This year, you’re committed to writing regular blog content. After all, search engine optimized (SEO) blog posts are one of the best ways to help improve search engine rankings. With fierce competition in your industry, you need to do everything possible to stand out.
We may be only two months into the new year, but that’s enough time to realize writing regular blog copy is a big commitment. From brainstorming a topic to completing research to actually writing a compelling post, you can spend hours before hitting that publish button.
After devoting that much time to crafting a piece of content, you want to ensure people will read it. But what’s the best way to make that happen?
In this article, I’ll outline some tips to master SEO writing so that your content ranks higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In turn, SEO writing increases the chances of readers viewing your site – potentially leading to more sales.
What Is SEO Copywriting?
Before I delve further into tips for SEO writing, let’s review what the term actually means.
SEO-focused content is copy that appeals to humans and search engine algorithms. By incorporating standard SEO best practices (like keyword research) into your copy, you can start ranking on search engines for terms related to those keywords.
Keywords can be short-tail (1-2 words) or long-tail (more than three words). Since they’re more specific, long-tail keywords are likelier to attract your target audience. However, they typically lack a similar search volume as shorter keywords.
Take, for example, the word “air fryer recipes” in Google. When we type it into Google, below is a list of the top ten results (not including the Sponsored listings):
- Air Fryer Recipes
- 80 Best Air Fryer Recipes – The Pioneer Woman
- 25+ Easy Air Fryer Recipes
- 78 Easy Air Fryer Recipes for a Quick Weeknight Dinner
- Easy Air Fryer Recipes for Beginners
- 15 Air Fryer Recipes to Add to Your Rotation
- 80 Essential Air Fryer Recipes to Make Immediately
- 44 air fryer recipes
- Every air fryer recipe you’ll ever need
- 15 SIMPLE Recipes that Will Make You Want an Air Fryer in ..
These suggested websites are directly related to the keyword “air fryer recipes.” In other words, Google has crawled these websites and determined they would match the searcher’s intent (i.e., they’re air fryer recipes). And ranking relevant copy that aligns with search intent is what Google’s all about.
So if you’re a company with an air fryer recipe, you want to do everything possible to appear on this search results page.
And it’s through SEO writing that helps make that happen.
SEO Copywriting Tips
If you’re going to spend the time writing blog copy, you should be prioritizing SEO. If your website isn’t easy for Google to rank, it’ll be hard for people to find and read your content.
Keep the User In Mind
Sure, I keep mentioning the importance of Google ranking your content highly. And although Google is important to keep in mind when writing content, there’s someone who plays an even more important role: the user.
Focusing on your readers while writing content enhances readability and makes your content more compelling. Although you want to include keywords throughout your content, you always want to write first for your audience.
How many keywords you insert and where you insert them will flow naturally from there.
Write the Right Length
Gone are the days when you had a great chance at ranking with a 500-word post! Nowadays, the content that tends to rank the highest is long-form content (content with a minimum of 1,200 words).
Although Google doesn’t necessarily use word count to rank content, longer content keeps traffic on your site for longer. Long-form content helps improve the Average Time on Page, a factor that Google looks at when ranking websites.
Of course, the suggested length always depends on the topic at hand. Try looking at the length of the top 3-5 searches for the keyword you’re trying to rank for, then get an average. When you write your content, write a piece that’s longer than that.
Ensure Readability Is Paramount
Think of the last time you landed on a site cluttered with text and little white space. More than likely, you got overwhelmed and went to a competitor’s site that was easier to read.
Subheadings, bulleted and numbered lists, images, and short paragraphs help break up your content into smaller, more digestible pieces for your reader. Even the length of each sentence matters when it comes to readability. I try to keep ours to 20 words or less.
Write a Strong Call to Action
Your SEO rankings can increase when readers comment on your posts or share your content on social media.
Like word count, Google doesn’t use social shares to influence rankings. However, natural backlinks can occur when you do so – which is one of the top SEO ranking factors.
And as for comments from readers? Comments (and your responses) increase the text length on a page, helping you rank for more long-tail keywords. Ending your blog post with a thought-provoking question is a great way to encourage comments.
SEO Keyword Tips
When you use SEO keywords correctly, you’re helping Google rank your content properly on SERPs. Increased rankings enhance the likelihood of attracting more targeted traffic to your website.
Find the Right Topics
Before optimizing your content, you need to choose a topic your target audience is currently searching on Google.
You can begin your search for trending topics by checking out the auto-generated searches that populate when you start typing into Google.
For example, when we typed in “air fryer recipes” earlier, Google also populated some predictions, as outlined below. These are relevant keywords that other users are typing into Google. These predictions are great places to start when brainstorming some new blog topics!
There are also some helpful tools to discover content ideas. QuestionDB is a keyword question tool that populates commonly asked questions relating to a keyword. Answer the Public helps you create topic ideas based on the autocomplete search engine data and even graphically showcases its results.
Perform Keyword Research
Once you know what to write about, it’s time to research the topic’s keywords.
There are several keyword research tools available to help you complete this step. I like to use UberSuggest, but other copywriters swear by SEMrush or Moz. Each tool has pros and cons, and it comes down to finding one you can easily utilize.
No matter which tool you use, narrow your list of keywords to those with high search volume and low competition. Avoid keywords with hardly any competition – that typically means users aren’t searching these terms much on Google.
As a rule of thumb, I like to target keywords with over 500 monthly searches, with an SEO difficulty of less than 40. Both of these analytics are available in UberSuggest’s free and paid versions.
Placement Matters
Once you have the keyword research in hand, it’s time to work on placing the keywords in the right locations throughout your content.
There are several key areas that Google looks at when ranking your site. And all of these are important areas to include your primary keyword. Basically, make it as easy as possible for Google to rank you for the relevant keyword!
Try to include your keyword in the following areas:
- Blog title,
- The first 100 words of your content,
- URL,
- Meta description,
- Headers and sub-heads, and
- Image ALT text.
Next, consider your internal links – or the hyperlinks that lead to other pages on your site. Use anchor text that links to a piece of super-relevant content.
For example, in the next sentence, the keyword “SEO writing” links to another of our blog posts dedicated to the topic. Readers interested in learning more about SEO writing can easily navigate to other resources on this same website simply by clicking the hyperlink.
The longer a reader stays on your site, the more your site is deemed helpful to Google, and the higher your rankings will climb.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
While following the tips above, you need to be careful to avoid keyword stuffing. This technique – frowned upon by Google – includes unnaturally incorporating numerous keywords throughout your writing.
Reread your text and analyze its flow. Are you mentioning your keywords in every paragraph? Does it sound too robot-y?
There’s a delicate balance between writing keyword-optimized content and continuously shoving keywords in front of the reader. Typically, you want to avoid mentioning a keyword more than once every 200 words.
Putting It All Together: SEO Copywriting Tips
It’s a fiercely competitive world out there, and writing with SEO in mind can help your organization stand out. Research shows that 69 percent of marketers invest in search engine optimization, and 71 percent always include strategic keywords. For 75 percent of respondents, SEO is found to be either extremely or very effective in producing the results they’re after.
If you want to start getting more results from your SEO copywriting, contact me for a free consult.