Category: writing

I received this question recently:

If I create content for our company (articles for magazines, social media posts, etc), do I need to try to use KEYWORDS within the text as much as possible? And if yes, is there an online tool / website to check how well I did my job before I publish it?

Here’s my answer:

• Brainstorm and research as much as you can about your topic.
• Ask your sales managers how they describe the service when they talk to people on the phone; write down all the phrases they mention.
• Jot down all the phrases and questions you think people will enter into a search engine for your topic.
• Check the monthly search volume of your phrases using a tool such as SEMRush or Searchmetrics or Ahrefs. Or use free SEO research tools.
  • List of tools: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/best-keyword-research-tools-niche.html
  • See Neil Patel’s blog for free research tools: https://neilpatel.com/blog/10-free-keyword-research-tools-to-help-plan-your-new-site/
  • Via SEMRush blog: https://www.semrush.com/blog/12-free-keyword-research-tools/
• Check search intent by entering the keyphrase into Google. Analyze the results you see:
  • Are you seeing some of your competitors? That’s good. You are in the right space.
  • Are you seeing dictionary or encyclopedia or university links? That’s not good, if you are a commercial company.
  • Look at the Google results and try to understand the search intent.
    • See this SEMRush blog: https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-identify-intent-in-search/
• Map out the structure and SEO elements of your article.
  • Outline the topic you want to target.
  • Write a draft meta page title and meta description.
  • Write a draft Heading 1 (H1).
  • List out the questions you want to answer in your article.
    • Questions are typically Heading 2s (H2).
    • Answers are a paragraph or a bullet list.
  • List out the keyphrases you want to target in the body text.
  • List articles that you want to use as inspiration for your SEO writing process.
    • Avoid copy and paste. Google is not dumb and can find out if you copy and pasted from another site.
  • Review SEO research before starting to write.
  • Start SEO copywriting process and include all SEO elements.
    • Include main keyphrase in your meta title tag, meta description, H1, add complementary keyphrases in H2s and body of the text, add alt texts for your images.
• There are several tools that you can use to check the keyword distribution and density in your article. I’ve used Ryte.com, Moz, and there’s a new AI tool called MarketMuse that I am testing.
• Important: Write for humans. Make the article useful. Think about the phrases people will use to find this article.
• Track traffic and keyphrases in a tool like SEMRush or SearchMetrics or Ahrefs or Ryte.com or similar. There’s quite a choice.

Hope you find this list useful.