Writing blog posts may not seem too hard. However, getting your content noticed is quite a challenge. Whether you are running a blog for personal reasons or business, of course, you want it to get in front of your audience and generate engagement. SEO is a great way to ensure this. If you can use it right.
If you’re new to SEO, this article is aimed at helping you. Here, you will find the ultimate guide to website content writing with SEO in mind.
Table of contents
Prepare First
The psychology behind quality, clickable content is simple—it solves the reader’s problem and brings value.
When people hop on the web, they have a very specific request they want to solve through search. The key to success in content writing is to understand the purpose and meet it. To do this, start by analyzing your audience. You need to understand what your TA craves and detect the intent they may have when they come across your site.
There are four goals that can stand behind a query:
- Informational: When a person is looking for knowledge and information.
- Commercial: When a person is looking to compare different brands/products before buying.
- Transactional: When a person is looking to take an action (usually, to purchase something).
- Navigational: When a person is looking to land on a specific page or website.
Before writing blog posts, be sure to identify the exact purpose behind them. This is the key to producing a relevant piece that meets users’ needs.
Keyword Research and Selection
Website content writing can’t cut it without keywords. Especially if organic visibility is the goal.
There are two types of optimization you should consider in keyword research:
Traditional SERPs
To rank in Google, you need to find keywords that reflect your TA’s purpose and closely align with the blog’s topic. You can find ideas in tools like Google Keyword Planner and similar. When selecting the queries, be sure to target both short-tail and long-tail ones. The first ones are broader and thus give you access to a broader audience. Yet, they are harder to rank for. Long-tail queries, on the contrary, are more specific and thus, less competitive, though they have lower search volumes.
If you are not sure where to start with keywords, there is also a smart hack. Look up the topic of your article on the web and analyze the top-ranking pages. This way, you can borrow the queries your competitors target and include them in your strategy.
AI Visibility
If you’re wondering how to write content that’s really visible, here’s one of the most important tips we can give you—traditional search isn’t the only option now. Today, 15 million adult US users first use AI search to find the information they need. And this number grows fast. Simply put, this means that optimizing for AI is the future of visibility.
To increase your chances of being featured in AI results, target conversational, question-based keywords along with regular ones. You can insert them into subheadings and provide direct answers to readers’ questions. You can also integrate them into FAQ sections.
To find such keywords, pick a reliable AI tool, such as aisearchvisibilitytool.com. This tool is designed for visibility tracking, just in the generated results rather than regular SERPs. However, you can use it to analyze competitors’ visibility and learn from it. Also, it can help you detect trends and valuable insights for optimization.
Crafting an Engaging and SEO-Friendly Title
When you have a list of keywords, you need to select the primary one. This is the query you want to rank for in the first place. Choose it based on relevancy, volume, and competition. After this, you can write a title for your future article.
Here are a few words on how to make a catchy and SEO-friendly title:
- Make it specific and descriptive. Readers should see what they’ll find by looking at it.
- Don’t make it too long or too short. There is no universal word count, but powerful titles are always snappy and concise.
- Integrate your primary keyword into it. If it stands close to the beginning, it’s perfect. You can also include some secondary queries, but avoid stuffing.
- Use power words for emphasis. Words like “quick,” “ultimate,” and others can help drive attention and encourage clicks.
- Make it intriguing. You want to capture your reader’s attention. However, you also want to keep it clear and easy to understand.
Structuring the Blog Post
When you have keywords and a title, you can make your blog post outline. Before you get to it, there are a few questions worth answering:
How long should a blog post be? Word count will directly influence the structure of your outline. Hence, defining it early is a good idea. Blogs can vary significantly in length. In fact, there is no specific word count that guarantees success. However, longer content seems to be on the rise now, thanks to the depth of topic disclosure that it offers. That’s why most top-performing articles are somewhere within the 1,500-2,500 word range.
What is the perfect structure of a blog article? In general terms, every post should consist of the following elements:
- Intriguing title
- Introduction to the topic with a hook
- Well-organized main body
- Conclusion
It’s important to note that the main body of the article should also be broken into subheadings (H2, H3, H4, etc.). This helps readability and, respectively, SEO. However, the exact structure and the number of subheadings will depend on your selected word count and blog post format.
When you’ve clarified details, make an outline. Remember to stay on topic and ensure a logical flow of ideas. And don’t forget to indicate keyword placement in the outline. It’s important that you spread them naturally through the article, integrating them into body text and subheadings. But don’t do stuffing.
Writing High-Quality, Optimized Content
Follow your outline to craft excellent copy. Here are the core tips for writing a blog that ranks:
- Prioritize your reader. Keep in mind your TA findings and intent when writing your articles.
- Follow Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. Your focus should be on writing people-first copy that brings unique insights and value.
- Remember about readability and clarity. Structure your text well and use short sentences and paragraphs to make it digestible.
- Use natural, conversational language when writing blogs. This will create a better connection with your readers and help optimize for AI.
- Use reputable external sources. Adding external links is a good way to provide added value and meet your TA’s needs in full.
- Place keywords strategically. You shouldn’t overuse them, but locating queries in the body and subheadings of your text is good for rankings.
Keep it original. Google doesn’t reward sites that publish poor and plagiarized content. To gain visibility, you should offer fresh ideas and insights. The same also goes for AI—if you’re using AI for content creation, be sure to humanize your articles before publication.
On-Page SEO Elements
When the goal is SERP visibility, it’s not just your content that matters. What else is there, you may wonder? Well, there are a few additional elements on the page that you should also optimize.
On-page optimization consists of:
- Header tags—If you’re a beginner, this may confuse you. So, let us make it clearer. Header tags are HTML elements used to tag articles’ headings and subheadings. They range from H1 to H6. Placing them on your page will help you create a structural hierarchy and simplify page crawling for search engines.
- Meta titles and descriptions—These are the things people see on SERPs next to your link. They need to feature your primary keyword and be attention-grabbing to stimulate clicks. And they have to be between 55-60 characters for titles and 150-165 characters for descriptions. The length matters because these elements can get cut down if the user is on a small screen.
- Images—Media files improve readability and visual hierarchy. Besides, they make your copy more engaging to readers. To optimize them, create descriptive file names and alt texts using your target keywords. And compress images so that they don’t hinder your page speed.
- Internal links—Linking to other articles on your website is a great way to make people stay and improve your engagement metrics, such as pages per session and bounce rate.
Conclusion
Creating high-quality copy is much easier when you have a detailed roadmap. Use the steps and tips we shared with you here to create excellent blogs that engage readers and give you high positions in SERPs.
But don’t stop there. After you handle the content writing part, your job isn’t over yet. After you create and publish your posts, implement winning content marketing strategies to promote your copy beyond organic search. And don’t forget the importance of analytics. Continuously measure your results and improve—that’s how you achieve sustainable growth.
