Today's post is one that I LOVE to teach other bloggers: how to write outstanding content that both your readers and Google will love in 2022 and beyond.
You want to create great content for your readers so that you’re providing value and helping people.
But you also want to write blog articles that Google will love so that it rewards you with high rankings.
Once your content starts ranking on Google, you can attract free organic traffic to your blog month after month.
So what should you keep in mind when writing your blog posts?
6 Steps to Follow to Write for Google in 2022
Here are the main six things to consider while writing content for Google and your readers:
- Start with keyword research
- Prioritize certain types of posts
- Scope out the competition
- Create an outline
- Take a deep dive
- Set a title, slug, and meta-description
Let's go over each in some more detail.
1. Start with keyword research
When you’re starting a blogging business, I don’t recommend writing about whatever you feel like writing about.
Instead, you need a strategy for your content. And that strategy comes from keyword research.
Keywords are words and phrases that people type into a search engine (mainly Google) looking for advice and answers.
There are lots of great tools for finding those keywords. One free tool I recommend starting with is UberSuggest.
With UberSuggest, you can type in keywords (up to three per day on the free plan) and see monthly volume (how many people are searching it per month) and a competition score between 0 and 100 (low score is easier to rank for, a higher score is competitive).
You can also enter the URL of a competitor blog to see what keywords it’s ranking for, which can be helpful to know as you’re figuring out which keywords to pursue.
I recommend looking for "longtail keywords" (ones that have 3-4 words or more) with a relatively high monthly volume — say, 1,000 or more — and low competition score -- like 40 or less.
Once you’ve identified your primary keyword, you can shape your article around that.
2. Prioritize certain types of posts
There are tons of keywords out there, so where should you start?
Well, to maximize your potential for making affiliate revenue, it’s a good idea to start with the types of posts that make money.
These are posts where people are looking for a recommendation for a service or product.
In marketing speak, these are keywords for which users have “transactional intent” — they’re looking to make a purchase.
The keywords that tend to have transactional intent are,
“Best of” posts, where you recommend the best products or services
Reviews, where you review a product or service
Comparison reviews, where you compare two or more products or services
So let’s say you’ve started a review blog, and you signed up for the Associates program to promote products.
One example of a "best of" post could be "The best ai copywriting tools."
A review could be of a specific product, like the "Jasper AI Review."
And a comparison article could compare two copywriting tools, like "Jarvis AI vs. Rytr AI: Which Is Better?"
These are great article types to write (if they have decent keyword volume), since they start to establish you as an expert and could help your blog make money.
However, you can also write informational posts, such as “How to” guides or “Ultimate Guide to [X].”
These will also provide value to your reader and help establish you as an expert in your niche.
3. Scope out the competition
Once you’ve identified your primary keyword, I want you to take a step that not a lot of bloggers talk about — but it’s so important.
Remember how I said SEO was a competitive sport?
Well, to beat out the competition and write an article that could rank well on Google, you need to scope out what the competition is doing.
Simply search for your keyword in google (in incognito mode so your search history doesn’t impact your results) and open up the 10 articles ranking on the first page.
I know this is a little tedious, but it’s an important part of writing for Google.
Check out these articles, paying special attention to how they’re organized and how long they are.
Use a critical eye to evaluate their pros and cons, and think about how you can write an article that’s even more helpful, accessible, informative, interesting, and unique.
While you definitely don’t want to copy your competitors, you do want to see what they’re doing well and where they’re falling short so you can write something even better.
Note that it’s always a good idea to get any information or data from the original source since blog posts can have outdated or inaccurate information.
4. Create an amazing content outline
Once you’ve scoped out the competition and done some research of your own, it’s time to create an outline.
Starting with an outline will help you organize your ideas.
Try to provide an answer to your reader right off the bat. Then jump into your list or first point.
In blog posts, you want to use headers to organize your ideas and make your post skimmable.
Your H1 will be your blog title, but then you can use H2s, H3s, and even H4s in your post in a sort of hierarchy of ideas.
For example, if I were writing about the best strollers for twins, my H1 would be my article title.
My first H2 would be “7 Best Strollers for Twins."
And then I’d list 5 or more H3s underneath with the name of each stroller and a description of why it made the list.
Not only do headers make your blog post easier to read, but it helps Google understand what your blog post is about.
5. Take a deep dive
These days, short blog posts of only about 500 words aren’t going to cut it when it comes to ranking on Google.
To give yourself a fighting chance, aim to write about 2,000 words or more.
Refer back to your competition analysis to see what others are doing.
If all the top-ranking articles are 4,000 words, you probably need to write something of equivalent or longer length.
You don’t want to go out of scope and start rambling around unrelated topics, but you do want to take a deep dive into your topic and answer all your readers’ questions.
To give one example, I recently wrote this post on how to make money blogging.
I noticed that a lot of the top-ranking articles included an FAQ in their posts, so I added one, too.
This helped me answer all my readers’ questions and make my post even longer and more comprehensive.
6. Set a title, slug, and meta-description
Once you’ve got your article all nice and formatted in WordPress, there are a few final steps to take before publishing it.
For one, you’ll set a title for your post. Include your primary keyword here or at least a close variation of it.
You also want to set your primary keyword as your slug or blog post URL.
So if your blog is parentingtips.com, your post targeting the keyword “best strollers for twins” would be parentingtips.com/beststrollersfortwins.
This is just another useful indication to Google of what your blog post is about.
Finally, set a meta-description using the Yoast plugin that we talked about.
This meta-description will usually be what shows up under your post title in Google search results, and it’s another indication to Google of what your post is about.
Use your primary keyword here, too!
For instance, on the best strollers article, a meta-description could be something like,
Are you searching for the best strollers for twins? I’ve collected and reviewed the 11 best strollers, along with their pros, cons, and price points.
The Yoast plugin will also give your post an SEO and readability score. Try to get both to turn green before you hit publish.
If they are orange or red, look at the Yoast plugin’s recommendations for how to improve your score.
Finally, you can set up categories for your blog posts. Again, this site organization is one more way to boost your SEO and help Google understand your posts.
Final thoughts on SEO Content Writing Post
I know that some bloggers feel like keyword research stifles their creativity, but think of it this way...
By doing keyword research, you know what problems your readers have and can be the ones to solve them.
You’ll write posts that people are actively searching for. Without targeting a keyword, it’s possible that no one will ever see your post.
That said, you can write articles that you’re passionate about, even without a keyword.
You might get people to see them by promoting them on social media or creating pins on Pinterest to drive traffic.
But to bring in organic search traffic, you’ll want to write keyword-driven posts.
Also, keep in mind that it can take several months to rank on Google, especially for a new blog.