When talking about high-quality seo content writing and marketing strategies, people tend to get too technical. They start discussing numbers and graphs that might confuse even those who can be considered experienced, let alone someone who is just learning the basics.
That’s why we wanted to give you more practical tips that will certainly come in handy and help you build a strong SEO content writing foundation. Read them below.
What Is SEO Content Writing?
Before we dig into the details, you should understand that regular content writing is different from its SEO-focused counterpart. While all content writers focus on providing good, engaging, and relevant content, those writers practicing SEO also do the following, among other things:
- Create content for better Google rankings
- Focus on conversion rates
- Use high-volume keywords
- Help reduce bounce rate
To sum up, SEO content would refer to any type of content created with the aim of increasing search engine traffic. Truth be told, it’s a much bigger concept with many sub-categories, but this is the gist of it.
Of course, your SEO practices should always align with your business goals. After clearly outlining them, you can start planning the SEO content strategy and working towards gaining more organic search traffic.
Top 5 Tips to Boost Your SEO Content Writing Skills
Now that we’ve scratched the surface and covered the basics, let’s go through some tips and tricks you can make use of right away. Keep in mind, though, that digital marketing and SEO strategies are ever-evolving and prone to change. Still, the pieces of advice below are both traditional and trendy, so make sure to take notes!
1. Understand the Ranking Factors
Firstly, you need to understand that there are certain parts of content writing that are seen as essential. In order for SEO to work seamlessly, they need to be perfectly compatible.
To reach high search engine ranking, your content needs to meet the following requirements:
- High content quality
- Content relevance
- Links
- Website structure
- Keywords
- Conciseness
- Readability
Before publishing any content, you need to make sure it contains all the vital aspects mentioned above.
2. Focus on Keywords
Ask any SEO specialist, and they will tell you the same thing — keywords can make or break your content. Since you’re aiming for increased traffic and conversion rates, you need to get very analytical. Given that readers use keywords to find the relevant content, you should carefully implement high-volume words and phrases.
Remember to use them in places like meta titles, descriptions, headings and evenly distribute them throughout the content. If you’re unsure where to begin, we’d suggest using top-rated SEO keyword tools, which will help you find and plan keyword implementation.
3. Recognize the Reader’s Intent
You can pack your content with keywords and still fail to get the readers’ attention. It usually happens if you don’t understand why people type these specific keywords in the search bar. You need to get inside the readers’ shoes and think about what they want to find after clicking on your business’ website.
If all they see is non-compelling and irrelevant content, they will bounce from your website and probably never come back. So, make sure to conduct serious research and understand what people intend to find by searching for these keywords.
4. Aim at the Featured Snippet
You’ve probably seen small boxes that appear at the top of the Google results when you type in a word, phrase, or question. These are featured snippets, and they are fantastic for SEO. Typically, featured snippets appear in the form of a short paragraph, bullet list, or table.
If you’re using your content to answer some questions, make sure to give concise and clear answers and potentially include a list. If deemed relevant, Google will extract the snippet from your content and place it above all results, giving your business more visibility and better ranking potential.
5. Link to High-Authority Websites
Make sure your content isn’t just plain text. Include images, graphs, tables, and, most importantly — links. When covering a topic, you should link it to a high-authority platform, one that would add more value to your content. Naturally, these websites should be relevant — otherwise, if their addition doesn’t make much sense, it may weaken your entire content strategy.
Dina Petkovic is a content writer passionate about all things SEO. She enjoys traveling, dancing, spending time with friends and family, but her true passion is researching new fields that would help broaden her horizons.
SEO Content stock photo by dizain/Shutterstock