SEO content writing has lived in the realm of “too hard basket” for many that create content for their companies and business websites. This is a terrible way to think about it as it’s probably the most important part of your website. Not only will it help you with search engine optimization, but with your rankings in Google and other search engines. We have put together this SEO content writing guide to help you gain success with search engines.
The content is the pulse of your site. Without a good flow of the right kinds of content, people will not want to keep reading through the many pages on your site. The search engines know this, and it’s their job to keep us all from clicking away! Creating great content is a huge part of getting people to read more about what you have to say or sell.
A focus on SEO is more important than ever as the internet gets clogged with an abundance of websites and blogs. It’s necessary to make sure you do everything you can to get people to your site and keep them reading your stuff. This is a must for the success of your business.
This SEO content writing guide will walk you through how to write for SEO purposes, making sure that it will attract people looking for what you are selling and allow them to read about it in an easy way on their computers, tablets, smartphones or any other device that they use.
Fact: 93% of website pages do not receive any organic search engine traffic. That is a staggering number. The odds are heavily stacked against your company’s website if you don’t take SEO content writing seriously.
Lets start with what is SEO and how it impacts content writing?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the way that we as webmasters and website designers try to get our websites to the top of search engines like Google. The search engine’s algorithm is always changing, but the basics have stayed the same since about 1997 – when Google first came online.
The #1 goal of SEO is to get your site found by as many visitors as possible. It is the #1 goal of any website owner or business person. That’s why we call it optimization.
SEO is a broad topic and there are many different strategies for how to do it well, which will differ from business-to-business and from business-to-consumer sites in most cases, though there are distinct differences [as always].
The importance of a keyword in SEO
A keyword is the most important aspect of SEO content writing. Think of a keyword as something you would type into Google to find what you are looking for. For instance, if you type in “e-commerce solutions” into Google or Bing, the search engines will pull up a list of sites that have this phrase in their content somewhere on the site.
To be found by search engines and people searching online, that’s what your main keywords will be on your website. Even more important is that you have many of these keywords scattered throughout your content and in the primary heading tags.
When writing individual content pieces selecting your primary keyword or two is very important. It will be the core around which that piece of content is built.
Let’s dive a little deeper into the elements of Keyword placement.
What are the elements of SEO content writing? Keyword placement
Once you know what SEO means, then it’s easier to become a pro at writing for it. The topic of this article is how to write SEO-friendly content. To do this right, there are five basic elements or topics of SEO content writing:
Title Tag
This is probably the most important part of any piece of content that you write. It’s where you want people to start and it’s where you want them to end up [or as close as possible].
The title tag is also the most important piece in achieving your goal of having a headline that is SEO friendly. Your title should be specific to the content, but it’s not as simple as being descriptive of the content. It has to be what search engines call keyword dense.
Meta-Description
A description of the article made for search engines. This should contain your primary keyword(s) as well as the article title (and any other keywords relevant to the topic [keyword density] so search engines know what they are looking for in this result list).
This is also a great place for people to click through to your site if they are interested in what you have to offer. Don’t limit this space for the search engines either; make sure it’s a nice description.
Content
The meat and potatoes of your posting. Using natural placement of your keywords and keyword density will cause the search engines to index this content higher than most of what they see. Including a very high number of keywords in this chunk of text also allows other website visitors to find your content easily.
Note that some search engines provide tools where you can custom-tailor the text to your keywords so it will appear higher in the listings. If you want more details on how to do this, see more below.
It’s important to make sure you provide enough information for the searcher in your post. The content is probably the most important aspect of any SEO-related post, and what will separate you from everyone else. You want people to read your content! Just don’t give away the whole story here.
Also, make sure that your text is easy to read and understand. If not, then you are doing yourself a disservice by not writing this way for SEO purposes.
Headings
Using keywords within your H1 along with other headings is a very important strategy for SEO. To do this right, you want to provide your keywords in the surrounding text surrounding the heading, as well as in the H1
Using your main keyword or several main keywords within each heading will bring the search engines and other visitors to your site. As a general rule, it is not acceptable to have headings that are more than 60 characters long without being keyword dense.
Internal Links
Using keywords within the internal links that go to your site is another important SEO strategy. Internal links will bring more visitors to your site, and they are also a good way to get other people’s information on what you have to offer
To do this right, it’s important that you include your main keyword(s) as well as some additional keywords in the internal links. As on any other page of your site, make sure the text is keyword dense and easy to understand.
External Links
External links are additional pages that are not on your site. However, they refer to your site. They also offer additional value to visitors coming to your page. It also helps Google understand your references for the content.
The important things here are:
1) Make sure the target of the link is relevant. If it isn’t, then the search spider will ignore these links – so you lose all credit for this link.
2) Make sure that the text surrounding the link is keyword dense and easy to understand.
Image Tags
The old saying is true, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It’s easy to see why. There are a lot of studies out there that show that images can have a big impact on a search engine’s ranking and its ability to determine which content is most relevant based on what the searcher is searching for. So your alt image tag should include your primary keyword(s)
Although this is not as important for the main content of your post, it’s still important to have keywords included within your images, especially if you are posting low-quality content to build traffic. Search engines can quickly determine if a photo is worth indexing based on the picture itself, because there will be no descriptions attached to it. So you don’t want to have any junk pictures in those alt tags. It’s best to have high-quality images that include a lot of great text surrounding them.
URL
While not that important compared to information and images, the URL of your website is a key aspect of SEO. The URL should start with your main keyword, and then you can have a link to any other page on your site without adding more keywords. The most important thing is that the URL itself contains no spaces or special characters.
What is on-page SEO in content writing?
Ok, so we have an understanding of SEO, Keywords and the elements of SEO. On page SEO is putting all of this into action on the specific piece of content you are writing. Not all SEO elements apply to every piece of content, but it’s very important to remember that you need to include keywords throughout your content. But you also must show the search engine (and your readers) that you care about them by including certain keywords in a way that shows you know what they are looking for when they search for them.
If the search engine can’t read your post or its contents, it will go through all the posts in the world looking for something specific, and you are then out of luck. You need to have your keyword in a way that is easy to find, but also easy for the search engine to read. That means you must use keywords throughout your content. But everything you write should be checked for keywords as well. It’s important that your writing is 100% original, but at the same time, it needs to contain some sort of value.
Again a reminder of where you should place your keyword:
- Title Tag
- Meta Description
- H1 Tags and other Heading tags
- URL
- First 100 Words of Body Content
- Naturally throughout the rest of your content
- Alt Image Tag
- Internal and external links
So when people say they need to do search engine optimisation. On-page SEO is simply the process of defining your keyword target for the said content piece and then get the content to be optimised and inline with this to help it get ranked on the first page of Google. An even better goal, first position.