You know you need to be producing great content and optimizing your website for search engine ranking, but what’s the difference between SEO and content writing? Both are important, but they serve different purposes.
SEO is all about making your website as visible as possible to search engines like Google. This means using the right keywords, having a well-organized website structure, and creating fresh content.
Content writing, on the other hand, is about creating compelling and interesting copy that will engage your readers. It should be informative and considerate of your audience’s needs.
While SEO is important for getting found online, content writing is what will make people stay on your site once they find it.
SEO Guidelines and Writing
Here are a few of the rules that SEO writers must follow with their content to give you an idea of how complicated SEO writing can be.
The content must be one-of-a-kind. Of course, that isn’t too difficult; all but the worst content writers will create more or less unique content for you, even if the piece’s specific value isn’t all that unique. In any case, it will not trigger duplicate content checks.
The structure of the content must be simple to read. Much has been said about writing at different grade levels, but there’s more to it than that when it comes to SEO. We’re talking about formatting such as bold and italics, short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and subheadings.
Knowing when and where to divide up content to keep it interesting, provide information to the reader, and allowing those who skim to still extract value is an important skill for an SEO writer.
A general content writer may eventually be able to adapt to the format, but it is very much a learned skill.
The content must be brief. Have you ever noticed how dense a typical blog post is? In many cases, you could condense it to an outline and still have 75% of the original.
There is rarely room for fluff or even expanded reasoning, and it can be difficult to insert your own writing voice into that type of writing.
A general content writer is free to include as much fluff as they want because the only authority to whom they are accountable is whoever publishes and edits their content.
Keywords should be used in the content. Keywords are the foundation of how Google analyzes and indexes content to make it visible in search results.
Without the proper use of keywords, your content is less likely to be found, which means the SEO writer isn’t doing their job.
Every post you write should ideally include some search queries. Consider what someone would have to type into Google to find my post, and what they would learn.
Continuous Learning
Unlike writers in other fields, SEO writers must stay on top of new Google updates. They have a constant learning curve with ever-changing algorithms that can make or break your site’s ranking potential quickly and efficiently without warning!
Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. Sometimes the changes are minor; something that does not necessitate any action on the part of the writer or site owner, something that affects only a small number of out-of-the-way foreign queries, and so on.
Sometimes Google’s changes affect a large number of sites, but not in a way that a content writer should be concerned about, such as their mobile-first updates.
Can an SEO writer help you with your content?
The answer will vary depending on a variety of factors. If your company has limited resources and only one person who can work with search engines then it may be best for them not to get into writing the content themselves but instead rely upon other sources like blog posts or press releases instead.
However, if there are multiple people in-house that have access to these tools as well as the time available over deadlines then maybe hiring someone full-time would make sense (especially considering most businesses don’t want their workers hired solely based on skillset).
Now you know a little bit more about what it takes to have a successful blog. It’s not all just writing posts and hoping for the best – there is some strategy and effort that needs to go into it if you want your blog to be seen by as many people as possible. Luckily, our team at PINGHOWE can help with all of those things!
We have experienced writers who will guide you through content strategy, keyword research, and designing informative graphics. Plus, we optimize everything for search engines so that visitors find what they need on page one. Contact us today to get started!
