Here comes the girl you like. Disguise!. Look at her, but don’t let her see you! Look interesting, but don’t let her see you. Tune in but keep it natural. Squint like there’s a foggy day in London. That winning look.        

BUT DON´T LET HER SEE YOU! Do you know what this ends in? Disaster. Why? Because you’re suffering from clumsy syndrome.

Don’t laugh, it’s very serious. It’s a very common disorder in which there is a disconnection between your mind and body. You could say there’s a neural blackout. You want to do one thing but your body does another. You imagine yourself as a real hunk but from the outside you look like you’re having a stroke with those weird faces you put.

This syndrome is also associated with writing. You think you’ve written the best article of your career until Google, it’s always Google, tells you not to leave SEO to your six-year-old nephew again.

Before you give up and put your promising SEO career on the back burner, give me a second. We’re here to help and give you tips on how to write SEO content that will make Google proud of you. Read on and discover the answer to your prayers. You clumsy.

What is SEO?

By now we understand that you know what you came here for and that you are clear about what you are looking for. However, it never hurts to remember what we are talking about.

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation” and refers to the set of practices that aim to increase the visibility and improve the positioning of your company on the internet through search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. A good SEO strategy is key to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website, whether it is through a blog post, a landing page or the home page of your website.

Writing for SEO covers much more than these search engines. First of all, we can´t lose sight of the fact that, above all, you are writing for people. It is true that it is a robot that indexes and positions it, but the final customer of that content is a human being. Write for the human, without forgetting the robot and not the other way around.

SEO activity is more than keeping the Google robot happy with pleasant writing. You must identify which keywords are most relevant and have the highest search volume. Your content must be of quality and useful to both your customers and the search engine. Including links is always a good thing. And the list goes on and on.

A key aspect to understand the balance your content should have is the SERP. On the first page we find high quality content, related to your search and optimised. But also, the sites that appear after your search usually have similar titles. Google is happy. The next step is to keep users happy, so the meta description strives to be a short and concise text that attracts you and makes you click. Balance between a happy Google and a happy user.

Keeping the search engines in sight

When we talk about search engines, we all understand that we are talking about Google. It is true that it is not the only one, but when you have 90% of the market, there is every reason to believe that you have the upper hand.

Something similar happens with content writing; it is not the only SEO factor but it is the one that has the most weight. You must plan well what you want to say and how you are going to say it. Copywriting, or SEO copywriting, is much more than just writing in general, and that’s it.

Because you can be a phenomenon at writing, you can write the best love letters ever, but you won’t even be able to make your audience fall in love with you without SEO because without SEO you won’t rank, and if you don’t rank, nobody will read you.

Back to the concept of balance. The fine thread of SEO content on which you move hangs between art and science. It’s like selling a car to a father and son. You need both of them to fall in love. One just wants to hear how cool the car is and how much he’ll flirt with it while the other just wants to hear how safe it is and how fuel efficient it is. Make them both happy, and you’ll sell the car. The better you do, the happier they will be, the more cars you will sell, and the more they will visit you.

To attract the eyes of the search engines and be good enough to rank high enough, you need to consider a few factors that are essential;

-Attractive, quality content. It must be useful and just what your users need.

-After your research, the keywords must appear a lot, but without overdoing it because then you will be penalised, and everything that goes up, will go down.

-The keyword should appear in the title tag. We will talk about the wonderful world of titles and headlines later on.

-Loading speed is very important. Even if your blog or website is the most beautiful in the world, if it takes too long to load, no one will see it. We’re so impatient that if it takes more than three seconds to load, we’re out of there. We call this a bounce. If there are a lot of bounces, Google will penalise you and you will start to drop positions in the SERP.

-In the meta description it is also advisable to use a keyword or secondary word, although here too the attractiveness of a text that makes you want to click on it is more important. Use between 155 to 160 characters.

-Photos are not just images. Give your photos a title because this text also counts and must be optimised. Everything counts, and step by step any of these details can be what makes you stand out from your competition and appear before them in the SERP.

-In addition, Google gives preference to certain key phrases over others, especially long tail ones.

Let SEO be with you and help you

Don’t think of SEO as something negative, something that can weigh you down and clip your creative wings. Far from it. It’s true that it makes it more interesting but it shouldn’t restrict you, in fact, it should be used to your advantage.

Never lose the point with keywords. I’m not just saying that. Think of these keywords as the KEY to your search. They are the key that connects you with your users. For this reason, you need to make a study of which ones are the most used, the current trends and which ones will be used the most. Look for the right flow of searches. And again, find your balance. The more search volume there is, the more competition you will have.

Think of a river and its tributaries. The river is the primary search, that of all your competitors. And the tributaries are secondary searches that, even with less volume, also bring in traffic. If your company sells tyres, keywords like tyres, wheels or puncture will be very popular.    

Don’t just advertise on your blog, create content for the affluent. Talk about “How to change a tyre easily”, “How often should we change tyres”, “When and why do tyres crystallise” or “Most used tyre brands by country”.  

The number of searches may be lower, but you also have less competition to deal with. You create useful, quality content that also contains the keywords we know our customer base uses.

Attractive headlines, for you and for SEO

The headline is the cover letter of your blog post or article. Again, it’s a balancing act. You have to use the keyword, be attractive but not sound spammy. The part of being attractive is fundamental because those few seconds will make the eyes of the users to focus on you or pass you by.

There are some tips, if we focus on the psychological part, that can make your users feel attracted to that succulent headline you have created.

–From Tesco to Santa Claus, we love lists. Title your article as if it were a list, and we’ll instinctively take notice. If you list them, especially if they are odd numbers, success is almost guaranteed; “The 7 steps to complete happiness”, “The 5 best exercises to lose weight”.

-Talk to your audience, address them directly. They read you and listen to you; “Listen to these songs and improve your health”.    

-A question awakes our interest; “How can your dog help you with your tax return?”    

-Be cheeky and use reverse psychology; “This article is not for you”, “Don’t read this if you want to succeed” We love to push back.

-Try to keep your headline under 72 characters. This way it will appear in full in the SERP.

SEO for the move

When you write, remember everything you need to include. One of the important factors is length. If you want to accommodate everything you need to use; keywords, secondary keywords, long tail, you need a large length. If your content is small and you fill it with everything we have mentioned, Google’s algorithm will think it is spam, you have made a mess where the content is not interesting enough, and it will penalise you.

The content, in addition to quality and useful, must match the search intention of our user and be well written if we want it to appear on the first page of Google. Remember that you write for humans, so do you know your humans?

You have to understand your audience. You must know who they are and how they behave. This information is basic to understanding how they write and how they search for you. The way you think about your business may not be the way your audience thinks about you. Recall the example above about tyres – does your audience say tyre, rubber or wheel?

If you are there to clarify doubts, look at how they ask so you know how to answer. The answer should be a solution to their problems, not create more. Speak their language, use their words. Rethink whether your customers speak your jargon, whether your business has it, whether you need to use it or not.

Another aspect that adds up in the eyes of the algorithm is internal links. This is when you link to a blog or page from another blog or page on your own website. Google understands how your content is connected and considers the information to be trustworthy.

However, if you want to add a little extra, the pinnacle of linking is backlinking. This is when other websites link to your content. Google starts to see you as an authority on the subject when others reference you. Of course, backlinks are an effective and fast way to get more quality traffic.

Remember that little gateway to your article; the meta description. Those two sentences that convince users from the SERP that your content is the most attractive and offers just what they need. Deploy all your science there to start receiving quality traffic.

Your content is a living thing. Everything is in constant movement and you must not lose track of what users are looking for. Fashions and trends change and if you want your content to stay on top, you need to make variations so that what doesn’t work, starts and what does work, keeps doing so for a long time.