80% of the knowledge comes from 3 steps
I’ve met a lot of people who work as SEOs in my time. And every single one of them loves one thing.
Nitty gritty details.
They’ll spend hours discussing the right schema, URL structure, and the merits of tiered link building.
But for us writers, we don’t need that nonsense.
We aren’t trying to figure out how Pinterest can best SEO to grow its business. We want to write words on the internet and make money doing it.
So, without further ado, here is the quick and dirty SEO guide for writers.
How to use SEO to make money
Search engine optimization is the fine art of getting articles you publish to appear in Google searches.
And there are two ways you can use this to make money.
1. Use SEO to build an audience.
You can use SEO to magically appear in front of your audience. They are out there searching for answers to their problems, and you can be there to give them those answers.
For example, I wrote this article on different Scottish History podcasts to get listeners to my own podcast. It’s been viewed thousands of times sending new listeners to my show every week.
2. Use SEO to promote products
The second method is to use SEO to direct people to your products for sale, or you use affiliate links to promote other people’s products.
I used to run a blog about mattresses and bedding that, by leveraging SEO, brought in over $250,000 in commission from affiliate links.
You do this by ranking for key phrases like “best litter box for cats” or “the cosy cat 4000 review”. But we’ll get to keyword research later in the article.
How Google picks what to rank
Simple in principle. Difficult in practice.
SEO is getting search traffic from all the search engines. (I still make money from a site that ranks in Bing lol)
But 90% of search traffic comes through Google, and if you can master Google the rest follow.
SEOs will wax lyrical about how Google has 200 ranking factors and looks at everything to decide what to rank. They’ll tell you that your h6 headers are important, as is the fact that you once clicked a spam email ten years ago.
But Google looks at three things:
- How relevant is the content
- How trustworthy is the source
- How many good backlinks the ranking site has
“If you write good enough content. You can always rank!” Wrong.
You need to be publishing that content somewhere that Google has deemed worthy. And they deem that by looking at how many backlinks you have from trustworthy sites across the internet.
And how do you published on a powerful website? Well you can cheat by publishing content on already powerful sites like Medium.com or by committing to building backlinks to your website over time. Getting by lines in online magazines is a solid strategy for writers looking to build backlinks.
The content itself then needs to adequately answer the question the user asked (we’ll get to that), and the site it’s published on has to look and feel trustworthy. I.e., it must be willing to show that there are real people running it with about pages and contact details.
How to find keywords
So what do you write?
Well you need to do keyword research. That is finding out what people are searching that you can then answer with your articles.
There are a bunch of tools to do it but my favourite (because they’re cheapest) is Keywords Everywhere. It gives you search volumes and keywords suggestions right on the Google screen.
You can then start typing in different questions you think your audience might have and finding the search volume.
The search volume is how many people are searching, and as a rule, about half of those top searches go to the number one spot on the Google page. (which is called the SERP – Search Engine Results Page – if you want to be down with the kids and use the proper lingo)
How to create content that ranks
Next you have to create your own piece of content to add to the fold. This involves a two step strategy.
- Match and exceed
- Write “relevant” content
Step 1. You take what is already on the page, replicate it with all the common headings, and then add to it.
Here’s how I’d start organising an article on the best writing groups to promote my own writing group – which you can see here if you’d like. Here’s how I’d start:
- Note the headings from each piece of content on page 1 in a spreadsheet.
- Take the most common headings and use them in your outline.
- Combine the headings some people have mentioned that seem the most relevant.
- Add your own headings and opinions to the outline as well.
That way, you have matched what’s already there while adding to the conversation.
2. Now, Google looks at relevance in a bunch of ways, but the most common is what words get used on the page. These “semantic keywords” build up a picture of what the article is talking about.
So a page on how to do 100 push-ups will mention words like exercise, press-ups, core strength, arm strength, and that kind of thing.
But how do you know what words?
Well, we have a handy dandy tool for this!
Actually we have a bunch of tools available but my favourite without a doubt is Surfer SEO.
It shows you all the keywords you might want to include and how often you should include them.
It also suggests word counts and such but I tend to ignore that and just focus on the semantic words.
Combine those two, and you will have a piece of content ready to rank.
Where to publish this content
I do pretty much all my publishing on a personal website. That way I have full control over the visitors to the site and don’t run the risk of anyone tampering with it.
I can show popups, embeds, banners, all the things that help you sell. Check out Kieranmacrae.com to see what I mean.
You can also publish on a third-party site like Medium to take advantage of its domain power, as I did with my podcasting article. The choice is yours.
SEO is Tool
Building a business solely on SEO is like sitting on a one legged stool. Only it’s someone else who controls how stable the leg is. And I can tell you that when Google releases an update, yanks your own stool leg away, and you are flat on your ass, it doesn’t feel good.
But as a tool it can be a useful one to help you build an audience and earn more money.
Lastly
This is 80% of the knowledge you need to succeed in SEO as a writer.
And you have a leg up that SEO’s don’t. You can write excellent content.
And if I had to pick whether to master SEO or writing, it would be writing every day of the week.
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions
Click here to get my free SEO checklist, which I use to rank better in Google.
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