In our previous article, we introduced you to the world of SEO, you could see how SEO and content go together seamlessly. After all, if you don’t optimize your content, it might fall back in the search engine results, and your website’s traffic will be low. Now we will explore in detail, how you can use the SEO content writing tips to maximize the success of your website content. Without further ado let’s dive through a solid 13 tips on the basics of SEO content writing!

1. Set your objectives

An order of priority cannot be established with SEO content writing tips since some are not explicitly included in the rules because they often blur together with the terms “marketing” or “programming.” However, to achieve success and to get a clearer picture of how things are working, we should still say a few words about them.

When defining goals in the first instance, it is worth looking for a keyword or keywords that match the search intent, which determines the nature of the content. 

Search intent refers to the purpose for which people search for a particular keyword. In general, we distinguish three types, and these are:

1. Informational keyword: the user wants to learn more about something, such as a topic, product, or industry. Examples: “advantages of online marketing”, “landing page creation”, “advantages of SEO”.
2. Navigational keywords: the user wants to visit a specific website or store. Examples: “AliExpress”, “Used Books Factory“, “Google maps”.
3. Commercial keywords: the user wants to buy a product or service. Examples: “pink unicorn purchase”, “blue tulip price”.

It is in Google’s interest to show users the most relevant search results, so it constantly prioritizes results that it believes match the search intent.

Let’s look at the following example: your t-shirt printing price list includes the keyword “latest t-shirt trends”. It wouldn’t make much sense, would it? It would probably be a big disappointment for the user if he arrived on such a website since this is not what he was looking for. Therefore, it is highly likely that someone will quit the website immediately. Why would Google want that? Also, if you do achieve your goal and get to one of the first places with this website (with let’s say the help of offsite techniques), you will see that everyone turns back after clicking and will certainly evaluate this situation. Most likely not according to your plans.

Whether you’re writing a blog post, product description, or landing page, SEO copywriting starts with search intent research. It is worth thinking about what words users are searching for concerning what you want to publish, and then preferably include them in your text. These words make the text more authentic for users and provide relevance for Google.

2. Find out what are your readers after: keyword research

If you have the search intent, you can start the keyword research. The following tools can help you with this, for example:

• Google Keyword Planner (you will need a Google Ads account for this, but it is not necessary to pay for it to use the keyword planner.)
• Keyword Tool (subscription is required to view search volumes, but keyword variations can be viewed.)
• SEMrush (a paid tool, but you can request a 2-week trial period.)
• Ubersuggest (Currently, after logging in, you can get a good amount of information for free, not only related to keyword research – during the quarantine –, later it will probably become a freemium tool again, which means that you can access a limited number of results for free, but the subscription is also only the price of 2 cappuccinos. )

3. Get to the point

SEO copywriting is online content. Thus, unlike offline text writing (books, magazines), it requires a different structure. People read differently online. They are growing impatient in front of laptops or mobile phones, they scroll and read quickly. No need for hooey. The final goal is to create a text that contains all the information that someone is interested in by entering the given keyword. Readers should get what they came for. Most of the time, there is no second chance, so let’s just focus on the first option. You should fulfill the users with their information needs.

While creating relevant content is largely about matching search intent, it’s not the only aspect of SEO. It is also essential to use the main keyword placed at the beginning of your content to help the algorithms predict whether the keywords in your text will contain all the information that can fulfill its query.

It’s okay if you give more information than the keyword would justify, but the added text should be distinguishable. Otherwise, if users don’t find at first glance what they are looking for, they won’t waste time searching and scrolling in your content, they will simply leave your website regardless of whether it contains the data they’re looking for. And the goal is not to leave the interested party unsatisfied, isn’t it? Your invested work and the user’s time will go to waste. Moreover, this will have a negative impact on branding, since this unpleasant experience can easily become fixed in the subconscious. If you have already invested so much time and energy in writing the text, it is worth paying attention to the details to obtain great results.

4. Forget keyword stacking

One of the main SEO content writing tips lies in not piling up your keywords in your text. Just to clarify: placing your keyword in the URL, at the beginning of the text, and scattered throughout your content in order to increase the keyword density, is not keyword stacking. SEO professionals used to stack keywords 5-10 years ago since it has been proven to be a good strategy and could get them to the top of the search results list and they were able to get good results.

As for the users, we can wonder how enjoyable it is to read an article in which every 5th word is a keyword. In 2022 this is no longer considered SEO content writing!  It is simple manipulation. Over the years Google has become very smart: it knows that this type of text does not serve the interests of users on the first page. It already knows what a synonym is. 

It delivers a horrible user experience, and if they spot it, you can even get fined (usually from the users), so it’s not worth writing this type of text. Moreover, no one wants to mess with an algorithm or, in the case of manual examination, with an SEO specialist. Although in other languages there’s only a small chance of running into manual inspection, you may never know when the situation will change. After all, it’s about Google.

It is much more important to explore your subject more thoroughly, covering the entire topic with them and leaving out the unnecessary, not-so-relevant text, as this only reduces the pertinence of the content within the given topic. This SEO content writing tip bears great importance, since Google recognizes what words and word combinations belong to a given topic, and even how often they appear in a relevant text.

5. Find out your target audience’s interests

Previously, we have listed a few keyword research tools that can be of great help in writing content, for marketers, SEO, and PPC specialists alike.

However, there is another great, free, and very effective tool that’s only used by a small group of people. This is nothing other than the hit list itself.

We can be grateful to Google for a variety of opportunities.

One is the related search list at the bottom of the page, which lists the long tail keywords that most people typed into the search engine and are relevant to the keyword they originally searched for.

And the other is, of course, the input field itself, which automatically provides relating keywords that most people searched for. It is worth exploring this. It is called the related search section and you can find it at the bottom of the SERP (Google search listing).

Let’s say that you work for a marketing company and have been given the task of writing texts on the topic of online marketing. Instead of starting to think about what you could write about, do this instead: you type in Google online marketing as a keyword. You will receive such results as: “advantages of online marketing”, “online marketing companies”, “why it is important…” etc. Based on these results, you can find out what people are interested in according to the purpose of the article.

With this tool, you can get valuable information about what your valuable target audience is interested in, completely free of charge. You can use it to refer to their preferred language, and the keywords that suit their interests can be included in the content of the SEO copywriting.

6. Titles and headlines also matter

Many marketing content writers make the mistake of spending long hours writing and researching a 2-3,000 word blog post without paying enough attention to its title and headlines. In most cases, however, this is the point where they decide whether they will click on the article at all. Writing a headline also has its methodology, and if you use WordPress CMS and an SEO plugin for it, you can also get tips on how to make the headline click-friendly. A well-written headline or meta description is also important, as it can significantly increase the click-through rate.

Last but not least we should mention HTML as well.

When it comes to SEO content writing tips HTML requires the most technical knowledge, which is why some people use already developed programs for it. In most cases, if you’re using a WordPress content manager, your post title (not your page title) will appear as an H1 heading, which means it will play the most important role in the hierarchy of post headings. It is also worth incorporating your keyword into it. 

Even though Google is already smart enough to review your content, we can also help it to estimate the relevance of your article. The H-tags will tell the search engine bots what the website is about and help the readers make sense of whether your content is what they’re looking for. The H-tags indicate the page hierarchy and make the structure of your content coherent. As a rule, you should use one main title that represents the main heading (H1). For instance: <h1> The best title tag of 2022 </h1>.

If you would like to structure your content further, i.e., provide it with several subheadings, H2, H3, and H4, since it would serve your content purpose the best, it is better to start by writing only the headings first. After all, the algorithms try to interpret it and use it to decipher the text based on these headings.

In the case of WordPress, you can set the heading types manually — and no, we don’t use H-tags because of the font sizes (many people use them to set the font sizes). You can even check how the developers used them in the source code. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+U on Windows, Ctrl+click on Mac, then View Page Sources. You copy the title or part of the desired text and search for it in the source code. 

Conclusion

As you could see SEO content writing tips are important pieces of a puzzle, so it’s in your interest to follow them closely to guarantee better engagement and traffic on your webpage. You can start by setting up your goals and clarifying what purpose your content serves; conduct quality research on what your target audience is interested in and do keyword research for it. Pay attention to your keywords, titles, and headlines; you should not overuse them. In our following article, we have included the remaining 6 best SEO content writing tips for you that will keep you updated with some of the top-notch techniques and will further sharpen your SEO content writing skills.