SEO writing in 2022: The Complete Guide (Updated)

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SEO knowledge is necessary for every writer to have in order to get their content ranking higher on google and increase organic traffic. If you are looking to improve your SEO writing in 2022, we have everything you need to become an expert in no time!

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Everything You Need to Know to Be Great at SEO Writing in 2022

When writing with SEO in mind, what are the three most important things to look out for? The following is needed to ensure you always have amazing SEO content:

  • SEO Keywords
  • Meta Tags
  • Easy to Read Text

With that taken into account let’s get started with learning all about SEO, and how to become a great SEO writer.

What Is SEO Writing in 2022?

In short, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of ensuring a website ranks high on search engines, so that the most amount of people can see it. But how do you rank higher? Ultimately, the search engines decide which sites to rank higher. Read below as we cover all the main things that search engines look for when deciding who to rank the best.

Content Research

Before you get SEO writing, the first thing to do is research. 

Think about the website you are writing SEO content for. What are their products/services? Who’s their target audience?

Conducting a large amount of research beforehand is essential to ensure that you not only reach the intended audience but that you will also achieve a high ranking on search engines.

SEO Writing Keywords

One of the first things to think about when writing for SEO is including keywords.  

SEO keywords are the specific keywords that searchers use to find your website. So, finding the keywords that your audience is most likely to search for is key for SEO writing in 2022. 

Short-Tail and Long Tail

When finding keywords, there are two types of keywords that you may have come across.

The first is short-tail keywords. These keywords are very short, not normally longer than three or four words. These are the words that the majority of people will search for when looking for a website or information.

Long-tail on the other hand is where the keywords are much longer and much more specific. These are searched for much less, however, they often receive a higher click-through rate than short-tail due to them being more specific.

Alternative Keywords

So now you’ve decided on which keyword to use for your page, it doesn’t stop there. The next step would be to look for alternative keywords about the same topic. This will greatly help with rankings as you will reach a larger percentage of your audience with more related keywords.

How Many Keywords Should Be Used?

The number of keywords will vary depending on the length of your content. The main thing to worry about is placing lots of keywords in the text without it sounding too forced. If the keywords are placed too many times, this can count as keyword stuffing which can rank your website lower.

To overcome this, the best thing is to use an SEO tool to help you. These tools will judge the keyword content, and let you know if you’ve used the keywords too much, or haven’t used them enough.

Where Should Keywords Be Placed?

Keywords should always be placed in the following:

  • In the title
  • Throughout the webpage
  • In the meta tag
  • Images alt text

However, although keywords are great for SEO, the most important thing is making sure the content reads well and is informative. 

Titles 

As already mentioned earlier, title tags should always have a keyword to help with SEO. But that’s not all. An engaging and informative title helps bring more visitors to your page, which increases clicks.

A recent study that looked at the different types of titles found the following:

  • Including numbers in the title was more preferred than any other title due to the specificity.
  • Titles that directly addressed the reader came 2nd.
  • ‘How to’ titles were the 3rd most preferred title by readers.

With this in mind, creating a title that engages readers is key for getting more searchers to click on your page. 

Meta Descriptions

Although the term ‘meta tags’ may not sound familiar to you, you are sure to have seen them before when surfing the web.

They are short sentence-long descriptions of a site. It is often seen directly below the link in a google search, explaining exactly what the webpage is. Although this description doesn’t actually appear on the webpage, it is embedded in the code of the page, giving google information about a website, and how it should be ranked. 

When writing for SEO, it is always a good idea to include a keyword in the meta description and write a compelling description for increasing your chances of visitors clicking on your page.

Mobile-Friendly Webpages 

Another thing that you need to optimize on your site to improve SEO is making mobile-friendly pages. 

Google recently announced that they were implementing mobile-first indexing on every website. This means that if a website is not optimized for mobile use, it will not be ranked as high as mobile-optimized websites. 

As mobiles are always increasing in popularity, and with more searches coming from mobile than desktop, ensuring webpages are optimized for mobile use is of the highest importance. 

Check and see how the content looks on mobile sites, and change it accordingly to ensure it is mobile-friendly. 

As well as this, it’s also a good idea to make sure the mobile site is indexed on the Google search console.

Your URLs

Having URLs that are Google-friendly is a surefire way to stay SEO optimized. On average, the more concise the URL is, the higher up in the rankings it goes. The hard and fast rule for optimized URLs is making sure it is below 110 characters.

Whilst you should take this into consideration, you also need to remember to put the keyword in the URL to further SEO-optimize your site.

To those unaware of what internal links are, they are links to other pages on your website. 

Internal links are perfect for SEO for two reasons.

  1. They help viewers on your site by giving them more content to look at.
  2. Google looks at how many people link to your website (even if it’s just internal links) and ranks you accordingly.

Outbound links are also shown to improve your search engine ranking. By including high authority outbound links, it shows that the page is a high authority itself and gives Google more reason to trust your site.

As well as this, Google wants to ensure that the content their searchers find is informative and all-encompassing. Having content that links to a range of different sites will show google that it contains everything a searcher will need on a certain topic. 

Easy to Read Content

One thing that increases rankings is how long visitors stay on a page. If these visitors read the content and find it informative and engaging, they are much more likely to stay on the page. They might even check out some other pages on your website!

So how do you make your content readable? 

Shorter Sentences and Simpler Words

One thing to improve this is by writing in shorter sentences. Shorter sentences are much easier to read than long-winded sentences. 

Simpler words are also great for improving readability. Viewers don’t want to have to open a dictionary every time they read an article, as this may put them off due to thinking the article is above their reading comprehension level.

Conversational or Formal

One other way to create easy-to-read content is to write in a conversational manner. This is especially true when writing blog posts. A conversational tone feels genuine and human, helping the reader enjoy it much more than if it was formal and unemotional. 

However, you also need to think about what you are writing for. With a blog, using a conversational manner is a great idea to get your message across. However, when it comes to writing a legal page, or other website pages, using formal writing would be more suitable.

Paragraphs and Fonts

Another thing that is often not talked about when writing easy-to-read content is fonts. The type and size of the font on the page will directly impact how easy the page is to read. If it is too small, or in an unreadable font, your viewers will either be unable to read it or annoyed at the font and click off, increasing your bounce rate.

Paragraphs are also important. Always having paragraphs no longer than five lines will increase the enjoyment of your webpage. No one wants to read walls and walls of text!

Images and Formatting

Formatting is another thing that needs to be thought about when writing in an easy-to-read manner. Not only does formatting increase the enjoyment of the text and make it easy to read, but it is also great for SEO. 

Rather than having one title and then paragraphs, it is usually a good idea to split it up with subheadings. This will ensure that the viewer can read the content easily, and get to the part they want to straight away by reading the subheadings. 

As well as the above, having keywords in the subheadings is a great way to keep your page SEO optimized.

And last but not least, the use of images is also something to think about. Having SEO keywords in the images ‘alt text’ will positively impact your SEO ranking. 

But having images isn’t just good for SEO. Images help make the text more lively, making it easier to read for those wanting more visual stimulation as well.

The Different Types of SEO Writing in 2022

When writing for SEO, there’s a range of different types of content you will need to create. Take a look below at the different types of SEO writing and the tips for creating great SEO content.

Blog SEO Writing in 2022

One type of SEO writing is blogs. This is very popular when SEO writing is concerned and has many benefits. 

One such benefit to blogs is that by answering often asked questions, these blogs can be jumped up to the top of the ranking, which a large number of searchers can see.

Featured Snippets

Snippets? What are snippets? 

I’m sure some of you are unaware of what a snippet is, or are just confused by the term. To put it in simple terms, snippets are a brief answer to a question asked on google, often seen on ‘position 0’ (the top ranking). 

However, getting to position 0 and having a featured snippet is no easy task. The best way to do this is by having a paragraph near the start of the post where the question is answered concisely. Google measures this, as well as a range of other things, like domain authority to determine who should get the illustrious featured snippet.

Evergreen Content 

When publishing new blogs, try and ensure that the content you’re posting is about topics that will remain relevant for a long time. Topical content is more likely to not rank well for long due to the lack of longevity and the fact that it may not become as relevant in the next two to three years. 

This is known as evergreen content. Evergreen content will give you a steady supply of clicks long after posting the blog.

Update, Update, Update

Another thing to think about when posting blogs is keeping them updated. Many believe that the only way they can improve their SEO ranking is by constantly creating more content. However, this isn’t always the case. 

You may find an old blog post that you had written ages ago is still relevant today, yet has dropped down in the rankings. Simply updating the content, including a few extra paragraphs of the latest developments to make it more relevant, will boost the post up in the rankings.

Updating blog posts often shoots up in rankings much quicker than if you had created a brand new blog post. This is because Google already knew about and trusted the blog post from beforehand. They would be much happier to boost it up as they will have to do fewer checks than a brand new blog post. 

One more thing on updating blog posts. It’s often a good idea to periodically check your blog posts for any content which might be irrelevant to your target audience. If you find any, it’s best to remove it and replace it with relevant content more suited to your audience.  

Landing Page SEO Writing in 2022

Having SEO-friendly landing pages is of the utmost importance when it comes to promoting your website and converting new clients. 

Improving page speed, making it mobile-friendly, and choosing the right keywords are all key for writing an SEO-friendly landing page that helps drum up support for your marketing campaign.  

Take a look at this article for finding more about making landing pages with SEO in mind to get a better understanding of the topic. 

Product Descriptions SEO Writing in 2022

In the ultra-competitive world of e-commerce, standing out can be a struggle. However, writing SEO product descriptions can make you stand out from the crowd. 

But how do you optimize product descriptions?

Although product descriptions are usually much smaller than the average blog post, researching and including keywords are still so important. This ensures that the page is optimized for SEO.

Duplicate Content

One of the reasons why many e-commerce stores fail at SEO product descriptions is because they use duplicate content. Duplicate content is never a good thing when it comes to SEO. The reason for this is that Google doesn’t know whether to include/exclude certain pages for being duplicates when indexing. 

In any event, creating unique content for each product description is of the highest importance for making it search engine friendly. 

Make It Persuasive

When it comes to product descriptions, persuasion is key. Detailing the benefits that the product will give will make it more beneficial to the customer than just detailing a list of the product features is key. 

Remember, when product descriptions are concerned, you want to keep the viewer on the page and make sales. 

SEO Writing in 2022 Done for You

So, now you have much more knowledge about writing for SEO, and what’s needed to ensure your website ranks high. However, writing for SEO can take a lot of time. 

This is where we come in. At Killer Copywriting, we can provide you with quality SEO-optimised content to ensure that your website ranks high and gets more of your target audience to your site. Whether it is blogs, landing pages, product descriptions, and more, we have you covered. 


Contact us today for more information.