Written by Lidia Vijga, a Co-Founder at BriefBid. Photo Credit: Sincerely Media
I believe the quickest way to learn anything is simply by doing, and SEO content writing is no exception. If you don’t like reading lengthy posts and want to get right into it, you came to the right place. I’ll walk you through what I’ve learned, so you can follow these steps while writing your next blog article and start generating more traffic from organic search.
Common assumptions in search ranking
First, let’s eliminate some of the assumptions about the search engine ranking. Since everyone’s goal is to rank first in Google search result, you may think that search engines prioritize the most popular web pages with the highest domain scores. Well, I’ve discovered that it’s not always the case, and your site does not necessarily have to have the following:
❌ Massive traffic volume ❌ Large number of backlinks ❌ High Domain Authority
What I learned is that search engines prioritize quality over quantity. So regardless of your traffic volume, or the number of authority links, if you create better quality content than your competitors, and follow a set of formatting rules, then you can, without a doubt, start ranking higher.
1. Start your SEO content writing with search trends
Keyword research is crucial, mostly because it’s the language your audience use to find relevant content. There are tons of tools available for keyword research, but I personally find Google Trends quite handy, especially when you need to compare search trends over different time frames.
2. Determine keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty, also known as SEO difficulty, is a process of evaluating how difficult it is to rank in organic search results. The goal here is to choose the keyword with the lower number, to get a better chance at ranking higher with your search term. For this step I use Ubersuggest to evaluate the keywords that I’ve previously compared in the Google trends.
3. Choose a focus keyphrase
Once you decide on the keyword that your audiences use in their search queries, you can now determine your search term, which is the focus keyphrase that you want your content to rank for the most. Here is a free keyphrase suggestion tool that generates long-tail variations of a search term based on Google keyword recommendations.
4. Install Yoast plugin to learn SEO content optimization fast
Yoast is a widely used WordPress SEO plugin with a five-star rating and over 5 million active installations. This tool helps to optimize and format writing based on the focus keyphrase. You can also edit meta descriptions, preview desktop and mobile snippets, and alter social media sharing captions and images.
5. Learn SEO writing tips by analyzing your content
Once you set up a focus keyphrase in Yoast, it automatically analyzes your copy and provides suggestions on improving the content so that you can rank higher for your search term.
6. Use algorithms to check readability
Aside from SEO analysis, Yoast plugin instantly provides a readability check. By analyzing your content with an algorithm, Yoast calculates the Flesch Reading Ease score and shares a feedback list. I’d suggest reviewing a list of the rules and suggestions before writing your next article.
7. Make sure that your content is on Google
Google Search Console provides an easy to use URL inspection, a tool that allows you to confirm whether your page appears in Google Search result. This tool also shares a full list of all search queries that bring users to your site and provides detailed stats, including your position on Google Search, impressions, clicks, and CTR (click-through rate) for each page.
Interested to learn what are the common SEO mistakes?
I hope you enjoyed this article, and my quick guide will give you some fresh ideas or help you improve your current skills. If you would like to share your SEO tips, please comment below. Reach out directly if you are interested in contributing a guest post.
