If writing SEO-friendly content is a big challenge for your business, then you’re not alone.
Many business owners today struggle with creating articles that resonate with people and rank high. Simply because most blogging strategies that worked in the past have either evolved or are no longer relevant.
So…
Here are five evergreen SEO writing tips to help you write top-notch content for your brand:
1- Identify and Research Hot Topics
Not every topic is worth covering on your blog. Especially if you’re investing a lot into content production.
So when looking for content ideas, you must consider two things:
- Value to the user
- Ranking potential
Before you type your first word on the screen, you need to make sure what you’re writing is valuable to the reader. Your content has to be relevant and provide clear answers.
Also, each article you publish must have a reasonable amount of monthly traffic that you could drive to your site.
Now… There are two main types of articles you can cover on your blog:
- Educational posts
- Promotional posts
Educational posts are informative articles with no direct intent of selling to the user. They’re written primarily to educate the reader and provide them with solutions to their problems.
This post is a simple example of an educational article.
Promotional posts, on the other hand, are aimed more towards promoting the brand and boosting sales.
At first sight, it may seem like focusing on promotional content is better for your business. After all, it’s a highway to increasing profits. Right?
There are two reasons why that’s wrong:
1) Google prefers educational content because it’s more beneficial to the user.
Search users type down queries with the intent of finding quality information that helps them overcome their challenges. That explains why “How-to” posts are the most popular content format for bloggers.
So by focusing more on informative content, your SEO rankings and traffic will go through the roof.
The second reason is…
Online users are 131% more likely to buy from a brand after consuming some of its educational content. In contrast, selling aggressively to new prospects that don’t trust your company is a sure way to push them away.
2- Outline Your Post Using Headlines and Sub headers
Headlines and sub headers allow you to better structure your content and improve its readability. It’s also an excellent way to drive more traffic to your page by increasing keyword density on the page.
Here’s how to do it:
Each article you publish needs to have one H1 tag, which is the main title of your page. Make sure your H1 contains your primary keyword. And make it enticing to get more visitors to click and read your articles.
As for H2 and H3 tags:
You can have multiple ones with different keywords on the same page. These make it easy for your to organize your thoughts and allow your prospects to find the answers they need quickly.
3- Develop A Writing Style That Fits Your Brand
Your writing style shapes the first impression people have of your company. Which is why it’s important to develop a voice that best represents your brand and connects with your audience.
But how do find a unique style that fits your brand?
For starters:
Write in a positive, conversational tone that grabs attention and keeps prospects interested in your story. Use “you” to drive knowledge to the reader and “I” or “we” to include yourself in the conversation.
Beyond that:
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short to encourage your visitors to read more. And always use simple words that are easy to grasp to improve understanding.
Finally…
Feel free to break any grammar rules you learned from your English teacher. Because none of them apply when you’re writing in a conversational tone.
For example:
You can start sentences with “and,” “which,” or “because”. This allows you to keep your sentences short without losing any meaning.
4- Find Out The Optimal Length For Each Article
Whenever writing a new content piece for your blog, you may find yourself wondering:
How long do my articles have to be?
Many SEO studies have been conducted over the years to find the best length for an SEO article. Yet, they’ve all given different results that would leave you even more clueless at the end.
The truth is:
There is no magic word count that works for all topics and article types. Because how long a post must be depends on the topic and the industry your company is in — as well as the competition on the primary keyword.
Long-form content works because it allows you to cover everything on a subject in a single piece. Google loves that since it ensures that you’ll answer every question inside the search user’s mind and beyond.
But long-form can backfire…
If you write a 3000 words post full of fluff and filler content, neither Google nor your visitors are going to be happy with that. So be sure not to make your articles unnecessarily lengthy.
To find the optimal word count for any of your articles, you need to look at your competitor’s work and try to top it.
First, search on Google for the primary keyword in your topic.
Next, check the word count for each of the top 10 ranking pages using Word Counter. Then add everything together to get the total.
Finally, divide the total number by 10 to find out the average length required to rank on page #1.
The word count you get is ideal for ranking high. But it’s better to add a few hundred words on top of it to edge out the competition.
5- Include Images, Screenshots, And Infographics
While this may seem obvious, most bloggers today don’t use images and screenshots in their articles.
Images make your content more shareable and easy to remember as they provide more context. They’re also an excellent way to break down large chunks of text and give readers quick breaks to rest their eyes.
Now hang on:
Because of their file sizes, images are often the #1 reason why web pages are slow on the internet. Therefore, it’s essential to optimize all image files to load quickly by compressing them before uploading.
And be sure to include keywords in your image file names and alt tags for better SEO results.
