How to Use SEO Writing to Get More Online Freelance Writing Jobs

SEO writing means search engine optimization writing. Essentially, it means helping your clients get found in the Google search engine.

Tweaking your writing using SEO content writing techniques can actually be quite simple. Once you get the hang of the basics, you can start offering this as a service.

There are two types of SEO writing for websites.

Technical SEO: This refers to the back end technical stuff like how fast the site is, the user experience, how quickly the images load, etc…
On Page SEO: This is what we’re talking about in this post. This refers to using low competition keywords and semantic keywords, strategically sprinkled into your post so Google picks up the keywords. SEO content writing also includes things like adding links, adding keywords to image alt text, etc… SEO writing is not just all about keywords.

In this post, we’ll be talking about how to do on page SEO for your clients.

If you like this post about SEO writing, you may also like:

*This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you make a purchase through my link, I am paid a commission for the referral at no extra cost to you. I make recommendations if i’ve paid my own money for the product, service, or course and think it’s worth the every penny.

Make Yourself More Valuable With SEO Content Writing Services

SEO writing makes you stand out in a sea of writers because you can help your ideal client get found in Google.

Most businesses want content because they’re using it as a marketing technique. They share it with their social media following, email a new post to their subscribers, and use these posts to get found in Google as a lead generation tool.

Knowing how to write for SEO can help you land more freelance writing jobs, and help your own business generate leads.

Skip past the frustration of learning this stuff on your own and sign up for this course by Elna Cain. I took this course when I started and it helped me find my first client within weeks, and it paid for itself with that first client. Get all the strategies you need to start your business and get clients coming to you. >>Check out the Course Here.<<

How to Start SEO Writing for Your Clients

Learning all about on page SEO is the obvious first step. But where do you start?

Here are the basics of SEO content writing:

Keywords

If you take nothing else away from this post, know that Keywords are THE most important factor in on-page SEO. Finding the right keywords for your target client is what makes your content valuable.

When someone searches in Google, they have a problem or a question they need answered. Your job is to match up the problem (what’s typed into Google) with the solution (the content).

Not all keywords are created equal. When someone searches “best time management tool for writers,” they have a different intent than someone searching for “time management.”

The first keyword phrase is someone looking for a solution to a problem with buyers intent. They are looking to purchase a tool to help them solve this problem.

When someone searches “time management” they might be looking for ideas, thoughts, or techniques others have found useful. They aren’t necessarily looking for a tool to solve their problem.

The intent behind the keyword is a key factor.

A keyword has one of the following:

Informational Intent (they’re searching for information)
Transactional Intent (looking to purchase something)
Commercial Intent (they may need to buy something, but aren’t ready yet)
Navigational Intent (finding a business near them)

Check out this post by Yoast to find out more about search intent.

The type of content you write will affect the types of visitors you attract. You’ll have to give some thought to this in your content plan.

For instance, I have a lot of educational posts with affiliate links sprinkled throughout.

If a person who lands on my site likes my educational content but wants to upgrade their skills as a new writer, they can buy a course like this one that I took by Elna Cain called Write to 1K. It’s the course that launched my career as a freelance writer. It’s such a great value for the cost, that I think every brand new content writer should take it. Not all of my content is set up to sell this course alone, but it’s sprinkled throughout my content so my readers can level up their skills if they want to.

Semantic Keywords

Semantic keywords are related keywords. As an example, the keywords I chose for this article are “SEO Writing” and “SEO Content Writing.”

When I use my chosen SEO writing tool, SEMrush, to find semantic keywords, it will give me a list of the top 10 pages ranking for this keyword and a list of keywords that could be help me rank for this post.

Here is the entire list of related keywords that are recommended:

quality content
pieces of content
web pages
keyword research
high quality
keyword stuffing
click through rate
blog posts
user experience
type of content
content marketer
conversion rates
search engine optimization
title tags
creating content
search engines rank
ranks in google
meta description
ranking factors
bounce rate

Under normal circumstances, I would not recommend doing what I just did, making a list and adding all the keywords. I did this only to show you what sort of keywords come up as related.

Instead, you’ll want to sprinkle these keywords throughout your post naturally. Use some of them for subtopics, or to explain a subject. Sometimes you’ll get a few keywords that don’t make sense for the post. They are just suggestions. it’s always more important that the post makes sense and helps the reader solve their problem.

Keyword stuffing is when you put as many keywords in a title or post as possible. You’ve probably seen this before and not realized it. It’s ugly and makes for a bad experience for the reader.

Keyword Placement

It’s important to have your main keywords in your titles and sprinkled throughout the post naturally.

You can take some of those related keywords and use them in the alt text (more on that in a minute). If the words don’t make sense or they’re misspelled, you can use them behind the scenes.

I don’t recommend putting misspelled words in the body of your copy. This looks unprofessional.

Links – Internal and External

Google likes it when it can crawl through a site and see related posts. This is why it helps to link out to other websites. Preferably, websites with high authority (as deemed by Google). You can check the authority of a site using SEMrush or a free tool like Moz. Authority is rated on a scale of 1-100.

internal links (aka links to your own relevant content) help Google decide what a site is about. It also helps keep readers on your site for longer by having them bounce around between your posts. This is good for the user experience.

You can do like I’ve done at the top of this article and put something like “If you like this post, you might also like…” or you can just link to specific words inside of your post. If I mentioned rates, I might link to my post about freelance writing rates.

Readability

Google doesn’t like it when you repeat the same start to a sentence several times. It also doesn’t like big chunks of text or long run on sentences. Mix up the length of your sentences and break them up. Make your life easier and install the Yoast plugin (more on this below).

Images

When you add images to your posts, make sure the titles have keywords. Once you’ve uploaded your images, make sure you update the alt text with keywords as well. This helps you come up in the image search results for your keywords and is often overlooked or forgotten.

URL

The URL should be short and have your main keyword. Google doesn’t like when you use stop words in your URL (also called a slug). Stop words are words like “to” and “from.” Google wants you to keep it short and to the point.

Meta Description

Add a meta description for your post with your keyword. You want to make this description intriguing to peak the interest of your reader, but you don’t want to give everything away in the description.

Yoast

Yoast is a plugin that acts as a checklist. It will give you a red, yellow, or green light for your SEO. You still need to know what you’re doing, but Yoast helps you keep track of most of the items mentioned in this post. There are other programs you can use, but I prefer Yoast.

SEMrush

SEMrush is my tool of choice for SEO. It’s a bit on the pricey side at $99.95 per month to start, but I find the information it provides to be worth it.

This is one of the reasons I offer reports as a service. If someone wants to buy a couple of reports every few months, it’s way less expensive than paying for a monthly subscription. These reports are not lucrative for me, but they help me make contacts and build authority.

SEO Content Writing Services

Once you have a good feel for SEO content writing as a service, you can offer this to your clients. I like to take over the entire blog for my clients, sign-in on the back end of their WordPress and put in all the bells and whistles. This saves them time and reduces the stress of having to remember all the details.

Jump past the long stressful sessions of trying to figure out how to become a writer by reading endless blog posts and do what I did. Take the >> Write to 1K course by Elna Cain<<. It helped me go from dreading my 9-5, to being a well paid, full time writer in less than a year.