Last Updated on 4 months by Christopher Jan Benitez

Being in the SEO game for a long time, you know the value that great SEO article writers bring to the table.

They help rank websites for their target keywords by observing the best on-page SEO practices on the articles they write.

Ultimately, they convert fairweather site visitors into customers with their compelling writing style.

So, if you’re:

• an aspiring writer who wants to turn his/her passion for writing into a profession
• website owner or agency looking to hire talented writers to help their business

Then you’ve come to the right place!

This post discusses the skills and discipline that the talented and most sought-after SEO article writers have.

By knowing these skills, you can build your writing business on these foundations or find a writer who meets these qualifications.

What separates good SEO article writers from the bad ones?

Before we start, this post is written by Rana Tarakji. Here’s a short bio about her:

Originally from the U.S., Rana Tarakji is an SEO analyst, the founder of One SEO – a multinational link building company -, and author of Off-Site SEO Guide: A Hands-On SEO Tutorial For Beginners & Dummies, who now lives in Beirut, Lebanon. Rana’s work has appeared in a wide range of publications in print and online, including Life Hacker, Upwork, Christian Today, Newswire, and many other outlets.

Also, I’ve edited the post and added my thoughts to make it more useful to you dear readers.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Let’s begin!

Researches for keywords strategically

One of the main factors that bring visitors to a website is when the content matches the keywords they searched on Google.

For professional SEO article writers, they never write content without a target keyword in mind.

This means they conduct adequate research prior to using keywords in their articles.

They dig deep and find out which words to best use if you want to rank for a niche.  Professional article writers in the SEO scene also learn about SEO trends and use them to their article’s advantage.

For example, people expect voice search to dominate SEO in 2019. Therefore, writers optimize their content for long tail keywords to rank for spoken (versus typed) keywords when the time comes.

Addresses user intent

The best professional SEO article writers know that behind every keyword possess an intent.

For instance, if you want to rank high for a keyword, you need to understand why users are searching for that keyword in the first place.

You can classify user intent may be classified as:

• Navigational – Do they want to learn more about the brands specific to that keyword?
• Informational – Are they looking for information about that topic?
• Transactional – Do they want to buy something that relates to the search phrase?

As you can see, for each type of intent, users have a corresponding agenda!

Professional SEO writers take the lead here by producing content that is most fit and helpful to the user intent behind your customer’s search query.

By imagining a preset persona of your target customer, they can generate articles that can offer a solution to each search query.

In turn, users get more enticed with every targeted solution your site has to offer them.

And the more users your writers attract with this intent-based strategy, the better your site’s organic traffic can become!

To learn more about intent-based keyword research, read this post at Search Engine Land.

Establishes content credibility

Creating content that matches your customer’s needs is one thing. But SEO article writers also ensure that each write-up they produce mirrors niche authority and credibility.

A mark of content credibility is its uniqueness and how insightful it is to readers. Regarding the latter, SEO writers research for information that can help back up their claims in the content.

Aside from fact-checking and source-citing, professional SEO article writers also take time to thoroughly proofread their work.

This is because they know that SEO-wise, well-written and error-free articles always attract natural links and stand a greater chance at ranking on top as opposed to those that are poorly written.

SEO article writers produce content that is readable and engaging

Professional SEO writers aim for the readability of their articles.

They are aware that engaging articles are the ones that are clear, organized, and, simple.

They lessen “fluff” and go straight to the point.

Every word and sentence on their articles are deliberate and purposeful.

That means simplifying industry jargons to help their target users understand the article.

The more logical and smooth-flowing the article, the better!

Aiming for the top (via featured snippets)

Another secret that professional SEO article writers keep is their constant goal of getting to the top of SERPs.

Your typical SEO strategy already addresses this with the usual on-page and off-page SEO campaigns. But professional SEO article writers may take a different route.

Remember the trend of voice search and the rise of search assistants (think “hey, Google”)? SEO writers aim their articles to respond to them through their articles.

So, when a user asks Google via voice search, their articles can turn up at the topmost part, also known as a featured snippet.

All they have to do is to make your site’s articles structured to a voice search-friendly format.

They do this by answering queries in a direct to the point manner. They can also make use of bullets and numbered lists so that the assistant can read the information one by one.

Finally, they fill their articles with statistics and facts to back up their content.

Maximizing content length

SEO article writers take time generating high-quality content. That also means (but is not exclusive to) lengthier content.

This hits your SEO goals in two ways.

One, it appeals to web crawlers and search engines more since longer content means a better chance to spread and utilize your target keywords.

Two, it enhances user experience. Assuming the content is comprehensive all throughout its 1,000-2000-word length, then you give more value to your site’s visitor as you offer him with more information.

Adding the right images

Professional SEO article writers know that articles are not just all about the text. They know that adding visual content like images and videos can help keep their focus.

This is because they understand that your site’s readers respond well to SEO best practices of including images within text posts.

Apart from providing a break from paragraphs, images can also help clarify the information that your articles convey.

For example, infographics and diagrams can help customers understand a complex concept that can otherwise be too wordy to elaborate.

But they do not just dump images and add an alt text tag to make it more SEO-friendly. Professional SEO writers attach images that are appropriate to the content.

When it comes to infographics, they either create one or choose a pre-made version. In any case, they include the ones that will increase your site’s organic traffic and not drive them away.

Creating catchy titles and headlines

Aside from ensuring that the title, headers, and tags of your articles contain your target keywords, professional SEO article writers make it a point to make the article titles catchy.

Titles are also a factor when you click on a search result. An article with an ambiguous and keyword-stuffed phrasing is less appealing than the one with wit and flair.

Leveraging social media

Professional writers who create content for SEO purposes use social media for SEO advantage.

Because social media feeds like that of Facebook are full of attention-grabbing content, they write posts with click-worthy headlines to gain traction to their social media followers.

They leverage the power of likes and shares to build better brand recall and recognition for your business.

They never fail to include a link of your site’s website URL on every post, so their followers can visit their site for more information about them.

Advantageous use of analytics

Aside from their content, professional SEO article writers also take their time to review the results of their content.

The information you can gather from platforms like Google Analytics contains useful SEO insights that SEO article writers can leverage.

Take for example data from bounce rate analytics.

A professional SEO article writer can infer which posts entice more users and which ones need improvement such that users stay longer in the page.

They then tweak the content of their articles to lower the bounce rate of each page and aim for more conversions.

Knowing what to avoid

Finally, what separates professional SEO article writers from others is how they keep track of which methods lead to penalties.

They don’t stuff your articles with keywords for the sake of optimizing them!

They know better than to use exact match keywords repeatedly and go for latent semantic indexing (LSI) to boost your overall SEO strategy.

They also avoid stale and old content and produce articles on a regular basis to keep their audience in the loop.

Lastly, these SEO writers know which tactics are useful and which common SEO mistakes to avoid.

Wrapping it up

These are just some of the things a capable SEO article writer can do.

Now, if you want to become one, then you need to take these tips to heart as well as their content writing advice.

Let’s face it – creating great articles are not enough in this day and age.

You need to get your articles that extra “oomph” that clients are looking for.

In this case, you need to hone your SEO skills to help your clients rank higher on SERPs.

Moreover, integrating SEO into your writing will help you land more clients in the future!

As for businesses, all you need to do is refer to these habits when looking for a writer for your blog or website.

Granted, there aren’t a lot of talented SEO article writers out there. But don’t give up and keep looking, they’re probably just around the corner!

Or maybe you’re reading one of their posts!

At this point, all you need to do is just ask! 🙂