SEO content writing is both an art and a science. The art is ensuring your writing is appealing and engaging. There is science in this respect too, particularly in relation to sales psychology.
There is also science in terms of the structure you use for SEO copy writing to ensure it ranks well on Google.
So, what do you need to know about SEO content writing for Local SEO and what is different in 2019 compared to previous years?
Everything Must Be Unique
This is an old one, but it is as important today as it was a decade or more ago. All the content on your website, from pages to blogs to news articles, must be 100 percent unique.
Copying and pasting can seem like a quick and easy way to get new content on your website, but it won’t help your SEO efforts and might even result in a drop in your rankings.
Ensuring you have unique content means you will have to invest in SEO content writing whether that is time to write yourself or money to hire a professional content writer. Using duplicate content is not an option, though.
Write for Your Customers
This is another one that people in Google have been talking about for many years now. Their advice is to always write for your customers rather than trying to write for the Google search algorithm, and its good advice.
So, do your writing first, making it as good as possible, then optimise it for Google where necessary.
Ensure Your Content is a Sufficient Length
This is an area that is commonly misunderstood as many people believe that internet users have short attention spans and don’t want to read long pages with lots of text. This might be true, but it misses the point of SEO content writing.
Firstly, most people who read your content, whatever the length, will not read it word for word, start to finish. Instead, they will skim read it, looking for the sections and points that most interest them.
So, the length of the article is not as important as making sure you make it easy for readers to find the information they are looking for. This means making the content as readable as possible with lots of headings, short paragraphs, easy to read sentences, and lists.
Secondly, one of the things Google looks for when ranking web pages is authority, i.e. which page is the most authoritative. According to research (and logic), pages with high word counts almost always beat pages with low word counts in Google rankings.
Be Informative and Engaging but Don’t Use Spam Techniques or Be Repetitive
You should make your content as informative, engaging, and interesting as possible, but don’t go for a high word count as talked about in the point above by repeating things over and over again.
Also, don’t spam. This is usually done by trying to crowbar keywords into sentences where they don’t fit, or by using too many keywords in the content. More on keywords in a moment.
Think Mobile
A good percentage of your website users probably use mobile devices when reading your content. Keep this in mind when you are writing as it makes it even more important to keep paragraphs shorts.
Use Keywords to Ensure Content Optimisation
You should have a main keyword for your page as well as secondary keywords, often referred to as LSI keywords. LSI keywords should appear sporadically throughout the text, but the main keyword should be in the first paragraph and in at least one sub-heading.
Add Links
Good SEO content writing includes links to related content. This should include several internal links to other pages on your website as well as one or two external links to authoritative sources.
Share the Content on Social Media and Other Platforms
Finally, you need to promote your content on social media, using ads, in email marketing campaigns, and using any other tool you have at your disposal. This will get more eyeballs on your content which will, if the content is good enough, increase the number of backlinks and shares on social media. This will give your content an SEO boost.
The Road to SEO Content Writing Success
You should always look to refine and improve the content on your website to get better SEO results. Using an SEO service provider is often the best way to achieve this, delivering high rankings and more traffic to your website.
