Your Writing Career is on the Line if you Don’t know (or use) these 6 SEO Secrets.

Here’s the truth, having a strong, sharp, and crisp writing (a rare commodity) is not good enough if your SEO is still wanting — a bitter pill to swallow.

After all, your content will be somewhere on page 50 of Google, and no one has all the time to search all the way. Sadly, some articles which rank high on search engines are crappy, full of jargon, and clichés.

With your good content, you deserve that first page. This is easier said than done. Writing for SEO is an uphill battle, but it is a skill that anyone can learn.

So I might have what you need to nail it. Here are 6 SEO secrets you can use to enhance your skills.

1. Writing for the Readers

You’re probably wondering why this has to do with SEO and why it tops the list. If you didn’t know, It’s one trick that SEO copywriters use to build their blog audience.

Let me ask you a question, why are you writing, and who are your targets? People, of course.

Copyblogger has it that SEO is the most misunderstood topic online. Why? Many content writers know how to optimize content for Google, but don’t know how to write for readers.

Do you remember when I said that you could bump into a poorly written article that ranks high on Google? This is the danger of not writing for the audience.

As a professional SEO writer, you need to write content that appeals to your target audience and hits their pain points.

Plus, not all the content you write should shove your audience with your services/products. If you do this, your readers will feel sidelined since the article is all about you.

2. Leveraging on Keyword Research

According to Internal Live Stats, Google receives an average of 63,000 searches per second. So it goes without saying that there are thousands of people that might be searching for your keyword.

The many hits you get, and you will be doing your client great favour of directing more people to land on their site.

Ranking well enables google to notice your effort, and the bots can reward you with the coveted first page. You can use the many Keyword research tools to look for the keywords people search for. Ensure that you record the number of times you use a keyword to avoid keyword stuffing.

3. Using Keywords in the Right Way

Once upon a time, SEO content writing involved throwing a bunch of keywords in your article with fingers crossed, hoping that thousands of readers will come out of the blues. Surprisingly, this worked, and only low-quality content ranked on the first pages of google.

Today, peppering your article with all sorts of keywords you come across tarnishes the quality of your article and the credibility of your SEO writing career.

Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s the best idea to include target keywords in your article (I’ve also done it in this article). But you have to be tactical and use a proven strategy.

The best strategy is using the main keywords in the title. In this case, my main keyword is SEO secrets. You can see that I’ve used it on the title. You should also use it in the first 300 words (I’ve done this, check on the last paragraph of my introduction).

Plus, you should use a variation of your keywords throughout the article. You can notice I’ve also done this in the entire article.

Point to note: You should not shove keywords into the content. Let them fit naturally. This makes your article sharp, focused, relevant, and generally have perfect flow.

4. Writing Long Form Articles

This article has 1333 words, and it’s within the scope stated in the best practices for SEO. For SEO purposes, a 3000-word article of little knowledge on the topic stands a better chance than an article of 200 words that is deep and full of wisdom. Google believes that the longer the article, the more value you give to a reader.

If you can, aim for at least 1000 words. Below that, you’ll have to work harder. Even if you’ve posted your article on high authority sites like Forbes, your clicking rate will still be low.

If you take a keen look at most of the popular blog posts, you’ll notice that their articles range from 1500 words and above. That’s how they lower their bounce rates.

5. Use of Images

Try to think of your past school days. Remember the days you had to learn new vocabulary words every week. Do you remember the exact word that you spelt correctly? Now think again of the first time you got an award for being the top performer in your favourite subject. Do you remember the exact gift you got?

Most probably, you had to think harder when remembering the first word you spelt correctly than the gift.

This exercise is proof that visuals are essential for humans. They tend to make you more involved in the text hence strengthening your memory. That’s why imagery is vital in SEO writing.

In the past, using a photo in your article was a pain in the flesh for readers. It’s because it would take minutes to download an image. Thanks to technological development, you can even upload a video which takes seconds to start streaming.

It doesn’t mean that you should just throw images you come across to your article. You need to have image SEO on your fingertips. Here’s why it’s important:

. High Rank in Image Search: If you didn’t know, 60% of searches in Google will click on the source of an image they find in an article. This is helpful to boost your page’s ranking, which is what your clients want.

. Content Going Viral: If you didn’t know, pictures tell a story more than written words. A strong photo can grab attention, arouse emotions hence make your article go viral. You can have a look at this article to get what I mean.

. Great User Experience: Readers interact more with images. It positively impacts them as they more time to engage with your article hence increasing the time they spend on your site.

6. Working on Your Readability Score

The secret sauce of excellent writing is using simple, straight, but still sharp words to convey your message. Your readers don’t want to take three hours trying to unravel what your sentence means. Readers are always on the go, so the faster you help them get what they need, the better.

Good readability increases engagement with your articles. And guess what, Google keeps a sharp an eye on your engagement metrics. They won’t mind throwing your content to page 56 if it is full of jargon and unwanted fluff.

A few tips to help improve your content readability include;

. Using short sentences. All your sentences shouldn’t go beyond 25 words. Keep them short to avoid too much fluff and encourage information-rich ideas.

. Use the active voice. Passive voice makes your article wordier.

· Use short paragraphs with at least 2–3 sentences per paragraph. No one will get motivated to read huge chunks of paragraphs. Remember, this is not fiction writing.

· Clean out any hints of grammatical errors. Use free tools like Grammarly to help you get the errors that might pass your eyes.

Bottom-line

If you nail it and become an expert in SEO writing, you’ve just opened yourself a door to one of the most coveted online careers today. Businesses compete for page one of google. They won’t think twice about hiring you if your good at doing this.

If you have more tips for SEO, feel free to drop some in the comment. If you’ve been looking for an SEO writer without success, then your search has come to an end. Shoot me a message.

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