SEO content is an integral part of your overall marketing strategy. There are many materials you can reference to write better. But some crucial tips are never shared online.
To help you start with SEO writing more easily, I write this post to share my "painful" experience during years of writing. Please note that you need to have a basic knowledge of SEO writing to understand some terms in this post.
What is SEO Writing?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's the process of optimizing content to improve your page's ranking on search engines (e.g., Google or Bing).
There are many steps for content optimization, including:
creating high-quality content based on keywords related to your business
building backlinks
doing technical stuff
Here, I want to focus on SEO’s non-technical aspect, content (and a bit about backlinks). This leads to the main topic today: SEO writing.
So what is SEO writing? It's about planning, writing, and optimizing content for search engines and readers.
Why is SEO Writing Important?
SEO writing is an integral part of content marketing. According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates roughly three times as many leads as traditional marketing. But it costs 62% less than the latter.
Source: Demand Metric
So to do content marketing well, you must focus on SEO writing. Good content can help your site/brand:
generate more leads
grab and hold customer attention
improve site/brand's trust, authority, and expertise with search engines
increase direct sales (if any)
Without a good strategy for SEO writing, your site can be prone to Google's violations. Google will lower your site's ranking and authority when the company sees it as spammy and unhealthy.
Different Types of SEO Writing
I'll divide SEO writing into different types based on purpose and content.
Based on Purpose
When you want to convey specific messages to audiences, your primary purpose can be to educate, advertise, or document processes. Hence, there are three types of SEO writing as follows:
Content writing: used to educate or entertain
Copywriting: used to advertise specific products/services and convince customers to use them
Technical writing: used to document particular processes, such as software manuals
Based on Content
Content can appear in written, visual, or verbal forms. There are different kinds of written content as follows:
Blog posts: refer to any articles, news pieces, and publications on the Blog section of a website. Look how Designveloper organizes their posts in their Blog!
Guest posts: refer to any content you write for other websites in your industry. Guest posts often attach backlinks that draw high traffic from those websites to yours through clicks. Here's how AS Marketing writes a guest post on their partner's website, Rank Tracker.
Product/Service descriptions: refer to a copy that explains why your offering is unique and why customers should buy it.
An outstanding Product Description from Weber
Ebooks: refer to long-form, downloadable content that provides a general audience with comprehensive guides. Hubspot has a massive resource of free ebooks on the website.
White Papers: guides or reports that cover more complex but specific issues than ebooks or guides. White papers include graphics (e.g., tables or charts) to help readers visualize data quickly. You can look through an excellent white paper from Cisco for the specific theme, Networking and Your Competitive Edge.
Infographics: visual representations of data and information. Infographics help summarize your message visually and quickly.
Email series: refer to email newsletters. You'll send these emails to subscribers to update new and relevant stories. Some websites like Atlas Obscura allow you to choose different types of email newsletters.
Besides, you can consider other forms of content like videos or podcasts.
What Novice Writers Need to Know About SEO Writing
Writing SEO content isn't simply typing some words. It's more complicated than that.
Over years of writing, I've realized some crucial things that no one tells you to optimize content. So based on my hands-on experience, here's what you should know to produce good SEO content:
1. Write for Your Target Readers
When writing, you should focus on the value given to readers, a post's structure, and a website's style guide.
Value
In marketing, writing the content means telling a story of your brand. No one has enough patience to read every word of boring content that gives them no value.
Just ask yourself these questions to explore the value you want to build:
"Why do I want to build this content?"
"What is my key point on this issue?"
Your primary key point is often the headline of your SEO articles. For example, the core idea in this blog post is revealing crucial tips any beginners should know about SEO writing.
Structure
Once you discover the main point, another critical issue is "Why does this content matter to my audiences?"
You'll fail to keep them reading your content if you can't convince them that you're giving reliable, helpful information.
Besides, you need to build a well-structured post including the following:
H1. Title (Your key point)
H2. Introduction
H2. Subheading 1 (Supporting point 1 to clarify your key point)
H2. Subheading 2 (Supporting point 2 to clarify your key point)
...
H2. Conclusion (Summary of your key and supporting points, plus call-to-action if any)
Just exercise "So what? Because" if you want to build great supporting ideas for your posts. Besides, you can integrate examples or personal experiences to strengthen your points.
Style guide
Many people can overlook font, tone, or more in SEO writing. But in fact, all those styles are vital cogs of the wheel.
As a content writer, you're on the company's behalf to interact with readers. What if you pick up illegible font or write big paragraphs of over five lines? Readers will feel overwhelmed and give up reading, no matter how good your content is.
Different websites have different style guides. But below are some basic rules to build a good format:
Use suitable typography for your brand
Use H1 for Title, and H2, H3 for subheadings
No more than five lines for each paragraph
Add space between paragraph
2. Build Readable, Optimized Content
Readability is a key factor you should focus on when writing SEO content.
Readability tells you how your content is easy to understand for search engines and human readers. Some tools I've worked with to check this indicator include Yoast SEO on WordPress, Readable, and Hemingway Editor.
Yoast SEO is a paid third-party plugin for WordPress. If your post has the green bullet next to Readability, your content is easy to read.
Source: Yoast
Readable is a paid tool; you should check every three paragraphs instead of a whole text. If you get a grade of B or above, your content is readable. But some companies can require an A for posts.
Hemingway Editor is a free tool. But I think it's not as good as Readable. The score you should achieve on Hemingway Editor is 8-9.
But you shouldn't depend heavily on those tools. I had another post talking about why writing and SEO tools are sometimes unreliable. Also, many websites stay high in ranking with "red" and "orange" bullets. Their secret is to focus on target audiences and industry instead of tools.
3. Don’t Forget Links and Some Other Critical SEO Factors
Optimization is another vital criteria in SEO writing. It's the process of aligning your content with a search engine's algorithm. In particular, you will optimize keywords and backlinks and do technical stuff. This helps search engines assess whether your content is valuable and trustworthy.
Optimizing content is more technical than you thought. You don’t need to get deeply involved in it. But there are some critical things you should discuss with SEO specialist and other marketers in a team to make your content SEO friendlier.
Add internal and external links to your content. You need to discuss with SEO specialists how many links to include. Based on my experience, the ideal number should be two to four per each.
No more than 60 characters for a SEO title (not a heading title).
155-160 characters for meta description.
Include key phrases in a post title, a SEO title, meta description, Introduction, Conclusion, and throughout a blog post. The density of keywords varies. Some companies require 1% - 2%, while my old company expects 5%.
Distribute key phrases, links and images across the blog post; don't gather them in certain section.
Companies often use SEO tools or plugins for optimization. Some typical examples include Yoast SEO and Frase.
You can look through Yoast's SEO analysis to know whether your content is SEO friendly. You should turn the bullet to orange or green, but avoid turning all bullets green.
Source: Yoast
Once again, remember that your main goal of building content should be for your readers first. If they find your content high-ranking but still bad, your website's traffic is still low. This can affect your brand's reputation.
Another SEO tool I use now is Frase. This online tool collects data from top-performing pages and calculates the average SEO score of those websites. And Frase will consider my content well-optimized if its score exceeds the average.
4. Start With Blog Posts
Are you new to creating content? If yes, you should start with blog posts and social media posts. It's because these two platforms had 80% of Internet interactors. Also, according to Hubspot, companies that had blogs attracted 55% more website visitors than those that didn't.
Then you'll repurpose your content. In particular, you pick and rebuild the best subtopics in other formats such as guides, videos, or infographics.
Source: Hubspot
Imagine building content is like planting a tree. You should start with its roots and build content around a broad topic relevant to your brand. You then move to other repurposed content as guides, slide decks, and more!
5. Never Write Introduction First
I wasted a lot of time writing a blog post because I first wrote the Introduction.
Why does this case happen? Remember that the Introduction helps you to introduce what you're going to say throughout the post. But once you haven't written any main or supporting ideas in the post, you'll not know how to introduce them. As a result, you may be stuck in the Introduction for hours without knowing how or what to write.
For this reason, many content specialists advise novice writers to focus on other parts first. And the Introduction should be the last thing you need to write.
6. Understand the Requests of a Website You Write for
Requests here are not style guides. Instead, they're requirements about keywords, backlinks, and other factors you should consider in SEO content.
Here are some questions I asked my clients before writing:
01. How many keywords should you include in a post?
My latest company required that main keywords account for 5% of the text. For example, if I have to write a 1500-word post, the number of keywords mustn't exceed eight. But some companies can require 1-2%.
In my current company, I use Frase to optimize content. This tool lists main and secondary key phrases that top-ranking posts have. I focus more on Frase's score than on how many main keywords I should include.
02. Could I use exactly every word of a long-tail key phrase?
A few months ago, I took the Content Marketing course on Hubspot. Based on their hands-on experience, you don't need to use exactly every word in a long-tail key phrase. Hence, you can use synonyms or adjust the keyword to make your post more natural. But my companies advised against doing so.
03. How many internal and external links should I include?
In old companies, there were no rules on that. But in a current company, they require no more than three links for an internal or external source.
04. How about image size and number?
Some companies I worked for don't mention image size and the number of images they want in a blog post. But others suggest the width of maximum 1000 pixel and the size of less than 150kb.
Heavy images can make your site speed lower, hurting user experience. Meanwhile, images with different sizes can negatively affect your site's overall style. So you need to consider resizing images before you start writing.
There are many more critical questions you must discover during the writing journey.
There's no perfect content. Even when I think Harry Potter is an excellent novel, you may not. The same applies to SEO writing. So, just read your company's instructions carefully before writing.
Final Thoughts
Once again, content is vital for any marketing strategy. If you want to become a content writer, you should remember basic rules to make your content optimized and readable.
Besides, there's no perfect writing. And there are no materials to make your content perfect. You need to remember two essential words to build good SEO content: optimization and readability. Also, if you want to write better, just write. I believe you will accumulate much valuable experience during your writing journey.
P.S
Please share your experience or story about SEO writing you've gone through. Experiences in other kinds of writing (e.g., novels) are also welcome.