7 Ways to Ace SEO Content Writing

Did you know, Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches every day?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in 1998 with a mission to make worldwide information easily accessible.

Over the years, Google has constantly evolved to deliver useful and relevant results in a fraction of a second.

Everybody wants to be at Google’s top spot but with information on the internet accelerating in warp speed and Google’s algorithm changing every season, how do you do it? This is where search engine optimization (SEO) content writing steps in.

SEO-friendly writing can level up your marketing efforts like never before.

Let’s deep dive into SEO content writing and how you can have a rock-solid SEO strategy.

What is SEO content writing?

Aligning high-quality content with targeted search terms is what SEO content writing is about. It involves creating content that is optimized not just for your target audience but for search engines as well. It helps websites gain organic visibility and search engine results page (SERP) rankings.

Why is SEO content writing important?

Content marketing is a crucial pillar of SEO. Without content marketing and SEO paired together, Google wouldn’t understand where to rank you on the result pages and your target customers wouldn’t have a reason to visit your website.

When done right, content and SEO, together, can catapult any website to the top of search engine rankings. There are more than 200 factors that impact how you rank on the SERPs but we’ve listed the most prominent ones:

• content quality
• backlinks
• security
• domain age and authority
• user experience
• mobile-optimized site
• page speed
• direct traffic
• content depth

Now that we are clear with key ranking factors, let’s dive into how you can craft a winning SEO content writing strategy.

How to create an awesome SEO content writing strategy?

To get your SEO content in the spotlight, we’ve enlisted 7 ways that are aligned with SEO best practices.

1. Know thy audience

The effectiveness of your content depends on how well you know your target audience. To begin, find answers for:

• who are your audience segments?
• what kind of information do they need?
• why do they need that information?

This way, you will offer your audience what they are actually searching for.

2. Find targeted keywords

For your SEO content to reach the right audience, you need to find the right keywords. Keyword research helps you:

• determine what topics people are talking about
• identify search volumes for topics

Be sure to strategically include keywords within the body of your content, sub-heads, and titles. When you do so, the keywords will flow in a natural way with your content and not in a way that they look like spam.

You can use SEO tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Keyword Keg to help you with keyword research.

3. Solidify your SEO basics

One of the key basics of SEO writing is nailing metadata. Metadata helps search engines understand what your content is about and how it should be presented in SERPs.

Focus on optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text. Here’s how:

• each page should have a unique title tag and keep it 70 characters or less
• keep your meta descriptions to 160 characters
• use descriptive language that matches the image and keep it up to 125 characters or less

Structure your headers and sub-headers well. Include keywords in your headers and craft your content around keywords that are most relevant and useful to the reader.

4. Focus on readability

Reader’s usually skim through stuff. When your content is easily understandable to more people, they will stay longer, thus helping your Google rankings. When this happens, it becomes a cue for Google that you offer relevant information. All this is because of an important SEO factor called ‘dwell time’.

It is the amount of time that passes between the point when you click on a search result and when you return to the results page. The longer the dwell time the better.

To ace readability, here are a few qualities you can practice:

• clarity
• structure
• accuracy
• simplicity

Include engaging, relevant imagery so that the visuals can complement your narrative. For WordPress users, plugins like Yoast SEO can help monitor your readability score and other SEO factors.

5. Aim for featured snippets

93% of marketers think that featured snippets drive more website clicks. Optimizing your content for being in the featured snippets’ spotlight may yield better visibility than a standard search result.

Here’s how you can optimize your content in a way that increases your chances of appearing on snippets:

• use any SERP analysis tool to identify if a featured snippet exists for the keyword you’re targeting
• work on enriching the quality of your content
• structure your content well by using numbered and bulleted lists
• include relevant statistics

6. Embrace backlinks

Getting backlinks, i.e, having other high-quality, external sites linked to your content can improve your site’s SEO position on search results pages. When such authoritative sites link or publish your content, search engines view that as a sign that you’re doing some top-notch work.

To start, you can publish your articles or blog posts on authoritative sites with high domain authority scores that link back to your website. This helps drive traffic to your site, increase your audience outreach, attract new subscribers, and improve lead generation.

7. Measure and optimize

It’s crucial to track key metrics on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to keep your SEO plan on the right track. Here’s what you can measure:

• click-through rate
• conversion rate
• organic traffic
• backlinks
• SERP position
• dwell time
• page and domain authority
• pageviews per session

With these insights, you’ll know which content is working its magic for you, based on which you can tweak your strategy and write similar SEO content.

Conclusion

A smart SEO content strategy can be the magic wand that’ll boost organic traffic and eventually conversions. Be sure to follow the aforementioned ways and you’ll put your SEO writing efforts in sixth gear.

Do you wish to conquer the SEO writing terrain? Talk to us.