What is SEO Content Writing?: A Complete Explanation

Despite the growing trend of visual-based content, you will still eventually find that content writing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies until today. It never loses relevance, not even in the AI era. What is SEO content writing? It is a practice of writing something that is specifically designed to reach audiences through search engine results pages (SERP) and is still in high demand. Why and how has SEO content writing evolved so far? 

What is SEO content writing, and why is it still in demand? 

Principally, SEO content writing is rooted in regular content writing practices. It consists of planning and researching materials to create text-based content. The intention is mostly to educate, inform, and entertain targeted audiences. However, within marketing, this practice is often developed to initiate brand awareness campaigns and persuade audiences to interact with certain products.

In order to do that, businesses use a strategy called what is SEO content writing. It stands for Search Engine Optimization. This strategy aims for a higher rank in SERP, meaning your content or page will likely land on top of search results when internet users type certain keywords. Due to that mechanism, there are more steps in SEO content writing compared to regular content writing. While the intention is basically to inform, educate, and entertain, SEO content writing uses keywords as a bridge between content and what readers are trying to find. It is different from regular content writing, which does not necessarily care about the keyword density. 

How to distinguish SEO writing and regular content writing? 

What is SEO content writing, and how do you compare to regular content writing? Let’s begin by defining what content writing is. Content writing is a practice of writing long-form, informative, and often educational articles to attract an audience and increase engagement. That is why content writing jobs are mostly closely related to fixed campaign budgets from certain brands or businesses. 

However, content writing can be really fluid and creative, which may blur the lines between it and creative writing as well as journalism. Content writers might use compelling narrative stories or showcase objectivity in order to build trust. This makes content writing a marketing art. People might not realize yet that they are reading a brand campaign until the very end of the article. 

Unlike regular content writing, SEO writing sounds more technical and structured with headings and listicles as its common features. This is because you are not only writing for humans with an SEO framework, but you also write for machines in order to be easily detected by both search engines and AI algorithms. While sharing the same intention – brand awareness, SEO articles are more rigid. You can also see the pattern where the writers spread keywords and phrases strategically. However, more SEO writers are now becoming more aware of the necessity of sounding natural. This is because SEO content writing follows a formulaic approach that can also be falsely flagged as AI. 

Optimize SEO content writing for business

What are other aspects of what is SEO content writing that make it necessary, particularly for businesses? I think we cannot deny that SEO content writing offers several specific benefits, as mentioned below. 

• SEO content writing will improve the organic traffic of your page by attracting people to consciously visit it. You attract them with keywords, offering them the possibility to get what they need, whether it is information or a solution for their issues. 
• By gaining organic traffic, you are also building trust and authority in certain industries or business sectors. That is why you are also advised to specify the topics you can cover to maintain high relevance, accuracy, and retention rate. 
• SEO is particularly deemed as a cost-effective marketing strategy because it runs organically. You will not need to rent space for advertisements or pay for ads on social media. Instead, you compete with other competitors in offering the most relevant and accurate information or solutions. Google SERP rank costs no money, but you will eventually need several SEO content writing tools to help you research target keywords and analyze the content marketing performance. 

Unwritten principles of SEO content writing 

What is SEO content writing actually? Does it have rules? Yes, SEO content writing generally follows these rules below. 

• Determine the target keywords (whether primary and secondary). You can use some SEO content writing tools that give you suggestions and an overview of keyword performance in search engines. SEO tools will provide you with search volume, recommended secondary keywords, and even possible other keyword ideas. 
• Make sure to mention the keywords in the title, the first paragraph (preferably the first sentence), and the meta description. 
• Mention the keywords in headings (H2 and H3) strategically; do not do keyword stuffing.
• Briefly cite or specify the keywords in the last paragraph (conclusion). 
• Write at least 500–800 words per content, but you are welcome to create long-form articles (1000–4000 words). 
• Include backlinks; this will allow your page or site to get better retention from readers or visitors. Make sure that the links are closely related to your content and have higher accuracy. Numbers are not that essential compared to the quality of the links. 

Semantic SEO 

However, as SEO becomes the norm in marketing, Google, as one of the most-used search engines these days, creates four principles called E-E-A-T to promote fairness and accuracy in its search results page. What is E-E-A-T?    

• Experience

Experience basically encourages you as a content creator to provide first-hand experiences and concrete, real-life examples. It could be your own personal insights, testimony, and so on. 

• Expertise

It refers to your commitment to create content that is highly credible. You can cite credible sources, quote experts, provide deep knowledge, and prove credentials on the topic you are talking about. 

• Authoritativeness

Authoritativeness is about building reputation and maintaining credibility. If you are often cited by people who work in certain industries, you may also be favored by the search engine. 

• Trustworthiness

This tests your commitment to providing accurate information and ensuring the safety of your page visitors. 

These four affect the mechanism of their result rank position. Search engines will favor text-based content that can prove its compliance based on those 4 indicators. It means you cannot merely flood your content with keywords and expect it to rank well in the search results page. You need to prove that each sentence and paragraph within your text has meaning and clear correlations. This process is called semantic, where the meaning of each sentence and word is analyzed by their relationships.  

If you are considering maximizing your marketing strategy in SEO content writing, here are some tips you can use to guarantee your articles are applying semantic concepts.

• Consider covering a topic with in-depth research. Make sure your article includes thorough information and is well-structured. 
• Writing with context means you are advised to provide the necessary background and reasoning before jumping into the main topic. This also tests your sensitivity to detect and read what the audience needs and cares about the most. For example, if you want to cover an issue, include reasons and context for why you find this topic crucial to be discussed. 
• Do not forget internal backlinks. Again, make sure each link has high relevance to the content. Focus on the quality of your links instead of numbers. Spread them evenly within the text by considering the length (word count) of your article 
• Research your visitors’ search intention. You can find them with SEO tools and search engine recommendations.  
• Instead of relying on the exact keywords, try to also include the synonyms. This will allow you to sound a lot more natural, while keeping the context intact. 
• Include structured data in tables, columns, or other forms of database records. This will create a better impression and enable search engines to index and understand your page content faster. 
• Maintain consistency, which means you need to post regularly so that your page will be recognized by the search engines. 

What is SEO content writing in the AI era? 

In the midst of AI, you might wonder if SEO content writing is still effective and applicable for businesses. People believe search engines are competing with AI chatbots these days. Instead of searching manually, internet users now prefer to ask an AI chatbot to get instant and conversational responses. However, if you look closely, AI chatbots find their voices by scanning SERP to get the most relevant answer. 

At this moment, prepare yourself to be introduced to what is known as AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Unlike what is SEO content writing, these frameworks focus on providing direct and generative answers rather than mere regular information. AEO and GEO are mostly applicable in AI platforms that use a chatbot format. In order to get relevant answers, AI platforms use many types of sources, such as knowledge from their own internal training model, semantic thinking, learned information, conversation history, and web search for updated information. 

This means AI platforms are still heavily on web content, particularly the text-based content, such as SEO articles. This is why you can see that they mentioned citations when generating answers. Thus, instead of thinking of AI platforms as competitors, you can acknowledge their existence as an opportunity. SEO content writers can now also try to appeal to AI users by making their content favorable for AI to scan and cite. 

So how do AEO and GEO work? Basically, they score the relevance of the content with these indicators below. 

• Search intent 

AI will try to understand what users really ask and need and try to find the most relevant sources. However, as AI focuses on the answers, it will prefer to cite sources that provide direct answers rather than more elaborate ones. 

• Direct answer quality 

AI prefers sources with explicit, direct, and clear answers. They do not read or care about filler sentences. 

• Semantic relevance 

A metric to measure the coherence between the intent behind users’ query with the content. 

• Topical authority and reputation

Topical authority is the ability of a page to show its specialty or niche in a specific topic. This will also work well with your page’s reputation. If you can provide high-quality written content, people will use you as a reference, the same way AI will emulate. 

• Structure 

AI loves articles with a well-organized structure, which means they have headings, bullet points, tables, or databases, and a clear description.  

• Entity recognition

Do not hesitate to mention what you are or certain products, brands, name in your article. AI has the ability to understand those entities and help them to process them faster. Only, make sure that you mention them with full responsibility and ethical consideration. 

• E-E-A-T 

AI also prefers written content with the E-E-A-T framework applied. Again, this shows their dependency on search engines to help them filter the niche (search intent), verify the page owner, and assess their reputation. 

• Readability

Word count is not relevant anymore, nor is keyword density. Instead, AI prefers content with high quality, easy to read, and with relevant logic.  

• Newness 

In AEO and GEO, new and fresh information is preferable. It is because AI tends to use web search to get updates. 

In short, AEO and GEO work better with content that provides direct answers, clear but offers in-depth explanation, well-structured, and focused or niche. If you are considering focusing on working in SEO content writing services, keeping those indicators in mind will be a plus point for clients. 

However, this does not mean you are completely risk-free and secure enough. There is still a downside to the AI platform trends. They may not replace search engines, but they certainly affect the way users interact with them. There is a phenomenon called “zero clicks”, where internet users are satisfied with AI answers and find it not necessary anymore to click the citations. This means your organic page views may plummet. Yet, content creators know that they can still increase brand awareness by mentioning a specific brand or entity. 

On-page and off-page SEO 

After understanding what is SEO content writing in general, you also need to do additional formatting right after writing articles. This is called On-page SEO. Means you need to add and check these indicators below to make sure search engine algorithms will find your page. 

• Keywords and phrases: place keywords and phrases strategically with optimum density. Too many keywords do not always end with a good result; you can use the help of SEO writing tools to calculate it for you. 
• Headings: they are the best way to make your article readable and easy to index by search engines. You can also put keywords and key phrases there. 
• URL structure: make sure that you change your URL is not too long, contains keywords, and is descriptive enough. 
• Internal links: Putting relevant links in your SEO articles will help improve audience retention and will affect your page authority and performance in search engines. The higher the score, the more reliable and trustworthy your page is. 
• Meta title and description: these entities are the first things search engine users are attracted to. That is why you have to make it short, direct, but also appealing. If possible, try to write a strong hook that attracts readers into clicking your page.   

Once you finish on-page SEO, you can promote your page using external resources such as social media. Extract or pick the most engaging parts of your SEO articles to create infographics or carousels, for example. You can also elaborate it into a video essay or even a podcast. This is what we call off-page SEO. It may generate organic traffic for your page, but you may need to learn how social media algorithms work. Some tips include adding viral songs and hashtags. As social media is a visual-based platform, you need to consider creating eye-catching posts and adding hooks to the thumbnail.  

List of best SEO content writing tools

After understanding the complete explanation of what is SEO content writing above, we can continue to the list of the best SEO content writing tools. These days, some companies have developed tools purposely used for SEO content writing. As we know, the process of writing SEO content is not a short process. It actually needs a long process from research, generating or writing, optimizing, and checking if there are any grammatically mistake or others. 

These tools will ensure your article has a high quality, and maintains the optimization from SEO principles, and reduce the time to write SEO articles. Check the following SEO content writing tools that can help you to write articles for blog posts or research for essays or academic papers. 

Writesonic 

Writesonic is an AI writing tool that is specifically built to help you write a high-quality article for your needs. This tool was initially only for an AI writing assistant, but as time goes by, Writesonic has transformed into a content writing tool for SEO. It has a wide range of features, from AI content generation to special features for optimizing SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). 

The other benefit of using Writesonic are it provides various templates depending on the content you want to write. The result is quite good and can be done within several minutes, which saves you time. However, the results from AI content writing tools still need to be checked thoroughly before they can be published. 

Jasper 

Jasper is an AI tool that was specifically built to assist the marketing process, including SEO. This platform has content generation to help you write articles and format articles for blog posts, social media posts, email marketing, and other publications. Jasper also has the capability to generate articles within several minutes. 

However, Jasper only works for writing assistance rather than a comprehensive SEO tool. For creating SEO content, you can use the SEO mode feature, which allows you to optimize the content generation. No surprise that this application has gained popularity these days to produce high-quality content rapidly. 

NeuronWriter

NueronWriter has an excellent tool for what is SEO content writing. This application is an easy-to-use writing assistant to create high-quality content and help you to optimize the SEO content. Not only for generating articles, but this tool also allows you to edit and give suggestions for internal linking. 

NeuronWriter also helps you to analyze the search engine result pages (SERP) and discover your competitors’ secrets. In addition, this tool has a plagiarism checker that ensures that your article is free from plagiarism. 

Surfer SEO 

Surfer SEO is another great tool for assisting content writing. This tool has gained popularity in recent days because of its features and affordable price compared to its rivals. Surfer SEO can help you to analyze the best target keyword and provide a detailed content plan to get ranking on search engines. 

One of the best features from Surfer SEO is the Content Editor, which can help to identify and fix the articles to meet the SEO standards and find the topic ideas. Additionally, it has specific features to monitor your brand visibility on AI chatbot platforms. 

Clearscope

Clearscope is an application uniquely built for what is SEO content writing. This tool will help you draft articles with the help of AI and make the writing process faster. Moreover, this platform has a content editor to enhance your content quality to meet the standard for an SEO campaign and maintain the ranking. 

On the other hand, Clearscope has a great integration that can help you to connect to Google Workspace, WordPress, and Microsoft Office seamlessly. Clearscope also supports local SEO and helps you understand your local competitors. Therefore, this app will assist you in creating relevant and impactful local SEO content.  

Conclusion 

What SEO content writing is answered above. It is a practice of producing articles or text-based content to attract an audience to visit your page or website. Content writing is distinguished from journalism as it represents commercial interests. However, many SEO content writers use journalism and creative writing techniques to create variations of content. On the other hand, journalistic articles can also use an SEO writing framework to help their page rank well in search engines and eventually help them reach wider audiences. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about What is the definition of SEO Content Writing

1. How does SEO content writing compare to regular content writing? 

They are basically the same in intention, which represent the interests of a certain brand or business. However, SEO writing is known to be more rigid and structured as they are designed to also be readable by machines (search engines). Regular content writing is more fluid and less structured. Instead, they are often written in narrative format with storytelling as the critical point. 

2. What is SEO content writing relevance in the light of AI? 

As we explain, what is SEO content writing actually? SEO content writing is still relevant in the AI era. AI is still heavily dependent on search engines and will do a web search to generate responses or answers. This means your page is still potentially cited by AI chatbots and may get organic traffic from it. 

3. What are the key tips in SEO content writing? 

Learn the structure (keywords and phrases, headings, meta title and descriptions, internal links), maintain relevance and quality, write as naturally as possible instead of robotic and formulaic, and lastly, be consistent so search engines will recognize your page better. 

4. As an SEO writer, do you need to learn about AEO and GEO other than what is SEO content writing? 

Yes, in the AI era, understanding AEO and GEO is necessary. These frameworks may help you get clients. AEO and GEO are basically a way to keep up with the disruption of AI and the growing trends of replacing search engines with AI chatbots. 

5. Are there any SEO content writing tools to generate high-quality content? 

Yes, of course. You can find various SEO content writing tools to produce high-quality content for blog posts, social media posts, email marketing, or other uses in marketing campaigns. For example, Writesonic, Jasper, NeuronWriter, Surfer SEO, and Clearscope. All of them provide content generation to produce articles to meet the SEO standards. 

6. Does the quality of articles affect ranking or position on Google and other search engines? 

Yes, obviously, Google has announced that its focus is on quality, useful, satisfying, and direct answers to what people search. Meanwhile, the articles with low quality and that contain keyword stuffing will not get a reward to be placed in a higher ranking on Google SERP. 

7. In the AI era, does SEO content writing still have an impact on business? 

Yes, absolutely. SEO content writing is still impactful for businesses nowadays, even if AI is dominating. The usage of SEO content writing is not only for search engines, but also for AI chatbot platforms, and it is also useful for businesses to expand brand awareness. This is because most of the AI engines find and crawl the answers from articles indexed on a search engine. 

8. What skill do you need to fill the SEO content writing jobs? 

In order to become an SEO content writer for filling SEO content writing jobs, you need to have several skills. The most important skills are researching to understand search intent for each keyword, having great writing skills, and always being creative to write in different writing styles. The reason behind it because each company or client needs a different style.