SEO content writing has evolved over the years due to a number of factors. From search engine algorithm updates to growing competition in every niche, writing SEO content is more complicated than ever.
To cut through the noise and gain a competitive edge, you must always keep track of the latest writing trends. Although some old writing skills are still relevant today, we’ve provided many new ideas that you must incorporate. More publishers are also becoming educated on its significance, leading to a higher demand for SEO copywriters, guides, and content.
Content
What is SEO writing?
Why is it important?”
How to write for SEO
Keyword research for content writing
Understand the search intent of keywords
Create Evergreen Content
Craft a content template for a good user experience
Put keywords in title tags and body
Create an internal linking plan
Create Google Friendly URLs
Share new content
Couple More Tips
Why do you need SEO copywriting?
What is SEO writing?
Writing for search engine optimization means appealing to both your readers and search engines. You must ideally maintain the balance between storytelling, providing descriptive information, and niched content based on your reader’s knowledge.
SEO content writing is defined as writing optimized content to rank in google search results. For example, using primary keywords in the text’s header tags and body content.
SEO writing intends to help your content rank higher in search engine result pages; by combining the traditional copywriting techniques with SEO writing tips.
It’s quite a straightforward process. First, you need a content strategy, well-researched data, and some SEO tools. Then you do some research to discover the search intent, type of content your users consume, and spy on your competitors to see what you’re missing out on – the content gap.
You could also write optimized copies to post on third-party websites. This SEO tactic is called link building and it’s also a good content marketing strategy. Link building affects other ranking factors like domain rating and authority too.
Why is it important?
Writing for SEO is crucial because it is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your content reaches your intended audience. If no one can find your high-quality content, does it really exist? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
For example, we optimized this SEO article properly, or else you wouldn’t have found it on any SERP. The higher a website’s search engine rankings are, the more visitors it will receive. More users equate to increased sales or simply more readers or fans.
Writing SEO-friendly content helps your audience, increases organic traffic to your website, and improves conversion rates. Although other content distribution methods like paid ads can get you a lot of traffic, they’re an expensive short-term strategy.
On the other hand, SEO writing is a long-term strategy that’ll keep bringing you non-paid organic traffic increasing your chances to monetize it with ads or affiliate posts. However, you’ll need to do more than just write content to get to the top and stay there.
Your SEO content must be:
- Be optimized for mobile users;
- Readable in your target audience’s natural language;
- Understand their queries and provide answers in a desirable format (lists, paragraphs, pictures).
How to write for SEO
Keyword research for content writing
The first step in creating SEO-friendly content is performing proper keyword research. Searching for short and long-tail keywords will help you describe a topic to the best of your ability for your users while optimizing your content for Google.
Fortunately, keyword research happens to be the easiest part of SEO content writing. First, you pick a topic you want to write about — bitcoin, electric cars, SEO — anything that’ll attract your target audience.
Secondly, you pick a keyword tool. Keyword tools are software programs or websites that crawl and search the internet looking for search phrases related to your topic. These tools then compile a list of available keywords, showing you how often users search for them (search volume) and how often people write about them (competition).
Most writers and publishers coming into SEO tend to go with free keyword tools like Google Trends, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, Keyword Sheeter, and more.
Keyword research helps you write content for SEO that remains valuable and relevant for a very long time.
Don’t follow the crowd here; put yourself in your reader’s shoes and find answers to questions that no one else provided.
For example, if you wanted to start writing SEO content, you’d like to know:
- How long should your content be;
- How often should you insert images;
- What is the best way to ask and answer a question?;
- How often should you use long-tail keywords;
- What’s the SEO-friendly way to insert video content in your articles.
The questions are endless, and we’ll answer them in this article. Your readers deserve the best content possible so that they keep coming back for more. As a reward, you’ll deserve higher profits on affiliate marketing or advertising.
Understand the search intent of keywords
To write the best content possible, you’ll need to understand the search intent of a keyword. First, you must understand your target audience’s needs and interests. Intent can be informational, transactional, or navigational.
Informational Intent
People looking for information make up a large number of searches on the internet. It could be weather information, educational information for children, SEO information, or anything else. People with informational intent are interested in learning more about a specific topic or have a particular question.
Google’s understanding of intent extends far beyond simply providing information about a specific term. For example, users searching for [pancakes] are looking for recipes rather than information about the history of pancakes. Google even recognizes that videos and images are helpful for some terms, such as [how to change a car tire].
Navigational intent refers to searches with a specific website or address in the user’s mind. For example, users who search for [Twitter] want to visit the Twitter homepage.
Ranking high for a navigational keyword will boost organic traffic only if your site is the navigational intent.
Transactional intent has to do with online shopping. When users are looking to buy something, they are searching with transactional intent. For example, [spare tires], [yoga mats], e.t.c.
Commercial Intent
Some people plan to shop in the (near) future and conduct their research on the internet. Queries like [What is the best 4K TV?] [Which SEO tool is the cheapest] show transactional intent. But they require more time and persuasion.
What Type of Content Do People Search in Google?
Now you understand the basics of keyword research and search intent, let’s move on to content types. Your goal here is to create the correct type of content for your users and Google.
We have an acronym for the various types of content – TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU.
- Top Of Funnel (TOFU)
TOFU content creates awareness, offers information, and educates the user on the subject matter, product, or service. This content must answer common questions or solve everyday problems.
When writing content that creates product or service awareness, don’t try to sell to the visitor because you risk losing them at this stage. Avoid using commercial keywords in this type of content. TOFU content satisfies the informational intent behind search phrases. Types: Blog posts, infographics, e-books, and podcasts.
- Middle Of Funnel (MOFU)
MOFU content keeps users informed and explains your services or products to them. You can distribute this type of content through case studies, product reviews and best practices, discounts, surveys, and so on.
- Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)
The bottom of the funnel content helps improve brand loyalty and conversions. It’s the type of content for converting leads into paying customers. This type of content includes live demos, customer stories and personal client reviews, product comparisons, new product launches, and more.
Create evergreen content
Finding topics that keep people coming back to your website is the second step in your research phase. Evergreen articles usually contain information that does not change over time. AIt’s the kind of content that solves a problem that people keep having. For example, how to take a screenshot on mac or how to format a flash drive.
As long as people use Instagram or TikTok, they’ll always ask all those “how-to” questions: how to get followers, how to use paid ads, how to monetize TikTok traffic, and more. Writing about new products, including their features, can be evergreen content.
You can draw attention to a boring niche as well; all you need is a good idea. Let’s look at some tips that’ll help you write evergreen content:
- Appeal to the product/topic/service’s history.
- Create how-to guides or help documents.
- Add a list of frequently asked questions to your article.
- Share best practices.
- Give examples of case studies.
- Tell the story of how your brand evolved or your success story.
Craft a content template for good user experience
Every article you write should have a natural flow and a creative content template. Web content requires clean visuals like images, videos, and gifs, and a cover photo with an eye-catching title on it. It’s a lot easier to share it on Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media sites.
The blog article’s layout should always correspond to your website’s design. It is easier to design an article layout if you are using an open-source CMS like WordPress. For SEO and better user experience, your posts should include:
- Bulleted or numbered lists
- Structured information.
- Legible font with moderate line spacing.
- Separate sections of images and text.
Put keywords in title tags and body
Besides content structure, you also have to deal with tags in titles. Writing your keyword at the start of your article’s title will give you a significant advantage.
This practice can boost your click-through rates because the users prefer to click on titles that contain the information they want to find. Another good idea is to optimize your titles for multiple keywords. But don’t just spam keywords for the sake of it.
Title tags are really important because that’s the first thing the user sees. To write compelling titles, check out your competition and see how they create titles that attract readers. If you look at your competition, you can see how you can create better title tags and stand out.
Your titles must also be relevant and appealing to get users to click on them and stay on the page. Also, don’t make a promise in the title that you won’t fulfill in the article.
Now you know that keywords in your content is a crucial aspect of SEO content creation. But how often should you use keywords in SEO content?
There is no ideal keyword density. Google has stated that keyword density is unimportant to them. The location of your keyword, rather than the number of times you use it, seems to be more important. Your keyword should appear in the following places:
- The URL
- The title tag
- The 100 words of the article
- The first paragraph
- In the H1 tag
- In the H2 tag
Write an enticing meta description
Although Meta descriptions do not affect Google rankings, you can boost your organic CTR by using a catchy meta description. As a result, we recommend that you write a unique meta description for each page on your website. Also, write a meta description that will entice Google searchers to click on your result.
Create an internal linking plan
Internal links add value to a page and are an effective SEO copywriting strategy. They allow users to stay longer on your website and navigate to other exciting topics.
When you’re writing about something and want to add more explanations, the best way to use internal links is to link to a page where you previously discussed it. For example, as we explain the importance of internal linking, we’ve linked to a page where we discussed this topic in greater depth.
When using internal links, ensure you link to the correct anchor texts and point to valuable, live web pages. The procedure isn’t complicated. You should be familiar with your website or be able to search for the relevant article.
Internal links also help search engines index your web pages and understand your site’s structure and architecture. As a result, we recommend including at least 4-5 internal links in every post you write.
Create Google Friendly URLs
Your title length should be between 50-60 characters and the URL between 90-105 characters. Having a short and easy-to-read URL has more advantages than having a long and difficult URL. It is beneficial if the focus keyword appears in both the URL and the title. But we’ll get into that later.
Share new content
Sharing your content is important if you want people to read it and boost your website traffic.
When you’ve published an article, you have to let other people on other platforms know. Share it with other people who might be interested. Content sharing does not involve social media marketing or emailing. You can share your content on other platforms with a wider reach like medium.com, and similar websites.
Couple more tips
- Write for your intended audience: The tone of your article may vary depending on the topic, but it should always be informative, engaging, and focused on your reader’s needs.
- Use keywords naturally: The average reader should have no idea that you used keywords while writing your article. Allow the keywords to assist you in creating your outline. Would any of the keywords work as main headings or in the first few sentences?
- Create a checklist: Copy and paste the keywords into a separate document where you can mark them as you go and keep track of how many times you’ve used them.
- Read your article aloud: Before submitting your article, read it aloud to see if there are any areas where the grammar and tone don’t sound right.
Why do you need SEO copywriting?
Without organic quality traffic, it will be tough to turn your blog into a profitable business.
At Adsterra, there are no restrictions on the number of unique users per month – you can earn money even with little traffic. But the quality of your content is important: an interested audience, clicks, and conversions.
For example, we offer banner ads according to the CPA model (which means advertisers pay for conversions). Therefore, it is so essential to create quality content that attracts a good audience.
