If you’re a freelance writer, it’s critical to have SEO writing skills (search engine optimization). This will help you write content that ranks high in search engine results pages, which can result in more website visitors and potential clients.
In this post, we’ll discuss the basics of SEO and how to apply them to your writing. So, if you’re ready to learn about SEO, keep reading.
What is SEO?
SEO is short for “search engine optimization.” SEO involves activities that help your website rank higher in search results.
It encompasses a lot of different factors including the seen and unseen parts of your website, along with functionality, user experience, performance, and backlinks (other websites linking to your website.
A major pillar of SEO involves keyword selection and website content.
Think about this: What do you punch into the search bar on Google?
Words, phrases, and questions that will help you get to the answer or solution you’re looking for.
What is SEO Writing?
In order for your website’s content to rank high in SERPs (search engine results pages), it must include keywords and phrases that people are searching for.
This is where SEO writing comes in.
As an SEO writer, it’s better not to think of Google as a “search engine.”
It’s really more of a
- Questions and Answers Engine
- And a Problems and Solutions Engine.
We bring our questions and problems to Google –– it gives us carefully curated answers, solutions, and results we’re looking for.
If your website answers your target audience’s questions and provides solutions to their problems in a unique, fun, and engaging way –– you’re golden. At its core, that’s what SEO writing is all about.
SEO writing is the process of optimizing your website content with keywords that your target audience is searching for, with the goal of increasing your visibility on search engines and the amount of relevant traffic to your website.
What SEO Writing Isn’t?
Don’t overdo it on the keywords. SEO writing isn’t just about stuffing your content with keywords. Search engines (and readers) don’t like that at all. *Google may even penalize you for it.
The purpose of SEO writing is to make sure your website content is both search engine friendly and user-friendly.
Great SEO writing is a balance of keyword research, competitive analysis, selection, and incorporation. But for the sake of this article, we’re going to stick to the basics.
If you’re brand new to freelance writing, this article will give you the skills, tips, and tools you need to start calling yourself an SEO writer.
Why SEO Writing is Important for Freelance Writers?
Nearly 100% of reading and writing now occurs online.
Becoming a great writer in and of itself makes you a force of nature in today’s remote workforce. If you couple great writing with SEO skills, there’s no industry or business on the planet that can’t use your skills.
So you can write well. That’s great! But is your writing going to bring you and your clients more
- Search engine visibility
- Website traffic
- Subscribers
- Customers
- Clients
- Money?
That’s SEO writing. That’s performance-writing. And that’s what clients and companies are looking for.
If you can show your potential freelance clients or companies you’re pitching the results your writing can produce, you’ll always have work as an SEO writer.
SEO Writing and Researching Basics
Top Recommendation: Write articles that are actually useful to readers.
Like I mentioned earlier, the primary things readers are looking for in online writing are:
- Answers to their questions
- And solutions to their problems
A lot of blogs and websites have already done this. At this point, the internet is a fairly comprehensive Q&A and problem-solution machine for most industries, topics, niches, and search users.
So how do you create SEO writing and content that stands out from what’s already available?
- Use the top-ranking articles on page one as a reference for your blogs, articles, and content. People and Google already like those.
- Strip out anything that is confusing or doesn’t have value.
- Add more value to your post to create something even better: References, videos, photos, infographics, downloadable guides and checklists, etc.
- Focus on quality. Not quantity.
SEO is a quality game. One great, well-researched, well-executed article or blog is more powerful and effective than a dozen mediocre articles or blogs.
Find ways to make your content more informative, interesting, fun, enjoyable, comprehensive, robust, condensed, actionable, relatable, and shareable than what’s out there.
These are some of the most important notes on SEO writing optimization.
When you write articles that are truly valuable and helpful to your audience, people will want to share them with their social networks on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Not only will this drive traffic back to your site, but if other website owners and writers find your article useful, they’ll want to link back to it from their own website or blog.
And that’s how the beautiful snowball of SEO writing starts rolling down the hill. That’s when “writing” becomes “SEO writing” and “performance-driven writing.”
SEO Writing Provides Unique Value to Your Readers
SEO writing is all about creating articles and blog posts that provide real value to your readers. You need to write content that people want to read, share, and link to.
So what does this mean for you? It means focusing on writing content that meets these criteria:
- It’s useful to readers
- It’s unique to the other content that’s already out there
To make your content more unique, you can conduct interviews with industry experts, search for under-reported stories on your topic, get new perspectives on the issue at hand, or provide an overall different point of view.
Not only will this stand out to readers, but it’ll also make your article more likely to rank highly in search engine results.
When people read your article, they should feel like it was written especially for them.
Blogging and Blog Structure for SEO Writing
In order to improve your SEO, it’s important that you structure each blog post in a way that is easy for both readers and Google / Bing to understand. As such, the following guidelines will help:
- Choose one keyword, phrase, or question in your niche or industry that you want to focus your writing on.
- Use Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, or one of the SEO tools listed below to look at the search volume, competition, and other keyword suggestions for your keyword. Look for low competition, mid-to-high search volume keywords.
- Each article should start with an introduction or “hook.” One that incorporates your exact keyword and immediately grabs your reader’s attention and makes them want to read more.
- Readers don’t read. They scan. Your articles should be easy to scan. You can do this by using subheadings (H2, H3, etc), bullet points, short sentences, and smaller paragraphs.
- Include your keyword and key questions in your H2s and H3s.
- Use formatting styles like bold text, italics, underlining, blockquotes, and varying alignment to keep your reader visually stimulated and interested in your blog.
- Your blog or article should also include images that are relevant to your blog content. Unsplash and Pexels are great places to grab free stock photos for your SEO writing content.
Sprinkle the keywords, phrases, questions, and topics you’re optimizing for throughout your sentences and paragraphs, and you’re off to a great start.
Link Out to Other Helpful Resources and Websites
As readers click through from one article to another on your website, it helps if those articles are related.
Linking internally also provides additional value for search engines such as Google and Bing by giving them an indication of the context in which each article is being presented.
In addition, linking to related articles can help you avoid duplicate content penalties by reducing the number of times a reader finds the same exact article on your website.
Link out to reputable and trustworthy sources as well as other quality websites that are relevant to your blog post for SEO purposes. This includes links to high authority sites like Forbes, Inc., and Entrepreneur. You can also link to your own blog posts or related articles on other sites that help provide context for your article.
Once you’ve published an article, it’s important that you share it far and wide through every social media channel available to you. This includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
Top Writing Software and SEO Writing Tools
Software isn’t going to do 100% of your SEO writing for you, but it will save a lot of time and make your life a lot easier.
Here’s a shortlist of some of the top SEO writing tools you can use to immediately 2-3x your SEO writing
Free Writing and SEO Writing Tools
- SEO Meta in 1 Click: This Google Chrome extension lets you view critical SEO information like headers and meta information in one click.
- Google Trends: This free tool from Google can tell you how any topic is trending online.
- Google Keyword Planner: Insert keywords, topics, industries, or even websites, and let this free tool map out hundreds of thousands of different keywords you can use to include in your content. Also includes information about keyword competition and search volume (the number of people searching for an exact word, question, or phrase).
- Hemingway Editor: Checks for grammar and readability.
- Grammarly: Proofreads, spellcheck, and edits your work so you don’t have to.
Paid Tools for SEO Writing
- Ahrefs or SEMrush: Industry-leading SEO and keyword research tools.
- Jasper.AI: Leading AI writing software. Yes, a software that will write for you.
- Grammarly Premium: Proofreading, editing, and catching your mistakes.
- Outraking.IO: Rank intelligence, SEO content grading, AI writing.
- WriterZen: Keyword research.
- Rytr.me: AI writing.
- GoCopy: Also AI writing.
For more on these, be sure to check out my post on The Best Writing Apps for SEO Writers.
More Tips for Improving your SEO Writing
- Go through Google search results pages to find out the most popular phrases people use when searching for content like yours. Study what they are looking for, and put yourself in their shoes.
- Learn as much as you can from free resources online. There’s a ton of great free content you can soak up just from searching “SEO writing basics” or “get started with SEO writing” on Google.
- Study SEO content writing and copywriting techniques from other writers in your industry or niche.
- If you’re writing about a niche topic, use tools like Answer the Public, Google Related Searches, and Google PAA (people also ask) info to find out what other people are searching for related to that topic.
- See how many search results show up for a given keyword, phrase, or search query. It’s important that you don’t go for a topic that isn’t too broad, too competitive, or has too few monthly searches.
- If you’re writing on a WordPress site (which I highly recommend), use Yoast, All-in-One SEO, or Rankmath. The free versions of these tools will help optimize and grade your content on your WordPress website and do most of the SEO thinking for you.
- Don’t forget to consider local keywords if you’re targeting cities or regions in your SEO writing.
SEO Tools for WordPress
SEO and writing plug-ins for WordPress
Must-Reads
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-for-seo
- https://goinswriter.com/seo-basics/
- https://yoast.com/seo-friendly-blog-post/
In Closing
SEO writing can be a daunting task, but if you take the time to learn the basics and use the right tools, your content will be sure to rank higher online. Utilize these tips and resources to get started on your SEO journey today.
P.S. – Stay tuned for more advanced SEO writing content and tutorials, and enroll in my free 21 Day Writing Challenge to Kickoff your SEO writing career today.