Top 3 SEO Content Writing Skills You Need to Succeed

We believe that in an SEO setting, every person needs to bring one or more natural skills to a role, but there are also skills that are mastered best on the job itself.

SEO content writers are familiar with this just as well as anybody else.

If you wish to enter the digital marketing industry as a content marketer, you may be a little surprised to know that powerful writing skills are essential but not enough.

When it comes to creating search-optimized content, it takes more than just good writing chops to succeed. There are many SEO concepts that content writers should be well-acquainted with if they plan to do their job nicely by creating content that ranks well for their clients or company.

In this blog, we will look at the top three skills every SEO content writer must have if they wish to succeed in this industry.

1. Having Diverse Writing Skills

This one shouldn’t be that surprising. The first essential skill every SEO content writer must have is being able to master various writing styles.

When a content writer joins a company, there are good chances that their job responsibility will include creating content for all types of clients.

Employees working with a digital marketing agency are well aware that a content writer can start the day writing content for a beauty brand and end the day with a blog article for a funeral home.

While the content itself will be different for every client, what ‘really’ matters is the tone.

Readers cannot distinguish the tone from words themselves, but they can do so from the sound of the words when put together.

For instance, the beauty brand requires fun and lighthearted content, while the funeral home needs writing that follows a compassionate, simple, and serious tone.

A skilled content writer not only naturally knows what tone they should use and when, but they are also aware of how to use that tone in a way that engages the readers well.

While we are on the subject of engagement, the next skill is also utterly essential for any SEO content writer who wants to hit the big time.

2. Understanding of Searcher Intent

The content writers that digital marketing companies hire don’t have to be exemplary masters in SEO in order to get successful in their jobs.

However, there is a way of writing content that perfectly goes in line with SEO in general, and that is understanding the search intent.

If SEO content writers want to make their work engaging for the readers, they’ll require more than just professional writing chops.

In order to be engaging, writers need to produce content that online readers are genuinely interested in reading instead of merely throwing topics at the wall and seeing if it sticks.

All SEO practitioners and other industry experts are now familiar with the different tools content writers utilize to find out what users are searching for on the web currently.

Knowing these tools is not the challenging part – it is using the data they give to build better content for the audience.

Once a content marketer becomes proficient in navigating the topic-generation features of such tools, it’s on him/her to convert those topics into lightning-rod content that honestly answers the questions the readers might have in mind.

These are the four main types of search intent content writers should bear in mind while writing:

• Informational: When the readers want to know something
• Transactional: When the readers want to purchase something
• Navigational: When the readers want to visit a particular web page or website
• Commercial investigation: When the readers are researching products/services they want to buy

Creating content for the different search intents calls for different approaches from the writer.

Simultaneously, every content piece is still meant to guide the readers toward buying what the client is offering.

For example, an information piece of content could be a list post of the 15 most delicious dishes from around the world that you must try.

Now in each point, the content writer can smoothly link to a product the client offers. Maybe the client owns a restaurant where the readers can go to try them out.

On the other hand, generating content for an eCommerce site would require a transactional content piece that is a little more direct about persuading the readers to purchase a product.

In addition to this, writers know that every type of content written for a specific context will use different keywords.

Based on your digital marketing agency’s setup, the content writers might be responsible for conducting this keyword research, or they can just get it done from the SEO specialists.

Nevertheless, in both cases, having the expertise to use the right keywords at the right places must be part of an SEO content writer’s toolkit.

For instance, an informational search phrase could be something like “top car brands,” whereas a transactional search term might be “cars for sale online.”

A skilled content writer will know how to incorporate these search terms within their writing naturally so that it answers what the readers want to find.

3. Creating Content for Topics Over Keywords

The third essential skill every competent SEO content writer must have is the ability to produce content for topics over keywords.

In case the writer is just getting started with SEO content marketing, they need to know the history of keywords in SEO.

Gone are the days when people wrote content for keywords because back then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Google gave more importance to keywords.

In fact, people began using black hat SEO tactics to stuff keywords into their content forcefully.

However, since all this contributes to poor user experiences, doing so today will earn you a penalty.

Things have changed now. In order to get their content to rank well in the SERPs, SEO content writers need to focus on writing for topics over keywords.

Sure, keywords have their own crucial place, but if you focus too much on shoehorning them in your content piece, it won’t read well to the people, and in turn, Google (or any other search engine) won’t rank it well in the search results.

Therefore, content writers must give their best to make their content piece authentic and relevant to the initial search query.

They need to focus on providing the most accurate answer to the readers’ actual question in as much detail as possible.

Writers can also go through the search results pages to see what type of content is ranking already and then think about making their content even better to help it acquire the #1 ranking position.

Wrapping It Up

There’s nothing more worth appreciating than when a professional writer, who perhaps had no knowledge about SEO formerly, wants to break into the SEO industry.

However, we can’t downplay the fact that to make it big as a professional SEO content writer, it takes potent writing skills. But if you focus on polishing your skillset from the very beginning of your journey towards becoming an SEO content writer, you’ll already be ahead in your game.

Now that you know the three most crucial skills you need to have to become a successful SEO content writer, you can set out to learn and master them.

Happy writing!