The best way to drive people to your website or landing page is to create great content. Whether you write a blog or craft an infographic, the content should be relevant and attention-grabbing.
Once upon a time hitting those points in your content would have been enough. But not anymore. In this content-saturated digital age, your content faces huge competition to get seen and that’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in.
Why is SEO important? Because it uses a set of techniques to increase the visibility of your content and web pages aimed at a specific audience you’re looking to target. Utilizing SEO ensures your content is relevant and findable by conducting keyword research and optimization, writing meta tags, optimizing headings, including internal links, and attracting quality backlinks.
Content marketing and SEO need to work together to drive traffic and engagement. The goal is to get your content in front of the right people and often that relies on where it’s positioned as a result of an online search - that means Google which is the market leader with an 85 percent market share.
In this blog, we’ll introduce you to SEO writing and reveal simple tips that will help you write SEO-optimized copy to drive traffic and leads.
What is SEO content writing?
SEO content writing is a way to create content that’s optimized on-page to help your content get a high ranking on search engines. It also signals that your content is relevant and of high quality.
When we talk about content, that can be anything that exists online you want your audience to find. This includes:
Blog posts
Landing pages
Product pages
Guides or eBooks
Infographics
Videos
Toolkits
Glossaries
Alongside keyword research and optimization, it’s important to ensure your content is organized. This means that your content should be in a logical order on your site and easy for visitors to locate. A great way to do this is to plan a flow for your content and include relevant links but a sitemap to help SEO and make your content findable.
There’s also no point in creating great content if you don’t share it! Make sure you have a plan to promote all your content on social media networks, link to relevant content in your emails, and get staff or brand advocates involved by asking them to share it on their networks. The wider you share your content, the more likely it is you will increase reach and drive backlinks.
If your content fails to land on the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you’ll see Clickthrough Rates (CTRs) nosedive to less than one percent. The difference between CTR in 1st position #1 on Google is significant compared to 2nd position #2 - 40 percent click vs. 18 percent. If your content fails to land on the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you’ll see CTRs nosedive to less than 1 percent.
Now that you know what SEO writing is, let's look at advice from DMI experts and some takeaway tips you can apply to your own work.
Writing for SEO: Top tips from technical writers
The practice of SEO is about the visibility of your content, but don’t forget to make sure that your content is tailored to your specific and unique audience.
It’s wise to keep on top of content and SEO marketing trends to stay ahead of your competition and spot any opportunities to get your content seen. We’ll take you through 9 key tips to help you write with SEO in mind.
1. Understand the KPI of your writing
Good SEO writing is not just about including a few keywords and being left at that.
This is where your content marketing KPIs play a role as they will help you determine the end goal of each piece of content. You should also have content in your marketing mix that drives people through the marketing funnel from awareness through to conversion.
“There is magic in SEO as it becomes this intersection of tech and story. You can tell a powerful story, sprinkle the magic of SEO on top of it, and not only do your readers see it, but more importantly, search engines see it, and you can move to the top of the rankings,” says Pamela Foley, Chief of Content Marketing & Strategy, AOU Creative.
For example, top of the funnel content for driving awareness includes blog posts, e-books, and infographics, while bottom of the funnel content to encourage conversions includes demos, testimonials or webinars.
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