What is SEO writing and how to write an optimized blog post?

Intro

We create and optimize web content with the intention of ranking it on the search engine result pages. This is why we make sure that everything that we write is basically based on the search engine guidelines.

Indeed, covering a piece of information in a unique way is not enough to rank a blog post. There is a lot more that we need to do such as maintain the readability, adjust keywords, and add meta tags. Sounds interesting?

Let us provide you with detailed insights about SEO writing so that you can effectively learn to create a well-optimized blog post.

What is SEO Writing?

When we write in accordance with the webmaster guidelines (predefined by the search engine) then it is called SEO writing.

The search engine (Google) itself has provided us with guidelines about “how to write and optimize content to get a higher ranking on the result pages”. The given guidelines enable us to create user-friendly and search-engine-friendly content without any errors.

The primary goal of SEO writing is to create content which can add value to the readers. This goal can be achieved if you focus on creating content that is relevant, readable, and unique.

The search engine is likely to rank your content if it finds your content adequate to answer the users’ queries and meet their needs. Thus, you must write in a way that your content is easy-to-understand and informative for the readers. Moreover, there shouldn’t be any duplication in it.

Take into account that the essential elements of well-optimized content include:

• Authenticity
• Relevancy
• Readability
• Originality

There’s one more thing that you need to be cautious about while writing web content — optimize it specifically for search engine crawlers. You can do this by creating metadata for each piece of content that you write.

Do not be confused. Just keep reading to find out how you can create and optimize a blog post as per the webmaster guidelines.

How to Create Well-optimized Blog Posts?

There are various factors that contribute to the creation of well-optimized content. Anyhow, if you just pay attention to the following five things then you can easily optimize a blog post for search engines:

• Originality
• Readability & Legibility
• Keywords
• ALT Tags
• Meta Tags

These things all together ensure that the content you create is easy-to-understand, informative, relevant, and valuable — for both readers and crawlers.

Here is a detailed breakdown of these factors so that you can effectively learn to write a well-optimized blog post. Read it thoroughly.

Achieving Uniqueness

This is the very first requirement of the search engine — the content you create must be free from plagiarism.

It’s common for people to look for a topic on the internet and paraphrase it in their words, but that’s something we call plagiarism-free content, not original or creative.

To make the original content, it is important to have enough knowledge about it, and the best way to gain knowledge about a topic is through research.

It’s not enough to read a couple of blogs and watch videos about that topic. If you are researching a topic, you should know what sub-topic you are going to focus on and strategize accordingly.

During your research, you can learn what points you want to discuss first and what written material it will include by creating heading structures.

In case you are a beginner and do not know how to attain uniqueness in writing then it would be better for you to take advantage of a paraphrasing tool. There are many online tools that can help you avoid plagiarism in your content and make sure it stands out. If you practice using a paraphrasing tool which is based on advanced AI algorithms then you can quickly learn to write unique content on your own.

Maintaining Readability & Legibility

Readability and legibility are not the factors that affect the search engines directly, but they are still important factors to consider when optimizing a blog post.

It is because these factors directly influence the user experience and determine how it will be. In the end, Google only cares about user experience, which is why these factors must be considered.

Readability

The readability influences the comprehensiveness of the text piece and determines how easy the text is to read as well as understand. Readability is considered to keep the content engaging as much as it can even for users in 6th grade.

There is no concern to the user with your content when you are making long sentences and complex words. On the other hand, it is not a wise choice to add multiple pieces of information in a single sentence and make it big enough to get ignored.

The following can help you enhance the readability score of your content:

• Short and easy sentences
• Brief paragraphs
• Simple terms
• Active voice sentences

Legibility

The legibility influences the quality of the presentation of the text. Legibility measures how easy it is for the user to distinguish one word from another and decode the symbol.

If the content is not presented well, the user may lose interest, no matter how well the content has been written and how much valuable information it contains.

The following things can help you improve the legibility of your content:

• Simple font
• Readable Font Size
• Medium weight and stroke contrast
• Normal Word and line spacing

Incorporating Keywords

Keyword Incorporation is an important part of On-Page SEO, and sometimes it gets hectic to adjust so many keywords in the content. To be honest, you don’t have to add so many keywords in the content if you can’t.

Keyword adjustment and management is a very detailed process. It gets very tricky to add the keywords organically in the blog post content.

However, if you think there is still a chance to incorporate the keywords, the best approach will be to add the keyword in the introduction. The introduction is also known as the very first paragraph of the keywords. In order for it to work, it needs to be incorporated naturally otherwise you can get noticed for using the black hat SEO technique called keyword stuffing.

Further, you can manage about 1% - 2% density of keywords in your whole content. As a result, you need to include your focus keyword in every third or fourth paragraph of your content.

Besides the content data, it is also important to add the focus keyword in Heading. It is recommended to adjust the focus keyword in 75% of your headings. The process of adding the keyword in the headings of the content is called heading optimization.

Adding Image ALT Tags

The ALT tags are the attribute in HTML coding language, these tags are given to the image to define the Google about the image. There are two ALT tags for the image “ALT Text” and “ALT description”. It also appears on the web page at the image area, in case the image is not loaded.

The purpose of adding Image ALT tags is definitely not ranking the blog post content. However, it helps in ranking the image in the images section of the search engine.

In case you think that it’s no use to rank on the search engine image section, you must know that from those who open the images section, 63% of the users click on the image source and visit the website.

If that seems less then let us tell you that, you can get natural backlinks using a good analytics chart, data graph or a good illustrator image. As long as you have relevant and authentic information in your image, most webmasters will display it on their website and give you credit as a source link.

Creating Metadata

The Metadata are the HTML tags, which are added in the header section of a webpage and explain all the possible information about the webpage.

The important Meta tags are “Meta Title” and “Meta Description”. Both of them are displayed in the SERPs at any query. The meta title is displayed as a blue clickable heading for every page while the meta description is presented just below the meta title in grey colour.

In the Meta Title, the webmaster has to highlight the main intent of the web page content within 60 to 70 characters. To optimize the meta title, it is important to add a number, an emotional word, the focus keyword and finally the brand name in it.

While Meta description, the webmaster should summarize the content of the webpage within 160 - 170 characters.

The worth of meta description has not remained as much. It is because now Google fetches the meta description itself and varies every different user according to query. However, it is still important as it helps the search engine to tell what the content is really about and helps to get ranking on targeted keywords.

Bottom Line

The name clearly implies — SEO writing involves the creation of well-optimized content. It is basically about creating a piece of content that is relevant, readable, and unique.