2 Secrets of Professional SEO Article Writers

1. Get your keyword research on. If you’re going to post content on your site anyway, you might as well take the time to make sure Google takes notice of your effort.

Find out which keywords and phrases people are searching for (as well as what you can be competitive in), and make yourself a keyword spreadsheet. Keep track of how many times you work the keywords into your content, and use the right tools to track where you rank for the keywords you target (SEMrush is our favorite). Don’t know where to get started? Check out our comprehensive guide to keyword research for SEO.

2. Put the keywords to work. Once upon a time, being an SEO content writer just meant dumping keywords into your copy — but that’s not how the game is played anymore. While it’s still a good idea to include your target keyword throughout your article, peppering your copy with forced keywords won’t really move the dial much (and often, it’ll hurt it).As is the case with any bit of SEO strategy, you’ve got to be tactical.

Include your keyword in the title, in the first 300 words, and in the first H1 or H2 (though, it should be noted that it isn’t necessary to hit both — just make sure you have it in one of them). After that, you should be trying to use variations of your keyword.

As an added note, it should never be a struggle to fit your keyword in your copy. Ideally, your keyword should feel natural in your writing — if you feel like you’re starting to write jibberish, you’ve gone too far.