You could have a great website design, a seamless UX and solid technical SEO, but if your content is rubbish, nothing matters.
Maybe that’s a bit much. But I’m a content writer, after all. Bad copy is just insulting. Thankfully, there’s a way to fix it – so you can appease both the search gods and your audience.
You need to start writing better SEO content. You know, the content that brings in traffic and inevitably brings in leads? Yeah, the good stuff. Let’s find out how to write it.
What is SEO content?
SEO content is a type of content, such as blogs and web copy, that’s optimised to rank well in search engines like Google. The copy focuses on a specific keyword your audience is searching for and provides high-quality information that matches search intent.
Writing for SEO is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, you need to satisfy search engines’ algorithms by meeting best practices. On the other hand, it’s about creating helpful content that addresses user intent and provides a valuable experience.
So, how do you write SEO content? Jump ahead to step one to find out.
SEO jargon explained
The one thing that knocked me off my feet when I learned how to write SEO content was the sheer amount of jargon involved. Is your content showing qualities of E-E-A-T? Will it rank on SERPs? Is your anchor text optimised with the right long-tail keyword? … Are you still reading?
Let’s define some terms before I get into the details:
- E-E-A-T: Google’s search quality rater guidelines: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Google’s human reviewers use this framework to assess the quality of content on websites.
- Helpful content update: A Google core update aimed at prioritising people-first content that is genuinely helpful, relevant and informative. The helpful content update was integrated into Google’s core ranking systems in March 2024, which ultimately changed how writers approach content.
- YMYL: This stands for ‘Your Money or Your Life,’ which is a phrase Google uses to separate content that could affect someone’s health, happiness, financial stability, or safety.
- SERPs: Stands for ‘Search Engine Results Pages’, which is the page you see after submitting a search query to a search engine.
- SERP features: These are enhanced search results that provide additional information and context beyond the traditional “blue links” in organic search results. Google SERP features include AI Overview, People Also Ask, knowledge panels and featured snippets.
- Primary keyword: The search term or phrase you want to target and rank for. It’s the foundation of all your web content, e.g., ‘hiking boots’.
- Long-tail keyword: Search queries that are more specific, longer and have a lower search volume. These keywords appear as three to five-word phrases, such as ‘best walking boots for hikes.’
- Semantic keywords: Keywords or phrases that relate to the primary keyword and capture a wider search intent. For ‘hiking boots’, you could use terms like ‘outdoor footwear’, ‘trail shoes’ and ‘waterproof hiking boots’.
- Search intent: A user’s goal behind a search query – the ‘why’ behind a search. Common types of search intent include informational, navigational, commercial and transactional.
- Internal linking: The hyperlinks that take users from one page on your website to another. Internal links improve the user experience (UX) and help search engines understand your site structure.
- Anchor text: The clickable text of a hyperlink that takes users to another internal page or website (external linking).
- Topic clusters: A content strategy that groups related content around a central topic (‘pillar’ or ‘hub’), with supporting content that explores specific subtopics.
- PageRank: A Google algorithm that determines a website’s performance by the quantity and quality of links pointing to it.
How do you write SEO content? [9 steps you can’t skip]
The key steps to writing copy for search:
1. Conduct keyword research
Whether you have a topic in mind or not, your first step should be keyword research. The primary and secondary keywords you choose, however, are not random. Instead, you compare several metrics to determine the keywords for your brand. These include:
- Search volume (How many users are searching for the term monthly)
- Search intent (The reason why they’re searching)
- Click-through rate (The percentage of users who see the link and click on it)
- Keyword density (How hard it will be for your content to rank for a specific keyword. The higher the number, the harder it gets.)
- Semantic keywords (The amount of related keywords you can choose from)
There are many keyword research tools available, such as Google Search Console, Google Ads Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz and SE Ranking. Once you’ve selected your primary keyword, you’ll need to find related terms (semantic keywords) or long-tail variations of your primary keyword.
Your secondary keywords may be lower in volume or difficulty (keyword density), which is nothing to stress about. These keywords are low-hanging fruit: they’re easy to optimise and rank for. You can get a lot of success from low-volume keywords, especially if you become the go-to website for that query.
2. See what your competitors are doing
Using a keyword research tool, you can uncover what your competitors are ranking well for and any gaps in their approach. Your initial competitor keyword research may reveal a lot of branded terms, either for their own brand or the work they’ve done for others (such as case studies).
Filter through these mentions until you get into the specifics of how your competitors are standing out from you in SERPs. You may find out that these keywords aren’t relevant, or better yet, they’re missing out on some huge opportunities.
When conducting competitor analysis, you should consider the following:
- Content gaps – What are your competitors covering that you aren’t? And what topics have they not covered yet? Your content should be more informative and engaging to outrank them.
- Relevancy – Just because your competitor ranks well for lots of keywords, it doesn’t mean you need to be the same. You should only focus on words relevant to your business and target audience.
- Keyword difficulty – If you choose competitor keywords that are already competitive to begin with, you’ll never get far. Target keywords with a low SEO difficulty score and healthy search volume.
- User intent – Your content must answer why users are searching. Analyse competitors: do they fully inform? Is their information current? Do they use examples? Spot the gaps – these are your opportunities to create more informative and engaging content that wins. (More on this below.)
3. Find out the keyword intent
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, make sure your content directly answers why someone searches for them. That’s search intent – the user’s reason for their query.
There are four main types of search intent:
- Informational: The user is looking for more information about something, e.g., ‘What is SEO?’
- Navigational: The user wants to go to a specific page, e.g., “Instagram login”.
- Commercial: The user is researching options before making a purchase, e.g., ‘iPhone 16 vs iPhone 16 Pro’.
- Transactional: The user is ready to convert, e.g., “ASOS discount codes” or “coffee shops near me.”
For example, someone searching ‘make tofu at home’ will see something like this:
The top results include educational blogs about homemade tofu, a ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) section, and video content (not shown in the screenshot) on how to make it at home. This search query has informational intent. At this point, the user isn’t interested in buying ready-made tofu. Instead, they want to make it from scratch.
To dig deeper, search your target term and see what content ranks best. Pay attention to the top-ranking content’s format, length, structure and topics. Whatever ranks work well, which indicates what searchers and Google prefer for that specific intent. (You can find this out automatically with SEO tools.)
4. Check if you have the expertise
Google values content that is based on the writer’s expertise in the subject matter. This ‘expertise’ is part of Google’s wider quality rater guidelines known as E-E-A-T.
When you offer unique insights, thorough analysis and research, you’ll demonstrate to Google that your content is from first-hand experience rather than a regurgitation of someone else’s work.
How much expertise you need depends on whether it’s a ‘Your Money or Your Life’ (YMYL) topic. For example, if you’re covering a blog on ‘why chemotherapy can save your life’, you’d need to be a qualified professional so that the information is medically accurate.
When searching for this query, I came across this article from the Cancer Center. The article was authored by a Doctor of Medicine, and a dedicated author page details their relevant experience. This practice is crucial, as author profiles help Google identify and verify author validity, which boosts E-E-A-T and improves search rankings for health-related queries.
What I’m trying to say here is that you should only write about subjects you know well.
5. Work on a content strategy
SEO content is done with intention. You write for the user, not for whenever your CEO gets excited about a trend. Remember, relevancy means everything – your content needs to align with a user’s query and intent to rank well.
There are many approaches to SEO writing, but the one I get the most out of is the hub and spoke model. This model organises your content into topics, which, as a result, improves internal linking, information architecture and UX.
You have your ‘hub’, which is a single page targeting a top-of-the-funnel keyword. A hub page gives your users an overview of the topic, which then links to other pages targeting mid- to long-term keywords.
For example, ‘How to write SEO content’ is our hub. I can’t cover everything in detail – unless I were creating an ebook – so it will break down into spokes. Each spoke article will explore a new aspect of the topic, providing more chances to rank for relevant keywords.
This systematic approach builds your topical authority, signalling to Google that your website is a trusted source for SERP rankings. As your hub gains authority, it efficiently distributes PageRank to linked spokes, boosting their ranking potential and the overall credibility of the site within that topic.
I find the hub and spoke model less overwhelming, as you’ll build content over time. A pillar page, on the other hand, combines your hub and all its spokes into a single, in-depth page. You’ll often see these terms mixed up – the result is pretty much the same.
6. Write your first draft
Okay. So, you’ve got your keywords, you know your sh*t, and you’re now ready to start writing. Even with all this research, putting words on paper is no easy feat. It’s quite often the hardest step.
When I write, I like to structure the content into a skeleton format. I write down all the subheadings, make some bullet points on what I want to cover and then start writing from the body. If you remember anything from school, beginning with the body is always the first thing you should do. Then, move on to the conclusion and introduction.
When it comes to SEO content, you need to ensure that it’s exhaustive. Your content should cover everything the user needs to know to satisfy their search query. And if you have more to cover? Separate it into another blog. That’s the whole point of a hub and spoke approach.
7. Optimise your content for search
You’ve got the ugly first draft out of the way. Now, it’s time to start editing. When you’re optimising content, you need to ensure it focuses on a keyword. This doesn’t mean you should force it into every heading or use it in sentences when it makes no grammatical sense, e.g.,
This is forced: “London spa getaway deals” vs. a more natural approach, such as “Best spa getaway deals in London” or “Deals for spa getaways in London.”
You should integrate keywords and semantic keywords naturally into your content. You’ve already confirmed your expertise (step 4) and created an SEO strategy (step 5), so everything will fall into place.
If you rely on AI, your content could be quite the opposite. Along with several other telltale signs, AI content will keyword stuff, which is something Google will penalise you for.
After doing all this, you’ll need to optimise image file names, add alt text to images, include internal and external links and so on. I cover these in more detail in my blog about copywriting mistakes, so head there after you’ve finished with this.
8. Make your content easy to read and skim
Users won’t stick around if your content is hard to follow. Life is hard enough as it is, so why punish them?
Here are my go-to fixes for making content readable:
- Follow a heading hierarchy: Like I said in our UX guide, a well-structured page guides users to the content they need the most. Using header tags also breaks up text and improves readability for users with visual impairments.
- Keep it simple, stupid: And no, I don’t mean ‘dumbed down’. Try to avoid complex words and sentences, so your copy is easy to understand. If the topic is technical, write in your audience’s language.
- Add visuals: Rather than relying on text alone, incorporate images, videos, and other multimedia to encourage users to engage with your content in different ways. (Not only that, but multimedia content might land you a spot in Google’s AI Overview.)
- Check your spelling and grammar: Your content may be amazing, but if the first thing a reader sees is a glaring spelling mistake, you can bet they’re not sticking around. Run a spell check – it’s free.
When you’re editing your copy, don’t get too lost in the details. You’ll find yourself obsessing over your word choices or if you’ve used one too many semi-colons (the answer is probably yes).
I approach content with one question in mind: Will my readers get the answer they’re looking for? Remember, you’re not on the cast of Mad Men. The content just needs to do the job. It doesn’t need to change the world.
9. Get it out in the open
The hard graft is over. Let’s get it out there! High-quality content like yours will take Google up to a week to index. But why wait? The quickest way to notify Google of new content is to submit your URL using Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool.
If you’ve followed my steps, users will find your content, hopefully within (or on) page 1 of SERPs. While search engines do their thing, you can share content on social media and email to maximise reach.
TL;DR – What makes good SEO content?
- First priority: do your keyword research. Dig into search volume, intent, keyword density and semantic keywords.
- See what your competition is ranking for, spot their weak spot, and figure out where you can be better.
- Match search intent and ensure your content delivers what users are looking for in that specific reason.
- Check if you have enough expertise to write on the subject. Google likes expertise, so stick to what you actually know.
- Optimise content with your chosen keywords. Only do this naturally, never forced.
- Use headings, keep it simple, add visuals and don’t forget about spell check.
- Force index new content so Google can pick it up sooner, rather than a week later.
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