SEO: Writing For Humans And Strategizing For Machines
A practical guide to optimized writing for the new, the broke, and the scared.
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is complicated. I’ve been writing things for three years now, and it’s still a headache.
More than the difficult concepts, learning SEO on your own requires tasks, processes, and tools that complete beginners simply won’t have any knowledge of.
But like anything else, SEO can have levels of depth.
It can be complicated and scary, as in indexing, off-page optimization, and backlink building.
But it can also be shallow and easy.
This guide is shallow and easy, tackling only the very basic premise of SEO — while still making your content a cut above the rest. It will utilize no new tools, requires no money, and won’t be scarily specific.
This advice won’t take you from 1 to 100 in SEO, but it will take you from 0 to 1.
These are SEO best practices for the new, the broke, and the scared.
Let’s begin.
The Basics
SEO is how your content will be “noticed” and “picked up” by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. There are a ton of elements to it as you might expect.
But at the core, search engines are really just assessing three things about your content:
- How informative it is.
- How entertaining it is.
- How easy it is to find.
These are vastly more complicated than they seem (especially #3), but there are simple changes that you can implement instantly for numbers 1 and 2.
It’s advice that I wish I could give to myself three years ago when I was just starting to write online.
Advice that is not confusing, saves time, and best of all, is free to implement.
Complete beginners to SEO, these are for you.
Here goes:
1. Improve your sentence and paragraph structure.
If there’s ever an easy win in SEO, it’s this. Search engine algorithms favor concise and to-the-point content.
Not just for the machines, but for your audience too. What went to your mind the last time you saw overly long sentences and text blocks? I know what I thought, I said “yuck,” and immediately went away.
More, the internet is flooded with low-quality AI content. And what do they all have in common? Poorly structured sentences, paragraphs, and articles. It’s what makes them so obvious.
Simply having a better structure will make you better than 80% of the content on the internet (yes, I made that statistic up, but you get it).
Now, how can you do that? Here are some simple tips.
- Vary your sentence lengths.
- Paragraphs should be no more than three to five lines of text long, for the most part.
- Outline and structure your articles properly, with H1, H2, etc. subheadings wherever possible.
- Every section should be no more than 250 to 300 words long.
- Use bullet points and numbers as much as you can.
Lastly, always ensure that you’re linking to the main idea of the article. The Big Idea, the Title, the Main Question. Every word has to be in service of that. It’s why readers click, and it’s why search engines will rank it.
Improve your structuring.
2. Know what is fluff and what are simply human elements.
Fluff are words that don’t add value to an article. Simple definitions, but identifying them can be tricky.
Some say that fluff must be avoided at all costs, and completely strip the article of anything that makes it human.
I have a client like this, and they insist their articles sound like it was made by a robot. Completely bare, all information. Doesn’t sound human at all.
Sure, barebones content like that might rank well, sometimes. They might also be great for specific topics, such as help content. But that advice is not for everything.
Aside from presenting information, you must also build a relationship with the reader. You need to reassure them, engage them, and entertain them.
You can’t do that with pure information.
So, how do you know what is fluff and what isn’t? Ask yourself these two questions.
- Can I say this more simply? And then,
- How can I add a bit of personality while doing so?
The answer will give you the intersection between what is informative and what is human. It’s the ideal optimized content and the best place to be.
3. Always link to non-competing, factual articles from high-authority sites.
Some articles don’t need links, sure. But when you do, those should be your main categories.
Let’s look at them one by one.
- Non-competing. Why link to competition? All you would be doing is driving traffic to them. If you’re a ghostwriter, your client will get mad.
- Factual. Misinformation abounds on the internet. If you want to be reliable, you need to have the highest standards for facts.
- High-authority. This is for the search engine, as how popular or “authoritative” your linked sites are also affecting your own.
If you’re writing for yourself, chances are you won’t need to link to high-quality web pages. But if you’re writing for a client, you probably will, so you need to know how to identify authoritative websites.
Here’s a guide to Moz’s 500 most popular sites to help you along. If you link to any one of these web pages, those are high-quality links.
Final Thoughts
Now, I know what you’re thinking, this seems restrictive and unnecessary. That’s also what I thought when I first came into online writing.
But if you think about it, it’s simply optimizing so that people get what they came for when they search for things online.
And, on another level, it’s also simply what most freelancing or ghostwriting clients want.
Let me also get this clear: not every writing has to be like this.
These basic best practices are only if you want to pursue optimized writing — if you’re writing creatively, or you’re writing for your own consumption, or your opinion, there’s completely no need.
But unfortunately, if you want to strategize for machines (search engines), these best practices have to be second nature.
Once these best practices are second nature, you can move on to the more complicated stuff, like keyword research, etc. But until then, this is the step to take that will take you from zero to one.
Hey all! How did you find this article? For the experienced writers there — I know it’s not traditional SEO advice, but my ultimate goal was to demystify the very basics and tailor it for complete beginners. For the new, broke, and scared.
And yes, this was me. Maybe still is.
Think you’d be interested in other areas broken down to the very first steps? Let me know in the comments.
