SEO Writing : Step By Step Guide to Rank in Google – 2022
In this article, you will learn about SEO Writing Meaning, Why Is SEO Writing Important, tools which are helpful while writing content for SEO, and also you will get some of the best practices of SEO Writing examples.
Contents :
What is SEO Writing ?
SEO writing is the process of planning, creating, and optimizing content with the primary goal of ranking in search engines.
SEO writing is also known as “Writing for SEO”.
Why Is SEO Writing Important ?
As We know, Awesome content is a key factor to rank in Google. But just pumping out high-quality content isn’t enough. We need to do search engine optimization legitimately.
Simply, Amazing content + solid on-page SEO = SEO writing.
SEO Writing Tools :
The following are some SEO Writing tools :
- Quora (Q&A Tool)
- Answer The Public
- Wikipedia
- h-supertools
- Coschedule
Don’t worry we will discuss each tool in our best practices for SEO writing.
SEO Writing Best Practices :
The following are Best Practices for SEO Writing:
- Generate a List of Content Topics
- Turn Your Topic Ideas into Keywords
- Outline Content To Match Search Intent
- Write Comprehensive Content
- Use Your Keyword in Your Content
- Optimize Your Title Tags for Clicks
- Write a Compelling Meta Description
- Use Internal Links
- Link to External Pages and Resources
- Use Related Words and Phrases (LSI)
- Use Multimedia In Your Content
- Strategically Promote Your Content
Let’s Start SEO Writing step by step…
1. Generate a List of Content Topics
So, The First Step is to create a list of content topics. It may sound strange right? Well, the SEO writing process starts before you write a single word.
In Order to succeed with SEO and content marketing, you need to write content that your target audience cares about. When you do that, the entire process gets 10x easier.
Let me provide two tools that are really helpful in finding topics for your SEO-focused content, So the first one is Quora.
Quora (Q&A Tool):
Finding your customer queries is a Key Step Because you can answer those questions with your content. You can manually look for questions on sites like Reddit and Quora.
But this takes a ton of time and effort. To speed things up, I recommend a nice little free tool called Answer The Public.
Answer The Public :
This tool scrapes the internet for questions that people have about the topic you type into it.
Pretty cool right?
Next, Our Second tool is Wikipedia. Specifically: Wikipedia’s table of contents section. Seriously Wikipedia’s table of contents is a topic idea goldmine.
For example, let’s say you run a blog about digital marketing. Well, you’d head over to the social media marketing page on Wikipedia as shown below screenshot.
As you can see, the contents section contains a bunch of interesting topic ideas.
2. Turn Your Topic Ideas in to Keywords
Keyword research might be the most important part of the SEO writing process. In fact, the right keyword can mean the difference between thousands of visits per month… or a piece of content that nobody reads.
Fortunately, We have a tool like h-supertools.com which generates a list of terms based on the seed keyword that you type into it. And also will give you interesting data like Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty, Paid Competition, and Cost Per Click(CPC).
3. Outline Content To Match Search Intent
We know that SEO writing is all about adding keywords to your web page. Sure, optimizing your content around keywords is still super important. But it’s not enough. Today, your content also needs to match “Search Intent”.
Well, You need to exactly provide what your customers are expecting while searching in google, that’s all about Search Intent.
For example, early this year I wanted to rank for the keyword: “PHP Laravel Ecommerce Project”. And before I even wrote my outline, I looked at the SERPs for that keyword as shown below screenshot.
And Google’s first page told me that people searching for “php laravel e-commerce project” wanted to download a source code.
So I wrote my content with that search intent in mind. And because my content gave Google what it wanted, it now ranks on the first page of Google.
4. Write Comprehensive Content
According to this industry study that analyzed 1M search results, long-form content ranks best in Google.
That doesn’t mean that you need to add fluff or filler to your post. But it does mean that you need to publish comprehensive stuff. In other words: content that covers your topic on a single page.
5. Use Your Keyword in Your Content
Adding keywords to your content is a BIG part of SEO content writing, But the question is: How often should you use keywords in your SEO content? Actually, There’s no perfect keyword density percentage. In fact, Google has gone on the record saying that they don’t pay attention to keyword density.
In my experience, the location of your keyword is more important than how many times you use it in your post. Specifically, Your keyword must appear in the following places:
- Your URL
- Your title tag
- The first 100 words of your page
- In an H1 tag
- In an H2 tag
Let me walk you through each of these steps with a real-life example: this post optimized around “Anypoint Management Center”.
As you can see, I include my keyword in that page’s URL(Observe the below screenshot).
I also added that keyword (once) in my page’s title tag.
And I also used my keyword in the first paragraph.
Your keyword doesn’t need to show up in the first paragraph. But make sure that it should be present in your first 100-150 words, and you’re good to go.
As I am using WordPress, my blog post title automatically gets wrapped into an H1 tag. We know that our title contains the main keyword. This means now the keyword is present in H1 Tag.
But you have to keep in mind that the H1 tag should use ONE per page. H1 tags are kind of like mini title tags. So if you use more than one on a page, it can confuse search engines.
At Last, You need to use your keyword in an H2 subheading, like this (as shown below).
With that, your content is optimized for SEO. (At least when it comes to keyword optimization).
But, If you want to optimize content for SEO 100%, then you also need to take care of whether your content is optimized for clicks or not.
6. Optimize Your Title Tags for Clicks
According to the case study which is published by Moz, organic click-through rate is a Google ranking signal. And As per my experience, I’ve found that a higher CTR usually results in higher rankings.
So besides adding your keyword in your title tag, you also want to optimize it for CTR.
- Use a specific number in your title for example The 10 Most Important Tips for Healthy Life.
- Write curious and emotionally-packed titles for example “100 AMAZING Free SEO Tools”
You Can also use a tool like Coschedule for analyzing your title.
7. Write a Compelling Meta Description
Meta descriptions don’t impact directly your Google rankings. But An eye-catching meta description Can boost your organic click-through rate(CTR). So I recommend writing a unique meta description for every page on your site. And make that meta description something that will make Google searchers want to click on your result.
For example, You can observe content in this meta description as shown below.
8. Use Internal Links
Internal links are a great way to optimize your content for users and search engines.
- Internal links are helpful to users because they help them find related content on your site.
- Internal links are helpful for search engines because it helps them to index your site’s pages… and also understand your site’s structure.
Which is why I recommend using at least 4-5 internal links for every post that you publish.
9. Link to External Pages and Resources
According to Moz, using outbound links can help improve your page’s Google rankings.
This makes sense if you think about it: Google wants to send people to content that has EVERYTHING that searchers want. And that “everything” includes helpful resources on other websites. So by adding external links to authority sites, you’re making your content more SEO-friendly.
Ideally, I am using lots of external links in my content because it is really helpful to my site visitors to learn more about topics that I mention in my post.
10. Use Related Words and Phrases (LSI)
LSI keywords are terms that are closely tied to your content’s topic. And LSI keywords are GREAT for SEO.
LSI terms help your content’s SEO for two main reasons:
- First, LSI keywords help Google fully understand the topic of your page.
- It’s one thing to see your target keyword in your title tag and URL.
Today, Google also wants to see that you fully cover that topic in your content.
11. Use Multimedia In Your Content
Multimedia may not strictly fall under the category of “SEO writing”. But images, infographics, and videos are super important for SEO. Plus, multimedia makes your content much more interesting and compelling.
So whenever it makes sense, I recommend using images, embedded videos, screenshots, visuals, and charts:
12. Strategically Promote Your Content
The SEO writing process isn’t finished after you hit the “publish” button.
Because the truth is: Your content won’t rank without content promotion especially if your site is new or doesn’t have a lot of authority yet.
In other words, for your content to rank in Google, you need to strategically promote it.
Here are a few ways to spread the word about your latest post:
- First, reach out to people that might be interested in your content… before you publish it.
- Second, promote every post using every channel and audience you have… no matter how small.
- Email subscribers
- LinkedIn or Facebook groups you belong to
- Social media followers
Again: if you don’t have a huge following on social media that’s totally OK. The idea here is to squeeze as much value out of the audience as you do have.
For example, whenever I publish a new post I work SUPER hard to spread the word.
- I send out an announcement email to my newsletter subscribers.
- And I share the content on social media (specifically Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) multiple times.
- Even though I don’t have a huge following on each of those platforms, every little bit helps.
If you have any questions or suggestions about SEO Writing, please feel free to leave a comment below.
