What Is SEO Writing, And How To Use It

If you’re juggling between several forms of marketing, it’s high time you focus your attention on SEO writing. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writing is a facet of content marketing that’s highly effective. In layman’s terms, SEO pertains to organic search results which means, getting free traffic by ranking your website on the first page of search engines. But when I say free, it’s not really free per se.

Of course, you need to hire content writers to craft the most SEO-centric blogs. However, when you stack it up against paid advertising like PPC (Pey-Per-Click), SEO is undeniably more cost-efficient. 

Learn more about how you can rank your website and read our beginner’s guide on SEO writing. 

How SEO Writing Can Rank Your Website

SEO writing has all the makings of an influential and lucrative marketing approach. If you search for your favorite brand’s website online, you’ll likely see a “BLOG” section on their drop-down menu. 

Take note, however, that SEO writing doesn’t only entail the written word for entertainment or Google’s algorithms.

One primary ingredient in SEO is user intent. This term refers to an online user’s goal, purpose, or intention of why they searched for a specific keyword. And there are three types: 

• Informational – Users who want to know more information about something
• Transactional – Users who wish to buy something
• Navigational – Users who are looking for particular websites

Say, for example, a business is looking for SEO writing agencies that can help its rankings. An SEO agency, on the other hand, must craft blogs that satisfy every user’s intent by explaining how SEO writing can help businesses. Or they can cover a whole range of topics around SEO writing marketing. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

SEO writing dwells heavily on keywords and on-page SEO. Here are some SEO writing tips that should get you started on your marketing journey. 

SEO Writing Tips to Rank Your Business

Before testing your game in unfamiliar waters, always define your goals. Whether it’s for brand awareness, a product guide, or customer engagement, make sure you plot them out before speaking to the experts to avoid confusion. 

Next is to determine your audience. What kind of customer demographics do you have? Or what types of customers do you cater to? 

Using Google Analytics will help you figure out your audience’s behavior. From there, you can determine what type of content will resonate best with your target market. Next, we move onto the fun and most crucial parts:

• Keyword Research 
• On-Page SEO

Keyword Research:

Keyword research is the crux of SEO marketing. Without the targeted keywords, Google will never see your website. In turn, your customers will never even be aware you exist! And there are several ways to do keyword research. How? 

First, list the top keywords that you want your business to rank for. The two most common types of keywords are short-tail and long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are incredibly competitive keywords that typically have less than three words. 

Example: SEO MARKETING

Long-tail keywords have lesser competition in your niche. They are longer keywords that comprise more than three words.

Examples: how SEO MARKETING works, SEO MARKETING companies near me, SEO MARKETING best practices 2019

This is called “niching down.” As you can see, the main keywords, which have the highest search volumes, are still there. But the second set of examples are more specific. Try to see which opportunity you think you can rank your business in and build your keywords around that. 

Ways to Do Keyword Research:

1. Google Search. Try to type in “SEO MARKETING” in Google and scroll down to the bottom. You’ll see there are several related keywords that people also search for. You can also use Keywords Everywhere to know the volume and cost per click for each keyword/s. You may even use the Google auto-fill feature to identify the most searched keywords and its synonyms.

2. Wikipedia. You may also turn to good old Wikipedia for more keyword ideas. Wikipedia bolds the most important terms in a topic and even formats each article with subheadings. 

3. Keyword research tools. You’ll find a lot of keyword research tools in the market that can help generate more ideas. Some are Keyword Tool, Keyword Planner, Uber Suggest, and more. 

4. Check competitors. One way to know what keywords to beat is if you spy on your competitors. Use Neil Patel’s free platform to enter a competitor’s URL, and it will display all the organic keywords that it ranks for.

On-Page SEO:

Now, let’s move onto another vital part of SEO marketing — on-page SEO. This pertains to sprinkling your keywords on every aspect of your content while adhering to white hat SEO. 

Here are a couple of tips:

• Put your keywords and their synonyms on your SEO title tags. Ensure it’s less than 60 characters long.
• Make sure your permalink/URL link contains your keywords.
• Write your keywords in the first 100 words of your blog. 
• Start your meta descriptions with a call-to-action word. Make sure they’re less than 160 characters long.
• Use H1, H2, H3, and H4 headings for structure. Check this Yoast guide for more tips. 
• Mention your keywords at least four times but don’t overdo it! 
• Break paragraphs into smaller chunks for readability. Two to three sentences per paragraph are easy to digest.
• Use anchor text for internal links.
• Choose external links that have high domain and page authority scores. However, make sure they’re not in direct competition with your business. Otherwise, choose no-follow links.
• Use bullet points, numbers, and bolding.
• Include images to break up chunks of texts. 
• Include keywords in your image file name and alt text. But make sure you’re describing the images precisely. 

Here’s a pro tip on image alt text or file name. Say, you’re ranking for the keywords, “blog writing,” and you choose an image with a person typing on a laptop. Your alt text could be “blog writer working on an article” or “person typing a blog on a laptop.”

Wrap Up

Dipping your toes into SEO marketing doesn’t have to be an uphill battle. As long you stick to white hat SEO, you’ll never have to worry about getting penalized. Lastly, SEO marketing might test your patience, but once you rank on the first page, expect to have tremendous marketing mileage.