Finding quality SEO content writers for your brand isn’t easy.
Essentially, you are looking for writers who can do two things:
- Tell a great story that satisfies the search intent of your audience
- Write content that adheres to SEO best practices
Telling a great story without following SEO best practices reduces your content visibility on search engines. Writing uninspiring content that follows some SEO best practices might result in more web traffic with little or no conversions.
You need someone with a perfect blend of both skills to succeed with SEO content writing.
I once had a brief discussion with a business owner who felt ripped off by bad content.
In his words, his writers provided factually good content with bland style and zero human element.
If such content turned him off, how much more his customers? Writing poor-quality content will always result in lost leads.
During our chat, this prospective client requested my SEO content writing service. I checked his website and provided a quote for his writing need. Unfortunately, I got a tasteless reply that ended with, “Your price is too high.”
It’s easy to run to content mills to get a $5 content writing service that takes forever to edit.
However, like the prospect said, blog posts with bland style and no human element won’t do any good. They negatively affect your business revenue.
Why SEO Content Writing is Important
I’ll briefly illustrate how SEO content writing helps your business.
When you type a search query in Google, you get a list of results. But these results contain ads. Let’s Google “how to become a leadership coach.”
Google returned two ads and other results, including links to some blog posts.
In advertising, there is a term called Cost Per Click (CPC).
The CPC is the amount you pay Google for a keyword when you do advertising campaigns.
The keyword in the query we searched for is “leadership coach.”
The CPC of this keyword is $6.50.
If you can part with $6.50 when one person (including those with zero interest) clicks your ad, that’s fine.
But you’ll have to consistently run these ads to get people to your website to buy your products and use your service.
That’s not all.
You’ll need lots of excellent copy, graphics, and videos, depending on the outcome you want.
Add the cost of hiring an agency to help you run your campaigns and you’ll see yourself spending thousands of dollars.
Is there a more comfortable route to get clients at a lower cost? Of course.
3,600 people search the term leadership coach monthly.
If you write an SEO-optimized blog post, you’ll get a significant number of these people on your website who could buy your product and use your service.
Research shows 47% of buyers viewed 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with a brand.
Writing an SEO blog post is far cheaper than doing an ad. Once you have a blog post, it’s yours forever. You don’t have to pay any royalties.
These are only two out of the many ways SEO content writing can benefit your business.
If you don’t have the time or expertise to write SEO blog posts, you’ll need to invest in expert SEO content writers.
Below are 12 tips to help you ask the right questions when selecting the best SEO content writers.
12 Qualities of Professional SEO Content Writers
1. Keyword Research
Before writing an excellent blog post, a brilliant SEO content writer does keyword research.
People read content that search engines present to them. If your post isn’t presented to readers, nobody will see it, even if Shakespeare wrote it.
You need keyword research to write what interests your audience.
You won’t know that about 3,600 people search the term leadership coach monthly without doing keyword research.
Keyword research helps you know if the search term is competitive, your potential savings in terms of CPC, how your competitors perform for the keyword, etc.
There are many copywriting tools for keyword research. Here are some keyword research tools used by professional SEO content writers.
- SEMrush (used by 6,000,000+ marketers)
SEMrush is a popular tool used by over 6 million people. Apart from finding viable keywords, SEMrush also helps you to spy on your competitors, build backlinks, and do other exciting stuff.
- UberSuggest
Ubersuggest is a cost-effective tool that helps in identifying valuable keyword opportunities.
Other keyword research tools are WordTracker, ahrefs.com, answerthepublic.com, and moz.com.
2. Expert SEO Blog Writers Shun Keyword Stuffing
Google dislikes keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is an unhealthy practice by unprofessional SEO content writers.
It is an attempt to manipulate search engines for the sake of better web traffic.
Keyword stuffing will hurt your business because the flow of your content will be unnatural. Once prospects land on your page, they’ll quickly leave because you didn’t give them the excellent content they wanted.
This will also increase your bounce rate and the bounce rate is an important SEO ranking factor.
Here is an excellent example of keyword stuffing. At HTC media, video marketing is our forte. As a premium video marketing service, we provide video marketing that beats other video marketing rookies. Choose the best video marketing service today. Work with HTC for your video marketing.
The keyword density of the term “video marketing” is 15.79%.
Keyword density = number of times the keyword appears in the post/total word count of the post x 100
The best SEO practice is to keep the keyword density below 3%.
Rather than stuff keywords unnaturally and attract Google penalties, expert SEO content writers do the following:
- Insert the keyword in the URL of the blog post
- Add the keyword to the H1 and title tag (not clickbait titles)
- Add the keyword to other heading tags
- Insert the keyword in the meta description while maintaining good keyword density
- Strategically place the keyword within the first 300 words of the SEO blog post
- Insert the keywords naturally in the body of the content
- In addition to other words, include the keyword when naming images used in the blog post
WordPress users can use the Yoast SEO plugin. It tells you if you exceed the accepted keyword density of a blog post.
Another option is RankMath. It’s a great plugin that’s currently free to use.
3. Pro SEO Content Writers Write Long-form Blog Content
The amount of value you can deliver in a blog post is length-dependent.
Research shows that search engines give higher rankings to blog posts of 2000+ words. However, it is vital to keep your blog post fluff-free as you try to make it lengthier.
Also, an excellent content writer writes to sufficiently satisfy the search intent of your audience. Writers that know what they are doing do not write to meet your set word count. They don’t trade quality for quantity.
Don’t write a 3000 words blog post that 2000 words will adequately treat.
4. Technical SEO
The job of a professional SEO content writer is to research and write. However, writing isn’t enough to get your content to page 1 of Google search results.
An excellent SEO article writer needs to understand how to link to other posts in your blog.
The more internal link a page has, the more you tell Google that the page is relevant. This is why you need to find and stick to the right writer who understands (or structures) your blog content.
It is vital to keep your image sizes small, name the images correctly, use alt tags, and remove annoying popups.
Plugins like WP Rocket can help those with WordPress websites to handle some of the technical SEO work automatically.
WP Rocket helps with:
- lazy loading for your images
- XML sitemaps preloading
- Google Fonts optimization
- CSS and JS minification
- deferred loading of JS files
- database optimization, and many more.
Other tools are Smush (for image optimization) and Google Analytics.
5. Expert SEO Blog Writers Rank Keywords on Their Website
A professional SEO content writer should show you posts they’ve ranked on search engines.
Regardless of where you find the writer, they should have published works that prove their expertise. Unless you have lots of money to throw around, it’s better to stick with those who have their skin in the game.
Here’s one of my content ranking on page 1 of Google search results for the long tail keyword, “lead magnet for coaches.”
6. Top SEO Content Writers Satisfy Users Search Intent
SEO content writing isn’t only about shooting for keywords and maintaining decent keyword density in a blog post.
Your audience is on a journey. Hence, a pro SEO article writer aims to write engaging content that educates, informs, and guides the reader to take a specific action.
This is achieved by knowing the questions your audience asks.
Here is an example of how your cold leads can become buyers by using search intent when writing SEO blog posts.
| Your audience searches for: | What your audience means: |
| What is copywriting? | They are searching for information. They have no clue how copywriting works. |
| What is copywriting Neil Patel | Your audience is searching for information and wants to navigate to Neil Patel’s blog. |
| How to Identify Pro Copywriters | Your audience is doing a commercial investigation to know what to look for before hiring a copywriter. |
| Where to hire the best copywriters | Your audience is ready to make a transaction. |
Creating SEO blog posts that capture search intent is gold for any business. It is also an essential ranking factor for SEO.
7. Professional SEO Article Writers Edit their Content
A pro SEO article writer has an eye for editing and takes down words with the delete button.
Programs like Microsoft Word and Google Docs help by underlining words in red that one should consider revising.
But these aren’t enough.
If a blog writer can’t afford another set of eyes to edit their written content, editing tools like Grammarly can help.
I have used the free and premium versions. In my opinion, the benefits of using the premium Grammarly outweighs the free version by over 90%.
8. Formatting for Publishing
Appealingly formatting of blog posts is vital for SEO and makes publishing easier. A professional SEO article writer avoids large chunks of text.
Here are some formatting pointers to look for:
- Does the SEO content writer break blocks of text with images, gifs, screenshots, and videos provided by you?
- Does the writer use bullet points to make the blog post easy to scan?
- Does the writer use heading tags in their blog posts? Receiving your content formatted with the right heading styles reduces your work if you choose to handle your blog post publishing.
- H1 (Heading 1) tags could be similar to your title tags. They should be 50-60 characters long; else, Google will cut the remaining characters. There should be only one H1 tag in your SEO blog post.
- H2 (Heading 2) tags are the subheadings after the H1 tag.
- H3 (Heading 3) tags are the subheadings under the H2 tag.
9. The Best SEO Content Writers Detest Plagiarism
Plagiarism is damaging to online reputation.
The sad thing about plagiarising is, one could do it without knowing.
Expert SEO content writers run blog articles through premium plagiarism checkers like Copyscape (recommended) and Grammarly.
Another way SEO article writers prevent plagiarism is by citing the source of their information.
The repercussions of using plagiarized content could be unpleasant. To prevent this, always double-check your blog content before hitting publish.
10. Publishing on WordPress and Other Content Management Platforms
Many business owners have lots of work on their plate and don’t have time to publish SEO blog posts. If you are in this category, you won’t only need a content writer. You’ll need a writer that can publish your blog posts.
However, you must trust this person to do a great job, including checking for plagiarism and thoroughly editing the blog post.
11. Professional SEO Writers Deliver on Time
To win in the SEO content game, you need to be deliberate. You need a content calendar and you need to have your content on schedule if you hire an SEO content writer.
Professional SEO article writers always stick to the content schedule. It is also helpful to communicate frequently with your writer.
This will help you know if they are working on many projects and you can both agree on reasonable timelines for your project.
12. Professional SEO Content Writers Write a Click-worthy Call to Action (CTA)
The goal of every content is to educate readers and make them take action. The search intent of the prospect will determine the kind of CTA to use in a blog post.
Also, it’s excellent to encourage your audience to click your CTA. You can reinforce your message with testimonials, your number of subscribers, tell them what they will miss if they don’t act immediately, etc.
Peter may be a customer who is easily convinced by written content. But Shane might be the visual kind of client that loves videos. Whatever you have, use it to prove that your product or service works.
Here are some CTA examples.
- Ask your readers to get on your email list by downloading a lead magnet
- Ask readers to connect with you on social media
- Tell readers to subscribe to receive emails when you publish a new blog post
- Encourage readers to leave comments on your blog posts
Conclusion
Having reliable SEO content writers gets easy by asking the right questions. I believe these 12 questions will help you in your search for an expert SEO content writer.
It is important to always establish your goals before starting any SEO blog writing project. Do you want to:
- Increase your email subscribers?
- Educate your audience on a subject?
- Reduce the bounce rate on your website?
- Write a post that encourages your audience to purchase a product/ service?
Regardless of your goals, one thing comes to mind when hiring an expert SEO content writer…
…What is the Cost of Hiring an SEO Content Writer?
Answer – it depends on what you want.
An excellent SEO content writing service costs $0.10–$1.00+ per word.
The reason for this variability in price is due to:
- the level of expertise of the writer
- the amount of time needed to research the topic
- editing and publishing cost
- the type of audience the writer writes for
- the amount of on-page SEO work required
- the number of clients the writer handles (more clients = higher price)
- the cost of the tools the writer uses and the list goes on.
SEO content writing service is vital because it profits your business in the long term.
You can maximize the benefits of SEO content at an affordable cost by negotiating an ongoing contract with your would-be SEO article writer.
This keeps you happy and makes the writer happy too.
There are many behind the scene jobs an SEO content writer does to get your content on the first page of Google search results.
Here’s an idea of what an SEO writer might spend monthly to give you excellent results:
- SemRush marketing tool – $99.95 monthly
- Frase – $39.99 monthly
- Grammarly – $29.95 monthly
- Hemmingway app – $19.99
- Photoshop – lots of time to design images and infographics
I hope you like this article. If you did, please let me know in the comments section.
If you lack the time and expertise to create SEO blog posts that turn to profit, get in touch.
Precious Oboidhe is a B2B SaaS content strategist and writer for hire. If you need help with strategizing and creating assets for the different stages of your content marketing funnel, get in touch.
Your blog will not help people hire best SEO Content Writers but will also help those content writers to know which qualities they need to sustain in the market.
I guess you mean “your blog will help” rather than “will not.”
And yes, it is vital for writers to know the qualities that make them a good fit.
Thank you for contributing 🦾.
It is so important to take care while hiring seo content writers. Thanks for sharing.
Yes Vibha. It is.