5 SEO Content Writing Techniques To Take You to the Next Level
You know you need to create content, and lots of it, to get traffic to your site. To convert visitors to clients, though, you need high-quality content that people actually read and act on. If your bounce rate is high, that’s a clue that it’s time to hone your SEO content writing skills or buy articles from a professional blogging service. If you decide to DIY it, try implementing one or two new seo content writing techniques each week instead of trying to change everything at once.
Which SEO Content Writing Techniques Should You Focus On?
There is a ton of information out there about SEO content writing, and if you’re just getting started, all the advice can be overwhelming. The good news is that you can start to see results when you concentrate on the following simple but powerful SEO content writing techniques and tips.
1. Know your audience.
It’s difficult to speak to your ideal customer when you aren’t sure exactly who that is. One great SEO content writing technique is to take the time to flesh out a few different buyer personas that you can tailor your writing to. For each of your ideal customers, come up with a name, age, occupation, family situation, home setting (urban, rural or suburban) and so on.
As you create each persona, focus on that individual’s pain points. Knowing what search terms and keywords lead buyers to your site helps you figure out what these are. When you know what questions (search terms) lead buyers to your product or service, you can speak to those questions and demonstrate how your offering solves a problem or fills a need.
Other seo content writing techniques to help you productively engage with your ideal audience are to offer quality content for free – like ebooks. This is true whether you sell informational products, physical goods or services of any kind. Providing value with no strings attached helps you establish yourself as an expert in your field and builds trust, which brings us to the next point:
2. Be consistent and trustworthy.
You need to develop two types of consistency in your seo content writing: consistency of messaging (don’t contradict yourself) and consistency in creating content. When your readers know they can count on something new from you every week on the blog or in your email newsletter, they won’t forget about you. Churning out new content on a regular basis also gives you ongoing opportunities to engage with new readers, who may then go on to become new customers.
It can be hard to keep writing for your website week after week, especially if you have other job responsibilities. Whatever you do, don’t compromise on quality. You risk losing your audience if you start publishing fluff or making up data. Keep your content factual and valuable.
One great SEO content writing technique is to carry a dedicated notebook (physical or digital) with you and jot down future content topics as they come to you. If you find it’s difficult to maintain a consistent publishing schedule, consider outsourcing your website content writing services to a content writing company.
3. Make your content easily digestible and visually appealing.
The better your SEO content writing flows, the more likely your readers are to stick around and read it. However, information overload is real. Many readers, no matter how much they value your content, will skim over it, looking for the high points. Make it easy for them to digest your words by using headings, images and graphics to support your text. Use plenty of white space and avoid huge blocks of text.
Bonus: Including relevant keywords in your headers helps your SEO ranking.
How your content is organized also matters. It seems obvious that the main points in SEO content writing should flow seamlessly in logical order, but writing this way is sometimes easier said than done. One great SEO content writing technique is to start with an outline, write your copy and then don’t be afraid to reorder your sections before publishing.
4. Do more research than you think is necessary.
If you have a shallow understanding of the topic you’re writing about, your SEO content writing will be shallow. Whether you are writing to inform or to persuade, adding depth to your copy makes it more engaging and keeps your readers coming back for more. When researching a new topic, don’t be satisfied with a surface understanding. The better you understand a subject, the less likely you are to simply regurgitate what someone else has already written about it.
Not all of your research has to be formal. If you continuously write copy for the same brands, there’s going to be a lot of overlap in your SEO content writing. Because your topics are often related, you should always be reading and listening to new information on those topics. It’s also good to pay attention to everyday situations that will resonate with your audience, which brings us to the last content writing tip in our list: storytelling.
5. Tell a story.
Being able to tell a good story doesn’t mean you need to drop everything and become a fiction writer. In the context of SEO content writing, storytelling involves creating a believable narrative around a relatable character; one with the same pain points as your prospect. In fact, your ideal buyer should be the hero of your story, and your product or service should be the thing that saves the day.
One of the most straightforward ways to tell a story involving your client and your offering is a case study. To keep your case studies from boring your readers to tears, try the following SEO content writing techniques:
- Make the story about the person, not the product.
- Use traditional story elements to guide your writing, including setting, character, conflict (pain points) and resolution (how your offering solved the hero’s problem and led to a happy ending).
- Incorporate real quotes and testimonials, because readers love dialogue.
- Include “before” and “after” visuals in the form of photographs, charts or tables.
Next-Level SEO Content Writing Techniques Start Now
So which of these content writing techniques will you tackle first? The truth is that they don’t have to be done in any certain order.
No matter where you are in your SEO content writing journey, you can always work on consistency and building trust. If you’re just starting out, you can’t go wrong with investing more time researching your audience and your main topics.
Don’t let yourself get stuck in the research stage, though. Remind yourself that developing customer personas is an ongoing thing and once you have one or two in mind, start writing! If you’ve been writing SEO content for a while, you may want to focus on honing your storytelling skills or even going back through old posts and adding headings, visuals and white space to make them more readable.
Or, if you have just more SEO content writing than you can handle, let our competent SEO writing services here at BKA Content help you out!
Need quality copywriting for your website or blog? Let our content experts do the hard stuff.
- 5 SEO Content Writing Techniques To Take You to the Next Level - October 1, 2022