How to Write SEO Content
There are multiple steps that come together to form expert, authoritative, trustworthy SEO content.
Each of the sections below will include hyperlinks to further readings and resources so you can master the process of SEO content creation.
Step #1. Find a Target Keyword or Topic
All content marketing efforts begin with thorough keyword research.
In fact, you should conduct keyword research before you begin to write! This is a crucial step for any content strategy and its execution.
Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research
Keyword research allows you to understand how your target audience searches for information, and more importantly, that they're searching for that information in the first place.
You don't want to create content around a topic that has no search demand!
This would mean your time was wasted and no value was provided where it matters most!
One manual way to do this is to leverage Google's autofill feature to see what people search for.
However, this method is tedious and allows no room for scale. Instead, we recommend you use a keyword research tool, or the keyword research feature built into your SEO platform of choice.
Don't have any SEO technology and not sure where to start? We've put together a list of the best keyword research tools to help with that.
Keyword research is also where the four types of search intents come into play. If you skipped down to this section, the four search intents are:
- Informational: Intent to know
- Navigational: Intent to go
- Transactional: Intent to buy
- Local: Intent to discover something nearby
The underlying intent determines the form of content that you create.
For example, a blog post is best suited to address an informational intent, where product pages are best for a transactional intent.
A proper keyword research tool will reveal the intent(s) for the keyword that you input, as we see here for the query "what to do in chicago" in seoClarity's Research Grid.
(This query demonstrates an informational intent.)
Try it out for yourself! Access our
to get started with keyword research.
Content that covers a keyword or topic with an informational intent is best presented as a blog post or listicle. But as we can see from the "SERP Features" section above, this query also triggers video results on the Google SERP. So for this example, we may benefit from creating a listicle with video content embedded into it.
If you don’t have access to a keyword research tool to automatically reveal intent, you can review top ranking content to locate patterns.
This clues you in on what Google considers best practice/the best content for your topic of interest. If all the top ranking content is a blog post, you can surmise that the intent is informational, and that’s the type of content you should create, too.
Step #2. Create a Content Brief
We know you’re eager to get writing, but bear with us!
Creating an outline before the writing process begins ensures all major topic areas are covered and accounted for correctly so that the end result can be authoritative content.
If you hire a content writer to conduct the actual writing for you, a content brief also works to eliminate miscommunication of the assignment and prevent re-work.
There are a few key elements to include in your content brief:
- Target keyword: If you don’t have one, go back to your keyword research!
- User intent: Know what type of content this will be and which intent it addresses
- Target audience: It’s important to understand and write for a specific audience to inform your writing style
- Content length: Determine what the final product will look like. Is it a long-form blog post, or a short listicle?
- Deadline: Don’t be left waiting for content to randomly come in!
- Title tag: Which title tags best convey the message of the content?
- Meta description: An enticing meta description convinces searchers to click your listing as opposed to others
- Headings: Headlines help readers find what they need, and help search engines understand the context of your writing
- External resources: These can help a writer familiarize themselves with the material
- Semantically-related keywords: These keywords relate to your main keyword/topic and demonstrate authority on the subject matter when purposefully worked into the content
- Internal link recommendations: Connect your existing content assets to demonstrate your authority on the complete topic
- Questions to answer: Real user questions are great to work into the content, and can give you an advantage in appearing in the Answer Box
- Call to action: What do you want the reader to do after they read the content? The goal could be to request a demo or download an ebook.
Semantically-Related Terms
Remember that Google understands queries and content beyond the individual keywords used — it understands the semantic content and meaning of the page as a whole. This means you need to include semantic variations of your target keyword throughout your content.
What exactly do we mean by this? Let's stick with our "what to do in chicago" example from above.
In the old days of SEO, a writer would be concerned with putting that exact phrase ("what to do in chicago") in as many places as possible on the page. It may have looked something like this:
Are you wondering what to do in Chicago? If you come to the Windy City, you may wonder what to do in Chicago. Luckily, there are many things that you can do in Chicago to make the most of your time. Here is a list of what to do in Chicago.
Do you see the problem with that?
It sounds mechanical, and offers no value to the end user reading this. The content is more concerned with cheating the algorithm in an attempt to rank well than it is with providing a positive end user experience.
Today, content needs to address the entirety of the topic, and that's where artificial technology and machine learning technology comes into the content creation process.
When we enter the query into Content Fusion, our AI content optimization feature, we see a list of 20 must-use topics to cover in the content.
(Content Fusion must-use topics for a query.)
Now, we know what to include in the content that will demonstrate our overall understanding of the topic.
If this content piece was hired out to a writer based in New York, they may not have known about the Lincoln Park neighborhood or Grant Park.
This serves a variety of purposes:
- It allows any writer to quickly become familiar with a subject.
- It ensures the topic will be covered from every relevant angle with semantic variations.
- It allows the content creation process to take place at scale, so you can allocate your time accordingly.
to see how it elevates the quality of your content coverage, or check out our list of the best content analysis tools.
Internal Linking
A content brief should also lay out possible internal linking opportunities. Having an established internal linking strategy in place can help strengthen site authority — and the links pull together topic clusters.
Topic clusters are groupings of related content connected with internal links, with each asset covering a different angle of the subject.
This methodology works to prove to Google that you have extinguished all possibilities of covering the topic, which demonstrates your authority on the subject.
We're using this approach for this very piece of content. This guide serves as the "pillar" or "hub" for all our various assets on SEO content writing.
You'll notice that we've included many internal links that bring you to their respective destination that covers one aspect of SEO content writing.
All of those assets are interlinked together, too, and of course, link back to this hub. All roads lead to the pillar content.
When all of this information is made available in a brief, you (or the designated content writer) will have a clear understanding of what the content needs to include, and what purpose it serves.
Let us send you a free, AI-generated content brief to show you how easy it makes content projects.
Step #3. Write the Content (and Use Engaging Elements!)
This step is to be expected: actually writing the content! Little has to change in your writing style, you just need to be sure to incorporate the information from the brief.
An AI content optimizer isn't meant to completely alter how you create content; instead it's supposed to allow you to create authoritative content at scale like never before. Remember, this is a move away from the technical, robotic sounding writing of the past.
One thing that is important to SEO content, however, is how you deliver the content.
In a world where a user expects so much — the advancements of the Google SERPs with their Answer Boxes, images, People Also Ask, etc. have really elevated people's expectations in terms of information delivery and online experience — you need to make sure you pay as much attention to the presentation of your content as the substance of the content itself.
This means you need to add engaging elements. If you can't keep users engaged with your page, they'll bounce back to the SERP and end up on a competitor website instead. Not good.
So, how do you create an engaging page? Here are a few ideas:
- Incorporate videos and images
- Avoid long blocks of unbroken text
- Create checklist or actionable takeaway
Our own content team put together a list of 8 tricks to create engaging content — choose a few of these to include on each page to capture and keep users' attention!
Recommended Reading: 19 SEO Content Writing Tips: Create Copy That Both Google and Users Love
Step #4. Optimize the Content Before Publication
Google uses hundreds of ranking factors to determine which content will appear in the search results, so writing the content isn’t the end of the journey!
You've targeted a search term with demand, created a detailed brief, and written the SEO content. Now, it's time to optimize the content before its publication.
Title tag and Meta Description
Title tags and meta descriptions are short snippets of information that explain what your page is about. If they are written well, they can appear directly on the SERPs with your search listing.
Note: Each organic SERP listing will always have a title and meta snippet present, they just may not be the ones you wrote. What do we mean by this?
If your title tag or meta description doesn't include your target keyword (or provide any value to searchers), Google may rewrite your title for you.
Even though Google thinks beyond individual keywords, doing this will make it clear for users what your page is about.
Resources on Metadata:
Describe Images with an Alt Tag
Images can include loads of relevant information, the only trouble is that search engines can't read them. This means that despite you having great content for the users, search engine bots will be none the wiser.
To overcome this, simply include an alt tag for the images on your site. Alt text is a brief description of an image that users don't see, but search engines do.
Nothing too detrimental will happen if you don't include alt text, but it is a missed optimization opportunity if you don't include it.
Include a Call to Action
A call to action (CTA) pushes your readers to do something. Whether it be subscribing to an email newsletter, downloading an ebook, or demoing a product, a CTA is your chance to have the readers take the next step. They've read your content — now what?
Sure, traffic is a nice metric to pay attention to, but that's only the beginning. What was this content trying to solve?
If users come to your site, read the content, and leave, you've hardly pushed anyone toward a conversion. Remember that SEO content is meant to earn search visibility, provide value, generate leads, and score conversions.
Step #5. Use Schema to Enhance Your Content
Once you have your content written, you can enhance it with schema. You can add schema to new content, or go back and refresh your old content. Schema is not a necessity for content, which is why we didn't include it as its own step above.
So, what exactly is schema? Schema (frequently called structured data) is a snippet of code that is added to a page that offers more information to search engines on what the page is about. Plus, different schema markups can give your content rich results on the SERP.
Here is an example of SERP listing without and with schema:
No Schema FAQ and Star Schema
You can see the first SERP listing is pretty standard: the title tag, URL, and meta description. The second picture is where we really get an idea of what schema can do. The FAQ schema increases search visibility of the search listing (more pixel space) and offers immediate value to users, while the star schema offers a social proof.
This is all thanks to a simple code addition that brought about multiple benefits. There are hundreds of schema types and properties to choose from at schema.org, and free tools like Schema Builder let you build, test, and deploy the schema on your own, without the need for a developer.
While schema isn't required, it's a low involvement, high reward approach to enhancing your pages and their contents.
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