A Step-By-Step Guide to SEO Content Writing

No matter how good your writing is, the target audience won't be able to appreciate it if you don't optimize your content for search engines. Learning how to write for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can seem challenging and require additional expertise. However, in reality, it's much simpler.

Read further to discover a simple step-by-step guide on SEO content writing.

Step 1: Find a Perfect Keyword

How to write an SEO article that gets indexed by search engine crawlers quickly and easily? By discovering topics that interest your potential audience the most. You can do this with the help of keyword research.

Use tools like Keywords Explorer in Ahrefs to identify relevant keywords for your niche. Then, pick the ones that align with your content and make sense for your website. Our keyword research guide can help you with this.

Step 2: Discover What People Are Searching for

Google filters and prioritizes content based on its relevance. This relevance, in turn, directly depends on user search queries.

So, to write SEO content that ranks highly, you need to do two things.

Discover the intent behind the query

To achieve this, all you need to do is google your target keyword and see what the search results suggest. For instance, if you're searching for "how to conduct SEO audit," you'll quickly discover that the highest-ranking articles are step-by-step guides or checklists — and, therefore, will be able to create similar content.

Ensure that your content answers all the searchers' questions

Figuring out the search intent and aligning with it is, without a doubt, crucial. However, if you want to learn how to write SEO articles that rank higher than competitor ones, you need to find a way to stand out among them.

Examine top-ranking pages for your target keyword and include all relevant subtopics expected by searchers. You can do this by running a keyword analysis or by checking out the structure of competitors' articles to see what they cover.

Step 3: Find a Way to Bring a Fresh Perspective to the Table

Another essential step of how to write content for SEO is making it not only relevant but also unique. After all, if it merely repeats what your competitors say, Google won't see the reason to rank it higher.

To instantly make your content more original, consider the following tactics:

• interviewing experts and sharing their opinions in your articles
• sharing your own personal experience and insights
• experimenting and sharing the results
• adding your own opinion
• researching deeply and adding more research sources and insights

Step 4: Write an Outline for Your Blog Post

This step is essential to those who want to learn how to write SEO content articles and to every other creator of written content. An outline is a structure of your future post that can be either brief or detailed, depending on your personal preferences. It ensures that you won't miss important nuances and that your post will be logically structured. It also helps prevent writer's block, as you'll know what you should write next.

If you are new to writing SEO content outlines, consider researching some examples online or turning to ChatGPT for help.

Step 5: Start Working on a Draft

Now, it's time to move to writing SEO articles. The essential tip here is to focus on completing your first draft rather than on making it perfect. After all, you'll have time to implement the edits later.

If you're struggling with maintaining your focus during the writing process, consider using tools like Google Docs that offer a distraction-free writing environment. You can also use Pomodoro timers and website blockers or turn on airplane mode on your phone to stay focused.

Step 6: Move on to Feedback and Editing

The next step of how to write articles for SEO would be proofreading and editing. But before you move to eliminate typos, repetitions, and other textual flows, find someone who can review your draft. This can be team members, employees, or someone from your loyal audience.

Use their feedback to identify inaccuracies and inconsistencies and improve the overall quality of your post before proofreading it. Ensure each draft goes through a peer-review process.

This step is also about seeking areas for your content's improvement. You can adjust the text's structure, add lists and bullet points, consider choosing visuals to support your points and run your blog post through proofreading tools such as Grammarly or Hemingway to improve it.

Step 7: Add a Captivating Title and Meta Description

The title tag and meta description are critical elements that influence a searcher's decision to click on your page. They are the first thing users see when they find your content in search results.

How to write SEO content titles and meta descriptions that captivate your audience? Focus on making them short and descriptive, aligning them with search intent, and emphasizing unique selling points. A title should be up to 70 characters in length, while a meta description should be under 160 characters.

Step 8: Include Internal Links in Your Content

Referencing statistical sources and adding a few external links will positively affect your SEO. However, including internal links is just as important as it helps to enhance user-friendliness and assist Google in understanding your page. You can use tools like Netpeak Spider to identify relevant internal link opportunities.

How to Analyze Internal Links with Netpeak Spider

If your goal is not only to learn how to write SEO-optimized content but also to figure out which links to add to it, Netpeak Spider can help you. With the help of this tool, you can check internal links to increase your SEO rankings.

Here's how to do that:

1. Open Netpeak Spider and select the 'Internal Links' parameter. Then, input the URL that you want to analyze and start crawling.
2. To preview the results of internal link analysis, visit the 'Database' tab and click 'Internal Links.'
3. Then, open Netpeak Checker and add the pages you want to examine. You can either enter the targeted URLs manually, upload them from a file, or use other options available.
4. Tick the 'Internal Links' option.
5. If you want to make your insights even more detailed, you can do this with the help of API integration. For instance, you can add Ahrefs by visiting Ahrefs OpenApp, subscribing, retrieving your access key, and doing the same to add Majestic.
6. Click 'Start' to launch the analysis.
7. Extract and analyze the results to improve your website's inner link structure.

Try Netpeak Spider to see how they can boost your SEO.

Bottom Line

Now you know how to do SEO content writing that resonates with your target audience and helps your content rank higher in search results. Utilize the tips listed in this article to create powerful SEO-friendly articles for your brand.