What Every Writer Should Know About SEO
Whether you are a SEO writer or not, knowing a few key tactics can change the game!
Have you seen our free SEO training video? Watch now!
When I started writing professionally back in 2017, SEO or “search engine optimization” was starting to pop up everywhere. I’d scroll through Upwork and see that countless job posts wanted SEO writers for blogs, product reviews and more.
At the time, I had no SEO training or knowledge whatsoever. But I applied for the jobs and landed many of them. (These clients were desperate.)
From there, I began learning all I could about SEO. While some of the information was irrelevant to my needs, I memorized and perfected the SEO tactics that would improve my work, perform for my clients and help my own website rank better.
As the years went on, I wrote countless top-ranking blog posts for my clients and my own sites. In this post, I want to give you a brief overview of SEO tactics that every writer should know.
7 SEO Writing Tactics for Writers
These SEO strategies aim to help you create better content – whether that’s on your own awesome writer portfolio site or for your clients. This list is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a great way to start strategically thinking about your content.
For even more in-depth training on SEO writing, watch our free SEO writing training video.
#1 Keyword Stuffing Is Not a Thing Anymore
It was a thing when I started. My clients wanted me to use various keywords and stuff them wherever I could. As you can imagine, some of my paragraphs used the same keywords over and over and over again. I don’t share any of those posts on my portfolio site…
Keyword stuffing used to actually work, but then the Internet was littered with low-quality content – and no one liked that! Nowadays, keyword stuffing can actually hurt the SEO score of your writing.
#2 Keyword Density Can Help
Keyword density is how many times a certain keyword shows up in your content. For a while, keyword density recommendations have remained the same at 1-2%.
That means that your desired keyword should show up 1-2 times per 100 words. If it shows up more, your work may get penalized (by SEO measures) for keyword stuffing.
#3 All Sorts of Keywords Will Do
If you are tasked with writing a blog post for a client, and they give you one or even a small handful of keywords, don’t be afraid to branch out from that list. In fact, you may be able to rank for other keywords outside of that list if you include alternative language in your writing.
Include short and long-tail keywords. Include questions that people will ask. Think about how people use those keywords in everyday conversations.
And while you absolutely could do your own research for extra keywords, I find that just being hyper aware of possible keywords works for me. I tend to create new, related keywords as I go.
For example: In this article, I’d love to rank for keywords surrounding “SEO tactics for writers.” However, instead of constantly repeating the same phrase about how writers can learn SEO from my post, I can keep diversifying my language in hopes of providing effective writer SEO strategies.
See what I did? Ideally, you’d have even more content to add to that paragraph.
#4 Think About Intent
This can sometimes be a hard concept to wrap your head around. However, if you understand this point, you can really create amazing content, regardless of your SEO knowledge and effectiveness.
Every time a reader searches for a topic, they have a reason why they’re searching. For example, someone could search using any of the following terms:
Cheap laundry baskets
Best laundry baskets
Decorative laundry baskets
You can start to generate some ideas about what the person is really looking for in their Google search. For example, someone searching for “cheap laundry baskets” wants to get their money’s worth and could be enticed to read an article entitled “10 laundry baskets under $10.”
On the other hand, someone searching for the “best laundry baskets” may want to weigh several options to find a laundry basket that will fit their needs.
The term “decorative laundry baskets” may indicate that the person is very concerned about style, so product reviews for cheap, white, plastic baskets wouldn’t appeal to them.
#5 Bring It Back to the Person
An evergreen trait of good SEO is to always think about how your writing will help the reader. Your writing should sound like a real person, be helpful and be tailored to what a specific reader is looking for.
No matter how much SEO criteria change, you can always count on ranking better when you’re focusing on the user experience and adding value for the person. Write for people, not for the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
#6 There’s On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO is what you may normally think about when it comes to writing better for SEO. It includes the content on the webpage like the title, subheads and body content.
Off-page SEO is sometimes out of your control as a writer. That is, unless you manage your own portfolio site. With off-page SEO, you can thoughtfully add in keywords into the structure of your website.
For example, you can change the URL of a certain blog post to help you rank better for a keyword. You can write a really good Google title and meta description that differs slightly from what you used as an on-page title.
As a writer, you could offer such off-page SEO services if you wanted to. Writing a Google title and meta description is a pretty quick task that you could upcharge when creating blogs for clients.
#7 Use FAQs as Subheadings
When someone searches using a question, Google would love to see you mimic that same question in your writing, as long as it makes sense. Feel free to use FAQs in your headings to tell Google that your article is right on target for a search query.
As long as the overall flow of the content makes sense, and you’re not touching on all sorts of topics in one post, FAQ subheadings can go a long way in readability and SEO.
Want to get into the profitable world of SEO writing? Learn all the basics, including what projects to pitch, in our free SEO training video.
