Being an SEO content writer and how to have the best SEO writing skills or SEO content writing skills
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plays a huge role in a site’s rankings in search engine results, as such a number of site owners strive to make it to the top. With recent changes to search engine algorithms, website content has become king. No more can you expect to have poor quality content on your site and expect to rank on the first pages of search engines, unless of course you are making use of unethical means to get there (Black Hat SEO techniques) As an SEO content writer, there is a need for you to produce the best possible content while keeping in mind that SEO optimization has to be realized. Much as you have to write the articles with the users in mind, bear in mind that you also write for search engines, after all they determine how the site’s content will rank.
Keywords are important for search engines as they crawl through your site. While using them in your articles, be sure to make them as natural as possible. Incorporate a keyword in the title, position the keywords in relevant spots on the article and ensure that you have the right keyword density. Ensure that the text you provide is original and also pay attention to the length of the article. At the end of the day, you want to grab your readers’ attention with interesting content and you also wish to perform well for the search engines.
SEO article writing has seen many a freelance writer advancing in their specific field of writing. This is because they have gained experience in producing content that is SEO friendly in addition to being consumer friendly hence helping with the site’s rankings on search engines. SEO content writing is not as hard as one might think. It is a matter of writing relevant content, incorporating the right keywords in the right places on the article and ensuring that the content produced is unique.
A few tips in producing the best SEO content writing or SEO article writing
- Ensure that you have relevant, good quality and original content
- Know where and how to use given keywords
- Ensure that the content is well organized
- Write with your audience in mind
- Ensure that you make use of the appropriate word count while not affecting the content. Long-form content is no longer perceived as a huge waste of time as it might have been in the days of old when short, sweet and simple was considered to sell better. A number of readers are now looking towards long, educational and informative content that will not leave them bored out of their minds midway!
- Last but not least, when all is said and done, be sure to proofread your work. It doesn’t make sense to produce fairly good or even great content with a number of spelling or grammar mistakes. It ends up making the content you produce look very unprofessional and off-putting to the reader.
SEO content writers: Do you really need them?
SEO content writers help businesses come up with optimized content for target specific audiences. They help come up with useful information that speak to both the readers and search engines. The reason for this is that in order for a site to reach high rankings on search engines, then the content needs to be well written and optimized for SEO. Different websites target different audiences and with this in mind, the type and level of content does tend to vary as well.
SEO content writers are a dime a dozen, however, to ensure that you end up with the best cut for your business, there are a few things you need to look into before accepting their services.
Below is a look at some of the things you need to look into before hiring writers:
- Check out their portfolio. Ask for examples of content they have created for other projects in the past and see if they fit your bill. Check out their skills, their communication style and overall writing ability to ensure that it is what your company seeks.
- Seek proof that the articles they write do actually yield results in terms of ranking highly in search engine keyword searches.
- Are they up to par with the current online writing techniques? To answer this question some of the questions you should seek answers to include, knowledge of keyword density, familiarity with respected keyword research tools and strategies in addition to utilization of appropriate meta tags such as image, alt tags and descriptions.
- The quality of content produced has got to be consistent in nature. It should be original, written for the users first, then search engine crawlers second and it should of quality.
Now that you have looked at what a good writer entails, you may be wondering if you really need SEO content writing services. With such services, your site’s rankings on search engines should be of paramount importance in addition to the enhancement of your brand image on the internet. A number of businesses, both small and big are realizing the need of such services in order to have their presence felt over the internet. More traffic can be driven to your site with relevant, original and quality content, which is where such writers come into play.
Content that has been well written with increase page rankings in addition to ensuring content relevancy for effective search engine hits. Well researched keywords make a website, but the most important part is the way they are positioned throughout the website. A number of phrases and keywords are what make up the content of a website. In addition, the article length does also play a role in terms of how the readers perceive it. Sometimes a short article may be called for, but there may be times when long, well-structured and informatively interesting articles do take the day. Last but not least, keyword density, or the number of times in which keywords are used in the article is also important. This is because you want to avoid scenarios of overstuffing keywords which could potentially result in penalties via search engines.
Ultimately, SEO content writing services do help you achieve the online presence that you desire. They vary from the expensive to the not so expensive services depending on the organization, company or individual you choose to use. A professionally done writing service can mean the difference between appearing on the first page(s) of search engine results and lagging behind in the last pages. Care must be taken however in ensuring that you get the very best service providers to avoid wasting a lot of time and money in the process.
Images and Video SEO
By nature, humans are visual. What this means is that you may have the perfect content on your site, but if it seems boring to the eye, then few people will stick around to read it. On the other hand though, when you combine great content with wonderful images or videos, then you can simply sit back and watch the traffic flow in! Images do play an important role in driving traffic into a website from image-based search engines. And what this means is that, you need to tweak your image SEO in case you wish to reap a lot of traffic from said search engines.
It is not rocket science to optimize your images in a bid to generate more traffic to your site. As a matter of fact, below are some tips or ways in which you can best optimize the image SEO on your site:
- Descriptions play a huge role. With this in mind, you need to name your images descriptively while sticking to plain English as much as possible! It is best to pick a name that you wish the image to rank for, this way search engines can easily pick up on it and hence help improve upon your rankings. Make use of acceptable keywords that will help your webpage rank on search engines. As an example, in case you run a shopping site, try to think of how your customers search for products on your site and try to come up with the naming patterns that they would use. A look at your website analytics will give you an idea as to which phrasing patterns your customers use in searches.
- Pay attention to the image size. You don’t want to end up with really big file sizes that end up affecting the page load times, after all, page load times do matter in SEO. Ensure that you have quality, reasonable sized images on your site. Make use of image editing programs to help you along. A smaller image with the option of a larger image pop-up view or a view on a separate webpage does make more sense in this case.
- Pay close attention to the Image file type that you will use. The three most common file types are GIF, JPEG, and PNG. Try to check out how the image is displayed under each file type before making a final decision. JPEGs provide for the best quality and smallest file sizes and are ideal for most ecommerce situations, GIFs are not meant for use on large product images, instead, they are best suited for decorative images and thumbnails. PNGs on the other hand work best at simple decorative images owing to their rather small file size.
- Help search engine spiders understand the image you put out by making use of the Image Alt Text feature.
Aside from images, Videos also play an important role when it comes down to making a site more lively and consumer friendly. Sometimes people like to watch a video in order to get the message that may have been conveyed in writing. As such, good video SEO services will go a long way in boasting your site’s rankings on search engines.
A look at a few times that will go a long way in your video SEO optimization strategy:
- Make sure that the quality of the video is a good one. This means the sound has to be perfect, the lighting has to be ok and the picture quality has to be great.
- Upload a transcript with the video and be sure that it incorporates the right keywords since search engines do tend to read the transcript of your video.
- Create video sitemaps so that search engines have no problem in finding and indexing the video.