A practical primer on SEO for article writing

I have always approached my teaching and coaching products in a totally practical sense. There are thousands upon thousands of experts in any given field, and I’m not sure if I am one. But I have done a bunch of different things with varying degrees of success over the years.

One of those things is blog writing. No, not like the blogs of the 2000s and 2010s, where people sold houseplants through affiliate links. I’m talking about long-form articles on ecom, retail, or service industry websites. Usually, they are under the ‘blog’ tab on the website.

Today I’m going to talk briefly (this is PRIMER, not a deep-dive) about my process and the results I’ve gotten. Who knows, I might even throw in a few resources.

What is SEO?

No kidding, when I started writing in 2016 or 2017, a client told me that I needed to ‘optimize for SEO.’ I had zero idea what he was talking about, so I googled it—it seemed pretty simple, really.

Of course, it is not simple at all in operation, but for us end users, the concept is not all that difficult.

If you get on the first page of Google, your odds of being seen are astronomically higher than they are on the second page. The odds of you being seen on the third page or later are practically nill.

Check it out: only 0.63% of searchers click on a link from the second page. So, if you are in the service industry and you’re trying to bring in new revenue from your website, you have to get on the first page. It’s really as simple as that. Over half of all global traffic comes from organic search, meaning it is the non-paid type.

Usually, the paid ads are at the top of the search results on Google.

Social media doesn’t come close to using SEO

Because we are all social media junkies (just admit it), we tend to think that social media is the ultimate magnet and drives an inordinate amount of traffic.

Not even close. Organic SEO drives 1,000 times more traffic than social media. People don’t flock to a product from social media; people watch cat videos. It’s as simple as that.

And even though I personally don’t use Google (I use Duck Duck Go), Google runs the world of search. Nearly 93% of search traffic globally comes from Google or a Google service like Maps, Images, or YouTube.

How do I use it?

Again, this is a very simple primer.

Everything I’ve learned has been through trial and error, and then seeing my work start creeping up through the rankings.

Now here’s the cool thing: once your work hits that number one spot, it tends to stay there unless it’s in a crazy-competitive niche (fitness and nutrition, finance, stuff like that). But the stuff I write about usually has low search volumes and moderately high difficulty in ranking (you will see these on whatever SEO service you use; I use Spyfu).

Let’s say I’m writing an article about Jeeps and Jeep tires.

Also, there will usually be a similar keywords tab where I can find some similar keywords to work with.

So, the search volumes on these are pretty good. Every month, 1,800 people search for Jeep tires. If that’s what my article is about, I’ll aim to use that a few times but not a crazy amount. The article has to flow naturally and read well. Otherwise, people will leave the page.

When people leave your webpage, it will actually hurt your SEO rankings. This is called ‘dwell time,’ and it matters.

It is super important to not only have good keywords and images to draw people in, but then keep them there with informative and useful, high-quality writing. Otherwise, readers will leave. When they leave, you also lose opportunities to backlink them to other articles, products, and services.

See, your articles create a narrative and build rapport with potential customers. You want them to find it insightful, humorous when appropriate, and useful. And if they are ready to buy, you want to give them the tools to make a purchase immediately without being obnoxious.

Parting thoughts

This is a huge topic to tackle, and I’ve got a feeling that this primer might blossom into a full-blown series.

Here’s the deal: if you are starting your own website, you need a ton of content on there to get ranked. You need to produce content all the time. The more, the better. But not just trash; it has to target whatever you are going for. However, there is a delicate balance. You don’t want to cram so many keywords into the articles that it just is a batch of crappy keyword stew.

Resources

I’ve linked a few good starting points in this thread below. And there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of articles in the linked resources. You will learn more in those than probably ~99% of the population knows about SEO.