Remember the hype claims that SEO is dead? If yes, then it’s better to forget about them. SEO is more than alive, and it will be so as long as the search engines are alive.

Search engines are not only alive but smart enough to draw uncontested conclusions about the quality of your content.

Do you want these findings to be beneficial to you? ReVerb’s team wants this, too. Therefore, I have created this ultimate SEO writing guide to dig deeper into this topic.

Foundation: What is SEO writing?

About 15 years ago, the question, ‘What is SEO writing?’ made almost no sense. It was enough to fill the text with approximately suitable keywords, and it worked overall. Today it is a direct route to Google’s blacklist.

Therefore, nowadays, we define SEO writing as follows. SEO writing is the process of creating content that both meets the technical requirements of the search engines and is interesting, relevant, valuable, and useful to readers.

Do you know the difference between a good SEO copywriter and a bad one? A good SEO writer understands the importance of this balance and knows how to satisfy both sides with the art of using the right words in the right place and at the right time.

So, let’s consider in detail two key ingredients of SEO writing, Google ranking factors and content writing requirements. 

Google ranking factors that influence your page’s fate

The Google search engine is equipped with very powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. It is able to analyze huge streams of information and rank sites based on the following parameters:

1. Security and Accessibility. This means your site must have a clean code, robots.txt file, and a sitemap to help Google navigate your site.
2. Page Loading Speed. In a perfect picture of the digital world, your site should load in 3-5 seconds. In case it takes longer to load, Google marks the site as one with poor user experience. Plus, most users won’t wait any longer and just switch to the competitors’ pages. To check the loading speed of your web pages, use Google PageSpeed Insights.
3. Mobile Friendliness. Google doesn’t respect sites that provide poor mobile experiences. Additionally, a mobile optimization strategy is one of the key ranking ideologies nowadays.
4. Internal and External Links. Google requires the articles on your blog to be meaningfully linked, plus your site must also have organic backlinks. These are links to your site from other platforms, which are more proof of the value of your content to users.
5. Social Shares. Social sharing is not a key ranking factor, but it is a good indicator that your site has good traffic and your content is worthy of sharing with others. Make sure that you added the Social Sharing button widget or plug-in on your blog.
6. Behavior Factors. Click-through rate, bounce rate, and dwell time are the main indicators. Their combination shows whether your text is relevant to the user’s request and also indicates the value of your content for the user and his level of engagement.
7. Optimized Content. Google considers content to be optimized when an article contains a sufficient number of relevant keywords and enough words to cover the topic. Tools like Google Analytics and Google Trends API help to create a list of relevant keywords and optimize your content more professionally. Plus, Google encourages sites whose visitors show positive behavioral factors (depth of view, bounce rate, time spent on the website, return rate, etc.). Ensuring high engagement metrics is one of the core purposes of an SEO copywriter. 
8. Technical SEO Signs. They include on-page SEO, proper sitemap, website accessibility for web crawlers, the absence of broken pages, and a great batch of other technical SEO elements.

4 steps to efficient SEO copywriting

As you can see, the production of SEO content is just one of the Google ranking factors. However, the content itself is the web page’s heart that directly affects other no less important factors, such as behavior patterns, shares, and organic backlinks. 

Here are the essential steps that an SEO writer (or you) need to take to create a top-notch article that will be adored both by readers and search engines:

Step 1. Select a good topic

A correctly chosen topic is already 30% of the success of your article. Therefore, the topic of the publication should be:

• Relevant to your blog. Your subscribers and customers will not appreciate the joke if you previously wrote about spare parts for cars, and your new article is about choosing strollers.
• Interesting for your audience. Before deciding on a topic, analyze your target audience’s current issues and problems. 
• Trendy. A trendy topic will definitely attract new visitors to your site. Regularly use Google Trends to define the most discussed topics in your business area nowadays.
• Not-overhyped. However, when selecting a trendy topic, make sure that it’s not already overhyped. Users are tired of the hackneyed news so catch the moment!

How do I find the right topics?

• Well, I usually communicate with the sales department to learn about the questions and requests of our customers.
• Another trick is using forums such as Quora or Reddit to define the questions people are asking now.

Step 2. Analyze competitors and find some gaps

Competitor analysis is always a good SEO writing strategy:

• Firstly, you can analyze what keywords they are using and use them as well. I use Ahrefs (Site overview -> Organic Search -> Organic Keywords) for this. Pay special attention to the column ‘Traffic’ which points out the actual number of visitors attracted to the site through the specific keyword.

• Secondly, you can find weaknesses and gaps in their SEO content and fill them in your blog.
• Thirdly, you can read questions and comments from their subscribers to supplement your knowledge about what the audience is interested in and what they like and dislike about the materials that have already been published.

Step 3. Select the relevant keywords and insert them correctly

Of course, you don’t need to manually search for keywords, although brainstorming is a good strategy. Fortunately, SEO tools are available to help you shape the semantic core of your article and site.

The most popular tools are SerpStat, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and UberSuggest. You only need to type your primary keyword around the topic, and you will get a huge list of potentially suitable keywords with indicators such as search volume, relevance, keywords difficulty, etc. 

Hint! Choosing the right keywords for SEO writing may seem easy but there still can be some difficulties, especially if you are doing it for the first time. That is why you should consider using AI-powered SEO tools that are able to help you with research, blog topic ideas generation, and picking the quick-win keywords. 

After you are done, find out how to insert the keywords correctly. 

Here are the basic recommendations:

• Use your main keyword in the title, Heading 2, and the first 200 words. 
• Select up to 5 on-topic keywords. Start with the common keyword and end with the long-tail versions.
• Use one keyword per 200 words. Avoid keyword stuffing; otherwise, they will look spammy. 
• Insert your keywords organically. They should look natural and relevant so your readers won’t even notice them. Change the order or endings where necessary.
• Make sure to use long-tailed keywords as well since users are looking for specific information more often. What’s more, it’s the best approach for new sites that don’t have enough domain authority to compete with giant niche leaders.

Step 4. Write your text professionally

So let’s move on to the most important part of writing for SEO – the creative (and partly technical) process itself. 

Here are some exclusive tips prepared by our team on how to create engaging, readable, and informative copies:

• Write short paragraphs

Modern users don’t read, they scan. Therefore, it is best to write short paragraphs and also leave white space between them. Lists and checklists are also welcome.

• Don’t overdo with passive voice 

The passive voice is rarely used in colloquial speech. Since you are writing for humans, not robots, you need to use a conversational style of speech.

• Try to create material that is better than the competitors’

Type the title of your article in Google search and thoroughly read the competitors’ materials from the first page in the results. Your task is to define their gaps, dig deeper, and compose a better piece: more useful, informational, and research-based, so the readers can find answers to all questions related to this theme.

• Link to experts and other trustworthy websites

Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are important for good rankings on Google. These metrics are also important to your readers. Therefore, use links to primary sources, renowned scientific researchers and organizations, and leading experts in the industry so that users have no doubts about the quality and credibility.

• Follow the structure

Strictly divide a text into logical paragraphs and come up with relevant headings for each of them: H2, H3 (if necessary), and conclusion.

• Stick to optimal article length

The ideal article length is 1000-2000 words depending on your goal. What’s more, Google believes that if you need more space to cover a topic and provide even more value, you are free to do it. 

• Adapt text to the voice search

As the mobile experience becomes key for users when searching for information and interacting with brands, more than half of the searches are already voice searches. Keep this in mind when considering the structure and headings of your article, as users behave differently when they type and speak.

Let’s compare:

– Text search query example – perfume Gucci Boston buy

– Voice search query example – where to buy Gucci perfume in Boston?

Short but capacious answers to voice queries are a good chance to get into the Google snippet. Therefore, alternate your subheadings to place your bet on both text and voice searches.

• Proofread your text twice

Of course, your text should not contain grammatical and lexical errors, typos, and extra spaces. Use special apps like Grammarly Premium to get rid of them, and ask your SEO writer to do the same. 

• Make sure your article is unique

Your article should be unique. Therefore, if you use information that someone has already published, be sure to indicate the source and also check the uniqueness of the text using plagiarism checkers. Make sure that your copy has a uniqueness rate of no less than 80%.

• Add credible images and videos

Images make your text easier to read, infographics let you show your most important data, milestones, or statistics visually, and videos improve behavioral factors by keeping users on the page longer.

• Come up with a compelling CTA

Your perfect SEO content should meet Google’s technical requirements and be helpful to users. It also needs to be able to convert potential leads into customers. That is why your text should end with a clear, motivating, and unobtrusive call to action, that is, gently prompting the user on what he should do next.

• Bring something unique to the table

Prove statements with your own opinions and professional advice, examples, and experiences.

If you have completed all of these points, well, you are very close to making Google happy to show your article to your target audience. You still have to check a few more technical points before the final victory. 

So, let’s make sure that your overall on-page optimization is done right. 

On-page SEO: tips and tricks

On-page SEO is the process of technical improvement of your page to make it more reliable and relevant in the eyes of Google. 

Here are the main on-page SEO practices:

• Meta-tags optimization. 

There are three crucial meta tags on a page: title, description, and alt text.

1. The meta-title of your page should include the main keyword and have a length of 50-60 characters with spaces. It should be catching, intriguing, and motivating.
2. The meta-description should attractively describe the main points of your content, contain the main keyword as well, and have a length of 150-155 characters.
3. The alt-tags (an image description) should contain one of the keywords, briefly describe the picture, and have a length of up to 125 characters.

• Internal links. Your blog posts and other sites’ pages should be linked to each other to facilitate the user’s journey and improve the dwell time. Make sure that you insert at least two relevant internal links throughout every page.
• Keywords volume distribution. Each of your articles should contain keywords of different usage frequency – from low to high.
• URL optimization. Keep the page URL short (2-3 words) and on-topic. The best SEO writing practice is to make the URL the same as your primary keyword. For example, you can see that the URL of this article is super straightforward: /seo-writing.

Conclusion

I hope that now you have a clear understanding of what SEO writing is and what the main rules of writing for SEO are. However, practice always has more pitfalls than theory. 

That is why a professional SEO writing process always involves a whole team of specialists: an SEO strategist, SEO copywriter, editor, and graphic designer. Such a multi-level approach creates top-notch content that attracts visitors, ranks high by search engines, and converts leads into customers. 

We at ReVerb have a well-composed SEO/content marketing team that is always ready to help you leverage your marketing strategy by driving tons of organic traffic to your site!