How to write SEO optimized content — The right way

What does SEO-optimized content mean?

SEO optimized content is the type of content created in a way that helps search engines rank it very high.

While some marketers think this means it needs to be keyword stuffed, it’s really to help them find, understand, and relate your content to the topic you’re trying to cover.

If you are wondering how to write effective SEO content, reading this guide for beginners and intermediate SEOs will systematically allow you to create SEO-optimized content.

7 SEO content writing tips

If you’re relying on your content to drive free organic traffic to your website, you’ll need to be really efficient at posting content on a regular basis.

At first, it can be really difficult to be motivated enough to write your articles or to find inspiration and ideas on what to write.

But writing often is a bit like flexing a muscle — over time your abilities improve, you become a stronger writer, and writing becomes much easier to do.

To become visible in search engines, it’s not just quality, but the quantity that is also important.

As your website or blog grows it also does so in authority and your posts will rank higher in search engines …

Today, I’ve picked out 7 SEO content writing tips that you should keep in mind as a beginner.

1 / Make your content EASY to read.

This is such a vital question, but I see even experienced online writers making the same mistake.

Notice how I use a lot of space between the text?

Well, it’s not because I hate long paragraphs.

People online these days won’t take the energy to read a huge, solid block of text — if you space your sentences out, people are much more likely to read it.

Plus, keep your writing simple enough that a majority of your audience understands what you mean.

2 / Write for your audience, not for Google.

Once you start to familiarize yourself with keyword research and various SEO techniques, you may suddenly be tempted to try and rank as many keywords as possible.

Do not do that!

Keyword stuffing can not only read very poorly, but it can also result in a penalty from Google.

At the same time, don’t worry too much about using it when it makes sense.

Try to write for the audience you are addressing, don’t be too formal, try to let your personality glow through in your writing.

People who read want to feel like there’s a real person behind the text, so don’t be afraid to be yourself.

For more information on the use of keywords, see this post.

3 / No copied content!

Whatever you do, don’t think it’ll be a much easier way to just copy and paste other people’s posts to your own site or blog!

Google will not rank copied content highly, and Google knows which post is the original.

Of course, there are lots of other posts that you can take inspiration from, but make sure your posts are all your own work, in your own words.

There are so many very similar posts when it comes to just about any subject, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make your post unique and original!

Add your own personal touch to a topic, do your research, and add your own unique ideas and opinions to your posts.

4 / Number of words — it matters!

Not long ago, you could rank a short 300-word article on the first page of Google.

While this still happens (rarely), the majority of these posts will come from sites with very high authority, or for topics/keywords with virtually no competition.

In fact, a study found that the average word count for posts on the first page of Google was 2000 words.

Now I have a lot of keywords ranking in the first pages of Google for less than that, but the majority of all my posts are over 1000 words and a bunch of 2000 words or more.

While you certainly don’t want to wander around and talk about something irrelevant, you should be aware that posts that are in-depth, and have a higher number of words, rank higher in search engines.

We recently read an article on shorter content which is now better for conversions because people’s attention spans are so short online these days. They recommended 700 words…!

The problem is, you’re going to have a hard time ranking a short article on the first page of Google unless you have very high authority.

5 / Create a captivating title!

What you put in your title and meta title (the title that appears in search engines) is really important, because this is your first chance to make a good impression.

While meta descriptions are also important to consider (the description you’ll see under the search title), you can’t always rely on their visibility because Google may choose to ignore them.

However, experimenting with your main title and meta title can be a decent way to increase your CTR (click-through rate).

To determine which title to use, you can use a free tool, such as Headline Analyzer by coschedule.

If you are using WordPress, using a plugin such as the all-in-one SEO plugin or YOAST will make it easier to add meta titles and descriptions.

The Internal Linking

To boost content, you have to give it power through hypertext links. When we mention this subject, we immediately think of the implementation of a net linking strategy.

Acquiring external links is essential to pushing content, but internal linking is a weapon you must use to improve your SEO. By creating internal links in your site, you increase the power of the pages receiving links but you also improve other metrics:

• Visiting time on your site
• The bounce rate
• The number of pages viewed

Organizing your internal network correctly will therefore bring you a lot of benefits. Plus, unlike net linking, you can optimize anchors without risking a penalty. An internal link also reacts faster than a backlink. The results will therefore be faster.

To define an effective internal networking strategy, you must take into account the semantic proximity of your content to be linked. No need to add 100 links to your page, 3 or 4 links are enough.

Also note that an internal linking is done inside your content and not in the menu, neither in the footer nor in the sidebars.

6 / Edit and proofread — Don’t forget it!

If you write your own content, you will inevitably make mistakes.

But if there are tons of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and absurd sentences, it isn’t going to look professional.

Make sure to proofread your work a few times, but it might also be a good idea to give it to someone else to check it out.

We often have blind spots when it comes to detecting errors on our own.

Another useful tool is Grammarly, it will help you correct errors and it is free to use.

There is also a free Chrome extension that you can download to your toolbar.

7 / Make sure your message keeps its promises!

If someone is wondering how to get the best keto chicken recipes and finds your message: “the best keto chicken recipes.”

They’ll want a great recipe that works — but what if your post contains a recipe with incorrect measurements?

What if it wasn’t even a recipe item?

What if it wasn’t even keto recipes !?

Well, either way, a lot of people would probably click away from it, disappointed that they didn’t get what they were looking for.

So whatever you decide to put in your headline, be sure to look back once you’ve finished your post and determine if you really delivered what you promised on at the start.

Will the reader be satisfied?

Will they have received the information they are looking for or is there something missing?

If you give your reader what they hope for, they’ll be much more likely to come back to your site in the future.

How to write SEO-optimized content?

Want your business to grow without increasing your marketing budget? Then make sure you produce quality optimized content.

This is how it works.

Search engine optimized (SEO) websites with strong relevancy, authority, and quality backlinks rank higher in search engines.

If your website appears on the main page, you will get more clicks, shares, likes, and engagement.

If no one can find your page, then even the best-written articles are useless.

It goes without saying that if you want your business to thrive, you need to make sure you write quality SEO-optimized content.

I’m not saying it’s easy. There is a lot of thought and forethought in writing powerful SEO content.

But once you’ve learned the basics and included them in your content production process, you’ll see that they’ll deliver good results without adding to your workload.

Enrich it with promotional activities like sending email marketing newsletters to your contact list and you are good to go.

But for today, let’s get to the topic of SEO-optimized content.

Here is what you are going to read.

• Use titles and sub-headings
• Add links to previous content
• Optimize the length of your article
• Choose your keywords wisely
• Optimize your images
• Make content shareable
• Write high-quality content
• Use Content Optimization Tools

How to make your content SEO optimized

1. Use titles and sub-headings

The use of headings and sub-headings does several things for SEO optimization.

First, it makes your writing easier to read and therefore easier for your readers to read.

People are more likely to share things that are easy to read.

The same goes for search engine robots.

As they crawl your site, they will recognize your titles and use them to better understand your content, such as the most important parts, etc.

Also, having headers and sub-headers increases keyword saturation, but remember not to overdo it to keep the system running.

To find out more see this Seo On Page checklist.

2. Add links to previous content

One of the ways search engines rank content is by the number of backlinks they get.

Good content tends to have a lot of backlinks — both external and internal.

If you want to drive organic traffic and rank your older content higher, you can’t forget to link to it from your new posts.

It helps search engine bots — and people — find your best articles.

In addition, links to high-quality and reputable websites increase the validity of your own website.

The better the links, the higher your page will rank in the search results.

Additionally, using credible sources in the body of your text builds a trusting relationship with your readers.

3. Optimize the length of your article

Most blog posts you read would be several hundred words long.

It was a numbers game, the more posts you post, the more traffic you get.

This is because in recent years Google has shown that it places a higher priority on longer, better quality content.

They aim to provide their users with the best possible responses, which often amounts to posting articles that provide the most comprehensive response possible to the user’s query.

Writing 300-word articles is no longer enough.

Examine your Google Analytics reports and identify the posts that generate the most engagement for you.

Which are the most visited and which are read as long as possible.

And then, which ones generate the highest conversions, for example, newsletter signups.

Then use that information to find the approach that will work best for your niche.

4. Choose your keywords wisely

Some marketers like to sit down and start writing. They are leaving SEO optimization for the last moment.

Others start by writing down the keywords they want to incorporate into their content.

This is the approach I prefer.

You start by identifying the keywords relevant to your topic.

You can either imagine them, use keyword planning tools like Google’s, use a more advanced SEO tool like Ahrefs or SERPSTAT, or hire an SEO agency to do it for you.

If you haven’t started this process yet, you should start with this keyword research guide.

And once you start writing, use the keywords in the title, titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and the master copy.

5. Optimize your images

Images are essential in making your content interesting and shareable.

People are much more likely to buy from a company whose website contains attractive and relevant photos.

You can optimize photos by adding keywords to image files and providing ALT tags.

Also, be sure to optimize the photo size. Images that are too large slowdown load time and hurt SEO.

Make the image as small as possible without compromising visibility or quality.

Many image editors allow you to do this with their built-in features.

If yours doesn’t, you can also use the tinypng app, a free tool that lets you quickly compress your image files.

6. Make the content shareable

So, you’ve managed to write an interesting, user-friendly, and content-rich article that people want to read.

The next step is to make it shareable.

Websites like Socialsnap make it easy to add social media buttons to your website so that users can easily share the content.

7. Write high-quality content

This should be pretty obvious, but it isn’t always applied.

The best way to get people to read and engage with your content is to write content that is useful and entertaining.

Search engines reward sites with relevant, high-quality content.

Quality is more important than almost any other factor on the list.

Once you have a clear idea of how you want to write and format your content, consider using some of the following tools to simplify and improve the writing process.

Content optimization tools

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor is a fantastic resource for everyday writing tasks, but it’s especially useful when reviewing articles for SEO optimization.

Hemingway Editor scans your articles to find and highlight phrases that are difficult or “very difficult” to read.

It also highlights cases of passive voice.

Articles that are highly readable are shared more often, and the most shared articles get the highest SEO rankings.

Webfx

Webfx is similar to Hemingway Editor in its ability to analyze your articles for readability.

But instead of highlighting hard-to-read sentences, it gives your text an overall readability score.

The score tells you which age group will be able to easily read the page.

If you have a URL for the website, you can enter the URL instead of the text.

Keyword Density Checker ( by copywritely )

The Keyword Density Checker analyzes your text or URL to determine how many times you have cited each keyword.

This is especially useful if you have a very large article and want to make sure it is not saturated with keywords.

As mentioned earlier, keywords should take up around 1–2% of the text.

Your turn

Hope you found this content useful.

If you use the tools and tips mentioned in this list, you will be able to create good SEO content for SEO no matter what industry you are writing for.

You will eventually learn to write content that people want to read and share.

Well-optimized websites generate more traffic, and higher traffic levels improve your SEO score.

What other ideas do you have to improve the quality of your SEO? Do you have any additional tips for getting better search engine results?