How to write for SEO?

The technique of researching, outlining, producing, and optimizing content to rank for a targeted phrase in Google and other search engines is known as SEO writing.

Google’s success is based on providing relevant content to users. If you want people to read your material, there’s no point in sprinkling SEO on top as an afterthought. Instead, you must integrate SEO into your content production process from the start.

Why do you need to learn SEO writing?

There’s a lot of stuff out there that never gets seen since it doesn’t rank, and because it isn’t exposed to potential customers, it won’t educate, assist, impress, or convert anybody (not to mention that it reflects poorly on you as the individual who created it).

Keeping SEO in mind while creating content, on the other hand, will help you attract organic traffic and bring interested people to your website.

Let’s take a big no-name SEO company in London as an example. They have 5 full-time employees working on their blog. After 5 years of constant development, they have increased from 800 to around 80,000 organic visits per month. Their content is optimised to rank and lead visitors to the site, where they can discover how this company can help them increase their traffic and revenue. Some of them will eventually become their clients!

The process of SEO writing in five steps

The goal of SEO writing is to create content that ranks in search engines, but this does not imply you will be producing art for a robot-only audience. Your primary objective is to figure out what people want so that you can adapt your material to their demands.

Here’s a 5-stage, beginner-friendly guide to writing a blog post that is SEO-optimized. For each step, I included examples from the article you are currently reading so you can see how the research and composition processes work behind the scenes.

• Keyword research
• Search intent identification
• Subtopics to include
• Outline
• Writing

Although you will not discover the keyword or phrase in writing, it is a critical component of SEO copywriting. When we write for SEO, we remember that writing itself is simply the last step in producing content. To do an outstanding job, you must first put on your researcher hat and figure out what people search for, what they anticipate to find, and only then start creating a piece of text.

Keyword research

Begin by deciding on a topic that is relevant to the company you’re writing for. Consider what people may search on Google to come to your product or service: this is your seed keyword. If you’re writing for a company that sells beds, your seed keyword might be something as simple as “bed” or “beds.”

Start by entering the seed keyword into any keyword research tool. It will provide you with a list of keyword suggestions expressed as questions. The majority of the outcomes will be instructional inquiries that you can rank a blog post for.

You may also use a special match report to see which queries contain your seed keyword and are ranked by the monthly search volume. Sometimes, these keywords aren’t appropriate for a blog post or piece: the format is dependent on search intent (more about this in stage 2).

If your site is relatively new, the first step might be to narrow down the list by searching for keywords with low keyword difficulty (less than 30 for example) and high monthly search volumes (more than 1000 searches monthly). These will generally be the simplest to rank for while still having traffic potential.

“Best double beds” appears to be a strong keyword with a significant number of monthly searches, for example. If we look at the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) overview, the top-ranking page for this keyword has an estimated 8,000 monthly visits from Google, suggesting there is huge traffic potential.

I began from “SEO” as a seed keyword and worked my way through the process mentioned to eventually discover the “SEO writing” phrase. I chose it since it has a lot of search and traffic potential, is relevant to my website target audience, and I am still not ranking for it.

Search intent identification

Once you’ve identified a primary keyword with significant traffic potential, the next step is to figure out what is the purpose of people who search for it, or in other words, their search intent. Remember, if your content does not correspond to it, Google is unlikely to rank it highly.

To know better how your content should look like, search for the top-ranking results in a search result page for a chosen keyword. They are a good indication of which pages best match the goal of this keyword. The crucial indicators are content type, format, and angle. They are used to determine which pages fit the purpose behind a term.

The type of content

The kinds of content that rank in the top spots ( whether it is a landing page, blog post, article, or video) tell you everything you need to know about how to develop your strategy for the keyword.

If your keyword is a question, the first results in Google SERP are often blog posts, articles, or videos that offer guidance to searchers in the learning mode.

However, if you found the phrase keyword, you might discover that it has no informational purpose, therefore you won’t rank with a blog article. For example, because the top-ranking results are eCommerce category pages, the SERP suggests that people searching for “double beds” are in buying mode.

The format of content

In the top spots, the most frequent format (whether it is how-to, listicle, or opinion article) will assist you in deciding how to structure your material. Because most of the “best double beds” results are presented in lists, that’s what you should produce.

The perspective of content

Look for recurring themes on the top-ranking sites and take note of their unique viewpoint or opinion. A popular angle in “how to produce a film” is about the process of filmmaking that you may do at home.

When it comes to the search intent behind the “SEO writing” keyword, there was little ambiguity: the search intent is to know more about the topic, content type should be a blog post in the format of a guide. Content angle suggests that it should be written for beginners or those writers who are new to SEO.

I figured that given the nature of my blog, a comprehensive SEO resource for writers made more sense than, say, a roundup of quotations or a listicle of top writing advice.

The important thing to keep in mind is that Google looks at searchers’ intent. It isn’t just a proxy for content quality, it’s also an important ranking signal that can assist you in re-optimizing existing material.

Subtopics to include

At this point, you have a solid primary keyword and know the sort, format, and perspective of the material you’ll produce. Keep researching for a little longer: you’ll now have to look at the top-ranking pages (your major ‘competitors’) and the SERP to see which subtopics you need to address. Make a list using a doc, text editor, or spreadsheet to keep track of all of the following items.

Competition research and analysis

A list of headings might help you understand a competitor’s content in a glance and figure out what subtopics you’ll need to cover in your article. You may also get a few pointers on how to make it better, more useful, and more original.

Look at the outlines of the top-ranking sites (i.e., headings) on your homepage. You may use Ahrefs’ free SEO toolbar to quickly view headings on any page. To access the on-data page report, click the checklist symbol, scroll down until you come across a list of headers, and make a note

When I did my research to write this tutorial, most of the top-rated articles included a “What is SEO writing?” subheading, which suggested I should add the definition since it appears to be what people are searching for.

What people asked about

Back to Google and search for your main term. The People also ask function might provide you with a sense of what people are thinking as they conduct their search.

You don’t have to cover every question you see, but you may get a better understanding of what people want to discover on your website. As to SEO writing, It appears that individuals are seeking new material written this year.

Analysing competitors’ keywords

Knowing what other terms your rivals rank for can assist you to avoid leaving anything essential out.

You may discover keyword ranking data by pasting the top-performing URLs into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool and selecting “Show keywords.” Look for similarities between the top-ranking sites. You’re not searching for keywords here to “distribute” throughout your post; instead, you’re looking for subtopics that may need to be included in your outline.

Outline

After following the first steps I described, you should have a primary (major) keyword, understand the format, type, and perspective of your content with all the relevant to your primary keyword subtopics. Now it’s time to make an outline. Start a new Google Doc (or the text editor of your choice). This aids in the organization of your thoughts and keeping the main perspective in mind while you write.

Following that, you should create a logical heading structure utilizing an ‘inverted pyramid’ method. Begin with the most substantial and essential information about the subject, then build your case and logically extend it throughout the essay.

In my situation, I began with a definition of “SEO writing” and why it’s essential, then went into a straight path of how-to instructions. The part about hints, which you’ll read about shortly, is beneficial but not necessary.

Writing

You’ve finally arrived at the writing stage, where you’ll turn your outline into a complete draft. You already know what to do as a content writer, but here are a few helpful ideas to bear in mind:

Bear in mind your readers

The majority of the major SEO components you’ll need are already in place by the time you start writing, so your focus can be on expressing your thoughts naturally.

Avoid convoluted language and needless “fluff” when writing. Writing tools like Hemingway can help you sharpen and simplify your work; however, they won’t catch technical or specialist language, so you’ll need to use your discretion.

Keep your target audience in mind throughout the writing process. Consider what they already know versus what you need to teach them if you’re targeting a piece towards beginners. It might be helpful to imagine a real person and write your draft for them.

Insert professional vocabulary

You may risk losing credibility if you don’t know the field you’re writing for well. You might use generic terms or phrases that don’t appeal to readers and make them less likely to trust you. When you don’t have first-hand experience, you may expand your vocabulary by reading existing material. An SEO outline is similar to a coloring book in that you have broad strokes, but the specifics of how you fill them in are completely up to you.

Finally, if you have a decent understanding of what your competition is up to, this might also help you create something new. For example, most of the content that ranks for the topic I am writing about provides generic cases: in contrast, I opted to take a meta approach and show how a real work evolves from an initial concept to publication.

Go by the outline

You’ll almost certainly discover that an SEO outline that makes sense in theory, needs to be modified as you go along writing your first draft. That’s completely normal. For example, I had four significant phases in my first draft. However, as I filled it out, it became clear that one of the steps could be divided into two; so I made a note in the outline and revised the document accordingly.

To empower your writing with SEO techniques

After you’ve finished your SEO writing, it’s not over. If you want your material to have the best chance of ranking and receiving traffic, keep these additional tips in mind while behind-the-scenes optimizing.

Title tag: The title tag is the most noticeable part of the search result page, and you won’t receive any traffic (or a high click-through rate) if they believe it isn’t worth their time. Consider the titles of top-ranking pages and produce one that may steal a click from the competition. Make sure you use your main term and explain why your page satisfies search intent while also giving value. Also, consider using numbers (for example, Affordable SEO packages from £199), adjectives like “best, easy, top, cheap”, dates (for 2022), etc. It’s not about creating clickbait in your SEO title: you don’t want people to bounce back to the SERPs if your material isn’t good, to be honest.

Link: Create a search engine-friendly URL by keeping it short and simple. Your most important term is usually sufficient. Short URLs are easier to read, while long ones are truncated in the search result pages and lose context. Avoid using numerical and dated characters in the URL, as they might be difficult to modify if you alter your content in the future.

Featured snippets: Featured snippets are often just a few words long and appear at the top of Google’s organic search results. Many queries feature them on top of the results, which help your content get exposure almost immediately. Look at the result page to figure out what the existing snippet is formatted like. You may notice that the featured snippet can be a list, which is pulled from your headings. If you evaluated search intent correctly, you should have optimized for these snippets automatically—simply by organizing your post logically. You may also come across a paragraph snippet. In this case, you need to respond to the question plainly and straightforwardly.

Internal links: You can’t possibly cover everything in one post, so use internal links to direct visitors to additional information sources that provide greater context. Internal links are also beneficial for SEO because Google utilizes them to discover new content.

Visualisation: A writer for SEOs is primarily concerned with words, but pictures may help readers follow along and add depth to your content. Nobody likes a wall of text (unless they’re reading a book); use images strategically to provide breaks and visualize your ideas.

Conclusion

The single most important thing you should learn from this essay is that SEO writing isn’t about cramming keywords into a story to satisfy search engines or misleading people into clicking on a certain result. It’s all about producing high-quality material that genuinely helps your audience. If you need help with your SEO and want to have a responsive and experienced Search engine optimisation assistant, contact our SEO agency to get a free audit of your website.