Most people don’t know what a freelance SEO writer is, but SEO writing is fast becoming an excellent career choice. Online sales surpassed retail sales for the first time during the 2011 holiday season, and as this trend continues, search engine traffic will become increasingly important. The demand for quality freelance SEO writers will grow significantly in the coming years, but how do you determine if SEO writing is for you? Here are the three essential qualities you need to be a freelance SEO writer.
Writing skills: Unlike a novelist, writing SEO articles does not require much creativity. However, a freelance SEO writer must have good basic writing skills. She must have a good command of the English language, with basic grammar and access to reference tools such as a thesaurus. It’s also important to understand the basics of writing structure and be able to form simple paragraphs that effectively convey ideas.
Diverse interests: While you don’t need to have many interests or areas of expertise to become a freelance SEO writer, it can certainly be beneficial. SEO content writers are often asked to write about a variety of topics and may need to do research to better understand the content domain before writing an article on that topic. If you can specialize in multiple areas, especially lucrative ones like finance, health, or relationships, it will be easier to find work and get things done. If this sounds fun to you rather than boring, then you might be a good candidate for this career.
Solid work ethic: Being a freelancer in any industry isn’t easy, but being a freelance SEO writer is especially challenging. You need to be able to produce content on topics you may not be interested in in a short period of time. It’s important to tackle projects on a daily basis, don’t leave them all to the last minute or you may end up with more work than you can handle. With the sheer number of freelance writers on the market, missing a deadline can easily cost you a client.
A career in SEO content writing can be challenging, but it can also be very rewarding. If you meet these three simple criteria, a freelance SEO writer may be right for you.
What Is a Freelance SEO Writer and Can I Do It?
If you’re new to the prospect of freelance writing on the web, or even if you’re not new to it, you may have seen companies looking for freelance SEO writers, or heard of other people making money freelancing SEO writers. There are many websites dedicated to learning how to write SEO articles, but what exactly is a freelance SEO writer?
To understand what a freelance SEO writer does, we must first understand what SEO is. The purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to make a website rank higher in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing (MSN) and thus increase traffic to the website. A company or SEO professional determines the most searched keywords related to that company. For example, a New York real estate agent may want to drive more traffic to her website, so she needs to figure out the most popular keywords related to “real estate agent” and “New York.”
Now that you know a little bit about SEO and its purpose, you’ve probably guessed that SEO writing uses these keywords (e.g. “new york realtor”) and that SEO articles will feature these popular keywords. Typically, an SEO writer is asked to write a 300-500 word article around a specific keyword, and the more that keyword is used in the article, the better the article ranks on search engines for that specific keyword. If the article ranks high in search engines, people will find it, click on it, and be taken to the company’s website.
You may be thinking, “Great! I am good at writing short articles. When can I start?” But there is one more important thing to understand about writing SEO articles: the point of an article is not the content, although very important. When writing SEO articles, the most important aspect of the article is multiple keyword matching. A freelance SEO writer knows how to write compelling, informative articles around these very specific keywords.
If the above sounds like something you’d like to do, then think about becoming a freelance SEO writer. A website is a must-have for most businesses and SEO is an essential part of a website’s existence: there is no point in having a website if no one can find it. Start writing simple SEO writing tips for clients almost immediately.
