SEO Writing for Beginners

Before you can learn to write SEO copy, you have to learn to write. Sorry, there’s no way around that one. Good SEO writing isn’t all that different from, well, plain good writing. One of the most important things about both is the ability to be clear and on topic.

When creating any piece of Internet writing, from a full website to a search engine optimized article for free publication, you must be able to stay on topic. You have not one but two motivations for doing this.

The first, of course, is that if you wander all over the map, no human being will want to read it. People go on the Internet to find information, after all. If your writing isn’t clear and can’t get your idea cross in a logical progression, there are plenty of writers out there who can.

The second reason is for search engine spiders. Those spiders use complicated mathematical algorithms to figure out what you’re writing about. They’re not intelligent, they can’t “read” like you and I think of it, but they can compare bits of information.

If you’ve got “SEO writing” appearing a few times in your article, along with some synonyms like “search engine optimization” and “web page writing”, a spider will be able to guess what you’re writing about pretty well. On the other hand, if the topic is wandering all over the map and you don’t put in relevant synonyms, you’ll be up a creek.

When writing for SEO purposes, write simply. Don’t talk down to your audience, there’s no quicker way to get readers angry, but do keep your sentences fairly short and to the point. Imagine you were talking to your boss and he or she didn’t have much time. You have to get to the point fairly fast.

You also have to get the entire idea across, not just bits and pieces. The same principles apply to Internet writing. Some people make the mistake of writing lots of short sentences, but that’s not good either. If you write sentences that are too choppy, you’ll jar your readers out of reading.

Vary your sentence length. Different sentence lengths make your writing more interesting to read. However, keep the convoluted, grammatically correct sentences for college papers and away from SEO writing.

Each and every piece of SEO copy should answer one basic core question. For each page, you must decide on that question and answer it. For your landing page, the question is often “What do you do?” Article core questions are often things like “Why is what you do important?”. Sales pages often try to answer “How will I benefit from your product or service?”. Once you find the core question and the best keywords, write your piece with these as your focus.

Last point, don’t get stupid with the keywords. Good SEO writing sounds natural, not as though you’re looking for any available excuse to repeat a phrase. Remember, search engine spiders don’t have bank accounts, humans do. You’re trying to get the attention of the readers who want what you have, while spiders don’t want anything.

Search engine spiders are just little bits of programming. Remember them, but don’t make your writing suffer for them. If you follow these guidelines and you can write decently at all, you’re well on your way to becoming a stellar SEO writer.

Tagged as: SEO copy, SEO copywriting, SEO services

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