I’m sure you’ve heard it before, “You have to optimize your writing for SEO.”
But how do you do that?
You want Google to show you lots of love. How do you get the keywords you need into your content without ruining your writing and getting a Google thumbs-down instead?
Here are a few tips to keep you in Google’s good graces.
1. Keyword stuffing is out
If you haven’t kept up with the changes in SEO writing over the last few years, there’s something you need to know. Keyword stuffing is no longer acceptable.
Keyword stuffing is filling your copy with keywords without considering how the content sounds to the reader. Content written this way loses its impact because it’s not quality writing. Readers see it and run away.
Google is onto keyword stuffers, and Google punishes them.
When someone searches Google, it prioritizes quality content that matches the keywords. (It has other criteria as well, but for our purposes, we’ll focus on quality content and keyword match.) When it finds poor content stuffed with keywords, Google pushes it down the search results. Way down.
If you’ve been keyword stuffing, stop. Stop now.
2. Keywords are like giraffes
Picture a giraffe. See the head atop the long neck, sloping down to meet the strong body, the line ending along the slender tail. Got that?
Let’s say you sell car insurance, and you’re writing content about saving money when covering young drivers. When you choose keywords, think about what your reader might type into the search bar to bring them to your content.
Here’s where the giraffe comes in. A “head” keyword is a single keyword, in this case it would be the word “insurance.” It gets high traffic but has high competition. So let’s do better.
A “body” keyword contains 2 to 3 words. For the example content, it might be “insurance for teenagers.” It would get decent traffic with less competition, but it’s still too broad.
Your real goal in choosing which keywords to target is to go after “long-tail” keywords. These keywords contain 4 or more words and get to the heart of what your reader is searching for. Think of this as more of a phrase than just keywords.
For our insurance content, a good long-tail keyword phrase might be “cheap car insurance for teenagers” or maybe “low-cost car insurance for teenagers.” This type of detailed long-tail keyword phrase gets less traffic but attracts more qualified leads.
This is what you want. You don’t need a million people to see your content but not read it. You need a thousand people to see it, read it and consider doing business with you. That’s a win.
3. Write great content first
While writing your content, don’t worry about your keyword phrases. Know the phrases but don’t actively try to include them while you write. Google and your readers want you to do just one thing.
Write great content.
Focus on writing valuable content for your reader. Give them information that helps them without selling them anything. Do some research. Link to sites that backup your data. This builds authority with your reader and gets lots of love from Google.
And while you’re writing, pieces of your keyword phrases will pop up because they’re in the back of your mind. This natural process will be helpful in the next step.
4. Add your SEO keywords and keyword phrases
After you’ve written your high-quality copy, go back and add your keywords. Start with your headline and subheads. Google likes these two areas. Don’t add keywords where they don’t make sense, and don’t add them to every subhead. Those actions get you precariously close to keyword stuffing again.
Your primary keyword should be included in your headline, toward the front of it if possible. Your primary and secondary keywords should be included in at least some of your subheads. Make them interesting so you can attract both Google and readers.
You should be able to find several places in the text containing pieces of your keyword phrases. The things to look for are vague phrases you can make more specific by adding qualifiers.
In our example, the words “car insurance” would probably appear multiple times in the copy. Where it makes sense, lengthen that vague phrase to be your long-tail keyword phrase “cheap car insurance for teenagers.”
One great thing about Google is it understands synonyms. Remember I said you could use either “cheap car insurance for teenagers” or “low-cost car insurance for teenagers?” Because Google understands cheap and low-cost mean the same thing, it will consider these the same in a search.
This allows you to add variety to your copy and at the same time not get into trouble with keyword stuffing. Great, huh?
5. Other great places to add keywords
Lists make your content more readable and keep someone scanning your content on your page. Google also pays attention to the words used in those lists. Pop in a keyword or two for more SEO love.
Also focus on inserting keywords into the first and last paragraphs of your content. These paragraphs are well-read by scanners and Google.
Google acts somewhat like someone scanning your copy, reading the beginning, the end, subheads and lists. Think like Google does, and you’ll begin to see results.
6. Here’s the biggest take-away
Say it with me, “Don’t overdo the keywords.” Only put in as many keywords as is natural to the flow of your content. It can be easy to step over the line.
It might help to have someone else read your copy first. See if they notice the keywords without you prompting them to watch for them. If there are too many, they’ll notice.
SEO success
I hope that helps you understand how to write your copy for SEO. If you have questions, put them in the comments below. Let’s get them answered so you can do this the right way if you must do it yourself.
Don’t want to do this yourself? Get in touch with me, and we’ll talk about your project. I’ve always got your back.