You can find thousands of content writers on the Internet vying for your business and some of them are actually brilliant. But your business website, or even your blog, doesn’t just need a content writer, it needs a content writer that can take care of your SEO needs. What am I talking about?
The performance of your content writer can be gauged from the following two indicators:
- How much search engine traffic your content attracts
- How much of that traffic actually converts
Successful content writers know how to draw a balance between both the requirements. Your website needs targeted traffic from all over the web in general, and search engines in particular. After that, it isn’t just search engine traffic that does the job, you also need business, you need paying customers and clients. When I say content writers, I mean people who totally understand the need of a business to convert traffic into customers and clients.
Add SEO abilities and you have the killer combination. So here are a few SEO guidelines for content writers that may help you as a content writer, and as also as a business owner looking for an SEO-proficient content writer.
- Write for the target audience
- Use the language your target audience uses on day-to-day basis as well as on search engines
- Avoid using more than two keywords for a webpage, an article or a blog post
- Stick to the main topic and try to remain as vertical as possible
- Be original; search engines like Google dislike duplicate content
- Use the primary keyword in the title
- Write for your audience first, make sure your content is convincing and would convert well, and only then think about SEO
- Use your primary as well as longtail keyword in the description
- Write in a conversational style
- Use appropriate images whenever possible because this can get you extra traffic from image searches as well as social networking websites like Pinterest
- Solve a problem, or provide a solution
- Use primary keywords and longtail keywords within headline tags (for instance,
,
), etc.
While preparing content for these SEO guidelines for content writers I discovered that lots of points that I have mentioned above already exist, or rather, appear in regurgitated form on other websites. Since the language is almost similar it shows that most of these writers don’t actually understand what it takes to create SEO-friendly content that also converts well, and they have simply taken the content off other websites and blogs. Some have even copied the bulleted lists straightaway. Well, this is the first sign that shows that where you stand.
Why SEO guidelines for content writers
Every good, experienced content writer by default is also a good SEO content writer. Amidst daily professional and personal grinds we forget these points so it is always better to keep revising them on a regular basis so that they get embedded into our subconscious. For instance, creating a title that contains the primary keyword should be done as a usability benefit even if you are not specifically writing for SEO. Similarly, highlighting important point with the help of the main keywords helps your readers quickly understand the gist of your webpage or the blog post.