When it comes to content writing for businesses, there is a lot that goes into striking the perfect balance of relevant and authoritative. If you’re working on building your authority, you need to create content that gets a lot of backlinks. However, if you are lacking in relevance, you need to work on your search engine optimization (SEO).
In this guide, we will focus on building relevance for your business content through SEO writing. We’ll cover the what, when, how, where, and why of SEO and how Bizwrite can help your business with its SEO content writing. Get ready for the ultimate guide to SEO writing.
What is SEO writing?
SEO is a method of creating content in a way that improves the amount of traffic to a website as well as the quality of the visitors. It does this by grafting elements to your content, such as keywords, phrases, images, videos, and other media that are commonly searched for by your target audience.
The first goal of SEO is to essentially persuade search engines, like Google or Bing, to show your content first in the search results. This increases the number of potential visitors. When you enter a search into Google, it runs a complicated algorithm to determine what content will be best suited to meet your needs as a searcher. It does this by determining a website’s ranking of how relevant and authoritative the content is. If a page has a higher ranking, Google will show that site closer to the top of the list of search results.
When you incorporate significant search terms into your content, you are letting search engines know that your content is relevant to those searches. The more content you have on your website with SEO elements included, the more likely your content will have a higher ranking in the search results list.
The second goal of SEO is to increase the quality of potential customers who find your site. While you want to grow your clientele base, you also want to have the right people interact with your content. This means folks that are most likely to have a positive interaction with your business and potentially form a relationship with your company.
Here is where the keywords and phrases you have in your content matter most. You want to discover what standard search terms are used by your desired audience and weave them into all of your content. There are many options that will help you determine what your audience is searching for and the keywords that are most likely to be highly ranked on search engines.
When you publish content that caters to clients already searching for a solution, it helps bring people to you who are more likely to engage and have positive interactions with your business. This works to get the clients to you through inbound marketing as opposed to blasting an intrusive message to anyone and everyone.
Lastly, SEO works to build your credibility. Because potential clients are searching for similar content, answers to their problems, or a product or service that meets their needs, they are likely to interact with your website when they find it. As your content grows in relevance, it will be referenced more on other sites via backlinks or other sites that link to yours in their content.
How to Incorporate SEO into Content
Now that you know what SEO is, it’s time to take a look at how to incorporate it into your content writing. You may think, “If SEO gets me higher on the search results, I should have as many keywords in my content as possible.” While it is easy to think that, it would actually hurt your search engine ranking. Too many keywords and phrases throughout your content will make your site look spammy and potentially dangerous to internet searchers.
Here is where the two main factors in ranking come into play. While you need your content to be relevant to your audience, you also need it to be authoritative. If a search engine deems your content non-authoritative, it will not give it a lower ranking in the search results.
So, how do you add in SEO without hurting your credibility and ranking? One of the most important ways to graft SEO elements into your content is to weave them in naturally. This means that your blog posts, product and service descriptions, bios, about us pages, and landing pages all have some SEO elements in them.
Let’s say you run a bakery and want to increase the number of customers on your website. When you publish a blog post about how a particular pastry is made, you should be sure to include keywords that are commonly searched for on sites like Google and Bing. It is essential to ensure that keywords are woven into your content so that they sound natural and unforced.
You can think of SEO elements as the pinch of salt that goes into some sweet bakery items. It is necessary to complete the recipe, but it can ruin the flavor if there is too much or the wrong kind of salt is used. If you were to use large granules of salt instead of fine, it would change the entire composition of the pastry. In this analogy, the large granules of salt are keywords or phrases that sound forced or unnatural to the content as a whole.
When you first set out to add a piece of content to your website, use a keyword tool to help you discover what phrases are popular search terms for your product or service. There are numerous of these that are free, though you can also employ a paid service to help find the best-ranked keywords. Doing this will aid you in knowing what your content needs to include.
When SEO Strategy Should Be Implemented
As we venture further into the ins and outs of a solid marketing strategy, let’s pause for a moment and think about when your SEO strategy should be executed. Not every business or organization is the same or has the same goals. Therefore, the SEO strategy will vary from company to company.
As you add content throughout your website, SEO shouldn’t be an afterthought. Instead, it should be incorporated from the very beginning of your content creation process. This means that as you plan your content, perhaps with a content framework or calendar, you have the forethought to include the keywords and SEO elements you want to include in each piece of content.
When you plan your SEO components from the very beginning, it becomes simpler to intersperse them throughout the content.
Where SEO Should Be Placed
The natural interweaving of SEO components can be tricky at times. While SEO should obviously be included in your content, there are more places where SEO components should be included.
There are two overarching forms of SEO placement: on-page and off-page. On-page SEO will be all of the SEO elements that are contained on your website. The primary purpose of on-page SEO is to build your relevance for internet searchers. This may include:
- Blog posts
- Meta tags
- Product descriptions
- Biographies
- Photos
- Articles
- Listings
- Service explanations
- Contact pages
- Landing pages
- HTML
- Etc…
Creating content on your website with built-in SEO means that on nearly every page, there is some form of relevant keyword or phrase. This isn’t just on the writing content, however.
You will need to incorporate SEO into the HTML itself in order to maximize your on-page SEO. You will also want to be sure that your SEO is included in your meta tags as well. Meta tags are the short blips that appear in the search results list. By padding these with SEO elements, you ensure that the preview of your content will help guide potential customers to visit your website.
Off-page SEO, however, is focused on the links and posts not directly located on your website. Off-page SEO aims to promote your business, build its credibility, and create opportunities for brand reach expansion. Examples of these may include:
- Social media post
- Emails
- Newsletters
- Backlinks
- Influencer shoutouts
- Guest bloggers
- And much more
Once your on-page SEO is handled, it is time to look into investing in your off-page SEO. The more channels your off-page SEO is on, the more backlinks you’ll get, the greater authority you’ll gain, and the higher ranking you’ll receive from search engines.
Promoting your off-page SEO may look like posting on major social media platforms, sending out a monthly email to your subscribers, or having a well-known influencer drop your name in their content. Here is where you can truly let your creativity soar.
Why SEO Is So Important
At its core, SEO is a part of inbound marketing, which serves to attract, engage, and delight customers on their buyer’s journey. Inbound marketing focuses on bringing potential customers to your website without interrupting them with annoying or intrusive ads. Let’s be honest; no one really likes to have an ad pop up that they did not ask for or need.
When you focus on SEO writing, you are providing your content with the best chance possible to be found organically. It’s estimated that 49% of marketers have a better ROI on organic searches than any other marketing. People searching for a product or solution to their problem want to find the best option. However, the majority of searchers will not look beyond the first three search results, and the #1 result on Google will receive ⅓ of all the clicks for those search results.
As you grow your relevance and authority through strategic SEO practices, your ranking increases. The greater your rank in the search results, the more likely your content will be seen. The more that your content is visited, the more people will engage with your website.
In short, being strategic with your SEO placement and volume is the key to getting more visitors to your website to hopefully cultivate a relationship with your business.
Here are some key reasons why SEO is important for businesses:
- It gives the customer what they need: When a potential customer is searching for a solution to their problem, SEO provides the solution they need. Say a person is looking for hairstylists in their area. They might search “hairstylists near me” or “local hair stylist.” If you have those phrases incorporated into your content, your content is relevant to their search query. Therefore, your website might rank higher in the search results list.
- Users trust quality backlinks: The more your website is recommended from quality sources, the more trustworthy it will be to potential customers. You build quality backlinks through strategic SEO writing and by linking to credible sources. Establishing trust for potential customers is a tremendous step in the buyer’s journey.
- SEO gives you a leg up on your competitors: Learning how to implement SEO properly is essential to growing your business and getting ahead of your competition. While you are in competition, you can also learn from your competitors and utilize the same standard SEO methods they are implementing.
- Discovery is the first step in the buyer’s journey: If you provide excellent service or products, but your content is never seen, you will never see progress for your business. SEO helps potential customers discover your content and see how it can help solve their problems.
- SEO is an opportunity: It is estimated that Google receives over 63,000 searches every second. With that massive amount of opportunity, SEO heightens the chance of your content being seen by those searchers.
Bizwrite is Here to Do Your SEO Writing
We know there is a lot to digest when it comes to strategic SEO writing. That’s why we are here to do all the writing for you. We are well-versed in SEO practices and implement them into every piece of content that we create. Contact our team to learn how we can handle website content, employee bios, email marketing newsletters, press releases, and more.