SEO content writing is something that many people think they know how to do. It gets a bad rep; SEO writing has been thought of in the past as difficult to read, with keywords stuffed in seemingly random places.
But that’s not what good SEO content is in 2020. These days, good SEO content is good content: full stop. There is no separation between content and SEO content. The only difference is that good SEO content is good content, but optimized with SEO in mind. It doesn’t pay to write poor quality content stuffed with keywords, at least not anymore.
So how do you write good SEO content? Let’s go through some important content writing tips.
Simple Content Writing Tips That Will Improve Your SEO
Write long, comprehensive articles about your topic.
Google seems to prefer content longer than 1000 words, as it’s likely to include more than enough information that the user needs to answer their question.
When talking about your topic, you want to cover multiple subtopics within your topic. This information should be geared toward providing context to the reader and answering questions that they may have as they’re reading.
Longer articles also benefit from the idea of “length implies strength”. This leads readers to believe that a longer article is likely more authoritative and more likely to be right. This isn’t necessarily true, but it does lend credence to the idea that longer content is better for SEO.
Break up your article into sections.
Of course, nobody wants to read long swaths of text that drone on and on about a topic. Make it interesting by breaking it up into sections.
If your content is more than 1000 words, it should have sections of no more than 300 words each. If you have super long content (3000+ words), you will want several sections with subsections. For best results, include a table of contents at the top which links to each subsection of the article.
Each section will have its own heading, which brings us to our next SEO content writing tip.
Optimize your headings and titles.
After breaking up your long, comprehensive article into sections, you want your headings to include important keywords that you would like to rank for.
Your title should front-load your desired keyword. For example, we wanted to rank for “SEO writing tips”, so we included that phrase in our first few words of our title. This is called front-loading, and it helps Google (and the searcher) figure out what the article is about.
For your h1, h2, and some h3 tags, you want to include primary and secondary keywords that you want to rank for.
Another important consideration for your title tag is whether or not it gets people to click. Headlines that get people clicking are better than ones that include keywords, but nobody bothers to click. Learn more about writing good headlines in this article by Search Engine Journal!
Use internal and external linking.
This one isn’t so much a writing tip as it is a general SEO tip. Websites with good SEO have optimized link structures. What this means is that articles link to other articles on their website that serve a purpose. For example, if we were to link to another article on our site that talked about off page SEO, it would allow the reader (you) to learn more about link building than what this article can provide. That’s an example of link structure in action!
Use internal linking profusely, but make sure that the links are relevant to the content being talked about.
Another thing that’s less talked about is external linking. External linking is when one website links to another one. People don’t like doing this because it leads people off their website; however, external linking does have its benefits. It allows you to link to more authoritative content, giving your reader more value. For example, you might wonder if external linking actually helps SEO. It turns out that MOZ has already discussed external link building and its effect on SEO.
In Summary
● Good SEO content just means writing good content, but optimizing it for SEO.
● Longer articles do better on Google. However, longer articles can be more difficult to read. Make them easier to read by splitting them up into subsections.
● Make sure each section is optimized for keywords that you would like to rank for.
● Link to other articles on your blog and on other websites.
