If you’re undertaking online writing jobs to earn money from home, you’ll need to understand how to produce content that is SEO-friendly. Most articles you’ll be asked to produce will be posted online as part of a company’s strategy to attract interest in its products and services by drawing traffic to its website.
Firms can have the most plush and professional website online, but if no one knows it exists, it will remain unvisited, and business will suffer. Search engine optimisation or, SEO for short, is the process of increasing the volume or improving the quality of traffic to a dedicated website from online search engines like Google. As a rule, the higher up or earlier that a site appears in an engine’s search results list, the greater the number of visitors it is likely to receive.
To this end, part of an online content writer’s job is to create blogs, product descriptions and copy that is SEO friendly. In this blog we’ll discuss some useful tools that can help you improve where your material ranks. Read on to find out more.
1. Adding meta titles and descriptions
Essentially metadata is simply data about data. Search engines like Google do not read the content you write. Instead, they index data by seeking out specific information from clearly defined metadata fields. To enhance the chances of the content your produce being located as part of a response to a specific search engine request, you can add appropriate metadata to your work. For example, you can add a search engine meta title, or meta description. This information clearly defines what your article is about and allows search engines to identify and class it easily.
2. Use key words and stop words
Keywords are topics and ideas that define what the content you write is about. When writing an article, you may be asked to include specific keywords. For example, if you were writing a blog for an electrician in Melbourne, keywords like electrician, electrical services, electrical maintenance might be included along with Melbourne.
Trying to add electrician Melbourne as a keyword isn’t grammatically sound. Fortunately, you can use stop words which are ignored by search engines. Stop words are mostly prepositions that allow you to connect your keywords making coherent sentences.
Overuse of keywords can be harmful, and placement is important. The first and final paragraph of content are common places to position keywords however some briefs may demand they are planted in the middle of articles. Using keywords too many times in an article (keyword stuffing) not only makes it difficult to read but can also lead to content being penalised by search engines.
3. Content structuring
Using correct structure in your articles is among the most important SEO tools you can apply. The content you write should always match the title you give it. Sentences should be kept short, and paragraphs should remain small when possible. Break up your content under subheadings to make them easier for search engines to crawl and people to read. To this end, unless you are producing technical articles, always simplify the language that you use. Make sure when writing blogs that you have an opening and closing paragraph and include a call to action when requested.
4. Try writing apps
There is a wealth of writing applications online that act as useful writing assistants. These online apps often have free versions that you can use to improve your writing making it more SEO friendly. You can copy and paste your pieces into the app, and it will give you in-depth feedback and suggestions on how you can make it easier to read or ways to correct your spelling and grammar.
The Hemingway app can help simplify the language you use and ensure it is search engine optimised, while the Grammarly app is useful for checking for mistakes in your writing. Both applications will identify if your work is overly wordy, if sentences are too lengthy or if the messaging is difficult to understand.
Over time, you can learn from the insights offered by these apps, and you will notice they highlight fewer issues and errors in your work.
5. Employ Analytics tools
Finally, analytics tools can help you understand how effectively your content writing performs. Google analytics is entirely free, and its insights can help direct your attempts to write more SEO-friendly content. It can help you see how much traffic articles or web pages gets from SEO, along with data on how many users engage with it. It can also display if content leads to conversions.
Ready to learn more about SEO-friendly content writing?
If you’re a copywriter who is keen to improve their skills, at Words of Worth Australia we can help. With guidance from our expert editors, you can earn while you learn and enhance your abilities while undertaking assignments. Apply to write with us today.