TJ Vasquez
The first article in our SEO writing series covered the basic elements of writing for beginners. It included pre-writing, drafting, editing, and critiquing your own work. This article will delve into the intermediate aspects of developing good writing practices.
We’ll cover how to incorporate search engine optimization into your writing projects, techniques for writing to convert more leads, how to embrace a more conversational writing style, and easy methods to follow to improve the quality of your writing.
Writing for SEO
SEO writing can be a long, complicated process to master. However, to keep this guide straightforward and concise, we’ll explore search engine optimization in brief.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a practice successful content creators use to improve their website’s search engine rankings. By producing accurate, relevant content that follows SEO guidelines, creators draw more organic traffic to their pages. This, in turn, helps to convert more leads into customers.
The key elements to focus on when SEO writing include:
- Keyword Usage: finding the right keywords to use and using them naturally in your blog posts (without stuffing or other black hat tactics)
- Accuracy: producing factual content your audience can trust
- User Intent: creating content that addresses your audience’s needs and provides the answers they’re looking for
- Content Writing: writing blog posts that have correct spelling and grammar, easy-to-read formats, and progression that makes sense (ex: step-by-step, chronological, alphabetical, etc.)
SEO Writing to Convert Leads
Any business leader who utilizes blogging wants to convert leads into loyal customers. To make sure your writing accomplishes that goal, there are a few things you need to do.
Keep customer service in mind when you’re writing blog posts. Present readers with incentives that’ll convince them to take the next step. On top of publishing high-quality writing, you’ll also want to offer your readers something for their time. You might mention a coupon, promotion, or giveaway in your blog post, or include a compelling CTA at the end of the post that refers readers to your products or services.
Follow up with your audience as well by regularly creating content that provides more information about a topic your readers engage with. Use social media posts to announce new articles, deals, and discussions.
Conversational Blogging/Writing
Depending on your industry and the demographics of your target audience, conversational writing can vary when it comes to the finer details of perfecting it.
To develop a more conversational writing style, research your audience and take notes on how they communicate with their colleagues and peers. Combining research and practice will enable you to write FOR your audience by using terminology and sentence structures that actually speak to them as unique individuals.
Conversational writing involves more than just “writing how you speak,” and if you really want to reach your audience on a personal level, perfect your conversational writing style by trying the following tips.
Don’t Meander
Remember when you were in school and the textbook you were reading took up four pages to explain something that could have been done in one paragraph? Of course, everyone hates that. When you’re covering a topic, get to the point within a reasonable amount of time.
Use Active Voice
Using active voice will make your audience feel more involved and connected with the story you’re telling. Though passive voice is okay to use on occasion, keep the majority of your content active.
An easy way to tell if you’re using passive or active voice is the “Zombie Test.” If you can add the phrase “by zombies” to the end of the sentence and it still makes sense, you’re using passive voice.
ACTIVE: “We processed each request on time.”
PASSIVE: “Each request was processed on time (by zombies).”
Write at Your Audience’s Level
If you’re familiar with your target audience, writing at their level should be relatively easy. For example, if they seem to prefer simpler, more casual sentences and terms, adjust your writing so that it fits a reading comprehension level they’ll identify with.
Address Your Readers
Include the word “you” or some variation of it in your writing to address your readers.
Easy Ways to Improve Your SEO Writing Quality
To conclude, here are a few more guidelines you can follow to improve the quality of your writing.
- Outline complicated topics
- Reduce your use of filler words and phrases
- Keep your paragraphs short (5 lines or fewer)
- Accept feedback
You have the potential to be a decent writer if you take your time and make an effort to improve your skills.
However, SEO isn’t easy to figure out right off the bat. If you think you could use some help planning your SEO strategy, a tool like Juno is definitely worth a try. This AI program will provide you with ten content ideas, as well as outlines and written drafts you can use to get started.
By keying a few basic pieces of information into Juno’s SEO Strategy Builder form, you can have a decent collection of industry-related pieces of content at your fingertips in just a few minutes. Check out Juno and get your SEO strategy off the ground.
SOURCES
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/tips-write-conversational-content/
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-improve-writing-skills/
