Implementing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies into your website can significantly improve your chances for exposure on search engine results pages (SERPs). Many factors play into where your web pages fall on SERPs, but SEO-friendly content is one of the best ways to give you this boost when executed correctly.
If you’ve tried adding keywords into your website content, you’ve probably experienced challenges incorporating them organically. It can be overwhelming to write strong, persuasive website content on your own, and when you add SEO to the mix, it can feel even more daunting.
Lucky, we have some tips and tricks to help streamline your SEO writing process. Check out these five tips to instantly improve your SEO writing skills.
First, Perform Keyword Research
If you’ve already performed keyword research, you can skip this section. But, if you’re starting from scratch (or are asking yourself, “what is keyword research”), this is the first step toward knowing what search queries are most relevant for your business.
Keyword research is the first step to take when incorporating SEO techniques into your writing, as this will help you nail down which keywords or phrases you need to target in your content.
While there are many tools out there to help you find strong keywords (we use Moz), the first steps you should take before using a tool should be asking yourself some questions. These questions should guide you on what kind of information your audience is looking for and why they would come to you for a solution.
Here are some questions to get you started:
- What common questions does your audience have when it comes to your products or services?
- Why are they seeking this information?
- Where are your customers located? Locally? Nationally?
- How would someone search for your services or products in a search engine? What kind of keywords would they use?
- When would someone search for your products or services? And, on what device?
By answering these questions, you will start to form a clearer understanding of your audience’s search intent (more on this later) and draft a starting list of keywords and phrases to research.
Once you have a good starting list of keywords, you can measure the strength of these with free tools such as Keyword Tool, ahrefs, Answer the Public, and RankTracker. Not only will these tools tell you how competitive your terms are, but they should also help expand your list of potential keywords that you didn’t think of before.
The result of this process should be a list of vetted keywords and phrases that are not difficult to rank against (for example, it will be tough to rank on the first SERPs page for “target”) but get a steady amount of searches.
Think about Your Users’ Search Intent
Before you start writing your SEO content, consider your audience and how they are looking for your business, User intent is one of the most important factors to consider with anything SEO related. Think about it: if you started writing SEO content without knowing what your users want to see, your efforts would be wasted.
User intent also plays a big role in where a person is within your sales funnel, and with this insight, In case you don’t know, here are the four main types of search intent that a user will have:
- Informational: This is where users are trying to learn more about a specific topic or concept and are in the awareness stage. An example would be “what is digital marketing?”
- Comparison: Users are comparing products or services to make a more informed purchasing decision, which means they are in the consideration stage. An example of this search query would be “digital marketing vs. traditional marketing.”
- Transactional: These users are in the conversion stage and are eager to move forward with a purchase. Here, an example of a search query would be “hire a digital marketing agency.”
- Navigational: This type of user is more than likely a customer and lives in the sales funnel’s loyalty phase. They know a lot about your business and are interested in learning more about what’s new. An example of this search would be “digital marketing trends in 2022.”
Based on this knowledge, you can craft optimized content that meets your users’ needs at each stage of the funnel. To help you with this, consider the following questions when reviewing your list of vetted keywords:
- What is the user looking for when searching these specific keywords/phrases?
- What problem are they trying to solve when searching?
- What solution are they looking for through search engines?
- What type of content would help someone find this solution (blog post, web page, etc.)?
By doing this, you will better understand what your audience wants to see when they click a link on SERPs.
Write Like a Human
Now that you know what keywords to use and the kind of content to create, it’s time to start drafting your content!
Before you begin incorporating the keywords on all the necessary on-page elements, remember this rule: you are writing for human beings, not robots. Therefore, your content needs to be enjoyable to consume and resonate with humans.
For example, don’t flood your content with complex words and verbose phrases that you want to rank for. Write sentences that include short action verbs and sprinkle these industry buzzwords to add a little bit of variety.
Keyword stuffing was a black hat SEO trick that worked 20+ years ago, but today, it will not only make your sentences confusing, but it could actually hurt your SEO rankings. For example, if your keyword is “eco-friendly maid services,” a keyword-stuffed sentence would look like this:
As the best eco-friendly maid services in the Atlanta area, we always keep up with the latest eco-friendly maid services techniques and eco-friendly maid services innovations.
Would you find this company to be reputable? Probably not. Is this sentence awkward? Definitely.
Lastly, always aim to write content that brings value to your audience and solves their problems. This should always be the main priority in your writing, no matter how important SEO is to your business.
Not Seeing Any Improvement?
If you’ve make your SEO content public and are not seeing any improvement in your rankings or website traffic, here are some common reasons why:
- SEO is a long-term strategy. Don’t expect to see results overnight. Organic SEO tends to take a while to see any drastic results, so be patient!
- On-page SEO is only one piece to the puzzle. There are many other factors to consider when enhancing your site’s SEO. Take a look at this list.
- Take a look at your website as a whole. Your content may be optimized as it should, but if the website it lives on is dated, slow, or has poor UX, no one will read it. Consider having your website audited to see if it meets the needs of your audience.
- You’re lacking other on-page SEO elements. Links, optimized images, and meta descriptions all play a role in your rankings. Check out this post to make sure you’ve checked all the things you needed to on your optimized pages.
SEO writing doesn’t have to feel like a chore. Keep these tips in mind and start improving your website’s SEO!
To learn more about SEO and SEO-friendly content for your website, let’s get in touch soon!
