Discover SEO Content Writing Tips & Techniques

Are you a content writer? Improve your content writing for SEO with these ten tips from Titan Growth.

It’s no secret that SEO and content go hand-in-hand.

After all, SEO is necessary for your content to be recovered somewhere on page 50 of the search results; we all know traffic on those pages is less than satisfactory. Likewise, your first-page ranking can only do so much if your content post-click is crummy. That’s why a good relationship between SEO and excellent content is essential! Here are ten tips on how to write SEO content to make your content go further and enhance your SEO efforts simultaneously.

SEO Writing Tips & Guidelines to Make Your Content Go Further

1. Write for Your Audience First

This SEO content writing tip is number one for a reason. It seems easy enough, yet many companies make content for all the wrong reasons. Write content that appeals to the interests of your target market or answers their questions. Not all posts need to be about your product or service, but they all should be industry related. Assert yourself and your company as a practical expert in your industry by writing SEO-friendly content that is interesting and informative, and you do it better than your competition.

2. Keep it all Under the Same Roof

Keep your original content under your domain name and get the credit and traffic your website deserves. If you have a blog, opt out of hosting with WordPress or Blogger and host the blog in a subfolder on your domain (i.e., www.example.com/blog ). Any time you have an opportunity to showcase other forms of original content like videos, infographics, or whitepapers, make sure to embed them onto your website and share from there.

3. Make Headlines that Pack a Punch

You have a concise amount of text to make a huge impression. So don’t underestimate the power of a compelling headline on SEO! Write headlines that are clear, interesting and make use of rich keywords. In addition to a great headline, make sure your meta descriptions are attractive and further elaborate on the topic of your article. Remember that your title and meta description appear in the search results, so make them count!

4. Use keyword-Rich Phrases

Use relevant, keyword-rich phrases in your headlines and throughout your content to let your readers and the search engines know what your post is about. But beware, too many keywords will not only turn off your readers but can result in search engine penalties for keyword stuffing. Use keywords thoughtfully and sparingly, sticking to a more natural feel. In addition to using keywords throughout the body of your post, take advantage of blog tags by tagging a few relevant keywords for each position; most general blogs already have tagging capabilities.

5. Structure Your Posts

The contents of your post may be excellent but can be easily lost in an unorganized, inefficient format. Breaking your content into smaller paragraphs with headlines makes for an easy read to keep your readers engaged. For search engines, back-end organization is critical too. Using proper tag hierarchy when tagging headlines (H1 for titles, H2 for subtitles) is essential to maintain a well-structured article.

6. Incorporate Imagery

Make your posts pop with images! People are visual. Adding an image along with your blog post can make a big impression. Have a Pinterest account? In addition to promoting your blogs across your other social media channels, posts with images can also be pinned, adding another avenue for traffic to your website.

7. Propel Content with Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool that can help increase the reach of your content and promote sharing. Post each new article on social media sites and forums using engaging descriptions and a call to action. Since the power of social media lies in sharing, it’s also essential to have share buttons on each blog post. If you want more control of how your links appear when they’re shared, implementing Twitter Cards for Twitter or Open Graph for Facebook (technical) can boost your connections and may help your click-through rates.

8. Implement Google Authorship

Google Authorship is a quick and easy way to tie content to a particular author; you only need a Google+ account. As a result, your articles come up as rich snippets in the search results featuring the author’s photo along with the article title. Google Authorship is excellent for personal promotion but can also increase the click-through rate of your articles. If you’re an author, learn how to set up Authorship for your website.

9. Promote Natural Link Building

Link building has come a long way since link buying and link farms, but links are still an important ranking factor for SEO. Linking to your articles or website in your post ensures a link back to your website if another site picks up your paper. If you get creative with other types of content like infographics and videos, adding an embed code on your site helps promote content sharing and links back to the original source. Creating great SEO content helps increase the shareability and the likelihood that other websites will link to it, so aim for quality.

10. Monitor Your Activity

 

Stay on top of your SEO-friendly content by monitoring your efforts. Google Analytics is an easy and free way to track your page views and the average time spent. Check your bounce rate and time on site to get an idea of how users interact with your website after landing on your content. If you see a high drop off in addition to a low average time spent on the page, that indicates that your content wasn’t relevant to what they were looking for, or worse, wasn’t enjoyable. Also, look at the number of social interactions (shares, likes, etc.) to get an idea of the virality of your post. Just looking at these simple metrics can give you a good idea of which content pieces are well-received and liked so that you can replicate that type of content down the road.