Your Guide to SEO Writing in 2023

Developing compelling content is the most effective strategy for drawing traffic to your website or landing page. The content that you write for a blog or create for an info graphic should be current and interesting if you want people to read it.

Once upon a time, if you had just included those points in your material, that would have been sufficient. However, not any longer. Your material is up against a lot of other people’s stuff in this digital age, so it might be difficult for it to get seen. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in handy.

What makes SEO such a big deal? Because it employs a collection of strategies to boost the exposure of your content and web pages directed toward a certain audience that you wish to target, and because it focuses on that audience specifically. Through the use of techniques such as conducting keyword research and optimization, writing meta tags, optimizing headlines, integrating internal links, and generating quality backlinks, search engine optimization (SEO) makes your material more relevant and easier to locate.

Content marketing and search engine optimization need to collaborate in order to drive engagement and traffic. The objective is to get your material in front of the appropriate audience, which frequently depends on where it is positioned as a result of an online search. Since Google is the industry leader and has an 85 percent market share, this implies that Google searches will be prioritized.

In this blog post, we will provide an introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) writing and offer easy methods that will assist you in creating text that is optimized for search engines in order to generate traffic and leads.

What exactly is meant by “SEO content writing”?

Writing content for search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategy to produce information that is optimized on the page, which can assist your content in achieving a high ranking on search engines. Additionally, it demonstrates that the information you produce is pertinent and of a high quality.

When we talk about content, we’re referring to anything that your audience can find online. This can be anything you want them to find. This consists of things like blog articles, landing pages, product pages, guides or eBooks, info graphics, videos, toolkits, and glossaries.

It is essential to ensure that your material is well organized, in addition to conducting keyword research and optimization. This indicates that the content on your website should be organized in a manner that makes sense and should not be difficult for users to find. You can accomplish this in a number of ways, one of which is to create a flow for your material and include relevant links as well as a sitemap. This will assist with SEO and will also make your content easier to find.

It is likewise pointless to produce excellent material if you do not distribute it to others. You should make sure that you have a plan to promote all of your material on social media networks, link to important content in your emails, and get staff members or brand champions engaged by encouraging them to share it on their networks. When you share your content with more people, you improve the likelihood that more people will see it and that it will generate backlinks.

Clickthrough Rates (CTRs) will plummet to fewer than one percent if your content does not appear on the first page of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The click-through rate (CTR) of the first position on Google is significantly higher than the click-through rate (CTR) of the second place on Google, which is 18 percent. Your click-through rates (CTRs) will plummet to less than one percent if your content does not appear on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP).

Now that you have an understanding of what SEO writing is, let’s look at some advice from DMI specialists as well as some key takeaways that you can use to your own work.

Writing for Search Engine Optimization: Advice from Experienced Technical Writers

The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase the exposure of your material; nevertheless, it is essential to ensure that your content is adapted to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience.

It is important to keep up with the latest developments in content marketing and SEO marketing in order to stay one step ahead of your competition and identify any opportunities for your material to be viewed. In this section, we will walk you through nine crucial techniques that will assist you in writing with SEO in mind.

1. Be familiar with the key performance indicators of your writing

To write in a way that is optimized for search engines, it is not enough to just include some relevant keywords and stop there.

Here is where your key performance indicators (KPIs) for content marketing come into play because they will assist you in determining the end aim of each individual piece of content. In addition, your marketing mix should include content that guides individuals from the awareness stage of the marketing funnel all the way through to the conversion point.

For instance, blog posts, e-books, and infographics are examples of content that belong at the top of the funnel and are used to drive awareness, whereas demos, testimonials, and webinars are examples of material that belong at the bottom of the funnel and are used to increase conversions.

2. Establish a framework that is predicated on a strategy.

Developing a successful content marketing plan should be considered an essential component of your overall approach. If you don’t have one, it will be tough to ensure that the material you produce is relevant, that it moves prospects along the sales funnel, and that it will appeal to the buyer personas you have created.

There are many different ways to approach a plan, but one that is effective for search engine optimization is called the “Hub and Spoke model,” which is also known as the “Pillar and Clusters model.” With this strategy, you will first develop content centered on a broad topic to serve as the hub piece, and then you will generate additional material that links to it and provides more depth – these will serve as your spokes.

Take, for instance, the practice of SEO writing. A hub article might be titled “What is SEO writing?” and a spoke piece could be titled “SEO for Bloggers: How to Optimize Your Articles.” Both of these pieces would link to and support the hub piece.

This strategy will not only assist you in producing a large amount of content (which will demonstrate your level of expertise) on a specific subject, but it will also assist you in improving your keyword rankings, driving traffic, and growing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as leads and sales.

3. Make use of keyword research tools to come up with SEO keywords.

The use of keywords is an essential component of writing for SEO. When conducting keyword research, there are five steps that are absolutely necessary:

1. Define

2. Brainstorm

3. Filter

4. Inspect

5. Prioritize

After you have compiled a target list, you may use research tools to assist you in ranking keywords and exploring new ones. There are free programs available, such as AlsoAsked and AnswerThePublic; but, the searches on a free account are limited, and until you pay for a subscription, you won’t obtain vast volumes of results.

Paid tools such as Semrush and AHREFS are quite helpful and provide you with a comprehensive overview of keyword volume as well as data regarding your competitors.

4. Check to see that the order of your headers is correct.

Blogs are an essential component of the content marketing strategy employed by a firm. They make it possible for you to attract visitors to your site by providing content that is pertinent and interesting. This content can be utilized to boost the amount of time people spend on your site as well as encourage click-throughs.

However, people of today are educated in digital technology and demand information quickly; this is why blog headers are so vital. People have a tendency to scan or skim through larger bits of text when they read them. This indicates that people are searching for information that is pertinent to their needs.

Make use of headers all across your blog to give it a flow, boost usability, and bring attention to what each part is about. The H1 headings should be considered the most significant, followed by the H2 and H3 headings.

Check out our five easy steps if you need assistance with beginning a blog, or make use of our practical blog template to build and structure a blog of your own.

5. When writing, use a tone that is appropriate for your industry.

Because of the unique characteristics of each sector, the messaging and tone that are successful in one business may not be appropriate for another.

A consumer beauty brand, for instance, may utilize graphics and adopt a tone that is bright and pleasant, but a B2B software provider may need to employ an approach that is more professional and factual in nature. When it comes to the tone that you employ, you should give it considerable consideration because using a tone that is risqué is more likely to alienate your customers than to engage them.

When a visitor visits your website or social media feed, they should be able to get a sense of who you are and what you stand for since you should include everyone and keep your community in mind.

It’s possible that you already know what kind of tone resonates with your potential clients and existing ones. If you do not, however, it is really necessary to have a solid understanding of your “ideal” clientele. In order to accomplish this, you will need to develop buyer personas for each subset of your audience so you can understand how to best engage and attract them.

Utilize our buyer persona template to get a head start on your content marketing efforts and get started right away.

6. Include relevant links both internally and externally

The use of links is the most effective method for directing users of a website to other content that is relevant. Think of the ‘Hub and Spoke model’ when considering how to get the most out of your material by include internal connections that will direct visitors to other content that may be of interest to them. You can also direct users to the “money pages” that offer them the chance to make a purchase by pointing them in that direction.

Backlinks, also known as external links, are an essential component of search engine optimization (SEO) due to the fact that they direct traffic from other websites to your own. It is to your advantage to have as many other websites as possible link to your content, since this will drive search rankings and demonstrate the worth of your information.

If you are using links from third-party websites as part of your strategy, be sure that the backlinks you create are of a high quality rather than creating a large number of backlinks of a low quality, which will have minimal impact on your SEO.

7. Tailor your writing so that it is appropriate for the audience and medium.

Every content marketer worth their salt will tell you that each platform has a unique set of content requirements. What this indicates is that the writing style you use for a blog will not be appropriate for a post on social media or a landing page you create.

Every content format and distribution platform calls for a distinctive method and aesthetic. When you write a blog, you are essentially taking readers on a journey and telling them a tale at the same time. Whereas a Google ad needs to hit all of the important keywords and be appealing to promote a click within the first few seconds of the user seeing it.

8. Create compelling calls to action

If you’ve put a lot of work into developing a piece of content, you owe it to the people who consume it to provide them with the option to take some kind of action. The purpose of a call to action (CTA) is to transform a reader or website visitor into a potential customer who can then be pursued further.

You have the option of using one of the following varieties of CTAs:

• Sign-up or Subscribe – Encourage individuals to sign up for your newsletter or updates by directing them to this page.

• Discover more – Clicking this link will take visitors to a specific landing page on your site or to another part of the site. It is also possible to utilize it as a teaser for launch events, like Apple did in the email invite they sent out.

• Get started – This may motivate folks to enroll in a class or get the ball rolling on their educational journey.

• Click here to download now – You may encourage readers to download an eBook or whitepaper by directing them to this page.

• Donate or Get engaged – This is a strategy utilized by the not-for-profit industry to either increase awareness of a campaign or attract donations. Recently, Airbnb decided to become involved in the housing crisis facing refugees in Ukraine by urging users to “Host a refugee.”

• Get my discount – This can encourage customers to join up for a mailing list in order to receive a coupon code for a discount on their purchase.

This is for a free trial or demonstration version of the product. On our website, we use this illustration to entice visitors to take a free test of their digital skills.

9. Make sure you always optimize!

It’s possible that you believe your work is finished as soon as you hit the “publish” button. When it comes to the content, however, such is unfortunately not the case.

There is always potential for improvement, even for your blogs or landing sites that are already working really well. Using statistics or including reports from third parties might cause information to become dated, especially if it is included in the article. Since keywords can also move in and out of style, the ones you chose for a campaign six months ago may not be searched for at all anymore. This is something to keep in mind while conducting keyword research.

Therefore, you should continually be optimizing the material you publish. Performing an assessment of your on-site SEO, in particular for key pages that are responsible for driving leads or income, is the most effective way to achieve this goal. You should also monitor how well the material is performing, and if you notice a drop in views or leads, you should investigate the cause of the decline. You can accomplish this goal by reviewing your statistics and selecting the material that has experienced a decline over a period of time.

Working together with Wolfgang Digital, we at DMI optimized our company blogs by implementing several SEO strategies. This required the incorporation of pertinent keywords, the updating of material, and the addition of internal links in order to update high-performing content. As a direct consequence of this, we noticed a year-over-year increase in leads generated by the blog of 143 percent in just one quarter.

What exactly is an example of SEO writing?

Now that you are familiar with the strategies necessary to optimize the content of your website using SEO, the following are some excellent examples from which you can draw inspiration.

Writing optimized for search engines for blogs.

It’s possible that you are already employing poor SEO practices on your site without even being aware of it. When it comes to search engine rankings, your blogs can benefit from having content that has been written with SEO in mind.

Check out this recent blog post that we prepared about YouTube with search engine optimization in mind. The emphasis of the article is made clear to Google and other search engines by the headline, which is titled “How to Create a YouTube Channel.” This headline includes the phrases “how to” and “YouTube channel,” which tells search engines exactly what the article is about.

The first paragraph of this post contains a link that takes readers to another article on our blog that is pertinent to YouTube, and the second paragraph contains a connection to a credible website that provides information from a third party.

The blog then continues by outlining crucial techniques to construct a channel using relevant photos and bullet points to space out the text. There are also internal and external links throughout the blog.

At the very conclusion of the article, there is a call to action (CTA) that points readers in the direction of an applicable DMI course that will help them start a YouTube channel. This is followed by an image CTA that says, “View Courses.”

Writing search engine optimization for landing pages

Landing pages are an essential component in increasing conversion rates. Therefore, the material that you provide on them needs to be pertinent, SEO-optimized, and provide a clear call to action (CTA).

B2B software provider Intercom develops excellent landing pages for its products that maintain the look and feel of their brand while reducing the amount of content as much as possible. On the other hand, the things that they provide are quite transparent, and it is simple to understand what they have to offer a visitor.

The artwork is highlighted with a positive headline that includes the words “build,” “life,” and “interaction,” which stands out against the white background. Their calls to action are straightforward, with options such as “Get started” or “Free Demo.” A user is taken to a sign-up page for email capture if they click on either of the CTAs.

Gucci – B2C

Landing pages designed by Gucci, a digital fashion brand that exemplifies luxury and generates pages that exude style, The infamous GG logo dominates the background, which features a color scheme that is both straightforward and striking. In the sample that follows, the amount of text has been reduced to a bare minimum, but it still plays off of the image of “The GG in Blue” and its connection to the blue cake.

The top menu makes navigation very simple, and the call to action, which reads “SHOP THE COLLECTION” and encourages users to either click or browse, is straightforward.

The Institute of Digital Marketing for Business to Consumer

This page is optimized to promote the newly developed Professional Diploma in Search Marketing Course by include pertinent keywords such as ‘SEO,’ ‘PPC,’ and ‘Google AdWords’ in the copy. This page is designed to advertise the course (and thousands of other terms we hold in our online dictionary).

Additionally, visitors are provided with information regarding the sort of course as well as the cost, and the page also displays the emblems of our Global Industry Advisory Council to demonstrate our wider industry accreditation. The call to action, which reads “Download Brochure,” is straightforward but pops out against the white background.

B2B on Shopify

The e-commerce giant Shopify develops landing pages with the purpose of luring merchants to sell their goods and services via their platform. The phrase “Everything you need to sell anyplace” is included in the headline, which gives you all of the information that you want as a visitor.

The main body of the content is compelling and makes use of phrases that highlight Shopify’s global reach and the ease with which it may be used, such as ‘trust,”sell,”ship,’ and ‘process.’ There is a call to action (CTA) that prompts users to execute the same action, titled “Start free trial,” located both at the top of the page and at the bottom of the panel.

Content optimization for eCommerce product pages

Writing an effective product page for online retailing can be difficult because there are many components that need to be included to convince a customer to make a buy (look at these 12 SEO tips for ecommerce for even better engagement). Here are some of the most prominent examples:

Birchbox is a direct-to-consumer beauty product delivery service. Birchbox is a subscription service that sends out boxes containing a variety of products on a monthly basis. The goal is to provide individuals with the opportunity to test out a variety of items that are tailored to their specific needs, such as the type of skin or hair they have.

On the product page, in addition to showcasing the products and providing access to user reviews, there is also a part that explains to visitors how to make use of the product. The writing is straightforward and full of often used terms and phrases, such as “glow,” “illuminate,” and “summer.” The call to action simply states, “Add to Basket,” despite the fact that the headline makes reference to the approaching summer season and labels the product as “important.”

Peloton is a business-to-consumer (B2C) cycling firm that sells bikes at a premium price yet utilizes text on its product pages in an efficient and economical manner.

The desire to get in better shape and change one’s appearance is tapped into by the headline “Transform your routine with game-changing cardio.” The high price point is addressed by the provision of monthly payments in addition to 0% financing. In addition to that, it provides a cost comparison option as well as a home trial that lasts for thirty days. The CTA is easy to understand—just say “Shop Bike”!

To the Public’s Benefit – B2C

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on eating healthy meals (just look at the success of alternative goods like the oat drink firm, Oatly), and Good Health has responded to this trend by releasing an organic selection of crisps. The product page makes effective use of copy while still conveying the information that the snacks do not contain gluten and are healthful.

The artwork is striking, and the text provides an overview of the products by describing them in terms of keywords like “baked,” “genuine cheese,” and “organic,” while also including trademarks. Customers have the option to place their orders in-store or online when they shop at any of the three CTAs.

As you scroll down the page, it splits up into panels that provide a more in-depth description of each individual product. It employs terms such as “love,” “babies,” and “favorite,” among others.

Is a job in SEO writing a good option?

According to research conducted by Lucidpress, 85 percent of industry professionals anticipate an increase in demand for content throughout 2021, and tailored content has the potential to enhance a brand’s income by 48 percent.

This merely underscores the necessity of content marketers in all different types of industries. However, if you want to become a good content marketer, you need to have some knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO). After all, businesses want to be found online, and one of the most efficient ways to achieve so is by developing content that is both relevant and optimized for search engines like Google.

But is it simple to write SEO content? In a nutshell, you need to put in the effort! When you apply SEO strategies to your content, it will assist enhance online exposure among the people that matter most, which are your prospects and customers. Since organic search is the major source for a website, SEO tactics are essential.

Focus on the critical components that will have the most impact on the quality of your SEO writing: keywords, headings, meta tags, calls to action (CTAs), internal links, and backlinks. Personalization and businesses like restaurants and cafes that are focused on a specific place are two examples of businesses that might benefit greatly from local search engine optimization.

How much do writers who specialize in SEO get paid?

A job in content marketing may be very lucrative, and it also provides the chance to work for yourself as a freelancer or to make a fortune while traveling the world. What will the typical take-home pay be for SEO writers in 2022, both those who work full-time and those who work part-time?

Comparably reports that the annual income for an SEO content writer in the United States can range anywhere from $29,000 to $109,000, while Talent.com reports that the average compensation in the United Kingdom is £25,500. Both of these figures are based on annual salaries. According to Payscale, the average income for a content writer with expertise in SEO is about $46,000, whereas the average yearly wage in Australia is nearly AU$57,000.

When it comes to charging a certain amount per word, the rates can vary. According to the results of a survey conducted by Search Engine Journal, the going pay for SEO professionals ranges anywhere from $0.02 to $2 per word.

The most important thing is to build up some experience in SEO writing that you can use to vouch for yourself when negotiating your fees as a freelancer or when you’re being interviewed for a position.

What are the characteristics of an excellent SEO writer?

Finding a decent SEO writer can be difficult, which implies that those who possess this skill are in high demand. It is crucial to have a primary ability to write content that is both understandable and interesting. To incorporate search engine optimization into your writing, you need to have:

Experience in editing and proofreading Knowledge of both the industry and the technical side of SEO Good research skills Keyword research and integration abilities A working understanding of both the industry and the technical side of SEO Good organizational skills An eye for detail