Many content writers know how long it takes to write blog posts and writing SEO friendly content is no easy tasks.
This process can take hours, from generating topic ideas to keyword research to finally pressing the publish button. That’s why if your post doesn’t generate any traffic or rank high on Google, it can be a major disappointment.
Luckily, there’s a way to overcome low traffic for your site, and that is SEO. As content creators, we aim to write content that resonates with our target audience and ranks high on Google, and that’s where SEO comes into place.
SEO is the bridge that helps us get our content ranking on Google. The question now becomes, how do you incorporate it in our content?
Don’t worry, I got you covered. In this article, I will discuss 11 SEO writing strategies for ranking on Google and increasing traffic to your website, including writing SEO-friendly copy!
Key Takeaways
SEO writing is the process of crafting content to rank on the first page, and it’s not as complex or complicated as you think. This involves researching keywords, writing high-quality articles that match your users’ intentions (usually pretty simple!), and optimizing with tags like H1s for easy crawlability.
The search engine journal did a 2020 study of billions of Google searches and found that the first organic result has an average 28.5% click-through rate. The second-place result gets a 15% average CTR, while the third-place organic result has an 11% average CTR.
The tenth position in the search results gets a 2.5% click-through rate. The websites on page 2 of the search results are like a graveyard.
This means if your content is not on the first page of Google for your specific keyword, there’s a slim chance users will find your website organically. Fewer visits to your site mean fewer opportunities to get sales and generate revenue.
The next best option is to invest in PPC advertising to get those users to your site. Still, if your marketing budget is tight, it can be hard to compete with competitors with a bigger budget.
Learning the skill of SEO writing can be a significant benefit for you and your company. It’s cheaper than PPC, and when it’s done right, it can bring lasting traffic to your site for years to come.
The first and most important step in ranking your website is using keywords in your title and throughout your post. This will help Google understand your article and rank it higher for those specific terms.
Google crawls your article looking for your H1s, H2s, H3s, H4s, and so forth. You should always use H1 for your title and use H2s and H3s and H4s for your subtopics throughout the article.
Your subheaders are critical to getting your article to rank high. You should always use subheadings that are relevant to your topic. When you use the right keywords your audience is searching for, you have a better possibility to rank.
Featured snippets are those highlighted boxes at the top of the search engine results pages that directly answer questions. These snippets are taken from websites and pulled directly into the search engine results pages.
According to data from SEMrush, around 19% of all SERP features are featured snippets. This means if you’re not targeting your content to rank as a snippet, you’re missing out on a lot of traffic.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. But typically, you want to make sure your post answers specific user queries with clear and concise answers. Questions that begin with why, can, do, are, and how make up the most popular featured snippets.
You can also use tools like AnswerThePublic to help find popular questions related to your topic. As you can imagine, featured snippets have the highest CTR of all organic results on Google.
In a study from Moz, they found that when keywords had featured snippet boxes, click-through rates were an average of 64% higher than normal listings without them. Listings with featured snippets also improved their position in search engine rankings steadily over time by almost 20%. That’s some serious SEO power right there!
One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to rank their website is writing for search engines rather than humans. This means using a lot of keywords, stuffing your post with them, and not caring about the readability of your article.
When you write for humans, you’re naturally going to use more keywords because they’ll be relevant to your article. You should also make sure you’re providing value by writing through answers, relevant subheadings, scannable sections, and beautiful images.
Meta descriptions are the short snippets that appear below the title of your website in the search engine results pages. They’re an excellent opportunity to sell your website to users and get them to click through to your article.
Including keywords in your meta description is a great way to help Google understand what your post is about. When you include relevant keywords, your website has a better chance of ranking higher for those terms.
Remember that meta descriptions should be around 150-160 characters long. Anything longer than that will get cut off in the search engine results pages.
Always add alt tags to your images, whether it’s the featured image or an image in the body of your post. When you add alt tags, your telling Google, and visually impaired users, what that image is about and why it’s in the article.
For example, let’s say your article is about wedding decorations and you include the following image:
Your caption should read something, like “Beautiful wedding decorations at the reception hall.”
The alt text is descriptive and includes the main keyword. Even if you use a stock photo, you still create a narrative that aligns with the article.
Always start by doing thorough keyword research before creating content, so you know exactly what terms users will be typing into Google to find your article. Imagine writing an article that nobody is searching for.
That would be a massive waste of your time. Instead, make sure you spend a significant amount of time researching keywords for the topics you want to write about.
There are quite a few ways to perform keyword research. The following is a list of tools that will give you a considerable boost in your research efforts.
Keyword research tools:
Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to get thousands of keywords ideas. You need a Google ads account to use this tool. You can use Google trends with Keyword Planner to find trending topic ideas around your seed keyword.
SEMRush and Aherfs are two similar but powerful keyword research tools that can take your keyword research process to another level. Both of these tools are incredible in-depth tools with tons of features that give you the best bang for your bucks. SEMRush starts at $119 a month, and Ahref starts at $99 a month.
Answer the public is a fantastic tool that few people use during keyword research. What this tool does is give you related questions around your seed keyword.
I recommend using 1 or 2 words to get the best result to get plenty of related terms around your topic. As you can see in this screenshot, there are many questions people are asking around the word SEO.
Answer the public to your advantage to get questions around your seed keyword. If your answer these questions thoroughly in your blog post, you have a chance of getting a featured snippet from Google.
Don’t keyword stuff your blog posts. It’s that simple, Don’t do it. Instead, you should write your article as naturally as possible. You will find plenty of opportunities to include your target keywords.
If you overuse your keywords, you risk getting penalized by Google. Not to mention, it will make your blog post difficult to read and understand.
When writing your blog post, find natural opportunities to include your target keyword. This consists of the title, meta description, the article’s body, and the alt tags of your images.
If you’re writing an article about how to make a delicious apple pie, include the main keyword in the title and meta description. Throughout your blog post, you can also reference “apple” when describing ingredients or steps used to make this tasty treat!
One of the best ways to improve your SEO is by including links to high-authority sites. When you include a link to another site, it tells Google that your article is credible and authoritative.
Including links also helps keep your readers engaged in exploring more content on other related topics.
Try including a link to an authority site within your first paragraph of blog post content when possible.
Another strategy is to optimize your image alt tags with the page’s target keyword you’re linking to for even more SEO juice!
Including links from highly-authorized sites that are relevant and related to your topic will boost traffic and help improve your rankings.
9. Make your content scannable.
People don’t want to read through a long, drawn-out article when looking for information. They want to scan the content and get the gist of what it’s about quickly.
That’s why you need to make your blog posts scannable.
There are a few things you can do to make your content more scannable:
When writing your blog post, keep these things in mind to make it easier for your readers to scan through the content.
10. Always link to other posts on your site.
When writing a blog post, it’s essential to continually include internal links. Using internal links helps readers navigate your site and keeps them engaged with the content that is already on your website.
Including an internal link within the first paragraph of your blog post will give Google more signals and keep readers from clicking away from your site. Linking to your other posts also reduces your bounce and increases your conversion chance.
You can also include internal links in your conclusion when you’re summarizing the main points of your blog post! This is a great way to keep readers on your site longer and give Google more signals that will boost the rankings for key pages on your site.
Remember to use proper anchor text when creating an internal link within another article or blog post on your site. Using “read more” or another generic anchor text isn’t ideal. Using a generic anchor text will not give you any SEO value. Pointing to a high-authority page with relevant key phrases will provide for both yourself and the destination of your link!
One of the most important aspects of SEO is link building. When you have a robust link-building strategy in place, it will help improve your site’s authority and rankings in no time.
Links are like votes to Google. The more votes you have, the more Google will begin to trust your website. And the higher the authority of these votes (aka domain authority), the more Google will start to favor your site and your content.
There are several different ways to build links, but not all of them are effective for SEO purposes. Here are some of the best ways to build links that will help improve your SEO:
Guest blogging can be highly beneficial for both parties involved. The blogger gets high-quality content with a backlink to their website. The site that accepts the blog post gains relevant traffic from the reader base of the blogger.
Linkbait is a great way to generate links because it encourages people to link to your content as a resource. This can be done in several ways, but the most common is by creating infographics or data visualizations.
Resource pages are one of the best places to get links because they’re usually high-quality and relevant pages with a lot of authority. When you reach out and offer your content as a valuable resource, there’s a good chance they will add a link back to your website.
Broken link building is one of the most time-consuming tactics, but it’s also one of the most effective. The goal is to find broken links on authoritative sites and offer your content for replacement.
One of the best ways to improve your website’s loading time is by compressing your images. When you have a slow-loading website, it frustrates your readers and gives them a bad impression of your site.
Google considers page speed when ranking websites, so compressing your images will help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Compressing your images is a quick and easy way to improve your website’s loading time, and it’s one of the best ways to boost your SEO.
There are several different ways to compress your images, but my favorite is using TinyPNG. It’s a free online tool that helps reduce the file size of your PNG and JPG files without affecting the quality of the image.
SEO writing can be a daunting task, but following these 12 powerful strategies will help you supercharge your rankings to page one of Google! By creating a strategic content marketing plan, you’ll be on your way to dominating the search engine results pages! Keep it up! 🙂
