What Is SEO Writing?

In the digital age, those who outrank their competitors in search engines are the victors.

Currently an $80 billion industry, search engine optimization (SEO) can make or break the success of your business. Businesses who do SEO well profit. Those that don’t invest in SEO don’t make the cut.

But what exactly is SEO writing? How do you do it, and how do you please search engines and readers all at the same time?

This article takes a deep dive into what SEO writing is and offers you practical advice on writing SEO content for your website that will outperform your competitors.

What Is SEO Writing?

Simply put, SEO writing is implementing specific keywords and keyphrases in your online content to target search intent.

Content writers and digital marketers do this to attract a specific target audience to a particular web page.

By writing with a target audience’s language and directly answering the questions those people ask Google, SEO copywriters use SEO writing to signify to search engines and searchers that the content on a website is relevant to that target audience.

We can use Loganix as an example to help clarify what we mean by SEO writing.

At Loganix, we offer various content marketing services, one of which is link building. So, when someone types ‘link building services’ or ‘Loganix’ into Google, we want Google to know they are looking for us and show us in the SERPs or search engine results pages.

To do this, we approach our content creation by strategically placing keywords in our text, title tag and headers, so both search engines and searchers know what we offer and that we can help them out.

The trick with SEO copywriting is to make your website stand out from your competitors.

Why is SEO writing Important?

SEO writing is critical because it enables you to rank high in SERPs.

As you probably know, 70% of search engine traffic never goes past the first page of results. As such, businesses that rank on the first page get 70% of the potential customers.

If you invest in high-quality writing, you can strategically use keywords to create the type of content you need to attract high search volumes and organic traffic.

SEO Writing FAQ

What are SEO keywords?

SEO keywords are words, groups of words, or sentences (called long-tail keywords) that your target audience use when talking about or searching for a product or service in your industry.

For example, if you’re a plumber, your customers might be asking Google:

“How to fix a blocked toilet.”

“How to unclog my kitchen sink.”

“Can I use bleach to unblock a pipe?”

“Plumber services in my area” (local SEO content plays a significant role in attracting search volumes from your area and includes using your area code, town or city in your content).

These sentences and words are the keywords you need to include in your web content, so searchers and search engines know that you can help solve their problems.

How do SEO keywords work?

SEO keywords work by signalling to search engines that the content on your web site is what searchers are looking for.

Google and other search engines use the keywords in your content to determine which content is relevant to a particular search query and how a webpage should rank in searches for a specific term.

How do I find SEO keywords?

Finding keywords is a professional art in and of itself – but that doesn’t mean you can’t do basic keyword research.

One very effective tactic for finding keywords is playing ‘alphabet spaghetti’ with the Google auto-suggest.

Going back to our plumbing business example, if you type a question relevant to your business into Google, Google will also show you other search queries people ask that are similar to that question.

You can then use these words and sentences to inform the content you publish on your website.

Other ways to find keywords is to use online SEO toolsets such as Ahrefs, Moz and SEMrush.

The keyword explorer in these services reveals similar keywords to your root word and shows how many people are looking for that term in a month (search volume). Advanced SEO content strategists then use this information to determine what type of content you need to write and which keywords to target to maximize the chances of search engines users finding your website.

What are the types of SEO?

There are many different types of SEO content, which include:

Response content.

This is material that directly answers a single question, such as “how do I unclog my toilet without a plunger”. You would create a single article on your website that answers this question thoroughly, roughly 1500 words. This article you’re currently reading is a piece of response content, responding directly to the question “What is SEO writing?”.

For many businesses, video format is a great way to create response content. Userslong-form can watch the process first hand, and you can also write SEO material in your video description.

If you make your response content well, you might just grab the Google rich snippet at the very top of the SERP, which enjoys the highest click-through rate of all results, just like this plumber has managed to do:

Staple content

Staple content uses lists and infographics to address a wider variety of questions and queries your target audience might have. Titles of staple content might include “5 ways to unblock your toilet”. This article on SEO title best practices is an example of staple content.

Pillar content

Pillar content is longform content, roughly 4000+ words, that aims to keep users onpage and read for extended periods. Pillar content boosts ranking factors such as dwell time, session time, and click-through rate, metrics that signal to search engines the information on your webpage is valuable and worth reading. Pillar content tackles complex concepts in your industry, such as the difference between content marketing and SEO writing.

Content strategy uses all these types of content to service the needs of as many target personas as possible while also satisfying the demands that search engines have for assessing the quality of web content.

SEO meta writing

A crucial element of SEO writing is getting the metadata of your website and webpage optimized for SEO. This involves structuring your internal links and naming them correctly. We explain how to do this in How to Write a Meta Description article.

Off-page SEO

As this article is about SEO writing, we’ve been focused on on-page SEO, which is everything to do with your webpage – the content quality.

One aspect of SEO we should mention is off-page SEO, which is essentially the backlink profile of a webpage. When you write unique and valuable content, other webmasters want to refer to that as well. To do this, they create a link from some anchor text within their website that links to your webpage.

The more backlinks your webpage has, the more relevant and authoritative search engines perceive it. Thus the higher they rank it in their SERPs.

How much do SEO writers make?

SEO writers can work either freelance or in house. Freelance SEO writers have no cap on their potential earnings, as their earnings directly correlate with how much work they want to take on.

Well-established and reliable SEO freelancers, who can demonstrate effective writing, can earn upwards of 100k per year.

In-house SEO writers are constrained by their salary but generally earn around 70-110k per year, depending on the company and the contract.

Why is SEO writing important?

SEO writing is critical because it is how you get your business noticed online. You can demonstrate your knowledge and expertise to your target audience with solid SEO writing and attract people who will pay for your services or products.

How do you write SEO content?

There are several fundamental concepts to remember when writing SEO content:

• Make the content readable. Readers skim over large chunks of text, and if your SEO content is too compact, readers will not engage with the content.
• Write to solve a problem. Each piece of content you create needs to have a specific purpose. Readers get the best user experience when they read material that tells them precisely their problem, how it is caused, and how they can fix it.
• Use the language of your target audience. Making your content relatable resonates with your target audience and demonstrates you understand them. Good SEO content writing flows naturally and avoids keyword stuffing.
• Avoid keyword stuffing. Search engine algorithms know when content flows naturally, and randomly inserting keywords into your content doesn’t make for good reading or an enjoyable user experience. Create entire sentences and paragraphs around a single target keyword to make the content seem genuine.

For more advice on writing SEO content, take a look at our 11 simple SEO writing tips article.

Conversely, if you’re more experienced with SEO but want to refine your skills, this SEO writing guide for copywriters includes actionable tips you can start using today to make more money from SEO writing.

What is SEO friendly content writing?

SEO friendly content writing is quality content that addresses user search intent while using keywords and key phrases.

As we’ve explained, it is writing that reads naturally, is engaging, but uses keywords.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of SEO content writing and its importance for your online business.

To recap:

SEO writing starts with audience research and knowing who you’re writing for. This is audience research.

You then need to discover the language that audience uses and the words they use to talk about your business and industry. This is keyword research.

Then, you need to write material that uses that language and answers the problems that audience has. This is SEO content writing.

Finally, you need to build backlinks to that content to show search engines your material is valuable and worth ranking high.

This is a lengthy process, but you can work with SEO specialists such as the copywriters at Loganix to do all the grunt work for you. Don’t hesitate to reach out to discuss your needs.