Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the primary strategy that helps online content find its way to readers. SEO boosts discoverability. It means having thoughtfully and strategically optimized keywords. In practice, an author with great SEO skills stands a better chance of having their website or information show up earlier in Google results.
The goal of SEO is to lead people to your content by paying attention to what they’re looking for If they’re looking for content similar to the content that you write, you want them to find you! When most of us type in a Google search, we know the general contours of what we’re looking for, but not the exact thing. That’s why we type broad keywords around the topic into a search engine. When you include those relevant keywords about the topics you cover in your own writing, you help your work rise to the top of the results page for people who are already interested in what you’re doing.
When you think about developing an SEO strategy, think about what someone might be looking for when you want them to find your work. What search terms are they likely to use? Those search terms will become the keywords that you can incorporate into your work.
There are a few ways to go about boosting SEO for your writing projects.
One is through clear titles and subject lines for your writing. If you are posting a short story about undead hordes in an industrial English city, your title should include words like “zombie,” “brains,” and “Manchester.” That way, people looking for stories about the undead in the UK will be better able to find your work.
You can also put keywords into your metadata and into the content itself. For example, WordPress lets you list keywords for your posts. But be sure to use your keywords in the writing itself, too. Adding in these keywords in metadata and content might seem redundant, but search algorithms work on repetition, so we recommend adding them in.
Making your content easily shareable helps boost its discoverability as well. If you’re writing about how a specific author has inspired your current work, tag that author and add a link to your favorite book they’ve written. This makes it easy for that author to know that someone is writing about them, and makes it easy for them to share your work if they like. As an article or a website gets shared, it is more prioritized by search algorithms because it’s clear that readers are engaging with it already.
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An excellent, detailed explanation of SEO and how to use it. With this guide, anyone can do it!