Like it or not, our online lives are dominated by search engines, and this goes for both consumers and companies. People discover the digital world through Google and other similar portals and what they find defines their day-to-day, work-life, and purchasing decisions. To be able to capitalize on this and build a solid online brand presence, businesses should become fluent in search engine optimization (SEO) and do it fast.
This SEO writing guide for marketers will help you up your digital game and significantly improve your ranking. By understanding the terminology and identifying the needs of your market, you can create the right content to boost your business’s online performance.
What Is SEO Writing?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about increasing your website traffic through achieving a top-ranking position in search engine result pages (SERPs). By improving the quality and relevancy of your content, you improve the visibility of your pages in organic, or unpaid, search results, and, thus, reach more people.
To design a successful SEO strategy, a marketer or business owner needs to develop a proper writing technique called SEO writing. The method enables you to create content strategically structured and optimized to increase the visibility of a website or blog on major search engine sites.
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The Benefits of SEO
SEO is more than just bringing more traffic to your website. It provides multiple advantages to both the user and the organization. Here are some of the notable benefits:
- SEO promotes a better user experience for your customers.
- It is the primary source of leads.
- Content optimization results in a higher conversion rate.
- SEO writing helps you establish brand awareness.
- The organization will gain market share.
An SEO Writing Guide for Marketers
An essential element for search engine optimization is the creation of content. It is also the most challenging part. There are various guidelines that are an established standard by major search engine sites, and should be complied with for successful SEO.
So, to make optimizing your website a lot easier for you, we’ve developed this essential SEO writing guide for marketers.
1. Objectives of Implementing SEO
When implementing SEO content writing techniques, make sure that you define a clear set of objectives. It is essential to align these goals with your company’s vision, mission statement, and values.
A carefully planned and thought-out SEO tactic will help you obtain the desired results.
Improved Brand Promotion
Marketers can efficiently use SEO writing to increase, strengthen and promote brand awareness. If you achieve a first-page position in search results, your customers will see your blogs, web pages, and social media accounts more often. In addition, staying on top makes customers think that you are the best in your industry. This gives you the credibility to convince them you have the products or services they are looking for.
Increase Website Traffic
When you use SEO in writing your content, search engines will understand your pages better and will show them to users whose search intent matches yours. The more people see them, the more will click on the links, and this will lead them to the landing pages of your site.
If your content is engaging and of good quality, visitors will spend more time on your website and their behavior will be a signal to search engines to show your pages to even more people. This will increase your visibility in SERPs further and boost traffic to your website.
Enhance User Experience
One of the best advantages of SEO writing for your business is that it enhances the user experience. Therefore, better UX should be one of the primary objectives in your search optimization strategy.
By improving your content structure and website usability, the entire search process is made easier and faster. Customers can land on your website right where they want to be and easily find what they need, instead of going relentlessly around in circles.
Achieve Desired Conversion Rate
Optimizing your website can become your business’s primary source of leads. And while SEO writing can’t directly deliver sales conversions, it can help you bring in the right kind of prospective customers who have a particular interest in your products and services.
Structuring your website content well and providing a top-notch user experience will help you convert website visitors into leads that are highly qualified and much easier to nurture through the funnel and become clients.
Improve Return on Investment
SEO strengthens the brand, increases website traffic, and provides more leads. As this happens, naturally, your company achieves an overall increase in return on investment (ROI). Therefore, ROI should also be an objective when using SEO writing techniques and devising your strategy.
2. Relevant Content and Focus Keywords
Now that your SEO objectives are clear, it is time to proceed to the next step: creating relevant content with the proper focus keywords.
Identify the Topic for Your Content
The topic defines your offer to your target market and, at the same time, answers their needs. You should research what obstacles your customers are facing, identify how you can help, and analyze how to best reach them with a solution.
Once you’ve pinned down what you’ll be writing about, create a catchy headline. For example, travel agencies may use something like, “2021 Top Summer Destination in Asia,” or “Travel Around the World, 20 Adventure Essentials.”
The heading should feature a keyword that captures your customer’s search intent and has a high enough search volume.
Choose the Right Keywords
One of the fundamentals of SEO writing is the focus keyword.
Keywords or key phrases are the queries that internet users write in search engines when looking for something online. In most cases, people don’t type an entire sentence, they use keywords or short phrases.
However, with the growing popularity of voice search and the advancement of natural language processing (NLP), algorithms are starting to recognize and understand long and complex queries. Using competitive longtail keywords in your pages is an SEO writing technique that allows you to leverage phrasing that is closer to how your customers express themselves and follow through on their search intent with more precision.
Search engines match the user’s query with their knowledge base of entities and deliver search engine result pages (SERPs) with sites containing these specific keywords.
The position of your website in the SERPs depends on many factors including, but not limited to, the quality of the pages, whether they answer the user intent, how well they comply with Google’s E-A-T standards, their core web vitals, and so on. However, to this date, the top factor is that your content should revolve around is the focus words.
Here are Google’s SEO content writing tips to consider when building a list of keywords:
- Be the customer when creating the keywords.
- Set specific keywords for a particular target audience.
- Identify generic keywords for the general public.
- Collect similar keywords into a standard ad group.
- 5-20 keywords per ad group.
- Choose keywords that are relevant to the content.
Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research is an essential part of SEO writing. There are many free and paid tools on the marketplace that can help you identify the best keywords for your website and even come up with new content ideas.
Some of the most popular are:
3. The Art of SEO Writing
Creating your content is not easy, especially when you are adopting the SEO writing method. It requires composing your text so that it can be readable and understandable by both humans and robots. Focusing too much on the keywords will make it weird for your customers, but not using them enough can compromise your SEO efforts.
However, if the main purpose of your content is to deliver value to the reader and that’s what you should be driven by.
Prepare your Text
Start with evaluating what your target audience is interested in. Think about what you want to say on the topic, and how you can put it into an informative article worth reading.
Consider conducting research on the topic before you start writing. No one is an expert on all things and updating your knowledge will enable you to write an insightful article that people will find value in. Also, otherwise, you risk spreading outdated or misleading information, especially if you are writing in a dynamic field.
Make sure to take notes and save any links to important scientific research and statistics that will support your statements and give your article more credibility.
Researching the topic and the relevant keywords will help you sketch an outline for your article and pinpoint the subjects to cover.
Here are some guide questions you can refer to when preparing your text:
- What is the purpose of the article? What should be the result?
- Who is the target audience for the content?
- How will you answer the needs of your audience?
- What features of your brand do you want to highlight?
- What is the outline of your text?
Write, Write, Write
SEO writing is a skill that takes time and practice to master, so you shouldn’t get discouraged easily. If it seems difficult at times, do not give up yet, you will get better.
When you are writing your content, make sure to follow the objectives and text outline. Sticking to an organized structure and following a well-composed line of thought will help you say what you want without straying, and will, ultimately, improve the quality of your article.
Some other notable SEO writing techniques to observe are:
Keywords. Take note to use the focus keywords both in the text and in the H2 and H3 headlines, and maintain a steady density. Overusing them may make the content sound unnatural, and keyword stuffing is an outdated practice. On the other hand, not mentioning them enough may confuse the search engine algorithm about your topic.
Linkbuilding. Links are important to search engines because, amongst other things, they help them understand what the content is about. And while other high-ranking websites linking to you are more important for your SEO, pages that you are linking to have value too. Therefore, make sure to provide in your text internal links to other relevant articles that you have written, as well as a few external ones to high-authority websites.
Images. Adding quality images that are relevant to your content and make the information richer can also benefit your SEO writing. It’s best to use only original visuals that provide additional value to your text. This will improve your chances of ranking in image SERPs and bring in additional traffic.
Yoast SEO. If your website is on WordPress, using a tool like the Yoast SEO plugin can help you identify how well optimized your text is. While it can’t help you write better, it can give you clues about where your weak points are and what to improve.
Writing may only take 30 minutes or it can take more than five hours, depending on the length and complexity of the article and the skills of the writer. However, rushing your work will reduce the quality of the content and may compromise your SEO efforts.
Correct the Article
As mentioned, content quality is essential for SEO writing. After finishing your text, evaluate it and make sure to correct any mistakes. Check the following as well:
- Vocabulary. Check your words of choice, the grammar, and spelling. Grammarly is a useful checker for your content.
- Plagiarism. Do not take credit for someone else’s work. It’s against the law, and therefore, can cause serious copyright issues. There are various plagiarism checker tools on the web to assist you.
- Format. Follow a format that is fitting for the type of article used.
Conclusion
Successful marketers and business owners do better when they follow the proper SEO writing techniques. By creating the right content and optimizing it well, they can increase their pages’ visibility in search results, bring in more traffic to their website, and improve their business online performance.
This takes a lot of skills, knowledge, and time. But with patience, you too can write successful SEO content.
Team DevriX
This article is crafted by DevriX's seasoned marketing team, boasting over four decades of collective expertise in crafting sophisticated marketing funnels, devising comprehensive content frameworks and pillars, implementing engaging email campaigns, and creating impactful social media content designed for scalability.
Our marketing experts specialize in the complete spectrum of inbound marketing strategies. As an accredited HubSpot Agency Partner and a Semrush Partner, we engage in meticulous research, blending our extensive experience with the unique insights of our highly skilled team.
We set benchmarks in content creation by incorporating cutting-edge marketing trends, leveraging in-depth industry research, and utilizing state-of-the-art AI tools for data segmentation and captivating content hooks. Our proficiency extends across a diverse range of sectors, including working with SMEs, Fortune 1000 companies, global B2B brands, major publishing entities, WooCommerce platforms, business directories, and affiliate networks.
