5 Tips for Writing Better SEO Content

Good content requires good SEO, and conversely, good SEO requires good content. You never want the wonderfully written copy you crafted put onto your website only to get lost in the last pages of a Google search result. Doing that means you’re going to get less than desirable effects for your hard work. 

However, getting onto the front page of Google isn’t enough. If your content isn’t good, people aren’t going to stay and continue reading. You need to wow your reader into staying and hook them with a great lead. In a way, you need to make your reader curious enough about what it is your article is offering to them–just like this one is making you do.

By keeping a few essential tips in mind, you can be well on your way to writing the SEO way. Doing so will not only keep your readers on your page and keep them genuinely invested in your brand, but you’re going to get more sales than ever before. 

1. Keep Your Audience In Mind

The most important thing to keep in mind when writing content for SEO is to keep your audience in mind. Unless your readers are robots, you probably shouldn’t be writing like one. If your target audience is professional lawyers, you need to make sure your tone reflects that–slang and buzzwords won’t work the same on that audience as they would on Gen-Z kids.

In addition to tone, you need to consider your content. While every piece of content on your blog may not be directly about your specific product or service, it should be related to your industry and helpful to your audience.

For example, if you own a cell phone repair shop and publish articles about gardening, your audience will be left feeling confused. Just because there are Apple phones and apple trees doesn’t mean that content is interchangeable. Your audience is smart enough to know you’re just trying to increase rankings if they see uninspired content like this on your site and are less likely to see you as a trustworthy brand. 

In short, understanding your audience is the most crucial thing you need to establish before a single word hits your article draft. Knowing who is looking at your website will help you best set your tone and respect their attention.

2. Make The Headline Matter

Your headline matters. It’s the first thing your reader sees when opening your blog, and it’s the sole thing they see when making their decision to click on a piece of content. 

Take this blog title, for example: “Tips for Writing Great SEO Content”. It tells you everything you need to know without being overly cheesy or looking down on you as a reader. You know by reading this, you’re going to get solid tips on SEO writing and content generation and that you’re going to leave this article knowing something that you didn’t before. 

However, let’s say this article had a different title: “People Overlook These Five SEO Writing Tips!”. This title is as click-bait as it gets and your audience will realize it. Hopefully, you are writing excellent and informative content, so make sure your headlines share that.

3. Make The Content Meaningful

It’s a tremendous waste of your time and effort to write for the sake of word count alone. Instead, think about your content and make sure it is valuable and topical. You’re definitely going to want to include your target keywords, but make sure it reads well and isn’t just fluff. If you feel like you’re writing filler content, it likely will come off that way when published.

Think about a sentence like this: “I love content writing because it allows me to show my reader the most important information on a webpage; in addition, every time I create new content, I learn more about SEO optimization”.

Did you catch that this sentence is loaded with keywords? Content writing, most important information on a webpage, and SEO optimization are keywords that someone who did a quick Google Search could type in.

This is a simple example, but by writing content with these searchable words and phrases in mind, you can produce content that will show up higher in search results. It takes skill to make these keywords integrate into your writing, but with practice, anything is possible. 

4. Give It Some Structure

You need subheadings throughout your article to keep your readers’ focus. Long walls of text will make your reader grow tired and bored, and eventually, click off of the page. If your reader is looking for one piece of information, headers let them scroll until they find what it is they’re looking for.

You need to make sure your heading tags on the backend are up to snuff, too. Ensure tags are listed in a proper hierarchy and that your article, both on the front end and back end, is easy to follow and understand. While your readers may not notice the difference between a H2, H3, or H4, search engines use these tags to analyze and rank your content, so be sure they’re logical and help the overall flow of the article.

And, of course, you want to wrap your article up with… 

5. The Call-To-Action (CTA)

Simple, but often overlooked. A call to action or a CTA, is essential in your content because it’s a final chance to sell yourself while you have your audience’s attention. We just had someone read an entire article about SEO writing tips, but what are they supposed to do now that they’ve learned all of this valuable information? That’s what our CTA is for:

At Agency Atlantic we can help solve your SEO content needs. If you aren’t a writer and don’t have one in your agency, we can help provide you with all of the blogs your client websites need to get visitors rolling in.