Writing content for search engines allows you to appear in search engine results pages. Once you're there, you can attract visitors to your site, give them valuable information, and get them interested in your brand.
But even if you publish awesome content jam-packed with value, it doesn't guarantee that people will find it. Your content has to be optimized for search engine algorithms.
Writing high-ranking content that readers find helpful can be a challenge, but there’s a method to it. In this blog post, I’ll discuss the characteristics of great content, along with 14 real-life examples of these characteristics. Let's jump into it.
14 SEO content writing examples
The best content is always packed with value and optimized for Google search results. Getting the right blend of this duo is not straightforward, but it has been done by many. Here are 14 content writing samples you can replicate in your content writing.
Write for your audience [Pick up Limes]
You don't have to write content for everyone on the internet. It's more practical to identify your target audience and figure out their needs, interests and pain points. With this knowledge, you can write SEO content that is relevant and helpful to someone out there.
Pick up Limes does this well. The food website provides recipes and information strictly for people interested in a plant-based diet. And it shows in every single detail.
For example, in their article on kitchen essentials, they mention the need for sharp knives. If you ask me, knives can be used to cut any type of food. But Pick up Limes keeps the conversation about cutting vegetables, fruits and nuts because that's what their readers want to eat.
Satisfy search intent [Expert Photography]
It's one thing to know what your audience is searching for, but it's another to understand why they're searching for it.
As a content creator, your job is to understand your reader's journey and the fundamental reason behind a given search query.
For example, if your audience is searching for what the best time to feed their dog is, the last thing you want is to use that search term to rank a landing page of your flagship dog food.
Expert Photography gives us a great example of how to satisfy search intent. The search query "drone photography" most likely originates from someone who owns a drone and is looking for tips and techniques on how to create fantastic drone photos.
This person is different from someone looking for a drone camera to buy.
Expert Photography responds to this search query with a detailed guide on drone photography. The guide lightly touches the best camera drones, but only advises the reader to check them out in another article.
Why?
Because the current reader is on that page for stuff like safety measures, tips, composition techniques and processing methods for drone photography.
Surfer's Keyword Research tool can help you quickly identify search intent along with new keyword ideas
Include relevant keywords [Surfer]
The first step to SEO writing is knowing what your audience is interested in and which keyword phrases they use to find their interests.
With effective keyword research and the right keyword density in your SEO content, you can bring in more organic traffic to your site.
Content Score is a Surfer metric that measures the level of optimization in your content relative to your competition. The score ranges from 0 to 100 and represents the quality and relevancy of a piece of content to a given keyword according to Google.
With a content score of 86, our article on long tail keywords is a good example of written content with relevant target keywords.
Add important keywords in your headers, URL and metadata [Drift]
Keywords usually appear in the body of a text. But that doesn't mean they can't be in your headers, article URL, meta description, and even in the in-text images.
Including keyword phrases outside the body of your SEO article can give your content an SEO boost as it lets search engines and readers know what the content is about and if it's relevant to a particular search query.
Drift does this well in their article on third party cookies. The primary keyword, "third party cookies" shows up in the main H1 header. There are also variations of the keywords in the H2 subheadings.
Optimize for CTR [Coinbase]
A high CTR can be an indicator that your keywords are performing well. After all, the more visible you are in SERPs, the higher the chances of someone visiting your website.
Effective meta descriptions are good for CTR because people are less likely to bounce to another site when they see what they're looking for in your title tag and meta description.
Neil Patel puts it nicely when he says,
"...you can get up to a 5.7% increase in click throughs when the exact query that someone is searching for is also in your meta description."
Let's see how Coinbase did this. “Cryptocurrency for beginners” has a monthly search volume of 2900. Coinbase optimizes their meta description by specifying that the guide is for beginners.
Secondly, there is a strong call to action in this meta description, something that lures a reader in.
Keep in mind that only 35.9% of Google featured snippets have a meta description the way it was written; the rest are cut or modified by Google.
Create evergreen content [Nerdwallet]
Information can get outdated quickly. News gets obsolete, trends become old fashioned, and figures change.
Evergreen content stands the test of time.
According to Hubspot, updating old posts increased traffic to those posts by 106%.
Instead of creating one article and updating it every year, Nerdwallet's page on the best credit cards for college students is updated every month to give evergreen search results to that search term.
You can identify a bunch of evergreen topics for your website and create them quickly using an AI writing tool like Surfer AI.
All you need to do is enter a primary keyword and provide some instructions for the kind of article you would like to create.
And in about 20 minutes, Surfer AI will generate a complete search engine optimized article like this.
Implement E-E-A-T [Verywell Fit]
The experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust levels (E-E-A-T) of a website, its content, and its content creators. These are the factors Google uses to see if its automated ranking systems are bringing in quality results.
In other words, E-E-A-T sets the bar of the quality of content Google wants.
So it's no longer enough to write SEO friendly content; the content has to actually come from reputable content creators and sources.
As Google's says,
"E-A-A-T can be useful to creators seeking to understand how to self-assess their own content to be successful in Google Search..."
Affiliate website Verywell Fit understands this, and as part of its editorial process, the site uses only subject matter expert writers, editors, fact checkers, and a review board of certified professionals.
At the start of their articles, you can see who wrote and reviewed each blog post, along with their credentials. To build more trust in their content, they've put more details about the education and experience of each writer and reviewer in the author pages.
Showcase your product [Wix]
High quality content that is optimized for SEO increases visibility in Google's results pages. So it only makes sense to use this limelight to show people what you've got.
Take Wix for example.
In their ecommerce security checklist, they start by educating the reader about website security, its devastating effects, and leading threats.
Then, they follow up this information with a checklist of the best ways to protect an ecommerce site.
On top of the list is choosing the right ecommerce platform, and Wix naturally educates the reader how its website builder is ideal for covering all the security threats mentioned before.
Create case studies and original content [Backlinko]
Case studies and original content give fresh insights into overly discussed topics in a vertical.
They show that you take content creation seriously, and are not just trying to game search engines.
No wonder 37% of B2C marketers use case studies in their content marketing and 58% of content marketers believe original content is the most important type of content.
Backlinko has numerous in-house studies with publicly available data.
It's not just awesome content for their target audience; it's a sign of thought leadership and helps build trust in Backlinko.
Create content hubs [Podia]
Content hubs, such as Adobe's which brings in nearly 2 million organic visitors from the US alone, can position a brand as an authority in a particular field. They can also improve SEO.
When search engines realize you have great comprehensive content in an area of your industry, they qualify you as a subject expert and favor you higher in results pages.
Podia's content hub on how to create and sell an online course links to several supporting pages about finding online course ideas, creating an outline, building course content, and more.
Such a large amount of internally linked content on one topic improves a reader's user journey and builds Podia's domain authority in the online course vertical.
It can also improve SEO when search engines recognize a bunch of thematically related pages that show a clear picture of what Podia's content is about.
Manage your reputation [Activecampaign]
SEO writing can help you manage your online reputation, after all 90% of an online consumer's impression is built on the first page of the search engine results.
If you keep tabs on competitors, trendy discussions, and what people are saying about your brand, you can stay on top of your game by writing pieces that remind people of what you stand for.
Activecampaign has a whole hub of versus pages to help users see their advantage over competitors. The company is clear about their product: personalized, automated marketing solutions for growing businesses.
But they are also aware that their competition offers similar products with varying features and pricing.
So the site uses these compare pages to explicitly tell their visitors how they stand out from other service providers.
Write for skimming [Mindbodygreen]
Not everybody is going to fully read an article from top to bottom.
In reality, most people read only 20% of the text in a web page during a visit
That's if they decide to read.
This is why it's vital to cut to the chase when communicating ideas during SEO writing. More importantly, you have to make your text visually appealing for people so they can get answers quickly, especially in long form content.
Headings, short paragraphs, bullet points, and bolded text make skimming easy. Infographics, videos and images also help a reader to understand your message faster.
Mindbodygreen, a healthy lifestyle blog, has skimmable blogs with fonts, colors, images and formatting that makes their information easy to digest.
Their article on the benefits of olive oil uses multiple sub-headers, short paragraphs, and a sentence summary after each benefit to allow readers pick out important facts quickly.
Link internally and externally [Surfer]
Internal and external links are a gateway to site relevance and authority.
Internal links help search engine bots understand the context of your web page, making it more visible in search queries. Although internal links are not inherently a ranking factor, Google's Senior Search Analyst John Mueller says,
"I think it’s one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important."
On the other hand, external links prove to the readers that your information is credible when they see outbound links to other authoritative pages.
Take this article you’re reading for example. It has external links to other websites because they’re relevant, and internal links within other articles under the SEO content writing keyword cluster.
Republish and update your content [Healthline]
Search engines and web visitors love updated content, so if you're not updating your blog posts, you're missing out on traffic. Repackaging a poorly performing post with fresh keywords and recent information can re-open traffic to that post.
It might also sound counter-intuitive, but not republishing old content means you're leaving out opportunities.
Generating new content ideas is no walk in the park, so why not reduce your workload by recycling what you already wrote?
Today, 73% of blog owners continuously update their SEO content, and so should you. Take Healthline's article The 10 Best Mattresses for Lower Back Pain in 2023 for example. Although it was first written in 2020, Healthline updates this article multiple times every year, giving new and returning readers confidence in that information.
Conclusion
Great content needs to be optimized for search engines and also provide value to a specific audience. Luckily, you don't have to reinvent the wheel when writing content. Hopefully, these SEO content writing samples inspire you to write your next blog post.
