Are you looking for SEO writing tips that will help your website content rise in the search results? Here are 7 easy tactics that will transform your invisible content into highly optimized page one gold.
Search engine optimization is a complex and ever-changing discipline. Because of this, many small businesses don’t have the time or money to invest in ranking their content.
The thing is, without content that ranks in search, you miss out on organic traffic. It’s like having a shop front in the real world with no signage or front door! More than 71% of searches are from someone clicking an organic result. If your content doesn’t rank, it isn’t targeting your customers.
There are basic, proven techniques that will drastically improve the way your content is indexed and scored by the search engines. When you combine these with good business practices, something magic happens – your traffic begins to rise.
So here are 7 SEO writing tips and tricks that leverage on-page optimization to improve your shot at ranking your target keywords. Make sure every page and post is optimized with these tips.
Tip #1: Create High Quality Content
There’s been some debate about what constitutes high quality content online. You’ll need to create excellent content on your website if you want it to have long-term ranking potential.
For small business owners, writing quality content has 3 features – it’s original, relevant and provides real value.
- Original content must be built from scratch using a variety of research sources. Your content must be unique, not plagiarized or duplicated anywhere, and should be in your own voice.
- Relevant content must be in-tune with the search intent of your audience. Your customers are looking for answers, and your content needs to provide them with real solutions.
- Valuable content is about usability and share-potential. Each of your content pieces must provide value to the reader or user, enough for them to want to pass it on.
- Quality trumps quantity with content. It’s better to create 2000 words in one post, than have 10, 200 word posts. Page 1 posts are 1800 words or more.
These are the SEO best practices for creating content that ranks well on the search engines. Every SEO copywriting piece will have different strategic elements, but they must all check these boxes.
Tip #2: Target Relevant Long-Tail Keywords
Knowing how to use SEO keywords in your content correctly will help you rank better. Small businesses that have no traffic to begin with, should focus on simple long-tail keyword phrases.
- Some 80% of your keyword phrases should have 3-4 words or more. These are called ‘long-tail keywords’ and they’re great for high traffic, low competition, high conversion potential.
- Your main or lead keyword should be a mid-tail or long-tail phrase of 3 words or more. Focus on local context for an added boost.
- Some 20% of your keyword phrases should be high traffic, for semantic relevance. You won’t rank for these, but they help search engines understand the context and relevance of your content. Add them to images and videos for higher ranking potential
Long-tail SEO keyword phrases are also great if you’re planning on using PPC ads to compliment your SEO strategy. Make sure they’re niche-specific! Don’t forget to conduct solid keyword research to find appropriate terms to build into your content.
Tip #3: Optimize Page Structure, Titles and Meta Descriptions
Ranking on a search engine requires some technical knowledge. Tip number three is going to show you three ways to immediately enhance your on-page SEO, with some technical know-how.
- First, optimize your page structure with HTML elements. These elements (H1, H2, H3) tell search engines about the hierarchy of importance in your structured content
- Optimize your title tags for search. These are the titles that appear in the search results. Yours should be less than 60 characters long, and must contain your main keyword
- Optimize your meta descriptions. These are the descriptive snippets you see below the titles in the search results. Yours should be less than 155 characters and contain your main keyword
One of the best SEO writing tips we can give you is to optimize the page structure of every page or post. They all need to be correctly structured, with a title tag and a meta description.
Tip #4: Optimize Your Page Headline for Search
This is an expansion of the previous tip involving your title tags. As you create yours, remember that headlines are the reason your customers will click through to your website. Make yours sing!
On average, eight out of ten people will only ever read your headline. It has to be so good, that it invites the other two to explore your content, beating all other headlines in the SERPS.
- Your headline must include your keyword phrase
- It must invoke action, emotion or provide value to the reader
- It should have a high engagement score (above 60)
- It should be unique (do a quick keyword search and make sure)
A strong page headline will become a strong title tag. These SEO writing tips will help get your content on page 1, and it will get customers to choose your content over others in your niche.
Tip #5: Optimize Your Image Alt Tags
Visual content is a search engine optimization secret weapon. Even larger companies don’t correctly optimize their images and videos, yet they’re huge traffic sources. Tip five is about optimizing your image alt tags. These are the text alternatives to your images.
Sometimes images don’t load, and all that remains is a text explanation. That’s your image alt tag. These should include your keyword and a relevant image description. When you associate the right keywords with images, it can attract highly targeted traffic to your site.
Articles with images get 94% more views than those without – so optimize each and every image in your page and post content with quality SEO writing.
Tip #6: Create Internal Link Networks
An internal link network is how you get customers to stay on your website for longer. These internal links direct customers from one page to another on your site.
Neil Patel calls internal links in blog posts a ‘power SEO’ strategy. It makes your site easier to crawl for search engines, it helps website navigation which improves usability, and it distributes page authority throughout your website.
There are a few main types of internal links:
- Link blog content to other blog content
- Link category pages to other categories
- Link products to products, or products to categories
- Link blog pages to products and category pages
Your internal link networks should be natural and should genuinely guide your customer from one place to the next, in a helpful manner.
Tip #7: Build External Links
Link building was the original SEO strategy in the early 2000s. These days, you should still try to get backlinks that are natural and useful for your user. This means attracting high quality inbound links from other websites because your content is so good.
- Network with other websites in your niche that have a high domain authority
- Ask them if they would like to link to your content (have a good reason)
- There are various backlinking strategies you can use to build external links
Search engines use external links as a ranking signal for your content. If lots of people link in to a page, then that page must have high quality, useful stuff on it. Makes sense, right?
These SEO writing fundamentals will help you rank your business content. Remember to choose an SEO-friendly web host, and to make sure that your website page speed is fast.
With these excellent tips and a responsive website, your company will be unstoppable in the SERPS. Create quality content, target mid and long-tail keywords, and optimize your page structure, title tags and meta descriptions. From there, make sure that you have a powerful headline that beats your competition.
Then all you have to do is optimize your image alt tags, and build strong internal and external link networks for best results. Use these high-performance SEO writing tips to get organic traffic rolling into your site this year.
