Usually, a professional content writer oversees thinking up SEO strategies and controlling their use on each platform. However, these days you, as a content writer need to have the most in-depth notions possible about SEO. This way, your content will achieve the greatest visibility possible. Both the person specialized in SEO and you have the same objective: generating more traffic toward your website. In this article, we will tell you three things that you should always keep in mind when writing content for the web.
Advantages of a journalist with SEO knowledge
Knowing about SEO strategies is very beneficial, both for you as well as for the website where you publish your articles.
What happens when you write without SEO notions? Well, when you submit your content, the editor and the SEO specialist must spend time correcting these texts. They have to “adapt it” to the web. Whereas, if you know how to place a title, identify key words and follow contemporary writing guidelines for the web, then your content can be online in less time. Plus, your possibilities of obtaining a greater increase in traffic. The reason is that, that content, optimized for the web, will have more options for being picked up by the search engines.
1. The search engines are what generate more traffic toward websites
Not even the boom of the social networks has been successful in becoming a visible reality throughout the world: the main source of traffic toward a website continues to be a search engine. So, thinking of the content is essential so that they will enter the enormous data bases of search engines, especially Google and Bing, much more rapidly.
These search engines act as intermediaries between relevant content and the key words that introduce the user into the box. If your content is optimized, the same as the site, Google will consider this content as more relevant and will show it before the others.
2. Identify and use the key words for each article
In the recent past, SEO practices said that you had to use a key word and then the same word another time, all through the article, while the more times it appeared, the better it was. This was in the past. These days, search engines are better able to “understand” content, so your work with the key words has to be more intelligent.
Before writing the first letter of a content in a text processor, you have to have already identified the principal and secondary key words that you will use in your article. How is it done? You can turn to several tools, like Google Keyword Planner, to identify the existing competition. While less competition, there are, logically, more options for positioning this content. These days, there’s a tendency to use longtail keywords. This means that if you’re writing an article on hotels in Mexico, you don’t use either “hotels” as a keyword, or “hotels in Mexico” because in both cases, the competition is enormous. On the other hand, if you turn to “cheap hotels in Mexico 2021, you can be sure you will have more options for a good position.
3. Pay close attention to the titles and meta descriptions
Putting a title has always been complicated for the majority of content creators. Identifying the best title for the web is still quite difficult. Creativity will always be important; however, there is a series of elements that must be there to have a functional title.
For example, you must always include the principal key word of your article in the title. Remember that your article can’t exceed 77 characters, including the spaces between words. Use names, places and events where they fit in naturally. Pay particular attention to punctuation marks. The less you use them, the better it is.
The meta description is one of the elements that web crawlers look for. Remember that this is the text that appears in the search results, beneath the title; therefore, it’s enormously important. The ideal meta description doesn’t exceed 177 characters, or two sentences. You can use both your primary key word as well as any other secondary words.
The idea behind this advice is that it should be very clear to you that the SEO is not only the responsibility of the professional SEO in charge of it. You, as the content creator can help yourself if you apply this advice.