Be­yond Key­words: SEO Tech­niques That You Can Take From Video Marketing

SEO tech­niques in writ­ing have be­come heav­ily scrutinized.

Google’s Panda up­date and so on have made it harder for those who in­dulged in “black hat” SEO.

Black hat SEO is sim­ply a for­mu­laic ap­proach to writ­ing re­ly­ing on heavy, repet­i­tive use of key­word phrases to lure peo­ple in with­out much (or any) re­spect for use­ful, in­for­ma­tive con­tent to get anywhere.

This is a good and wel­comed de­vel­op­ment for those who care about ac­tual con­tent, writ­ers and con­sumers included.

But, what does it mean for SEO writers?

It means that you’ve got to be cre­ative. It means that you had bet­ter know real writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tech­niques which go far be­yond just sat­u­rat­ing peo­ple with key­word phrases.

If you’re un­cer­tain of what to do as an SEO writer in today’s world that de­mands qual­ity art, you can turn to suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing videos to help learn some im­por­tant stuff…

Use the clas­si­cal copy­writ­ing tech­nique of “ag­i­tate the prob­lem”. Peo­ple need to re­al­ize that they have a prob­lem be­fore you can solve said prob­lem for them. No­body is telling you to try to ma­nip­u­late or hyp­no­tize peo­ple into be­liev­ing that they have some prob­lem that they ac­tu­ally don’t have. We mean that peo­ple, by their hu­man na­ture, at­tempt to ig­nore or down­play their own prob­lems and you need to get it across to them in your writ­ing that they should solve their prob­lem -- us­ing your prod­uct or service.

Bring up the read­ers’ prob­lem. What will be “the harm” to them if they don’t solve this problem?

This “harm” might very well al­ready be go­ing on in their lives. Yes, they may al­ready be feel­ing it.

How is your prod­uct or of­fer­ing go­ing to solve their prob­lem, pre­vent­ing more or fu­ture “harm”? This is be­yond SEO key­words -- this is about the art of com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Mar­ket­ing videos con­stantly ex­ploit this. As a writer, vi­su­al­ize and make your read­ers vi­su­al­ize the res­o­lu­tion to the prob­lem that you agitate.

Use rep­e­ti­tion. “Ah!” you say! “This is what we SEO writ­ers do!”

Not so fast.

We’re not talk­ing of re­peat­ing the same key­word phrases. We’re talk­ing about what the videos do: repet­i­tively bring­ing up prob­lems and their solutions.

You will find the videos rephrase the same prob­lem in var­i­ous and sundry ways over and over again. In your writ­ing, do the same thing. How can you keep re­stat­ing the same prob­lem but with the use of dif­fer­ent words, phrases, and con­cepts? This goes far be­yond say­ing “key­word phrase”, “key­word phrase”…

Ex­press lim­i­ta­tions. The dan­ger here is telling lies to make sales, but…if you have a great of­fer that only has a lim­ited time on it, or which only has a lim­ited sup­ply, you need to make this known.

No, don’t pre­tend or lie. We all know about the mar­ket­ing let­ters on­line with the count­down clocks that never get to “zero”. Those things just un­der­mine the cred­i­bil­ity of the mar­keters and their offers.

Talk to peo­ple about the fact that you don’t have un­lim­ited re­sources avail­able with which to help them. Make them vi­su­al­ize (there’s that vi­su­al­iza­tion thing again) what it would be like to miss out on get­ting the help or the so­lu­tion that they need or desire.

Tell the truth, but within that make your of­fer urgent.

Ask peo­ple to take ac­tion. Yes, you need to ask peo­ple to do a cer­tain thing to help themselves.

Most peo­ple are in­de­ci­sive by their na­ture. Your key­word phrases aren’t go­ing to mean much of any­thing if you don’t ask for the sale. Don’t be shy.

Peo­ple need to be asked to buy.

And they will need to be asked more than once within your writ­ing, be­cause they will be filled with doubt. Mar­ket­ing videos re­peat­edly ask peo­ple to buy. You must do the same.

There you have it. Go watch some mar­ket­ing videos, and then go write.