Writing Content for SEO: 7 Human-First Tips from Our Writers

Breaking down SEO, search intent, and the basics of writing content for SEO

Nowadays one of the biggest struggles of marketing your business is mastering the art of effective SEO. Good SEO can make or break a website and how well it ranks in search engines. You can have the most beautifully designed website, but if it isn’t optimized for search engines correctly, you won’t be giving all that hard work much of a fighting chance at being seen.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. The main goal of SEO is to help your website rank closer to the top of the first page for search engines like Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go. You want to make sure your site content— whether it’s a service page, blog, or something else— is making it onto the first page of Google. If not, it’s unlikely anyone will ever see it. And with 53.3% of website traffic coming from organic searches, you could be losing a substantial percentage of possible clientele by not making yourself easily findable on Google.

As our founder Dave often says, “the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google.”

Content that’s ranked highly in Google is seen to be the most relevant and useful to the searcher, so you want to try to get as close to the top as possible.  

What SEO Can’t do (and what it can)

Let’s be clear: good SEO does not guarantee an immediate increase in traffic and business. In most cases optimizing for SEO on a specific post or page isn’t going to instantly increase clientele. 

So what can it do?

Often times when we explain SEO to our clients, we use the analogy of a relationship. Any good relationship takes time and investment. It takes work and patience to establish a relationship with Google, and you can’t jump ahead without first laying the building blocks to get where you want to go. 

In the long-run, as rapport builds, you can see your rankings increase and numbers go up. While not a immediate solution to increased clientele, investing in SEO helps to establish a relationship with Google that gets you more exposure and relevance as time goes on. 

A number of things go into increasing SEO. Consistently posting SEO-friendly blogs is just one piece of that puzzle, but it’s an important piece. 

Content is king, and good content that is both appealing to people and search engines is key to increasing SEO. 

But writing content for SEO can be more complicated than it seems.

So, what makes good content?

Writing Content for SEO: Understanding your audience

Knowing your audience is one of the most important factors when writing content for SEO. Specifically, you want to understand who’s searching and why they’re searching. This brings us to the subject of search intent. 

Search intent is the reason why prospect clients are going to search engines. As you think about blog writing in relation to search engine optimization, it’s important to understand who you want to be writing to and what they’re looking for.

There are four kinds of search intent:

navigational: 

This is usually when internet users use search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo to find a certain webpage instead of entering the URL into the search bar.

informational:

Informational search intent means that users are  trying to find more information on a specific topic, product, or service.  

commercial:

Usually, people with a commercial search intent want to make a purchase but are doing their due research before making a decision.

transactional:

Like it sounds, transactional search intent means that customers have decided on a product or service and want to make a purchase online. 

Knowing your audience’s search intent is important because it affects how you write your blog and what kinds of keywords you use. For example, if you are a gym wanting to attract future gym goers, your target audience is likely people comparing different gyms and trying to decide on one. In this case, you’ll probably use words like “why attend ____ gym”. 

If you’re an online retailer trying to sell products, the people wanting to buy your product will likely be searching things like “buy stationary” or “purchase *insert product here*”.  If you want your target audience to be able to find you easily you’ll want to use keywords that they’ll be using. This also brings us to long-tail versus short-tail keywords and how you can use both to benefit your business. 

Long tail vs. Short-tail keywords 

When writing content for SEO it’s important to be aware of your keyword or keyword phrase. Think of keywords as the tail of an animal. Shorter keywords *short-tail) are closer to the bulk of the animal (in this case the animal is overall searches).  Short-tail keywords are typically very generic and used by a lot of online platforms. Therefore, there will be more search results coming up. 

The further down the tail you go and the longer your keyword or key phrase is, the fewer search results you’ll have to compete with. 

If you’re a small business, the go-to strategy when establishing a relationship with Google or other search engines is to start with long tail keywords and work towards short-tail keywords.

When you are first starting out online, you have no rapport with Google. So if you immediately go for short, general keywords like “repair shop” or “wind shield wipers”, you are much less likely to make it to the first page of Google (and at that point, what’s the point?).

By starting with long tail keywords, you decrease the amount of searchers, but you increase the likelihood of your content ranking higher on the first page of Google when it’s searched for specifically. So if you’re an auto parts retailer in Tacoma, instead of “wind shield wipers”, maybe your long tail keyword is “wind shield wipers for sale in Tacoma”. 

Readability 

Another important thing to think about when writing content for SEO is readability. Writing content for SEO is a continual balancing act of writing for people AND search engines. Poorly written content will get dinged by search engines, while content that is too specific and difficult to understand (content that has a high Flesch score) will get penalized too.

It’s also important to avoid having duplicate content on your site. Even if two posts or service pages are similar in content, having exactly similar content can lead to page cannibalization, with both pages likely ranking lower as a penalty from Google. 

Layout

Speaking of readability, let’s talk layout. When writing content for SEO, keep in mind that a good layout for your pages and blogs is important for increasing readability for both Google and prospect clients. 

Big walls of text that aren’t broken up with headings or images can be intimidating and difficult to navigate. It’s important to break your content up into bite-sized chunks, with short paragraphs and clear descriptions of what to expect in each section. 

Make sure to follow through on your title and heading titles, too. 

Neither Google nor people like to be fooled. If you make promises in your titles that you don’t follow through on, it can increase the likelihood for clients to click away immediately, and never revisit your site.

Both your relationship with people and search engines function on trust and delivering on what you promise. 

The Problem With the AI Content Flood

Search engines are currently dealing with an influx of low quality content. Business owners often ask if they can simply ask a chatbot to handle their SEO writing. The short answer is that you can, but you probably should not rely on it entirely.

AI tools are predictors. They look at patterns in existing data and guess what word comes next. They do not know your business. They do not know that the weather in Tacoma impacts how a roofing contractor schedules jobs. They do not understand the nuance of a neighborhood in Pierce County. When you rely solely on automated text for SEO writing, you get generic results.

Google has clarified its stance on this. They prioritize high quality content regardless of how it is produced, but they penalize spammy, automated content intended only to manipulate rankings. You can read more about Google’s guidance on AI-generated content to understand their focus on helpfulness. If your SEO writing offers no new insight and reads like a robot wrote it, it will likely struggle to rank.

Local Nuance Matters in Puget Sound

One of the biggest failures of automated or outsourced content is the lack of local knowledge. Generic content often references laws, weather, or geography that simply do not apply to Washington state. Effective SEO writing in our region must be accurate to the location.

If you are a business in Tacoma, your content should reflect that. You might need to reference specific permitting rules from the City of Tacoma. You might need to discuss how the salt air near Puget Sound affects building materials. When you include these details, your SEO writing performs better because it is locally relevant.

Search engines are increasingly looking for this type of expertise. They call it E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Showing that you understand the local context builds that trust. It proves you are not a lead generation farm, but a legitimate local entity. This is vital for our social media management efforts as well, where local engagement is key to visibility.

Consistency Builds Authority

SEO writing is not a one time task. It requires consistency. Search engines prefer sites that are updated regularly with fresh, relevant information. A stagnant site can signal to Google that the business might no longer be active or relevant.

However, consistency does not mean churning out garbage. It means publishing steady, high-quality updates. This could be case studies, answers to frequently asked questions, or updates on industry changes. For a local business, this builds a library of content that establishes you as the authority in your field. Our ongoing services ensure your writing for search engine optimization stays fresh.

Writing content for SEO is a balancing act: clear structure and the right keywords for search engines, and honest, specific, local writing for the people who actually read it. If you would rather hand that work to a team that does it every week, explore our content writing services or contact GreenHaven Interactive to talk through your goals.

Frequently Asked Questions