If you run your own website, and have a bit of a flair for writing, you might think things should be plain sailing in terms of producing good written content, but it is of course essential that you consider SEO when writing for the net! This can feel like a real blow to any writers out there who know they produce good work. It’s frustrating to think that you have to manipulate your work in order for it to work on the net; but thankfully, you shouldn’t have to adapt your work too much, if you just know a few important ground rules. The internet is changing all the time, and fortunately, it is starting to become more and more important for written content to be of high quality, so this should be great news for all you writers out there! Here we list a few things to keep in mind to make sure you great writing is great writing for SEO!
Don’t Just Write For Your Audience
This seems like a ridiculous suggestion, but the fact remains, even after the Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird updates, we have to consider keyword research every time we write for a site. The bottom line is that Google still use spiders to crawl sites, and they still pick up on keywords in order to understand your web page. There may be less emphasis on this now, but it’s still a factor. Thankfully, it’s normally the case that a well written piece is going to pick up salient keywords quite naturally, but just consider what your post is about before you start writing!
Keep Those Keywords!
A great idea is to think of three keywords that relate to your post and of course web page. These should be strategically placed in the title tag, the #h1 headline, the image alt tags and within the body of the text. Of course, you have to make this natural, particularly when it comes to placing keywords in the text. Your copy always has to be natural. If a keyword doesn’t fit naturally, you probably need to go back to the drawing board with your article.
Google Loves Great Copy!
Luckily for you writers out there, the one thing Google cares about more than anything else right now is quality content. This means that even if you are not absolutely spot on with your keyword density, even if you do not yet have any authority in the eyes of Google as an author, and even if your site is lacking in domain authority, a great piece of content will always be shared, and Google recognises this! If you can get your work to go viral and if your web pages are shared all around the internet by other bloggers because your content is great, this will be picked up by Google. You will be picking up great quality, absolutely genuine organic back links everywhere you go, and Google is going to sit up and take note. In the eyes of the almighty, there’s nothing quite like a great piece of content!
So all you have to do is watch your keywords carefully, and continue to research them at all times. Secondly, work carefully to make sure those keywords are in the right places on your page, but most importantly of all, keep writing great content! Writing for SEO purposes is as important as ever, but thankfully, these days that mostly means just writing great copy!
