SEO Writing for a Beginner
SEO Writing Beginner Tips
If you are trying to build your website, you probably already learned that you need to produce high-quality content that points to your expertise in the subject matter. However, SEO writing for a beginner is not just about producing quality content. There is a lot that you need to understand about the role of keywords and how to use them in your content, as well as other tips to increase your search engine rankings.
What is SEO Writing?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. The goal of SEO writing is to attract search engines to your pages so that your customers will be able to find your content. The best content in the world won't help you build trust with your clients or attract new business if search engines never show the content to the people who are searching for it. Therefore, if you want to write for readers on the web, you need to think about on page SEO as well as metadata SEO.
SEO Writing and Keywords
Keywords are at the root of SEO. When someone wants to find something online they type in the words they think will be most likely to reveal the results they are looking for. Then, the search engine bots do their best to find content that matches the words that were searched. These words are known as keywords.
Primary and Secondary Keywords
Before you even think about writing, you should know what keywords you will be focused on. In general, the primary keyword is usually the topic or main theme of what you will be writing. In SEO copywriting, this would be the name of a product or a product category.
Secondary keywords relate to the primary keyword and are alternatives that people may also search for. Secondary keywords often are more specific than the primary keyword, which means there is less competition for them.
Choosing Keywords
The Google Keyword tool or planner is a powerful and free tool that can set you up for success in choosing keywords for your SEO writing. All you need is a Google account to use this feature.
Google tries very hard to make you sign up for an ad campaign when you are accessing the keyword tool. You are welcome to do this if you would like to pay to boost your results, but you can also access the keyword tool for free. Here's how.
1- Access the keyword planner from here Click "Go to Keyword Planner"
2- Click "New Googles Ads account"
3- Make sure your browser is as wide as your screen will allow. At the bottom where it says, “Are you a professional marketer?” Click “Switch to Expert Mode”. Google hides this option when the browser is less than the width of your screen.
4- Click "Create an account without a campaign," below the larger box options.
5- Click "Submit". Don't worry, you won't need to provide payment information.
6- Click "Explore your account".
7- Click the "tools and settings" button at the top right side.
8- Select "keyword planner".
9- Choose between "Discover new keywords" and "Get search volume and forecasts".
Now you have access to the full power of Google Keywords. You can find new keywords based on keywords you put in and you can learn about search volume and forecast based on historical metrics for your keyword.
Google also kindly lets you know how many average monthly searches there are for each suggested keyword, as well as how high the competition level is.
Other SEO Tools
Google isn’t the only useful SEO tool on the market, although it may be the most powerful for the cost. Moz is a powerful SEO toolset that can also crawl your site and make suggestions, along with keyword research and other tools. Semrush offers a toolkit that is especially effective for E-commerce and enterprise sites. Ubersuggest is an easy to use tool that generates lots of useful information about a keyword without you having to sign into anything or pay a penny.
High Volume of Searches with Low Competition
You want to find keywords that people are searching for a lot but that are not being well covered by existing web pages. These may be new topics that have not yet been written about, such as a new product, or they may be searches that other writers have simply overlooked. When creating SEO copywriting, you can leap to the top of rankings just by choosing a new product as your keyword.
Specific Keywords
You can also enter phrases, otherwise known as long-tail keywords. In general, long-tail keywords have lower competition but also lower search volume than single words. On the other hand, long-tail keywords can create specificity which may be searched very frequently by your particular market.
For instance, a long tail keyword that includes your location will limit searches to people searching for services specifically within your area. This means that while the search volume may be lower overall, it may be significant in your area such that it will do a lot to direct the traffic that you need to your site.
If you are a dog groomer located in New York City, using a long tail keyword like “groomers in New York,” “Best dog groomer in Queens,” or “New York City dog groomer” is more likely to attract the audience you want than short keywords like “groomer” or “dog groomer.”
Where to Put SEO Keywords
Let's look at where to use keywords in order to create the greatest impact for search engines.
- URL. Work your keyword into your URL for a quick and easy attractant for bots
- Metadata. Metadata is information about the article, not the content itself. You are able to enter metadata for each page that you publish. You don't want to keyword stuff (use more keywords than are natural), but it is very important to fit the keyword into your metadata at least once or twice.
- Title. It is essential that you work your primary keyword into the title. The keyword should go as close to the beginning of the title as possible
- Headings. Headings are a great place to put your primary keyword and are also a very natural location for secondary keywords
First paragraph. Use your keyword in the first paragraph of the blog post, as close to the beginning as is possible while still seeming natural - Throughout the article. Use your keyword throughout the article but be very careful not to keyword stuff. The main content of the article is a great place to work in secondary keywords rather than overdoing the primary keyword. In general, two or three keywords for 500 words is a good rule of thumb
- Image file names. This is one of the places people are least likely to think of when including their keywords for SEO writing. Bots consider image file names to be metadata, so putting keywords in your image file name, title, and descriptive text can all help your search engine ratings
- Categories and tags. If your blog or website is organized by categories and tags, as most are, these are a great opportunity for keywords. Categories and tags allow for internal linking as well, which also increases your page’s ranking
Link Building
Link building is an excellent way to increase your rankings with search engines and encourage organic traffic to your site. You can link out to other helpful articles in anchor text that is related to your keywords. While there is some risk that you will lose your readers to the other site, linking out to valuable resources increases trust with your readers and increases your search engine ratings, so it is well worth doing at least once or twice in an article.
You can also get other people to link to you, which increases your organic traffic by getting people to click to your site from theirs and also increases your search engine ranking. Search engine bots like to see sites that are interconnected with other sites, so having links to and from your site does a lot to directly increase your SEO beyond the use of keywords.
You can ask other people to link to you, pay them for doing so, guest post to other people sites in exchange for a link to your own site, or in the best-case scenario, create high-quality content that other people will link to without you having to ask.
How to Write for On-Page SEO
It can be very overwhelming to actually sit down to write your article once you have done all of the research and gathered the keywords. You need to think about not only informing and entertaining your audience but also making your writing as attractive to bots as possible without scaring away your human readers. Here are a few good tips to help you write excellent content that is also attractive to search engines.
Make it Valuable
Every word that you write should count towards your goal of providing quality content for readers. If your audience gets the impression that you are writing just for marketing value or in order to attract bots, they will abandon it immediately. Be conscientious, do your research, and plan out your writing so that the content you create will be of great value to your readers.
Word Count
There is no hard-and-fast rule about how long articles written for SEO should be, but as a rule, they should be no shorter than 500 words and should not exceed two thousand words without very good reason. On page SEO can pack more keywords with longer text, but readers are less likely to stick through the content. In general, it is better to post shorter articles more frequently than long articles.
An exception to this can be Pillar Pages, which are often three or four thousand words or even more. These pages are less likely to be read all the way through, but because they can pack so many keywords in without keyword stuffing, they can often propel a page to the top of rankings.
Pillar pages are designed to organize your entire blog as well as providing extremely high-quality content. Only take on writing a pillar page if you are confident that you are an authority on the subject and can create highly valuable long-form content.
Frequent Posting is Essential
Posting frequently isn't just important for your loyal readers who want to be able to come back to your site to read something new every week. Frequent posting also teaches search engines to keep checking your website frequently, as it is updated regularly. Over time, this will make your page rank more highly.
Perfectly Optimized Helps with SEO Writing
If what you had thought was going to be a relatively simple task, writing content about the information you understand well, is becoming overwhelming, you may want to consider having a professional help you get started or manage your site.
Perfectly Optimized knows what it takes to create SEO writing that puts your site at the top of the search engine results. Whether you just need some help learning the ropes and getting established or you want someone to manage your website or blog full time, Perfectly Optimized has the skills you need.