SEO Writing Tips & Techniques Guide 2022
Last Update: 28 March 2022
Great SEO content works well for both organic optimization as well as inbound marketing via social media and other major outlets. In this article we will cover 10 tips on writing better SEO content as well as how these tips can help your SEO efforts.
SEO Writing Tips to Make Your Content Go Further
1. Write for your audience first
The first SEO content writing tip is to write for your audience first.
You might think that writing content with keywords in mind is the best way to optimize your site, but search engines are smarter than that. While it’s important to include keywords in your content, that isn’t all you need to do if you want readers to find it.
Write content that appeals to the interests of your target market or answers their questions. Not all posts need to be about your product or service, but they all should be industry related. Assert yourself and your company as an expert in your industry by writing SEO-friendly content that is interesting and informative, and do it better than your competition.
This means doing research on what questions people have about your industry, then answering those questions in a clear, concise manner using language that people actually use when typing queries into search engines. It also means knowing the common terms for products or services related to the ones you offer so you can include them naturally in posts.
2. Keep it all under the same roof
The question of what to do with your blog has been debated for years. There are many schools of thought on the best place to host your blog, and there are good arguments for each one.
But if you want to make sure you get the most SEO value from your content efforts, it’s important that all of your original, quality content exists under the same domain.
Here’s why:
1. It’s easier for Google to find all of your content if it’s in one place.
2. When you optimize a single domain instead of multiple domains, it’s easier to build up authority (which is an SEO factor).
3. When publishers link back to a piece of your content they’ll link to the main site and not the blog, which will benefit the main site.
There are certainly valid reasons why many brands choose to host their blogs on other sites, but as long as it doesn’t conflict with other goals (like brand-awareness), there is no reason not to keep everything under the same roof when it comes to SEO value.
3. Make headlines that pack a punch
A great headline can stop people in their tracks, make them think or even inspire them. It can also be the difference between someone clicking on your article in search results or skipping right over it.
You have a very short amount of text to make a very big impression. So don’t underestimate the power of an effective headline on SEO! Write headlines that are clear, interesting and make use of rich keywords. In addition to a great headline, also make sure your meta descriptions are interesting and further elaborate on the topic of your article. Keep in mind that your title and meta description are what show up in the search results, so make them count!
4. Use keyword-rich phrases
The most important thing to know about using keywords and keyword phrases on your blog is that you want them to flow naturally. You don’t want to just stuff keyword-rich terms into every sentence. The best way to use keywords and keyword phrases is as part of a natural, interesting sentence or headline.
That’s not to say you should avoid the keywords you’ve chosen; it means you should find creative ways to incorporate them into your blogging.
For example, let’s say that you’ve decided that one of your main keyword phrases is “dog training.” If you’re writing a post about teaching an old dog a new trick, you shouldn’t write:
I’m going to teach my old dog a new trick tonight when I train my dog. My dog is going to be so well-trained after our training session together!
Instead, write something more like this:
My friend Kathy and I are going to teach her old retriever some new tricks tonight — we’ve been working on teaching the dog how to fetch a ball for several weeks now. Tonight we’ll finally get down on the floor and try some hands-on training with the dog.
In this case, the words “dog,” “training” and “training session” were all used as part
5. Structure your posts
When writing your blog posts, it’s important to think about your readers. The contents of your post may be great but can be easily lost in an unorganized, inefficient format.
Breaking your content up into smaller paragraphs with headlines makes for an easy read that will keep your readers engaged. For the search engines, back-end organization is key too. Using proper tag hierarchy when tagging headlines (H1 for titles, H2 for subtitles) is important to maintain a well-structured article.
6. Incorporate imagery
Make your posts pop with images! People are visual. Adding an image along with your blog post can make a big impression. Have a Pinterest account? In addition to promoting your blogs across your other social media channels, posts with images can also be pinned, adding another avenue for traffic to your website.
Be sure to add alt-text to all of your images so they can be indexed by search engines. You should also keep the file size in mind when uploading your images and add a title or caption to them as well.
7. Propel content with social media
People share content, but what makes them share it? An attractive title and an engaging description, for starters. Give the title and description of your post some thought so that people will be more likely to share them.
Social media is a powerful tool that can help increase the reach of your content and promote sharing. Post each new article on social media sites and in forums, using engaging descriptions and a call-to-action.
Since the power of social media lies in sharing, it’s also important to have share buttons on each of your blog posts. If you want more control of how your links appear when they’re shared, implementing Twitter Cards for Twitter or Open Graph for Facebook (technical) can give your shared links a boost, and may help your click-through rates.
8. Implement Google Authorship
Google Authorship is a quick and easy way to tie content to a certain author. As a result, your articles come up as rich snippets in the search results featuring your photo along with the article title. Google Authorship is great for personal promotion, but can also increase the click through rate to your articles.
To get started, you need a Google+ account. Next, you need to edit each post on your site by adding a link to the corresponding post on your Google+ profile. If you have multiple authors, each needs to do this for themselves.
To make sure Google shows these links as Google Authorship, go back and add yourself or each author on the site as an author. This will add a byline under each post and make sure that when someone clicks on it, they go directly to their Google+ profile.
Once you’ve linked your posts together with Google Authorship markup, head over to Google Webmaster Tools and use the Structured Data Testing Tool to test one of them out.
9. Promote natural link building
Link building is the process of getting links to your website from other websites. These backlinks show search engines that other sites vouch for your content, so the more quality, relevant sites that link to you, the better.
There are also a number of strategies you can use to build links on your own.
Start by creating compelling, original content that people will want to share. Then make it easy for them to do so by adding social sharing buttons. Next, start outreach to online publications and bloggers in your industry to see if they’ll feature your content on their site. Another great strategy is to target customers with blogs and ask them to write about their experience using your product or service. Learn more about link building strategy.
10. Monitor your activity
Monitor your activity. Stay on top of your SEO friendly content by monitoring your efforts. Google Analytics is an easy and free way to track your page views and the average time spent on a page. Check things like your bounce rate and time on site to get an idea of how users interact with your website after landing on your content.
If you see a high drop off in addition to a low average time spent on the page, that’s an indication that your content wasn’t relevant to what they were looking for, or worse, wasn’t interesting. Also, take a look at the number of social interactions (shares, likes, etc ) to get an idea of the virality
Final Thought
In the end, these SEO writing tips are what will ultimately launch your website onto the top of Google. In order to achieve this, you must be strategic with each page. You also must remember that both content and SEO work together with one another. If your SEO writing is done properly, then it will enhance your content and will help you gain more readers and customers.
Let’s Talk!
If what you see here is relevant for you and can help you grow your business or organisation, we’d love to discuss further with you. Drop us a message or schedule an appointment with us.
