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This is a complete guide to creating SEO content.

In fact, the techniques I’m about to show you have helped me rank #1 in Google for competitive keywords like “SEO strategy”:

And “how to get YouTube subscribers”:

I’ll walk you through the steps to creating your own content that’s optimized for search. So you can improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your website.

What Is SEO Content?

SEO content is online content designed to rank in search engines (like Google). Also, content written for SEO is typically optimized around a specific keyword.

And when it comes to search engine optimization, make no mistake: Content is KEY.

I can speak from firsthand experience that content marketing can help you get LOTS of organic (unpaid) traffic.

In fact, we regularly publish content on Backlinko that’s specifically designed to rank in Google.

And this SEO-focused content strategy is one of the main reasons the site gets over 645K monthly sessions from organic search.

With that in mind, let’s now walk through the steps of SEO content optimization.

How to Write SEO Content

To rank on Google, you need two things: content that helps readers and content that shows up in search results.

And that’s exactly what you’re about to learn.

Tip #1: Choose the Right Topics

Your first step to writing SEO content is to come up with suitable topic ideas.

Specifically, you want to cover topics that:

• Your target audience (or customers) care about
• You have experience or expertise in
• Are related to your business

This way, you can create valuable content that’s likely to connect with your audience. And that makes it WAY more likely to convert them into customers.

Here are three quick ways to [find content ideas](/content/find-content-ideas "25 Creative Ways to Find New Content Ideas"/index.html) and come up with awesome topics:

• Reddit: Head over to active subreddits where your target audience tends to hang out. And look for topics that tend to come up again and again. These are likely topics your target audience struggles with—prime targets for [quality SEO content](/content/quality-seo-content "Quality SEO Content: The QRIES Approach for Better Rankings"/index.html).
• Competitor Blogs: Look at popular blog posts, videos, and infographics from your competitors’ blogs. What do they have in common? What can you emulate (or improve upon)?
• Personas: Personas can help you paint a clear picture of your target audience. Including what they are interested in, their pain points, and what factors influence their buying decisions. You can use Semrush’s free Buyer Persona Tool to create your own.

For example, my target audience includes people that do marketing full-time.

Tip #2: Use the Right Content Type to Meet the Search Intent

Most people likely associate SEO with written content. But there’s much more to consider than just writing blog posts.

Types of SEO content include:

• Articles and guides (like this one)
• Listicles and comparison posts
• Infographics
• Videos
• Podcasts

And not every topic you target is best served with a written post. This links to the idea of [search intent](/content/hub/seo/search-intent "Search Intent and SEO: A Complete Guide"/index.html).

Tip #3: Find Your Target Keywords

Now it’s time to find target keywords for your content.

To be clear: [Keyword research](/content/tools/keyword "Free Keyword Research Tool by Backlinko"/index.html) is a HUGE topic. So I can’t cover everything there is to know about finding keywords here.

First, use Google autocomplete to find [long tail keywords](/content/long-tail-keywords "Long Tail Keywords: How to Find & Use Them Effectively"/index.html).

Tip #4: Optimize Your Content for Target Keywords

Now it’s time to take the keywords you just found and optimize your content for them.

Tip #5: Write Comprehensive Content

If you want your content to rank in Google it needs to be AWESOME.

This means it needs to:

• Give the user what they want
• Answer all of their questions
• Go beyond what’s already out there

Tip #6: Optimize Your Content for Users

If your content doesn’t provide a great user experience and isn’t easy to read and understand, it WON’T rank.

Tip #7: Add Information Gain

[Information gain](/content/information-gain "Information Gain: How Top Content Leaders Win at SEO"/index.html) is a measure of how unique and valuable your content is compared to the content that’s already out there.

Tip #8: Analyze Your Results and Adapt Your Strategy

To do that, I recommend tracking a few important page-level metrics:

• Organic rankings
• Organic traffic and impressions
• Backlinks

Start Creating Great SEO Content

Clearly it takes a lot of time and effort to create truly valuable content that’s also optimized for SEO.

But it’s also clearly worth it.