9 Secrets of Professional SEO Content Writers

Here are the 9 secrets of professional SEO article writers.

1. Get your keyword research on.
2. Put the keywords to work.
3. Write about something people care about.
4. Know the basics of technical SEO
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5. Make it long enough to count.
6. Watch your analytics.
7. Edit your work.
8. Become your own online PR agency.
9. Realize that becoming an SEO writing expert takes time.

1. Get your keyword research on.

If you’re going to post content on your site anyway, you might as well take the time to make sure Google takes notice of your effort.
Find out which keywords and phrases people are searching for (as well as what you can be competitive in), and make yourself a keyword spreadsheet. Keep track of how many times you work the keywords into your content, and use the right tools to track where you rank for the keywords you target. SEMrush is our favorite — in fact, we love SEMrush so much, we’ve become affiliate partners with them, and when you click here you’ll get a 7-day free trial.

2. Put the keywords to work.

Once upon a time, being an SEO content writer just meant dumping keywords into your copy — but that’s not how the game is played anymore.
While it’s still a good idea to include your target keyword throughout your article, peppering your copy with forced keywords won’t really move the dial much (and often, it’ll hurt it). As is the case with any bit of SEO strategy, you’ve got to be tactical.

3. Write about something people care about.

Before you set out to do any kind of SEO writing, ask yourself this: who cares?
We’re not being facetious, here — too often, article writers just pump out content for no real reason, with no real strategy behind it. They forget that actual humans need to want to read this stuff — you’re not really writing for Google’s algorithms, you’re writing for people!

4. Know the basics of technical SEO.

All the keyword optimization in the world won’t help you if your site isn’t even indexed.
As a writer, you aren’t expected to know how to migrate a site, or to enable HTTPS across an entire domain. You don’t really have to know about how to maximize a crawl budget, and you don’t have to know about minifying JavaScript. Yet, knowing a few things about technical SEO can make you a better SEO writer.

5. Make it long enough to count.

Sure, 100 words of fresh content are better than no new content at all — but how much value can you really deliver in a Tweet?
Search engines tend to give preference to longer blogs and articles, and for good reason. Try to shoot for at least 600 words, but if you can get to 1,000 or more, go for it.

6. Watch your analytics.

SEO writing isn’t fire-and-forget — you shouldn’t just post your content and walk away.
In fact, you should be regularly monitoring your content using Google Analytics. According to data gathered by the folks at SEMrush, time on site, bounce rate, and pages per session are all as important (if not more important) than keyword density.

7. Edit your work.

The main difference between professional SEO article writers and regular people is an eye for self-editing. Programs like OpenOffice, Google Docs and Microsoft Word make it easy — the red and green squiggles give most of it away. Having an eye for aesthetically pleasing formatting is also important. Stay away from super long paragraphs and sentences that go on for miles.

8. Become your own online PR agency.

Once you’ve written and posted the fresh content, the SEO work is only half complete.
The final step of all web content writing is acting as your own online PR agency — link to your content all over the place. Comment on blogs and link back to your site. Submit your content to Reddit and StumbleUpon. Social media management and web content writing go hand-in-hand, and as soon as you hit the “Publish” button on your fresh article or blog, you should tweet your heart out.

9. Realize that becoming an SEO writing expert takes time.

SEO writing is a skill — and like every other skill, you aren’t going to master it overnight.
But here’s the thing — that’s totally okay. See, when you’re writing SEO content, you’re always going to want to go back and edit your content as your analytics start to give you specific insights. Even if you don’t hit gold on your first try, you can keep perfecting your piece of content until it starts to rank.