What It Really Means To Write For SEO

Writing for SEO, just like SEO itself has indeed come a long way. Long gone are the days when what you needed to do to have an SEO content was to come up with an article and make sure that the occurrence of targeted keywords reaches a certain percentage within the article. Then all that’s left for you to do was add a few words with links to targeted pages. Those were the good old days of easy SEO writing. It was simple to come up with articles for SEO, it would help you rank easily too, despite your articles being basically worthless.

Nowadays, writing for SEO is no longer a simple formula. It has become one of the most important aspects of a successful SEO strategy and there are certain factors you need to nail before your writing can be considered acceptable in the SEO world. There are certain rules that dominate how you should write your content. These rules are set so you can provide articles that are useful to both search engines and customers alike.

What are these rules to effectively write for SEO?

1. Change of Perspective

   So you have a business and you want to tell the world about how awesome it is. When it comes to writing for SEO, you will have to change your perspective. We know you know how awesome your business is. However, in writing for SEO, you need to focus more on seeing things from your customers’ point of view. Therefore, you will have to write something that would be appealing to your site visitors. The point should not be on what you can do, but on what benefits they can get from you.

   There was a time in the past when keyword density was a big deal for SEO writing. It was even considered as the ultimate key to successfully pulling off effective SEO. The focus used to be on the most lucrative keywords, the number of times they appeared on the page and the words included on the links within the page. While it is true that even to this day these factors have an impact on SEO writing, they no longer have the same importance they used to have in the past. Therefore, they are not your main priority when you write for SEO now. Keywords themselves hold a different meaning now. It can be more confusing now because the formula about keywords is no longer as well-defined as it was in the past.

   Note that you should not completely stray away from the basics when it comes to implementing keywords on your SEO content. At the very least, the title, a subtitle and a couple of lines in the body should have the keywords you are targeting for. However, the tricky part is Google. It can actually detect that you are doing this keyword implementation and while it isn’t against its standards, Google is not going to be impressed either. The best way to stay within the ‘best of both worlds’ is to consider the keywords as your guide to the topic.

   Focus not just on keyword usage but on keyword support too. This means you should also use keywords that support the keywords you are targeting. This is because Google can recognize the relationship between different keywords. When you create your content, cover the topic the best you can and use the best supporting words for your target keywords.

2. Make Site Visitors Stay

   When it comes to ranking on search engines, you should be aware that the length of time your site visitors stay on your page will have a huge impact on how your site will rank on search engine pages. The longer your site visitor stays on your site, the more likely he or she will be a paying customer too. The challenge of keeping them on your site lies on your content too. This is an added pressure to your writing, but whatever you write, you need to keep customers reading. Of course, you can try to implement the typical bullet points, subheading, lists and other strategies but you can go beyond that. You can try the strategy called ‘Bucket Brigades’. Apparently, this is an old tactic that was used to get people to continuously read sales letters. These come in the form of lead-in sentences and questions followed usually by a colon. It’s like a commercial but in writing.

   You can also apply supplemental content in your writing. Supplemental content helps create high-quality pages per Google standards. Google just love pages with supplemental content! These are actually features that lead visitors to other parts of your website, including articles and products. It’s not just about adding random links either. You should lead the users to other content relevant to the topic they were searching for.  You have to be careful in adding supplemental content though. Overdoing it will make your content distracting.

3. Write to a Specific Level
   

   You might have heard other SEO experts talking about how you should write for a certain level when creating your content. They’re right. Most experts encourage SEO content to be at around 8^th-grade level. However, this is not a fixed rule you really need to abide by. You also need to consider the type of business you have and the type of customers you have. Let’s say you’re dealing with medical professionals in your business. Writing in 8^th-grade level about medical products you are selling could have a negative impact on your business. If your writing is too simplistic, you might have to say goodbye to your conversion fantasies! It all comes back to the basics – you need to be customer-focused in your writing approach.

It is also important that you address questions related to your topic. You can ask the questions yourself and address it in your writing. Your customers may not even be aware of the questions they want to ask until they see the question. In the end, remember that writing your content is not just about the rankings. Remember that your ultimate goal here is conversion.