When it comes to books, non-fiction is my thing. So much so that I am now writing a second blog post about it. In the first post I shared lessons from non-fiction that apply to copywriting. This time around, I’m expanding those lessons to the topic of search engine optimization (SEO).
In a nutshell, my four points were: write what you love, how you write is as important as what you write, show your work, and craft a title that motivates people to click, not scroll by.
Here’s how those four points pertain to SEO, specifically for blog posts and other long-form or cornerstone content.
Write what you love.
You are running a business and, as such, need to use your written output to attract an audience interested in what you have on offer.
While you focus on keywords and copy that will draw people to your site, you should also keep another idea in mind: balancing the standard stuff about products and services with related but more narrative or personal content; the kind of thing that provides value to visitors while also showing who you are and what you feel passionate about.
This kind of niche content is fun to write and fosters connection with your audience, but also aligns with the SEO concept of long-tail keywords. These are the ultra-specific words or terms that won’t necessarily reach a broad audience but will attract an interested audience, which may have more value in the end.
Maybe you’re an optometrist who loves sharing with patients the importance of nutrition in maintaining eye health, or an interior designer fascinated by the psychology of colour. Including such topics on your site can inspire people with similar interests to visit your site, learn about your business and, just maybe, choose you over a competitor.
How you write is as important as what you write.
In my previous post I talked about knowing your audience and writing in a way that speaks to them. This notion of how you write corresponds to the SEO concept of readability.
The good folks at Yoast include a readability analysis in their SEO assessment tool and offer a detailed explanation of how it works on their website. As they see it, readability is not about oversimplifying content, but increasing accessibility and comprehension. The level of language is one factor, but so is structure i.e. the use of subheadings, paragraph and sentence length, and the presence of transition words and active voice.
Another important point from Yoast: it’s not just people reading your site. Google, Alexa and Siri are all crawling your site, so having text that is easy to scan and read is important. And anything that improves readability will help search engine rankings.
Show your work.
Including a list of sources you cited or providing clickable credits to videos and photos is not only the right thing to do, it also gives you outbound links which is good for SEO.
Again I defer to the people at Yoast to explain why: links to trustworthy sources show your expertise and authority while also indicating to search engines that you are “using the right information to create content.” (Kind of like I just did here.)
Craft a good title.
The SEO implications here are probably obvious but the title of a blog post can–and should–contain keywords pertaining to the content of the article and, by extension, your business. And using a little creativity in your titles will draw attention and motivate people to click to learn more.
For example, let’s look at the topic of optometry and nutrition I mentioned above. A post on that subject could be called “Good Foods for Eye Health” which would be accurate, but not terribly inspiring.
Better titles might be: “Top 5 Foods You Can Eat for Optimal Eye Health” or “The Antioxidants You Need for Eye Health & Where to Get Them.” (Or this title from a recent post of mine “Kale Is Great for Eye Health–Here’s How to Make It Go Down Easy.”)
Which one would you be more likely to click on?
“Card Catalog” by Phanatic is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.