Writing for digital marketing isn’t like a typical day at the office for a writer. It has to come with a fine balance of flow and optimization. Whether you’re writing for your site or your clients, the end goal is to rank for that topic and get eyes on it through organic results for years to come. That, however, isn’t always easy. Here are a few SEO tips for writers.
Keyword research
Before you sit down and start writing an article that came to you during your morning run or coffee session at Starbucks, you have to know what is the main keyword you’re targeting. There are many keywords variations for the same idea and you would definitely want to target the one with the most searches plus relevancy. Fortunately, you can use a google’s keyword planner to get some ideas and data. It also happens to be one of the best tools which happens to be free. Quite often you may be surprised that what you think people search for get’s absolutely no volume. Make sure to use the main keyword and its variations throughout the article.
Don’t Get Fancy with Titles, Not to Dry Either
Magazine style headlines may be fun and attract clickbait, but they may prevent you from being in a position to be seen. Keep those catchy lines for ads and make your title relevant to the search queries. In other words, you can make the title unique but make sure the target keyword is included. For example, if you were a health blogger who is writing an article about why gluten is bad you’d want to avoid a catchy title like “The Poison in your Pantry” and are much better going with “5 reasons gluten is bad: Comprehensive Guide”. So make sure your target keyword is in the heading.
Utilize Sub Headings
Make sure your articles are broken down into h2 and h3 headings. Utilizing keyword variations give you a larger opportunity to rank for related keywords. Once you find the exact word that you want to target, you can also use the keyword variations throughout the article with subheadings. This will not only provide a piece of content that addresses more points but also increase your articles exposure which brings more traffic.
Make it Lengthy, Make it Better
Search engines, mainly Google love, love in depth content. Take a peek at what your competitors are writing about and make it longer, and make it better. This is what Brian Dean often refers to as the skyscraper technique. A skyscraper technique is a three step process. First step is where you find content that has received massive shares due to it’s awesomeness. After that you make a piece of content that is much better with more value than the one of your competitors. Finally all you have to do is reach out to same people that shared the content that you one upped and tell them that there is actually something even better. Oh, you can also share it with some top influencers as well.
Know Your Topic
One of the most important things is semantics. Stuffing keywords has long been out the door, what’s more important now is to know the industry lingo. The more industry specific the language you use the better. When you have in depth knowledge of what you’re writing about, the semantics will happen naturally. So brush up and research. If you’re doing a guest post or need a post on something that you’re not a pro on then you need to go out and find someone who is. Often times you can go to bloggers in certain niches and ask them if they will be willing to write a post on your behalf for a fee.
Stick to One Main Point
It’s easy to get carried away and write about every aspect of a subject, the best thing to do however is to strip a topic to its bones and focus on it. This will give you better ranking power for the long tail keyword. Here is a quick definition long tail keywords are lengthy and quite specific search queries. For example, don’t write “how to train puppies” when you can write “How to Toilet Train a Golden Retriever Puppy in Days”
Write Often
There are many reasons why you should write everyday or at very least few times per week. For one you are adding more potential keyword that you can rank for. You also will get better at writing and always stay sharp. Lastly, when search engines pick up on the fact that you put up a large amount of content than your competitors they will crawl your site more often. This leaves you with more opportunity to rank for more topics.
Get to Writing!
These are all great tips that veterans use to make sure that their content ranks and attracts large amounts of traffic for time to come. You to can get awesome results if you follow them! The hardest thing to do is remembering to utilize these steps when creating content, so create a sticky notes with highlights and enjoy the new fruits of your labor.
About the Author
Mack Dudayev is the founder and marketing strategist at InsureChance.com, an online life insurance marketplace who is obsessed with digital marketing.
Source: SEO For Growth