SEO writing, or the process of creating content that lands you in top Google’s search result pages (SERPs), is essential to successful website optimization. To write content that lands you a coveted Google featured snippet or position 0 in SERP, you need to:

• Conduct careful keyword research.
• Create high-quality that aligns to your niche user’s needs and intent.
• Optimise your article’s headers and subheads for smooth page crawling.
• Make your content easily readable.

Recent Google Search studies show that websites at position one in SERP generally have a 25% click-through rate (CTR). For websites in positions two and 10, this number drastically goes down to 2.5% and 15%, respectively. That percentage goes down even further when you reach Google’s second page.

This means there is a slim possibility that users will reach your website naturally, if it doesn’t make that first SERP. Low traffic to your website means lower chance to produce leads and will negatively impact your ability to make money. 

So, how can you ensure you’re writing web content that will land the best SERP positions? 

The best action to take may be to invest in marketing resources to help you pull users to your website. But, if your budget is tight, you can instead invest time into generating quality SEO content. It’s free and can ultimately drive visitors to your site and help you organically generate leads and grow your client base.

What Is SEO Copywriting?

Over the years, Google has released more updates and adjustments to its algorithms, causing SEO copywriting to evolve and change drastically (and frequently!). As a result, if you want to produce content that ranks well in Google search and directs paying clients or consumers to your online business, you need to consider the elements of Google’s ranking algorithm.

SEO copywriting is one of the best ways to tap into Google’s ranking algorithm components and help you target a specific niche audience and gain long-term visitors. The process is all about producing helpful, engaging, and targeted material that people will share on social networking sites. 

Content that’s SEO-optimised is easier for readers to find and share. And content that’s shared across social platforms is recognized as being more authoritative and relevant, raising its position in Google’s keyword rankings.  

What If Google Doesn’t List Your Site?

Although Google scans billions of pages, some websites will inevitably slip through the cracks. There are several reasons why your website may not be noticed by Google, including: 

• Your site is poorly connected to other websites across the internet.
• You recently published a new website, and Google hasn’t had time to crawl it effectively.
• The website’s architecture makes it challenging for Google to efficiently crawl its content.
• Google encountered a problem while attempting to crawl your website.
• You might not have allowed Google bots access to your site server.

How Can I Ensure Google Indexes My Website?

To help Google web crawlers do their job and successfully find and index your website for high SERP rankings, there are a few factors to consider. The following are important tactics to include your SEO-writing toolbox: 

Use Meta Description Tags

Google may utilise meta tags, or snippets of text within a page’s source code that describe a page’s content, to help rank your site. Additionally, meta description tags—another key part of webpage SEO—are crucial. These snippets of HTML code are part of your webpage header, and summarise the text on your page.

Because Google isn’t always able to match a search user’s search query to visible content on your webpages, metadata can help fill in the blanks. If Google can’t locate an appropriate selection of text to include in the snippet, having meta description tags on each of your pages can serve as an important and essential backup. 

Featured Snippets

A featured snippet in Google SERPs is the text that appears at the top of SERPs and carefully summarises the information from your web content. These highlighted excerpts are prominently displayed in what’s often called “position 0”, and are front-and-centre for readers to find and click on. 

To land a featured snippet, both your on-page text and metadata need to provide content that’s educational, accurate, direct, and engaging. 

Although there isn’t a set minimum or maximum length for a description meta tag, it should be long enough so that it is fully displayed in search. Snippet lengths vary based on the content niche you’re operating within, and users may see snippets in different sizes depending on how and where they search. 

To help craft the perfect featured snippet, make sure your page contains all the information users would need to learn more about you and your site. To help do this, you’ll need to write a meta description tag related to the page’s content. Some helpful tips to consider include:

• Make your headlines accurate but engaging. Avoid using headings like: “Page about baseball cards” or and instead try “10 things to know when buying and selling collectable baseball cards from 1980-2000”
• Don’t keyword-pack your descriptions. Yes, it is important to include keywords—but make sure your text is still readable. 
• Avoid wordy meta description tags. Be short and sweet! Don’t copy-paste the full text of your article into the meta description tag. Instead, pull a sentence or two that accurately captures the context of your piece. 

Use Distinct Page Descriptions

Both web users and Google benefit from having unique meta descriptions for each page—especially when a user’s search results may include several pages from your site domain. (For example, you can employ searches using the “site: operator” tag, which allows you to request results from the particular domain.) 

Writing  meta description tags for a site with thousands of pages isn’t practical. In this situation, you might consider tapping into your page text to help inform and create meta description tags. You can do this by:

• Using header tags to draw attention to the significant content. Not only do header tags help make your content more readable, they organise your text and are SEO-friendly, too.
• Using unique single meta description tags for each page on your site. Look at your title and subheads–you can often pull your information from those pieces to help accurately (and easily!) build meta tags.
• Use clear headings and closings calls to action (CTA). Ensure your headers and subheaders accurately describe what content follows. This helps to organise your subjects and build a stronger content hierarchy. Ensuring your closing CTA aligns with your main subject helps bring your messaging home, and guide your readers to other content on your site, your online store, or to a contact page.

Consider Developing an Outline Before You Begin

To write website SEO effectively, consider what the primary headings and sub-headings of the text on your pages will be, much like you would when creating an outline for an article or essay. Then decide where to incorporate your header tags.

Using header tags in your outline

Too many header tags can lead to confusion. To help your readers, avoid the following header tag mistakes:

An important note about using header tags: Don’t use too many in your content. Instead, focus on incorporating header tags only when appropriate, and as a helpful way for you and your readers to understand how content is being organised on your webpages. With too many headers, your readers may have trouble skimming your content and being able to tell where one topic starts and stops. 

• Writing text in heading tags that doesn’t match page’s contents and structure.
• Using heading tags when emphasised (“em>”) or bold-face text (“strong>”) may instead work best.
• Switching between different heading tag sizes.
• Using too many heading tags on your pages.
• Wordy headings.
• Using header tags more for decoration and design, rather than for context and structure. 

 12 Guidelines for Writing Helpful Content for SEO 

Let’s now put all this good SEO optimization to work! The following 12 tips will help you write content that boosts your website’s SEO.

 1. Make good use of headings.

Headers make your blog article and sections easier for Google’s web spiders to scan and interpret. Web crawlers, just like your readers, need to easily skim your blog content. Use your article’s H1 headers to summarise your article. Then, your H2s, H3s, and H4s dissect the article’s subtopics and outline their structure.

Your subheaders should include high-intent keywords and reflect the content of your article’s body. You have a much better chance of ranking high in SERP when you use the proper keywords that capture your target audience’s intent.

 2. Make your material snippet-friendly.

Google’s featured snippets are something to aim for, when writing helpful content for your website. These featured blocks of text are the most direct responses to search queries readers type into Google. For instance, what results would I find if I Google “How to Write a Blog Post”? The best response can be displayed by Google using a featured snippet.

To get Google to feature your content in a featured snippet, you must provide a brief  but complete response to your targeted search question (or search query). Google recommends that you keep your answer direct and prescriptive, and rather short: 58 words or less.

For example: You can use “How to Take Screenshot on a MacBook Computer” as a H1 or H2 heading, then outline how-to steps in a numbered or bulleted list.

Be sure to incorporate a portion of your search query within your article’s introduction and focus on building strong response text. Using the example mentioned above, you should begin your article with: “Here is a step-by-step guide to help you take a screenshot on your MacBook.” Your following step-by-step numbered guide should then reflect actions the reader should take, and be written in active voice (e.g., using words like  “click” or “choose”).

 3. Write for readers rather than search engines.

With all these SEO recommendations, it might be easy to forget that your readers are looking for solutions when they type their search query into Google’s browser windows. One of the best ways to get your content noticed, is to write blog posts that answer those questions—and in a cohesive, accurate, and easy-to-read format.

What does a successful blog post look like? It offers a comprehensive search query response, is easily scannable, has a strong and subhead structure that makes sense to the reader, and also is nice to look at appropriate graphics, photos, and videos. 

As you write your content, consider your “human” audience: What are your buyer personas’ motives, challenges, and interests? Additionally, it’s crucial to pick subjects that will appeal to and solve your potential client’s problems. 

Although specific SEO tools can assist with the technical facets of your website, you can also choose to use content writing SEO tools to help you create accurate, concise, and reader-friendly content. Marrying the technical side of SEO with the reader-friendly side can build strong SEO success and help your website rank high in SERP and draw in traffic. 

Note: Some SEO tools offer ways to track how long visitors stay on a page, if they visit multiple site pages, and how far they scroll across your website. Having this info can help you see where you may need to make content adjustments to further help your readers. 

 4. Fill out your meta description with keywords.

Subheaders, keywords, and snippets are a few ways your blog post might interact with Google. But, there are more elements to consider: Google also analyses meta descriptions, when determining your search results. (Meta descriptions are the one- to three-sentence summaries that appear beneath a SERP response title.)

To effectively use meta descriptions and briefly summarise the content of your post, try: When crafting your meta descriptions be sure to:

• Keeping them brief and to-the-point.
• Using a maximum of two keywords.
• Making your content engaging and intriguing. (Since there will likely be other posts that are identical to yours, you’ll want your description to catch your reader’s attention.)

 5. Give your images alternative text.

Image alternative text, or alt text, describes what’s being illustrated in your graphics and photos. Alt text is an inclusive tool that helps folks who can’t see your website better understand the contents of your post and any images included within it. Because you need to describe picture contents, one-word descriptions generally don’t work as alt text. 

To help you understand what this might entail, let’s use a photo example illustrating a virtual event, and picturing a businessman holding a pen while seated at a desk.

Your alt text for this image may look like: “A businessman in a black suit sitting at a desk and holding a pen while attending a virtual event” to describe the image in the alt text. The descriptive phrase “virtual event” is used in this sentence—by adding your intent for the stock photo you’re describing, you’re able to build a story that fits with your blog article. In addition to an accurate alt text description for your visually impaired visitors, this has the added benefit of being picked up by screen readers and amplifying your SEO, too.

 6. Do keyword research.

An astonishing 70,000+ search inquiries per second are processed by Google. To help your content stand out, you need to target the precise keywords and phrases that your potential clients are using in their search queries. 

• Utilise a keyword research tool. Websites and tools like Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner can help you see what people are searching for and how popular keywords are being used.
• To get a sense of the most popular keywords, try using Google Trends. Insights collected through Google Trends can help you figure out the right terms to target for your marketing. You can track along, and see what keywords have been continuously falling over time—as well as emerging trends, that you can successfully pick up and use in your content.
• Competitive analysis can supply you with keywords to use, too. Your competitors can be a rich source of information for you! To find out which keywords your competitors’ domains are currently ranking for, use competitive intelligence tools. Then, consider utilising the keywords you find in your own content. However, keep in mind that language evolves, fashion trends change, or your product or service line expands, so your focus keywords will shift over time.

To ensure you’re leveraging the best, up-to-date keywords for your target audience—and not passing up crucial ranking possibilities—plan to regularly do keyword research. 

 7. Refrain from overusing keywords.

The careful balance you’re aiming for with writing content to help your website’s SEO is to optimise content across all your webpages, without it feeling forced. Organically and conversationally incorporate keywords. And be careful to not overdo it—packing in too many keywords can make your content unreadable. 

For example, avoid using a meta description that reads: “Sales support and lead generation for marketing startups,” if your keywords are “marketing,” “startups,” and “sales.”

To make the description more natural, focus on one or two keywords instead: “Want to win at the marketing game? If you’re looking for killer startup strategies, our research-supported solutions can help you land sales.”

This method allows you to use keywords, without overusing them in your text. Don’t forget that you’re trying to solve important problems for your audience. A poor user experience will scare away potential clients, and may hurt your standing with Google, too.

 8. Include links to reliable websites.

In addition to offering blog visitors additional and relevant content, linking to trustworthy websites shows search engines that you’ve done your own homework. Data and research sourced from reputable websites in your niche can go a long way in establishing your own credibility. Using compelling statistics will help you create stronger, more specific arguments that will help you win your readers’ trust.

 9. Create long-form content that’s easy to skim.  

You’d assume that shorter blog posts are the way to go, especially with the shorter attention spans of today’s readers. But, actually longer, more in-depth blog posts are preferred by search engines like Google.

The more content you have on a page, the more information search engines have to crawl and review. But, longer blogs may be overwhelming your readers. To help craft longer content that’s easy to read, build your content into sections or bite-sized, scannable portions.

For example, split a big sentence into two parts. Keep your paragraphs to just a handful of sentences. And, employ bullets to help organise your thoughts and main points. All of these factors can be excellent attention-grabbers and make your articles simpler to understand, especially on mobile devices.

 10. Cite more articles on your website.

Search engines can more accurately build a sitemap when you link to other web pages or blog posts from your own site. This also helps to grow the audience’s knowledge of your content and establish you as a reliable, credible source of information.

You can also cite your own content, within your site. Internal links to other worthwhile material in your blog archive can keep visitors around longer and move them through your pages. This can help lower bounce rates and improve your conversion rates. 

When adding your links and citations, be sure to use natural language for your anchor text. That means avoiding generic terminology and calls-to-action, like “click here”. Instead, use descriptive terms like, “Download the ultimate SEO guide”. This not only entices readers to click your content links, it also accurately describes what you’re sharing. But, only Include links that support the points you’re trying to make and that are relevant to the topic you’re addressing.

 11. Reduce image size for faster page loading.

Heavy graphics over 4 MB are a big reason for slow page loading times, and delayed page latency. Your page speed may be significantly impacted if your post has multiple photographs that are 100 KB or more in size.

Fortunately, there are several free apps that can help you compress photographs, without losing quality. Visit Google’s PageSpeed site for a free analysis and recommendations if you believe that your low ranking is the result of your pages loading too slowly.

 12. Create a plan for link building.

Your search ranking is greatly impacted by link building. Good link building can grow your online relationships and help build stronger conversions. 

Think of it as a contest, and each website that links back to your web pages is a vote in your favour. The more votes, the more credibility you earn in Google’s eyes—and the greater your chance of winning higher SERP rankings.  

Writing content that other websites will want to link within their articles is a good idea. Include high-value elements in your articles to make them more linkable.

Wrap-Up

In conclusion, writing content to help your site’s SEO is a good strategy for any online business owner or blog writer. Our tips and methods can help you build stronger SEO, drive visitors to your website, and boost your traffic. Good value-add resources, like expert interviews and links are a bonus for your readers that will grow your visitor base, too.