Every content marketer wants the latest and greatest SEO content writing tips. Can you blame them? There’s not much better than organic search traffic for your company website or blog. We’re here to help!
If you attended Content Marketing World 2021, then you likely heard all of the excellent SEO-related content that was presented. But if you weren’t able to attend, you’re in luck. In this article, we will share the top SEO content writing tips that our team learned at Content Marketing World 2021. Please forgive us if we leave out something good…there was so much good content!
The search engine optimization topics that are covered below are:
- Content strategy
- Keyword research
- Content development
- Product-led SEO
Content Strategy
Audience Search Mindset
Whenever engaging content is the goal, your content strategy must be the first focus. We believe that a strategy-first approach is one of the most important SEO tips for beginners – maybe even more important than keyword research!
Monique Johnson and Dave McAnally of BrightEdge set the table nicely by helping marketers consider SEO while developing their content strategy.
A good content strategy will also uncover as many details about your target audiences as possible. Monique and Dave discussed how and what searches reveal the things specific audiences care about. They also touched on the future of digital content and how search will help you learn more about your audiences in the future.
The big takeaway: Search drives the buying decision process.
It’s important for marketers to know their audience’s mindset based on their search activity. Why? The better you know your audience’s mindset and tendencies, the better content you’ll write that serves them.
Check out this awesome slide about search mindset from Monique and Dave’s presentation:
SEO Tactics to Incorporate into Your Content Strategy
Alli Berry of The Motley Fool came through with tactics! The SEO tactics discussed during her presentation relate to the 3 pillars of SEO: on-page (content), brand reputation, and off-page (technical).
We love that Alli made the point to mention that good SEO never involves cheating the system or doing anything that would ruin the user experience of your website.
“What’s good for humans is good for search engines.” – Alli Berry
Here are the 10 SEO tactics that Alli recommends for your content strategy. This is a good, simple template you can use as a checklist for your SEO content efforts. While tips 9 and 10 aren’t SEO content writing tips, they are important for making sure your audience can better enjoy your great content:
- Utilize Keyword Research in Content Planning
- Create a Hub and Spoke Model
—This involves finding keywords that closely relate to your core keywords, and creating content for those related keyword targets. - Utilize the Inverted Pyramid of Journalism
This tip will help you organize how you write your blog content for humans and search engines! – 1. Most Newsworthy Info (Who, What, Where, When, Why) – 2. Important Details – 3. Background Info - Update Content Regularly
- Utilize Experts in Your Content
- Ask for Reviews (and Use Them in Your Content!)
- Drive Direct Traffic
- Create Link-Worthy Content (and Do Outreach!)
- Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
- Improve Your Site Speed
Keyword Research
Does the thought of keyword research give you anxiety? If so, you’re not alone. But don’t worry. We’re here to make it simple for you. I was blessed to present my Idea-driven Keyword Research process at Content Marketing World 2021.
The first step to easier, funner, more effective keyword research is taking time to brainstorm blog topic ideas! Simple, right?
Here are some great ways to come up with some juicy blog topics during a team brainstorming session:
- Identify your ideal reader or customer and their interests.
- Develop a customer journey and topics that guide potential customers along the journey.
- Study what your competitors and similar blogs are publishing.
- Answer questions that your customers typically have.
After you’ve come up with some content ideas, now it’s time to organize your ideas into a content matrix. Your content matrix will organize your topics by your audiences and your various content themes. Only after these initial steps do you start doing technical keyword research.
The biggest tip for technical keyword research is to find the short keywords (head terms) living inside the topics you developed early on. For instance, if your topic is “Data Storage Solutions for Healthcare Organizations,” you can see the keyword “data storage solutions” right there.
These head terms are what you would plug into your keyword research software of choice (e.g. Semrush, Ahrefs, or RankIQ). You’ve done the heavy lifting already. Now you can simply use software to do the longtail keyword research. You will apply your fabulous longtail keywords to the blog topic ideas you developed at the beginning of the Idea-driven Keyword Research process.
Content Development and Beyond
Now it’s time to put all of your SEO knowledge and insights into action by creating content. We’re mostly focusing on written content here. But not just any old content! If you want to master how to write search engine optimized content and/or how to optimize content for search engines, you need to learn how to create content that’s enjoyable and trustworthy (along with findable).
Lee Odden of Top Rank Marketing reminded us that, “Being the best answer means providing highly relevant, comprehensive content that is optimized for findability and credibility.” during his How B2B Content Marketers Can Dominate in Search presentation.
Keep credibility in mind in every aspect of your brand, including your content. Your content getting found is just the beginning of the journey. Once a potential customer finds your content, they want to know if they can trust you (eventually). And get this . . . Google’s search algorithm considers if users trust and engage with your content.
The best strategy for creating trustworthy content is providing the best, most complete answer in an engaging manner. Lee suggests leveraging collaboration with industry experts and influencers to add authentic credibility to your content. Why? Because good SEO results depend a lot on E.A.T. (building Expertise, Authority, and Trust). If you combine low competition keyword optimization with trustworthy content, you’ll be well on your way to content marketing success, but there’s more. . . .
Getting Results (Sales) with Your Content
We really liked how Eli Schwartz shifted the focus away from keywords and search data and inspired everyone to look at other sources for user/potential customer data. During his session, Flip the Script with Product-Led SEO, he reminded us that ONLY creating and publishing content won’t lead to sales in 2021.
As we mentioned earlier, keyword research isn’t the hard part and there are many ways to create content. Blogging and publishing guest posts will only go so far if the content isn’t providing any value. Real results happen when you truly know your audience and engage with them.
Eli reminded everyone that SEO page rankings are not sales! Product-Led SEO is a tested system that has helped Eli’s clients achieve 1000% organic growth and increase sales. Product-Led SEO transforms SEO strategy into a product that fills a gap in the marketplace and provides a specific need. Good examples of Product-Led SEO are companies like Tripadvisor, Zillow, and Amazon. Like these popular companies, your organization can programmatically pull in data from different sources like search engines and databases to create a product of real value. Yes, this is a big undertaking, but it will be worth it.
Keep the Product-Led SEO system and your WHY for creating your product in mind so you can activate your SEO insights and content and generate revenue for your business. Check out Eli Schwartz’s insightful book Product-Led SEO.
In Conclusion
As you can see, there was a ton of great SEO content on the Content Marketing World schedule.
Our team at Neoluxe Marketing is excited to apply these SEO content writing tips from Content Marketing World 2021. We hope you’re inspired by these tips and insights as well! We don’t know about you, but we’re looking forward to the SEO insights we’ll learn at Content Marketing World 2022!
If you need help with your content or SEO, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team.
