In fact, the techniques I’m about to show you have helped me rank #1 in Google for competitive keywords like “SEO strategy”:
And “how to get YouTube subscribers”:
I’ll walk you through the steps to creating your own content that’s optimized for search. So you can improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your website.
What Is SEO Content?
SEO content is online content designed to rank in search engines (like Google). Also, content written for SEO is typically optimized around a specific keyword.
And when it comes to search engine optimization, make no mistake:
Content is KEY.
I can speak from firsthand experience that content marketing can help you get LOTS of organic (unpaid) traffic.
In fact, we regularly publish content on Backlinko that’s specifically designed to rank in Google.
And this SEO-focused content strategy is one of the main reasons the site gets over 645K monthly sessions from organic search.
With that in mind, let’s now walk through the steps of SEO content optimization.
How to Write SEO Content
To rank on Google, you need two things: content that helps readers and content that shows up in search results.
And that’s exactly what you’re about to learn.
First up: how to pick topics that resonate.
Tip #1: Choose the Right Topics
Your first step to writing SEO content is to come up with suitable topic ideas.
Specifically, you want to cover topics that:
Your target audience (or customers) care about
You have experience or expertise in
Are related to your business
This way, you can create valuable content that’s likely to connect with your audience. And that makes it WAY more likely to convert them into customers.
Here are three quick ways to find content ideas and come up with awesome topics:
Reddit: Head over to active subreddits where your target audience tends to hang out. And look for topics that tend to come up again and again. These are likely topics your target audience struggles with—prime targets for quality SEO content.
Competitor Blogs: Look at popular blog posts, videos, and infographics from your competitors’ blogs. What do they have in common? What can you emulate (or improve upon)?
Personas: Personas can help you paint a clear picture of your target audience. Including what they are interested in, their pain points, and what factors influence their buying decisions. You can use Semrush’s free Buyer Persona Tool to create your own.
For example, my target audience includes people that do marketing full-time.
A while back I noticed this discussion on the SEO subreddit.
So I decided to create a post that answered that specific question:
Simple.
Tip #2: Use the Right Content Type to Meet the Search Intent
Most people likely associate SEO with written content. But there’s much more to consider than just writing blog posts.
Types of SEO content include:
Articles and guides (like this one)
Listicles and comparison posts
Infographics
Videos
Podcasts
And not every topic you target is best served with a written post. This links to the idea of search intent.
In other words: what a user wants from a piece of content.
For example, someone searching for the term “how to install a dishwasher” likely wants to see how it’s done. That’s why the top results in Google are how-to videos:
But even when written content is the answer, you need to ensure it’s the right type of written content for your target audience.
How do you know what the right type of content is?
Search your target keyword in Google and look at the results (more on keywords in the next section).
For example, take the keyword “project management software.” You might plan to create a mega guide covering:
What project management software is
What types there are
Some of the key players
How to choose the right software
But heading to Google shows you that’s not the best idea:
All the top-ranking articles are best lists that compare the top project management software solutions on the market.
So, if you wanted to compete for this keyword, you’d likely need to create a similar format of article. Not a mega guide.
Note: While the rest of this article can be broadly applied to other types of content like videos and podcasts, I’ll be focusing on writing SEO content.
So if you want to learn more about those, check out our article on video SEO and our podcasting guide.
Tip #3: Find Your Target Keywords
Now it’s time to find target keywords for your content.
To be clear:
Keyword research is a HUGE topic. So I can’t cover everything there is to know about finding keywords here (I have a separate dedicated article all about SEO keywords for that).
But I can give you a handful of quick keyword research techniques that are working great right now.
What’s cool about this technique is that these are real searches people have made on Google. So you know these are keywords people are typing into the search engine you’re optimizing your content for.
But how do you prioritize them?
For that, you need more data beyond the list of keywords themselves. You can use a tool like Semrush’s Keyword Overview to analyze the keywords you find through Google Autocomplete.
Or:
Take it a step further and get thousands of relevant keyword ideas for your content with the Keyword Magic Tool.
You can filter by metrics like:
Search volume (so you know how many people search for a keyword each month)
Keyword difficulty (so you can gauge how hard it’ll be to rank your content for that term)
Search intent (to help you understand what users want to gain when they search for that term)
This makes it a breeze to find and prioritize keywords to target within your SEO content.
Now it’s time to take the keywords you just found and optimize your content for them.
Here’s an example of how I optimized one of my blog posts for the target keyword of “SEO Strategy”:
First, I made sure to include my main keyword in the first 100 words of my page. (Actually the first sentence in this case.)
This helps make it clear to users and search engines that this article is about creating an SEO strategy.
But the next step is to add more instances of the main keyword—along with variations and secondary keywords—throughout the content.
In a NATURAL way.
That’s an absolutely vital aspect of SEO content optimization. Avoid adding keywords left and right in the hopes of boosting your rankings, also known as keyword stuffing (it’s against Google’s spam policies).
As you’re writing about your topic, you’ll gradually find natural ways to include these keywords. Like I did:
Bonus tip: To help the optimization of other content on your site, add internal links to other pages with relevant anchor text.
This provides Google with helpful context about what those pages cover. Like this:
This is an easy way to optimize more than just the page you’re creating at that time.
And there are lots of other benefits to this too, which you can learn about in our guide to internal linking.
Tip #5: Write Comprehensive Content
If you want your content to rank in Google it needs to be AWESOME.
This means it needs to:
Give the user what they want
Answer all of their questions
Go beyond what’s already out there (we’ll talk more about this later in the section on information gain)
Now I could have written something like “5 SEO Copywriting Tips for Better Rankings.”
But I knew that comprehensive content had a MUCH better chance of ranking #1 in Google than a short post.
And I was right!
My guide hit the #1 spot for my target keyword:
As you might expect, comprehensive content tends to be MUCH longer than your average blog post.
In fact, our Google ranking signals study found that the average word count of the top 10 results for most keywords tended to be 1,447 words:
Why does long content rank better?
Longer content helps give Google more information about the topic of that webpage. This makes it easier for the algorithm to understand that your page is a relevant result for that keyword.
Long-form articles can cover A LOT more than a 500-word blog post on the same topic. This means long articles can answer searchers’ queries better than short content.
Long content tends to attract more links and social shares than shallow content. Largely because it goes into more detail and can contain more “linkable” insights.
For example, the SEO copywriting guide I mentioned earlier is 3,334 words long.
Was that piece of content easy to write? Heck no!
The first draft alone took over 20 hours.
That said, writing long-form content can be a competitive advantage for you.
Your competition is probably too lazy to write in-depth pieces. This means that you’ll instantly separate yourself from the pack when you start publishing insanely-thorough stuff.
But:
Longer isn’t just better by default. You still need to write quality content and follow the next step in particular:
Tip #6: Optimize Your Content for Users
If your content doesn’t provide a great user experience and isn’t easy to read and understand, it WON’T rank.
That’s because Google uses page experience signals (in addition to traditional ranking signals, like backlinks) to figure out which results deserve to rank #1 in the search results.
So if people LOVE your content, it can get a rankings boost.
With that in mind, here are some SEO writing tips that you can use to make sure your content satisfies users and search engines:
Use Short Sentences
Short sentences make your writing MUCH easier to follow. Although in reality, a mix of sentence lengths is usually best.
You’ll see I apply this rule in this post. And every other post on the site:
If your content is easy to follow, it makes it easier for readers to consume more of it.
Simple.
Use Images and Other Media
I recommend adding lots of multimedia to your content.
In other words: use video, audio, diagrams, charts, interactive media, quizzes, games, and infographics.
This approach works well for blog posts. Which is why you’ll see lots of images in all the articles on Backlinko:
Images and graphics can make it easier for readers to understand your content. And it’s an easy way to add value beyond the words on the page.
Plus, your multimedia can rank on its own. Especially in image search:
Use Helpful Subheadings (and Optimize for Featured Snippets)
Last up, use H tag subheadings to break up your content.
This is especially important for long-form content.
A good rule of thumb is to use a new subheading for every new topic or concept you’re discussing.
For example, you can see that I use lots of subheadings in all of my posts:
Which makes them easy to read (and skim).
Because a lot of your audience won’t read every word from the first to the last. And using helpful subheadings makes it much easier for them to find what they need.
Pro tip: Add these headings to a table of contents. This way, users can navigate around your post with ease.
Plus, you can use subheadings to optimize for featured snippets. This is where you use a heading tag with a common question your users have, and then give a direct, comprehensive answer underneath it. Like this:
The goal is to then rank at the top of Google for that question keyword with your featured snippet:
This can drive significant traffic to your site. For more on how to optimize for these, check out our guide to featured snippets.
Tip #7: Add Information Gain
Information gain is a measure of how unique and valuable your content is compared to the content that’s already out there.
In other words:
What do you have to offer that those ranking in the search results don’t already have?
This doesn’t just mean you look at the top 10 results, take all of their headings, add a few new ones, then call it a day.
It’s about:
Adding new, unique perspectives based on experience and expertise (this could be your own, or that of others you interview, for example)
Presenting new data or insights
Taking a different approach to better meet the search intent
But there are lots of other ways to add information gain. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Sometimes, it’s just a case of showing an example of how you or your business does things differently.
Like we did with our flow charts showing how we upgraded our content scaling process:
This gave our readers a “behind-the-scenes” look at what it takes to produce content on Backlinko.
Or perhaps you have access to unique proprietary data that sets you apart from competitors. That’s how Angi adds information gain to their content:
Going above and beyond to add value for your audience is also GREAT for your SEO efforts.
For example, our article on scaling content creation grabbed the featured snippet for our target keyword:
And Angi’s blog sees more than 4 million organic visitors each month:
But another benefit of Angi’s unique data is that it also attracts A LOT of quality backlinks:
So, when considering how to optimize your content for SEO, go beyond keywords and think about how you can provide real value to your audience through information gain.
It can bring improvements in rankings, traffic, and even backlinks.
Further reading: For more on this important topic, check out our full guide to information gain in SEO.
Tip #8: Analyze Your Results and Adapt Your Strategy
Creating SEO content is just one part of the overall process of growing your online visibility. The next step is to analyze your data and use it to improve your content and overall marketing strategy.
To do that, I recommend tracking a few important page-level metrics:
This lets you monitor keyword gains and losses over time. So you can understand if your content optimization efforts are working, and which pages you might need to revisit.
You can track your organic traffic using tools like Google Analytics.
I recommend keeping tabs on important pieces of content, rather than just your total website traffic.
These could be landing pages or just ones you’ve updated recently using the guidance in this article.
You can do this through the “Pages and screens” report, filtering for organic sessions:
If your content gets a lot of impressions but few clicks, it suggests you need to optimize it further. Sometimes it’s just a case of tweaking your title tags and meta descriptions. But it could indicate wider issues with your content.
(For more on that, check out our guide to on-page SEO.)
Backlink building is a massive aspect of SEO, so I can’t cover all the details here. But building high-quality links to your content is a great way to improve its SEO and visibility.
