How To Write SEO-Friendly Content And Get More People To Buy Your Book
Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links marked “affiliate link” in this post.
If you are an author with a self-published book, consider getting a website and starting a blog. Having a blog or a website is a great way to connect with your readers, and hopefully, after reading your blog or website, they will want to buy your book.
Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash
However, once you hit publish, the dreams of changing the world by posting your inspiring, culture-changing thoughts soon disappear when nobody visits your blog or reads your content. New writers learn quickly that the time and energy spent writing a post means nothing if nobody reads it. This is why writing SEO-friendly content is essential. Optimizing content for SEO will bring new readers to your blog.
It’s Overwhelming — But You Need to Start Already
As if starting a website wasn’t enough work, you now must worry about starting an SEO-friendly website. Yes, I know it’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. You wrote your book (affiliate link) (or are in the process of writing a book), and you want to be successful at both.
Building an SEO-friendly blog takes time, so the sooner you start, the better.
To build a platform and gain more readers for your book, you must find a way to build trust with potential readers. Creating SEO-friendly content is just one aspect of marketing that you will need to focus on, and it will help you build that trust with your readers. It is necessary and time-consuming, but it is worth it.
SEO Content Will Make Your Writing More Fruitful
I know your time is precious, and you want your writing to be fruitful, but before you can change the world with your writing, you need to understand how SEO-friendly content works and the steps you need to take to build a readership.
Creating a website or starting a blog requires ensuring it is SEO-optimized. Writing and creating a platform require different skill sets.
Writing is the creative side, and you are probably familiar with the technical side of writing, too.
On the other hand, building a platform and getting people to read your blog is called marketing. Specifically, it is called content marketing and requires the skill of writing SEO content.
You Need to Learn SEO Content Strategies
Writing words that mean something is important, but SEO-optimized content is king in blogging. SEO content is just that: content optimized for search engines.
SEO content always has a clear direction and purpose. This content is designed to bring traffic to your blog or website, a.k.a. new readers. So, it is crucial to understand what search engines look for when crawling your content and what is required to ensure that your blog post reaches the most readers possible.
One thing to remember when writing a blog post is to identify the purpose of the post. What is the main idea? What are you trying to achieve by writing this post?
Knowing this will help you determine the main keywords you are targeting. You will need to learn to think differently when writing a blog post. Blogging is often a creative outlet for writers to share their thoughts and feelings. However, the content you post on your blog must have a purpose and a clear direction.
How To Write SEO-Friendly Blog Posts and Content
Your new mindset when writing content is to write something that someone else will want to read.
It will be less about what you want to say and more about learning how to use your blogging platform as an outlet to answer questions and help the reader learn something new. This is a mindset shift for most writers, but writing something someone is looking for or wants to read is essential.
You will need to start your research by finding something to write about. Many tools exist that will help you come up with new topic ideas. However, the best place to start is within the search engines themselves. If you have an idea for an article, you can go to Google and begin typing out whatever words are related to your post idea. (See image below.)
Start by typing in general search terms to get new ideas.
If you are writing a Bible Study, start typing in “Bible Study.” Once you start typing, you will see suggestions in the Google search bar that will give you more keyword ideas.
You will also find a list of questions and related searches on the first page.
Scrolling down the Google search page, you will see a section titled “People Also Ask.” This is a great place to get new keyword and topic ideas.
You can use the information on this page as a catalyst for your blog post.
If you have difficulty finding keywords or don’t know what keywords might be related to your blog post, you can use a tool like Google Trends or Google Keywords Planner. The Google Keywords planner is usually used for Google Ads; however, it is a great place to find different keywords.
How Do You Know If an SEO Tool is Legit
Google is probably the most credible tool you can find because you are going directly to the source — you want your blog post to appear in Google, so beginning your research at Google is the best place to start. However, when looking at other SEO tools and resources in your research, you will need to look at the fruit of the person providing the content and/or the tool.
Is their website showing up in the search engines?
Do they provide a track record of delivering relevant and valuable content?
Do they practice what they preach?
Another way to tell if a source or SEO tool is credible is to look at reviews and complaints. SEO is a popular topic all around the internet, and many people offer insight into the tools they use. A quick Google search on reviews for the tools you are looking at will help you know if something truly enables you to write SEO content.
Expand Your Learning and Start Writing SEO-Friendly Content
The best tools and resources will help you find good keywords and optimize your articles. As a writer, you are encouraged to continue to use your creativity, share your heart, and be authentic in your blog posts. However, your posts must reflect good SEO practices to appear in search engines.
Here are some tools that will help you write meaningful SEO content that people will want to read:
● Semrush SEO Writing Assistant: Semrush is well-known in the SEO world. However, their tools can be expensive for the new blogger.
● RankMath: If you use Wordpress then Rank Math is a great tool to use. They offer a free version and an affordable premium version. This tool can be used directly on your WP dashboard.
● Rank IQ (affiliate link): A great tool to find ideas on what to write about. They also provide reports on content ideas, how much search traffic these topics will provide, how fast they rank in search engines, and more. You can also write and optimize your content within the dashboard.
● Ubersuggest: It provides many free tools and an affordable premium tool for SEO content, including a free keyword research tool. This tool also offers plans where you can get reports of what you need to do to improve the SEO on your entire website.
● Keywords Everywhere: This is a very helpful tool designed to help you get new keyword ideas and see the search volume of those keywords. I like to use the Chrome extension, and the ideas pop up directly in my browser when doing a Google search.
As an author, writing SEO content can feel overwhelming and like it is taking you away from writing creative content. But you can always implement your heart and your thoughts into SEO content.
When you take the time to research keywords and optimize your articles for search engines, you will find that you have written more fruitful and high-quality content. But most of all, people will start reading your blog posts, and finally, your written words will be seen and heard by your readers.