You’re a content writer, or someone who runs a blog. You put time into your blog posts, so naturally, you want to make sure that it gets its best possible chance of being read (by the right people). Given that the default option is Google doing its best to index all the content out there to sort it into its most relevant SERPs, trying to get a piece of the traffic pie is reasonable.
Only problem is you’re not sure what the best/right things to do are. How do you turn a piece of content writing from being a “meh” in Google’s eyes to one that’s “OMG, I need to index and rank that article right now!” I’m going to tell you how to create SEO optimized content writing, following some overarching principles below.
Principle #1 – Solve a problem
You want to be buddies with Google? Make sure your content solves a real, human problem. Sure, you might want to try and rank for a word like “weight loss” if you’re someone who provides nutrition and dieting services, but the keyword itself is far too broad and vague.
You’re much better off going for something like, “weight loss help for emotional eaters”. Bingo! A lot more focused and the problem is right there in the keyword: emotional eating. Not all keywords will be as explicit as this, but the point is that need to know what the underlying problem is in that keyword before you actually write the content. Otherwise you’re just adding to all the clutter.
Principle #2 – Technically…
…you have to address the technical aspects of SEO. This stuff is relevant, but only when Principle #1 is addressed first. It doesn’t matter how technically sound your post is, but if the content doesn’t solve a problem, Google is unlikely to rank it in their pages.
This isn’t an exhaustive list but five technical SEO considerations to bear in mind:
- keyword density,
- optimized title (<150 characters, keyword in the title),
- 50-word snippet at the start of the post,
- metadata
- internal links to help search engines understand which pages are important on your blog
Principle #3 – Share it around… PROPERLY
This last principle is probably one of the hardest, but it’s one of the best ways to make sure that people link back to your site – a critical element of SEO. People link to content that’s useful, elicits a strong emotional response or novel (amongst other reasons).
But creating content is only the beginning. You should focus also on building relationships and tapping them when you’ve created content so that people know more about the stuff that you write/create.
Clicking share and linking it on socials isn’t enough. Everyone does that and it’s spammy. Play the long game. Build relationships with PR and other people in your space, get their input on posts, then let them know when your post is live.
If you’re not comfortable asking for a link back, then work harder on making the content linkworthy. But this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to build relationships. Good content gets shared around, period.
So there you have it: three principles to writing SEO optimized content. There isn’t any magic to it, you just have to solve problems, remember the technical elements, then ask people in your circles to share it. Now go out and create!