7 minutes isn’t a terribly long time.

You could make a cup of tea, return a phone call or enjoy a quick walk around the block. But what if I told you that in just 420 seconds you could optimise your latest blog post or webpage so that Google (and your readers) love it?

1. Choose one main theme in two or three words

If you strive to write content that search engines love, then step 1 is to make each page easy to digest. When you cover lots of topics in a single blog post, article or webpage, your copywriting can look a bit like a pile of books on the floor (to search engines that is). Choose a main theme to your page or blog post, and stick to it. If you can think of related topics, break them out into more posts or subpages.

2. Do a quick search for the best keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases people use to find solutions online, so if you want your blog posts to be found, you need to use the same words and phrases as your audience! Google has a free keyword tool that will show you words and phrases that are being searched on and how popular they are. Start by putting in terms relating to your main topic. Ideally you want phrases that have high traffic and low competition.

3. Use your keywords in your headline and any subheadings

To boost your SEO, you need to get smart and use your keywords strategically. One of the ways you can do this is in your headlines and subheadings. Try and use your keywords at the start of your headlines and subheadings, but always keep your reader in mind. If it feels like you’re pushing a round peg into a square hole, then choose readability over optimisation!

4. Convert long paragraphs into lists

Search engines love bullet and numbered lists and pay particular attention to them. This naturally means your lists are valuable locations for your keywords, especially the first two words of each list. Lists will also make your web pages and blog posts easier to read which is good news for your audience (and happy readers are good news for you!)

5. Create links between pages and use your keywords

Creating links between your pages has a few benefits. Links make it easy for your readers to navigate around your site, which in turns keeps them hanging around for longer. More importantly, from an SEO point of view, search engines pay particular attention to links making them the ideal location for your keywords.

6. Run your copy through Wordle.net

While there are several ways to use your keywords strategically, using them frequently is also important. One of the hardest elements of SEO copywriting can be striking a balance between using your keywords frequently and still sounding natural. Wordle.net will show you a word cloud of your page with the most commonly used words in larger font. You will quickly get a sense of whether or not you need to do more optimisation work, but always keep your reader in mind!

7. Use your keywords in the page title and description tags

Another strategic use of your keywords is in your page title and description tags. Search engines use these metatags as clues about your content so they are prime candidates for a little keyword love. The page title and descriptions tags also determine the text that appears when search results are displayed, which means they are like ads for your site.   So there you have it. 7 ways you can optimise your online copywriting in just 7 minutes. If you ever think about SEO as “something you’ll get to grips with one day”, remember all you need is 7 minutes!