SEO, or search engine optimization, is optimizing your page to rank on search results. And among the many factors in SEO, do you know which experts stated is the decisive factor?
Content.
Content is the initial creation of your during your SEO process. No content means no SEO. Therefore, experts always recommend investing in writing informative and original content that can educate users.
But out of a thousand competitors writing the same topic, how to write SEO content that is unique gives marketers a hard time thinking. But no worries, here are 8 simple steps you can implement now.
What Does “Writing for SEO” Mean?
Simply put, “writing for SEO” means creating content designed to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERP), such as Google. When you produce good quality articles, you strategically optimize your content to increase its visibility and attract more organic traffic to your site.
To do this, mastering these three understandings:
- Know who you are writing to.
- Know what specific information your target audiences are looking for in the answers.
- Research for the information to provide the most precise, easy-to-understand, and straightforward answer.
8 Steps to Create SEO Content
Here comes the exciting part: how to write SEO content that is compelling enough to keep users reading from beginning to end. While it might sound complex, we have shortened it to 8 simple steps:
- Research topic
- Find target keywords
- Draft an outline
- Write a clear meta description
- Write growth-focused content
- Review and revise
- Optimize SEO elements
- Add internal links
- Research Topic
Obviously, you must know what topic you want to write about before actually taking action.
When we talk about SEO content, we are referring to various types of content, such as blog posts, product descriptions, testimonials, captions, interactive elements, and landing pages. Each has its topic category you must choose to build compelling content relevance to the points.
Here are some questions you can ask while researching:
- What is your target audience? – Knowing who you are writing for and their expectations is significant to keep users engaged. You want your users to be educated with the information provided to maintain their interest.
- How do your competitors perform on similar topics? – Evaluating your competitors to know what they are good and bad at. From then, gain insights and make unique content that differentiates you and your competitors.
- What are current trending topics? Keep an eye on trending topics and popular search queries using tools like Google Trends. By aligning your content with the crowd’s interest, you gain more opportunities to attract readers.
- Find Target Keywords
After identifying the topic, to effectively rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs), find target keywords that align with the chosen topic.
Advanced tools like Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner provide in-depth analytics of important keyword metrics like volume or key difficulty. Additionally, Google Trends can help you identify trending keywords at any time. So, it is worth trying out.
However, keep in mind that chosen keywords don’t have to align with your specific goals. As the search intent varies, the keyword might evolve over time. That’s why frequent keyword update is also necessary, just like the post-publishing steps in producing content.
- Draft An Outline
Once you know what to write and the target keywords align with the chosen topic, it’s time to make your writing process actually begin: drafting an outline.
An outline is where you place everything you have researched in one place and organize them into a proper structure.
Additionally, drafting an outline means creating reasonable headlines to divide your content into different parts. A good headline captures the attention of potential readers and encourages them to continue reading. Hence, making them attractive is crucial.
Here are the most common headline types you can try:
- Question
- Numbers
- Include a value proposition
Keep in mind that a great headline isn’t there to attract attention, but it helps audiences scan through the overall content. Precise, short, and straightforward are three factors that can make your headlines more memorable to readers.
- Write a Clear Meta Description
Can’t go wrong with creating a clear meta description to impress your readers at first glance, right?
This on-page SEO element summarizes a web page that appears in search results. It gives users an idea of the content on a page and its relevance to their search.
Since it is a brief, keeping your meta description short and precise is important. But that’s not it, try to implement these:
- Include focus keywords: Incorporate relevant keywords from your research because Google uses keywords to position your webpage on search results.
- Align with content: Make sure the description accurately represents the content. Misleading descriptions can increase bounce rates and loss of trust.
- Add a call to action (CTA): A well-executed CTA motivates searchers to click on your website. Relevant CTAs like “find out more” or “get it now” can encourage visitors to take action.
- Write Growth-Focused Content
Here comes the part where you utilize your writing knowledge: growth-focused content.
Creating growth-focused content is essential for improving your search rankings. This involves writing content that explicitly fits the search demand of your industry and optimizing it for search engines.
This step is when you refer to your audiences’ expectations when reading content about this topic: What are their expectations? What information do they look at while reading this content? How do they want the tone of voice to be?
For example, you can support your facts by providing reliable sources, charts, or figures. This strategy not only helps to credit your point statistically but also to establish your website as an authority with proven content.
Remember, keeping everything consistent is the key. Focus on maintaining high-quality content, a consistent tone of voice, or creating a publishing calendar to ensure your writers aim for optimal results.
- Review & Revise
Don’t tell us you finalize a 2000-word article without going back and reviewing for errors. If that is the case, then your writing process cannot end.
The best way to analyze your content is to have somebody from a different perspective read it for you. It can either be your colleagues, audiences, or random strangers with the same interest.
Revise your writing based on the feedback received. Then, proceed to the next step of your process. Having a new point of view can improve and make your SEO content more diverse.
To avoid grammatical errors and duplicate content as an issue for SEO, remember to check carefully during this part of the process.
- Optimize SEO Elements
Before publishing, ensure your content is SEO-ready to satisfy search engines’ algorithms for better ranking. Here are some common SEO elements to optimize:
- Title tag
- Meta description
- URL
- Page or post-categorization
- Image alt text
Here are some tips to optimize your SEO:
- Include main keywords on the title tag, meta description, and URL.
- Keep images alt-text short and descriptive.
- Compress your image to shorten page loading speed.
- Improve better UI/UX.
- Optimize your website to make it mobile-friendly.
- Add internal links
Internal links are links that connect different pages on your website. This SEO element is essential because it is like a guide to help search engines crawl your entire page to determine the relevance, relationship, and value of your content.
By strategically including internal links, you can enhance the SEO performance of your website. Here are three factors that determine the value of internal links:
- Relevance: Links related to your industry or topic help search engines understand the focus of your website and rank it higher in search results.
- Authority: Links from reputable and popular websites carry more value and credibility, boosting your SEO rankings.
- Variety: A diverse link profile, including links from blogs, website directories, review sites, and more, is beneficial for SEO.
When adding internal links, use short, relevant, and descriptive anchor text. The anchor text should clearly deliver the value of the linked page.
Also, avoid generic phrases like “click here” or “press this button,” as they provide little context that might confuse search engines and readers.
4 Tips To Integrate SEO in Content Writing
Incorporating SEO into your content is like throwing one stone hits two targets: ranking on search results and enhancing user engagement. Here are four tips to help you achieve:
- Understand Your SEO Writing Goals
Have you ever thought: What are you writing this for? Why should I write this content? How will this article affect my webpage?
It’s important to establish a clear picture of your goals at the beginning of your SEO process. Though we understand that it might vary depending on business goals, but aren’t we doing SEO to aim for one specific purpose: ranking on search engines?
In case you still need help, here is a reminder: Our SEO goal is to help search engine crawl bots find and properly index your site to rank better for relevant search terms. Let’s start there.
See more: What is a featured snippet?
- Keep Your Content Engage
To maintain user engagement, your content must be engaged. That is the obvious example of the process and its result.
When writing SEO content, it’s important to prioritize the needs of your human readers over focusing on search engine requirements. Because at the end of the day, all Google priorities are how helpful your content is to its users.
Search engines evaluate the helpful rate of webpages based on factors like readability and formatting, which are dedicated to human comprehension.
By writing content that is user-friendly and meets audiences’ expectations, you are simultaneously optimizing it for search engines. Remember, writing for humans ultimately means writing for search engines, too.
- Lead the SEO Trends
Leading the trends always brings significant benefits to your webpage, right? So if others can do that, you can do it, too.
The ultimate tactic to lead the trend is staying up-to-date with whatever happens in the evolving industry. Keep track of the latest changes to Google’s algorithm and the preferences of web users.
Once you know the trend, adapt your SEO writing approach to ensure your content aligns with current trends and meets the crowd’s interest in the fattest approach possible.
- Analyze and Evaluate Your Results
Do you want to know where you are in the process? This is the step to find out.
Analyzing and evaluating the SEO writing performance allows you to determine if you’re making progress toward your goals.
Keep a close eye on how content performs and use analytics to measure its impact. Try to use analytics tools like Ahrefs, Google Analytics, etc. When testing new techniques, track the results to ensure they are more effective than previous strategies. And find out the reason why it is not.
By continuously measuring and analyzing the data, you can optimize your SEO writing efforts and make better decisions to improve results.
Conclusion
In short, the process of how to write SEO content is most effective when you really know the readers’ expectations when reading your article. Try to position yourself as a reader and ask as many questions as possible.
We have recommended the eight essential steps and four trips to incorporate SEO into your content writing. Now, it is your turn to implement and show off your skills. We are sure you got this!
Co-Founder & General Manager @ ROI Digitally
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