Best SEO Tips for Content Writing

Content has been one of the best-performing digital marketing strategies in recent times. It has far outperformed other methods for getting search rank and ROI.

High-quality content writing has several advantages over other methods like ads and social media. Search engine updates are frequent, focusing on providing relevant content to the audience.

However, content writing is not just filling a web page with words and hoping Google Magic will take care of it. You need to consider several SEO factors before pressing the publish button on your CMS.

Look at SEO recommendations before, during, and after your content writing process.

Start With An Action Plan

Most of us believe in planning, and so do the content writers. Here, planning means several things you should consider—the type of tone your article will take, the audience, the product, and several others.

Planning helps you list out ideas you have for a piece of content, and it can be anything about what you are writing about. In simple terms, writers call it content outline. It touches on what you will write about and all its particulars.

You need not have a very detailed content outline. Instead, it is a simple plan that will help you as a writer on what to write next and add value to the content.

All you need is a guide to ensure you're following the right path through the process.

Action: Plan a content strategy before you start the process

Commit To Detailed Research

Once you are done with content planning or outlining, you need to focus on research. There are millions of posts added to the internet every minute, and your research determines how different you are from them.

Unlike planning, research takes a lot of your time. Writing is all about getting good at researching your topic.

People need something that relates to them to click on your post. A clickbait title will only go so far - you need actionable content.

Today's readers are a lot more discerning than earlier. If you deliver something unique, they are bound to take the time to read it.

As a writer, you must thoroughly research any topic to cover all angles. The data you obtain from research should be more than just keywords and numbers. You need to do the legwork and visit as many websites on the topic as you can.

Action: Get as much information as possible about your topic for the best results.

Check What Your Competitors Are Doing

Sometimes, the best way to improve your work is to peek at the competition. Competitor analysis is an important step when it comes to content writing.

It can give you several important insights into the type of keywords and tone they've used. You also get a lot of different approaches to the same topic. Taking this step will give you a chance to try out different ideas for the content you are planning to write.

Make a list of all the competitors your article will have, and then visit their version on the topic. It helps to take notes on what they've covered here. It gives you the scope of what you can improve.

The objective of competitor analysis is not just to blatantly copy material from their website. You're picking up pointers on what they have written to produce a better article of your own.

Finding your competition on a particular topic is easy - all you need to do is Google it. The top five results are the ones you want to check on.

Action: Find out what the competition is up to and make it better

Opt For Long-tail Keywords

As you are writing for SEO, keywords play an important part. The more effective your keyword selection is, the more traction you'll have on searches.

However, this is easier said than done. There are hundreds of keywords that are targeted by your competition every day. This is what makes it harder to rank all the keywords you picked.

The solution here is to opt for long-tail keywords. Like its namesake, these keywords are longer and more specific as well.

Your advantage here is that long-tail keywords have better conversion ratios than other keywords. The reason is that longer keywords focus on better user intent than short keywords.

Your goal would be to identify these performing long-tail keywords relevant to your niche and add them to your article. Some research here would give you a lot of benefits, including increased rankings.

Action: Long-tail keywords offer better conversion and ranking benefits for specific queries. You can use various online tools to find long-tail keywords.

Understand What Your Audiences Want

Many writers tend to forget or take for granted the role of their audience in your content. While the topic you're writing on is key, all the writing is for your audience.

To put it more simply, audience-centric content wins every time. But here's what many people don't discuss - what is audience-centric content?

Any content piece that leans more towards what your readers want to read about is considered audience-centric. Identify a target persona for your content and write with that in mind. 

Focusing on writing for a specific audience might limit your numbers. Still, these have much better conversion ratios than a general article. This is why most businesses focus on articles that focus on a subject rather than generalized articles.

This offers the best results for getting results for your content. This will also push your creativity as a writer to develop unique ideas for your persona.

Action: Ensure that your content has a target persona in mind.

Opt For Long-Form Content

A few years ago, a phase proclaimed that long-form copy is done. Shorter copies were taking over, and everyone was switching to it as fast as possible.

Today, several indications indicate that a copy about three thousand words in length seems to get the best results.

The reason is that in SEO, quality content beats simple copy. A landing page might have a short copy that pushes conversion rates high. But when it comes to the top and middle funnel content, the long-form post is king. Short copies are generated to sell, which is a singular motive.

Long-form content is not just about sales but educating, helping, and discussing relevant topics of interest. This is why search engines prioritize longer content.

Action: Creating long-form content is the best way to get more traction for your website.

Use Short Paragraphs & Sentences

Long-form content performs, but the key is to make it engaging for your readers. And a writer does this by making content easy to read. The key is to keep the content short.

When writing, keep paragraphs and sentences short. And sometimes, in a rush to publish, writers might forget to do it. While the solution is pretty simple, it is something that people overlook.

Shorter paragraphs improve reader retention significantly. Couple this with shorter sentences, and you've got a winning content formula on your hands.

The length of both paragraphs and sentences has come under scrutiny of late. People today have very little time to read long, boring walls of text. Anything you publish competes with millions of other posts for their attention.

So, consider writing shorter paragraphs packed to the brim with value to make it easy on them and you.

Content that is actionable and easy to read will score high for users. It translates into much better SEO metrics as well.

Action: Ensure that paragraphs are not more than three lines long and readability scores are seven or lower. 

Don't Over-optimize Keywords Or Copy

When many people talk about the importance of keywords, they tend to cram as much as they can into an article.

This is not just wrong; it can even negatively affect your rankings. Over time, search engines have evolved and became more intelligent. They can see this through "engineering" content for SEO.

When you add several keywords, search engines perceive it as trying to score points without offering value. The result is that the content piece might lose out on rankings.

The key here is to make sure that you write without stuffing in keywords. It should appear naturally in the content.

When writing, it helps to think of keywords as ingredients to a recipe. If you add too much of anything, it won't come out well. Use keywords sparingly in your content.

If you need to add a few keywords later, ensure they fit into the context. Because forcing keywords into content is worse than not having that keyword added.

Action: Don't force keywords through some unproven density ratio - let it happen naturally.

Get Your SEO Meta Data Right

In the early days of SEO, the optimization process started with adding proper metadata. This is very little focus today, and it needs to change.

For writers today, CMS automatically adds metadata. Many people don’t bother to check them for correctness or relevance. Even today, searches place great importance on SEO metadata for any online content. This is a space where you can strategically add keywords or phrases.

Following standards for titles, internal links, alt text, and descriptions is important. Not many people realize it, but the title tag is one of the most powerful SEO elements. It impacts the ranking of the content to large extent. Search results include title tags when indexing your content.

Learn to optimize metadata and keep it simple enough for people and search engines to understand.

Action: Never ignore SEO metadata; optimize it with relevant keywords.

Promotion Strategies Are Critical

In the early days of SEO-based writing, all you needed to rank high was to write and publish an article. But today, things have changed considerably.

The same process of writing and not promoting content puts your article at a huge disadvantage.

Writing is just the first step, you will also need to focus on promoting it effectively. The promotion phase is what matters and how people see it.

As we discussed, many articles are being published on the internet daily. A promotion plan is what makes the difference between them and yours.

Promoting an article also has several advantages, like being linked or invited to collaborate with another party. Social media too can be used to drive traffic and improve sales.

Collaborating with other people also offers numerous advantages that can help your visibility. You can also use social media to drive more traffic.

For example, take this promotion done by Coca-Cola across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Action: Promotion is a critical step in improving the visibility of your content piece.

Write for People, Not Search Results

This would be the most relevant tip writers can remember today. With all the optimization and SEO, we often forget we are writing for people.

Search engines will not be interested in your content when we do that. The reason is that all SEO metrics today depend on the audience. As people engage with your content, the SEO performance keeps getting better.

Ensuring your article has keywords without supplementing it with quality content will not help.

Another pointer here is the language and tone you use in an article. It should be friendly, engaging, and informative. All these factors are what keep a user interested.

Learn to include interesting tidbits in your content, remembering it must be relevant to your writing. Break up the monotony with instances of other relevant subjects or humor.

All of these tactics work to help your reader get through the largest content pieces.

Action: Keywords and metrics are not everything - writing for your readers is the best way forward.

Figure Out A Good Hook To Start

It is always important for any content piece to have a good hook to get the reader interested. You should remember to tailor your intro paragraph to the content.

A good and engaging introduction lays the foundation for the tone of the article. This can be whatever you want; many writers use this to showcase their creativity. Pair it with a closing paragraph referencing the opening hook for the best effect.

The ideal time to create a hook and conclusion is after writing the article. It pays to spend a little more time to get this right. An attractive intro can help improve your article's appeal and get more shares than it otherwise would.

Ideally, this hook would be short and easy to read. It needs to be impactful and also contribute to the subject being discussed. It should also get right into the subject rather than meander along without saying anything significant.

Action: Create an attractive intro paragraph that aligns with your audience.

Ensure Your Content Has Purpose

Content writers should ensure that the topic they are writing on addresses a certain topic or issue. It could be anything aligned with the industry you're working in. A typical trait of low-quality writing is when they talk about many different things without dealing with the main subject.

It is important to have content pieces that detail the subject. Pointless writing to add keywords or content can be bad for your website.

“Establish what you'll talk about early on in the article. And then reference it throughout the article till you're done”, says Lucy from Ace Blogger Outreach.

This is how writers can hold the reader's attention through long-form copy. If you bounce around too much between different ideas, your readers will find it a waste of their time.

Once they do, they will click away, and your SEO metrics will degrade. So, staying on point throughout the article about your writing is important.

Action: Focusing on your subject when writing content helps you retain readership.

High-quality Visuals Help

One of the best content platforms of today that people find appealing is images. Presently social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram are a good example for this. Detailed imagery is something that can influence the minds of the readers. It can entice them into the article and keep them there. In studies, an article with images had 94% more views than those that didn't.

E.g., Check this image from McDonalds.

On the other hand, using low-quality images can have the opposite effect. Website visitors perceive poor images as a reflection of the article. The effect is so pronounced that people skip articles if the images are of poor quality.

Compress the high-resolution images that you use to save space. Or, if you don't have many good-quality images, don't use many of them. Low-quality visuals will only hurt your chances with your audience.

Action: Using high-quality, relevant images can considerably boost traffic and retention.

After Everything Is Done, Optimize

Doing SEO for a blog isn’t easy. Because of this, it is easier to get the content writing phase done before optimizing a post or its metadata.

Writers are beings of habit. Once they find their groove, they should finish the article before modifying it.

After writing the content, this approach will guide you in refining it for better optimization. Another aspect of optimization is that you can add important keywords naturally into the content.

Optimizing later will help you come up with good segues into difficult keywords. It can also work better to frame meta titles and descriptions after the article.

A lot of writers only have placeholders for images when they write. High-quality images are added after the writing is completed.

Action: When writing, focus on getting it done before you start on optimization.

Links Help Add And Share Authority

Another method to build more authority and get better retention is to add more links. When done right, links considerably improve the power and trust of your article.

Consider adding links at key points to support or illustrate your argument. These links could also be internal, meaning other pages on your website could also gain some of the traffic.

This decreases your bounce rate and also improves your website authority. Both of these aspects can push your content up the rankings.

Also, remember not to overuse the links. Remember that the reader will break concentration while clicking the link. Too many links mean more chances that your reader might lose focus on your article.

Action: Use internal and external links to your advantage, but do so sparingly.

Use Powerful CTAs to Drive Traffic

Regarding actionable content, CTAs are at the top of the food chain. A well-placed call-to-action inspires readers to take action.

This is important because you can direct your readers' actions if your CTA is good. A CTA needs to be related to what you're writing about. The CTA should direct users to a specific website if you're talking about a service.

Relevant CTAs are what make the audience click on them. It also needs to be catchy and inspirational. You can also use a CTA separately on an article for good results. This prompts users to follow a similar article on your website.

Like keywords, you shouldn't overuse this as it can then start to feel cheap and sales.

Action: Strong CTAs can get users to click on it more often.

Make Content And Website Mobile-friendly

Most of us visualize our readers behind huge computer screens when writing content. Mobile devices account for over half of web traffic in today's digital landscape. Remember that mobile users' requirements are distinct from those of desktop users. They require content to be formatted specifically for smaller screens.

The solution is to ensure that you test your website exhaustively for the best mobile experience. The displayed content should not be too big or small for the average mobile user.

Another compelling reason to ensure your website is mobile-friendly is that Google boosts the ranking of mobile-optimized sites. Google Search penalizes websites that do not have mobile versions.

Action: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly with responsive page elements to maximize benefits.

In Summary

Another compelling reason to ensure your website is mobile-friendly is that Google boosts the ranking of mobile-optimized sites. A lot of well-written content pieces out there hardly get any traffic. This confirms that writing is merely one element content writing. Ensure that you have covered most of the above processes, and you will have an article that performs well on any search engine!

Did these pointers help your articles reach a better reach? Have you had any experiences that could add to this list? Share them with us via a comment.

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