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I’m sure we all are familiar with the “writing for SEO” phrase that often gets thrown all over the internet. The truth is that writing for SEO is not hard, but there are still some things to keep in mind to make sure your content meets the Mighty Google standards. I know there are other search engines out there but let’s be honest: with a 92% market share, Google is the search engine you should aim to “please” first and foremost.
1. Writing starts before you type the first word
When writing SEO-optimised content, the optimisation starts at the research phase. With proper keyword research (you can use tools such as SEMRush, Ahref or Google Keyword Planner if you have a paid ad campaign running), you can identify which topics are worth writing about if your main goal is to attract organic visits to your article or transactional landing page.
How does that work? Well, it all starts with a broad idea. You can begin by either typing something you think your readers would enjoy learning more about and checking what related keywords are being searched for. This way, you’ll be able to niche down and answer a specific search intent. If you don’t have a tool or don’t want to pay for one, you can scout your competitors’ websites and see what they’re writing about — even though they may not have articles that target any specific keywords — or rather a particular search demand — so keep this in mind.
The goal at this step is to identify content opportunities that have a chance to bring organic visits daily to your piece of content. And for that, there needs to be demand because, unlike paid advertising, SEO doesn’t create demand: it captures it.
2. Answer the search intent
Behind every keyword, there is a search intent. It’s Google’s algorithm to guess it, so it can serve what it thinks are the best pages for users.
Sometimes, the search intent behind a keyword is easy to identify. If I type “buy shoes”, the search intent behind this keyword is transactional: I’m at the bottom of the sales funnel and am ready to… you guessed it, buy shoes!
If I type “what type of shoes should I wear at a wedding”, the search intent becomes informational: I want to know what shoes I should wear at my buddy’s wedding — not buy a pair right away (this will come later).
It becomes tricky for complex topics or super broad keywords, and it’s reflected in the search results. For example, the keyword “cryptocurrency” gets me the following first-page results:
SERP for the keyword cryptocurrency
At the top, there is an informational piece of content about what cryptocurrency is. The second result comes from coinmarketcap.com, a website that gives token prices, charts and other information traders can use to guide their decisions.
Then, the search result page shows news related to the space and moves again into informational content:
News publications about cryptocurrency
Binance’s page completes the bottom of the page. This is a pure commercially-focused page destined to convert visitors into active (paying) users of the platform:
As you can see, the search intent behind such a broad keyword is hard to identify by both search engines and writers. So, it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth writing about it and, if so, what search intent should you answer: transactional or informational? Or both, maybe…
As a general rule of thumb, I would avoid targeting these types of keywords if it can be avoided, as the search intent is hard to determine, making it even harder to rank. Try to niche down whenever you can and go after keywords with clear intent behind the words to solidify your traffic before moving on to broader terms.
3. Don’t feel forced to use exact-match keywords.
I’ll keep it brief for this one as I have already published an in-depth article about this on Medium. But basically, the logic is that you should perform a keyword research when investigating which content you should write about, but you don’t have to use exact-match keywords if it doesn’t make sense. A lot of keywords users type in search engines are grammatically wrong (e.g., “best schools London”), so you’d better use them the right way (e.g., “best schools in London”). Google is smart enough to know that these two terms are the same.
You can also use keyword variations or synonyms if it makes more sense in your copy and to your target audience or market. This will not penalise your content, and you should still be able to rank for your main keyword if the rest of your copy is on-point.
4. Word count doesn’t really matter.
For this point, I also published an article that shows that word count doesn’t really matter… Well, it’s not entirely true because it matters, but not how most people think.
Long-form content doesn’t correlate with higher rankings. The goal is to answer the search intent behind the keywords you’re trying to rank for. Whether this can be answered with 300 words or 3,000 words entirely depends on the topic. The goal is to treat whatever subject you’re writing about thoroughly without fluff or being lazy.
5. Structure your page with proper header tags
Header tags (<H1>, <H2>, <H3,> etc.) are meant to be used on your page to structure your content.
They’re super easy to use, but I’ve seen plenty of writers not even consider using them.
As a rule of thumb, here is how you should use them to follow the best practices when it comes to SEO:
· H1 tags should only be used once per page. They are the main title of the page.
· H2 tags can be used in multiple parts to create sections on the page.
· H3 tags are similar to H2 tags but are used to create sub-sections within individual H2 sections.
Let’s say we have a page that talks about the most popular dog breeds. Here is how the page could be structured:
<H1> The Most Popular Dog Breeds </H1>
<H2> Small Dogs </H2>
<H3> French Bulldogs </H3>
<H3> Chihuahua </H3>
<H3> Jack Russels </H3>
<H2> Large Dogs </H3>
<H3> Rottweiler</H3>
<H3> German shepherd </H3>
<H3> Boxer </H3>
Using header tags lets you organise your content in a way that makes sense to the user and Google: it’s a win-win!
6. Use semantically related words
Well, this part should be (kind of) already covered when you create content that thoroughly answers the search intent behind your main keywords. But it’s worth mentioning as it’s pretty essential, even though most writers already do it without necessarily knowing it.
Basically, when writing content about a subject, you should use vocabulary that relates to it on top of the keyword you’re trying to rank for. If we go back to the dog example, the copy should contain words closely related to dog breeds. On the top of my head, I can already think about a few, such as: “training”, “kennel”, “vet”, “friendly”, “pet”, “companion”, loyal”, etc.
Some tools give you semantically related words to include in your copy, such as Frase or Surfer SEO. What they do is they take the top 10 results for your target keyword and check which words appear the most. While it is not an exact science, this can give you some indications of what you should talk about in your copy.
7. Write for humans
We’re in 2022 and Google is becoming smarter every day. This means that it can understand content in any language.
This means that you should focus on pleasing your readers first and foremost. If you’re trying to over-optimise your copy for Google, chances are your content will probably not read well and hurt your rankings. Just make sure you publish the type of content you’d be interested in reading if you were in your audience or target customers’ shoes.
This implies copy that is simple and to the point. Internet users have a very short attention span, and you risk having your visitors bounce off your site if you bury them with overly complicated sentences. Be simple but accurate: that’s all your audience and Google want!
8. Don’t stuff keywords
This tip goes hand-to-hand with the previous one, but it’s so important that it requires its own part. Do NOT stuff your target keywords if there is no valid reason to do so. We’re not in 2009 anymore and this way of “cheating” the system is long gone now.
But it will hurt more than just your rankings: it will hurt your brand as a whole. Users are not stupid and will notice what you’re trying to do.
Only use keywords when it makes sense to do so and naturally. Don’t force it. The only two places where it’s almost mandatory to include your main keyword are in your H1 tag and meta title.
9. Don’t forget to fill in your metadata
By metadata, I specifically mean meta titles and meta descriptions:
Wikipedia search result page for dog breeds
The meta title is the clickable text in blue in the screenshot above. This is generally the first element searchers see.
The meta description is the grey text underneath. It’s not a ranking factor, so don’t feel you have to include your main keyword there. Just try to create something compelling that will entice searchers to click on your page rather than a competitor’s.
They both have a limit defined in pixel length. People generally use up to 65 characters (spaces included) for meta titles and 160 characters for meta descriptions to be safe. There are, however, a bunch of free tools that you can use to preview how your metadata will appear and if it fits the recommended length.
If you exceed the maximum length, Google will truncate it, which you do not want:
Example of a meta title too long being truncated on Google search result page
10. Write Alt Tags for your images
Alt tags, or alternative text, are a bit of text (usually one short sentence) that describes what the image is about. Users on the page can’t see it, but it still is essential for two main reasons:
1. People relying on audio to browse the web can better understand how the page is structured. There’s a massive shift in the digital world to make content accessible to anyone, so make sure you keep this in mind. Alt tags should therefore be descriptive enough, so someone who can’t see know what the image is about.
2. It allows the image to rank on image search. This is especially important for product images, as some online buyers go to Google image to browse products. This could get you some additional visits to your site and increase your sales.
And… that’s it! I hope you found this helpful. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any questions. If you’re interested in SEO and content marketing and want to read more about it, feel free to follow me on Medium, so you don’t miss the next article.
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