Over the last few years, content writers have been in high demand. This is because they’re well-rounded individuals who can write in different tones and on many subjects.
However, they should also know SEO to reach a broad audience and make a splash.
What exactly should you pay attention to SEO-wise? We’ve singled out seven SEO content writing tips that could help you rank on search engine results page (SERP), thus generating more traffic to your pages and boosting their conversion rates.
This article will cover:
- Site Speed
- Effective Keywords
- Keyword Frequency
- Content
- Page Links
- Meta Description
- Readability
- General Writing Tips
1. Site Speed
We can’t stress enough how important it is to have a fast website. Likewise, speed is essential for mobile pages.
You may have heard that in 2018 page speed became a ranking factor for Google in the mobile-first index. So if your website is slow, it’ll have fewer conversions, a high bounce rate, and a low number of page visits.
Website speed is a sign of great user experience, and in general, 2 to 3 seconds or less is a good page load.
Anything higher than that will most likely lead to people leaving your page. You can use Google’s Page Speed Insights to evaluate the page speed.
Enter your site’s domain URL on the homepage.
You will then see your site’s Performance score primarily measured using Core Web Vitals and suggestions you can implement to improve your score.
2. Effective Keywords
Keywords are the keywords and phrases people enter in search engines to find specific content. They are one of the core elements of SEO.
Choosing the right keywords can be tricky, but it can be incredibly beneficial for anyone’s business.
What’s important is those keywords speak directly to whatever you’re writing about! One of the tools that could help you with your keyword research is Ubersuggest.
Enter your topic or seed keyword on the tool to see specific keywords related to it.
The good thing about this tool is it shows you how many times users searched for the keyword on Google (search volume) and how easy or difficult ranking on top of Google search results for the keyword is (keyword difficulty or KD).
The goal is to target keywords with high search volume and low KD when writing for SEO. Assuming that you write great content (which we’ll get into later), expect to rank your page on top of search results sooner than later.
This is where you should use keywords:
Title tags
It’s all about making a great first impression. Your post’s title tag is the first thing your potential audience will see, so do your best to capture their attention.
For starters, your keyword should appear once in the article’s title or the page you’ve created.
It would be best to be mindful of the length of your title tags. Google starts cutting them off after around 50 – 60 characters, so avoid this truncation and keep them short.
URL
This is the address of the page where users can find your content.
Content management systems like WordPress will use the title of your page or blog post as the URL.
However, you want to make the URL short and easy to read and remember for readers so they can type it quickly. This applies to search engines, too, since longer URLs take them much longer to process.
That said, using your keyword as the URL is the best approach. Edit your content’s URL before publishing it.
Meta description
This is the summary of what your page is about.
If you’re using one of the SEO tools, you can set your meta description. You should insert your primary keyword and one of the related keywords here.
Contrarily, without an SEO tool, meta descriptions will be generated from the first 160 characters of your content.
Heading tags
H1 is the main heading on the page and can be used only once. Other tags, from H2 – H6 are optional and can be used several times as long as you respect the hierarchy.
Why are headings important? People often read titles carefully to understand what an article could be about.
If you use headings, it’s also easier for search engines to read through well-organised content. That’s why you should play your cards wisely and place relevant search queries in headings.
You should also focus on long-tail keywords. These are informational keywords that can help you beat the competition, as that’s how in reality, people browse the web. They also help establish your authority and expertise about the subject.
Keyword Frequency
Pay close attention to how often your target keyword appears within your content.
If the frequency is too low, Google may think your content is irrelevant to a specific query.
That’s a thing to avoid, as the text will be unpleasant to read. Plus, it’s something that search engines seriously condemn, and you risk getting a penalty for it.
This is why you should include relevant keywords in your content. Also known as natural language processing (NLP) keywords, they help make your content more topically pertinent to your target keyword.
The more NLP keywords you use, the higher the content’s relevancy and the higher its chances of reaching the top of search engine rankings!
You can use tools like Surfer SEO to help you identify NLP keywords to include in your content. Below is a partial list of words and phrases related to the keyword “wordpress maintenance” using its SERP Analyzer.
3. Content
We’ve already highlighted the importance of using keywords, but you should be wary of SEO writing.
You’re most likely familiar with the Panda algorithm. Panda penalises ‘thin’ or low-quality content, preventing those websites from ranking high in Google.
That’s why you should try your best to create engaging, high-quality texts which will be helpful to your intended audience.
For instance, someone wants to see which WordPress pizza themes are the most popular. So please do your research, make a selection, explain what makes them better than the rest, and help your visitors choose.
Create posts that your target audience would want to know about the topic. It doesn’t matter if it’s long or short as long as it satisfies user intent.
Also, don’t forget to refresh your content from time to time. Search engine algorithms constantly change, so update articles regularly unless you want your organic rankings to plummet.
4. Internal Links
Why are page links essential, and what do they do with SEO content creation? For Google, it’s all about making information available to everyone.
Therefore, using internal links will mean your content is valuable and can be found elsewhere.
For Google, this is important. Its bot renders a webpage, follows the first link it stumbles upon, then the next, and so on. It learns how pages are connected and also how relevant they are.
Internal links could potentially lead to more visits to your website. For example, include links to similar subjects you’ve tackled within your content and connect the pages.
It would be best to use anchor links, which significantly improve the user experience and are also great for SEO. That’s important for longer posts, as search engines sometimes create direct links to parts of the text that have been anchored.
5. Readability
A well-written piece of content shouldn’t be incomprehensible. It’s as simple as that.
To measure how easy it is to read your content, you can use some readability tests, e.g. the Flesch Reading ease score. This one is commonly used, and these are the scores:
- 90.0-100.0: Easily understood by an average 11-year-old student.
- 60.0-70.0: Easily understood by an average 13-15-year-old student.
- 0.0-30.0: Best for university graduates.
Why is this important for SEO? Well, Google is trying to mimic humans. That means it scans texts in a human-like way, recognises synonyms, etc. Voice search is also on the rise.
Google wouldn’t list results with words that are too difficult to understand. For a given question, your page must provide a concise answer.
Imagine someone who wants to learn how to change the author of a post in WordPress Classic Editor and Gutenberg. You should get straight to the point and explain that as simply as possible, as in the linked article.
6. Value
The most vital aspect of writing content to grow your organic traffic is to produce something your target audience wants to read and search engines want to index.
Striking a balance between both factors is critical to help you create SEO content guaranteed to appear on search engine results.
Part of writing for readers and search engines are providing them with examples to help drive your point home.
There’s a reason why Google has been aggressive in rolling out updates concerning content quality. The (Product) Review and Helpful Content updates are just some things geared toward making your content valuable to everyone.
With the advent of AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s easy to deliver the “whats” and “whys” in your content.
Nowadays, you must explain how something is done through examples, case studies, first-hand experiences, and others. These will help separate your content from the naff you read online.
Not to mention, Google added an extra E (experience) in E-E-A-T on their Search Raters Quality Guidelines.
So, you should publish authoritative, trustworthy content written by an expert and provide readers with a seamless experience on your website.
In this case, getting SEO content writers knowledgeable about your topic or niche is best. Hire from reputable websites to get the best value out of your money.
7. General Writing Tips
The tips above should help you write content that cuts through the noise on search engines. But to help give your SEO copywriting even better, below are additional things you must follow:
Make Your Content Easy to Read
Keep your sentences short. Less than 20% of your sentences should have more than 20 words. Your paragraphs should contain around 100 words with 3 –4 sentences each.
The length of your entire text matters, too. As mentioned, Google doesn’t tolerate thin content, so your posts should be at least 1000 words long.
However, if the content calls for less than a thousand words, don’t be afraid to write that much, as long as it covers the content in-depth.
Use Active Voice
Writing passively can confuse readers easily since it can be unclear who’s acting. So to avoid having text that is hard to read, use the active voice as much as possible.
Focus on Structure
Use headings. There should be around 300 words between headers to keep a good content structure. As mentioned, you could use headers from H1 – H6, though the most commonly used are H1 – H3.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Back then, mentioning your target keyword phrases as often as possible could get you on top of Google. Nowadays, it provides users with a poor user experience and will drag your website on organic search.
This is why you must avoid keyword stuffing at all costs. Best to use NLP keywords instead so you don’t use the exact words and phrases in your content repeatedly.
Follow the SEO Content Writing Tips Above to Increase Your Rankings on Search Engines
We covered seven content writing tips that you should stick to for better SEO. They will help you write SEO content that will rank better in Google and other search engines, resulting in more traffic to your web pages.
It may take some time to master them all, and that’s ok. Success won’t come overnight, but be persistent!
Monitor your statistics, use Google Analytics, and keep track of things that could be changed for the better. Especially check bounce rate and time on site.
Create quality content, be patient and disciplined, and the results will speak for themselves in time!
