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May 8, 2025 21 mins
Why SEO Writing Matters for Your Business
 
In this episode, we dive into what is SEO writing, breaking down how to create content that ranks high and engages customers. Learn SEO writing in plain English, with practical tips to target keywords, match search intent, and structure content for success. Whether you’re a business owner or marketer, this episode offers actionable steps to boost your online visibility.
 
Key Episode Takeaways:
  • SEO writing blends strategic keyword use with reader-friendly content to satisfy both Google and human audiences.
  • Clarify your content’s purpose—match search intent to ensure Google connects your page with the right searchers.
  • Keyword research helps you target what people are actually searching for, avoiding jargon or unsearched terms.
  • Use keywords intentionally in titles, headlines, URLs, and alt text, but keep it natural for readability.
  • Study top-ranking content for structure, length, and format to model your content after what Google favors.
Get the full scoop on SEO writing and how to start at https://luminatelocal.com/what-is-seo-writing/
 
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:19):
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to Luminate Local.
I'm your host Jesse Dolan.
And for the last 25 plus years, I've been helping small and local businesses rank higherin search and online to get better leads, grow their business and implement smart,
sustainable local SEO.
If you've ever sat down to write a blog post or a new page for your website and thought,okay, I'm supposed to do this for SEO, but how do I write something that will actually

(00:43):
show up in search?
This is for you.
We're going to be answering the question.
What is SEO writing?
We'll cover what it really means, why it matters and how to actually do it and do it in away that helps your content rank and reach your ideal customers, right?
It's not just for the Google bot, this is for human beings too.
So let's get into it.

(01:04):
Okay, so you're sitting there again, the local business owner, marketing manager, youwhatever your position is,
You know you need to rank for keywords that matter to your business.
You know that content is important.
We've heard content is king, content is queen, right?
Content, content, content.
We need more content.
But you don't have content targeting those keywords you wanna be phone for maybe, right?

(01:28):
Or worse, uh you've written pages maybe that you thought would rank for particularkeywords, but they're not showing up anywhere.
You're not alone.
You're not the only one that has this problem.
That's why we wanna talk here today.
about SEO writing or SEO content writing.
So here's the core problem.
Maybe your site doesn't have the content it needs to rank for the keywords you want.

(01:52):
You feel stuck because you're not sure how to write the content with SEO in mind.
And what does that mean versus just writing the content in general, right?
How do you apply SEO to this?
How do you do SEO content writing?
Content that Google likes, but also real people actually want to read.
Again, this isn't just for the Google bot.
is for human beings too.

(02:12):
We have to satisfy both of things here.
So SEO writing may feel hard, ah may feel unnatural, uh and it may require you to thinklike a search engine and a human being at the same time, right?
Again, we got to satisfy both.
Bit of a weird combination.
And I don't think it's taught very clearly out there.

(02:35):
I'm not knocking anybody or anything.
It's just something that when we talk to clients, this is always a subject that justreally needs a lot of education.
So that's what we're to try to fix here today, or at least talk through on some of thesepoints.
So who am I?
Again, I'm Jesse Dolan.
I've spent 25 years helping businesses build content strategies and implement SEO thatgets results.

(02:59):
And here's what I've learned when it comes to SEO writing.
It doesn't have to be a mystery.
It's a skill.
just like writing or creative writing or things like that.
Some people are good, some people are bad.
And like any skill, it's gonna get easier once you understand the process and practice it,okay?
So let's walk through some things step by step.

(03:22):
Before I get into that though, I do wanna read a review on this episode.
If you've listened to any other episodes for Luminate Local, you know that we read areview on every episode.
Reviews are very important to us.
That's the way we get feedback from you, the audience, knowing that these episodes aregood, that they resonate with you, that our teachings are on point and we're talking about

(03:42):
the things that you want to learn and it's all working good.
So if you are so inclined, please go on out to illuminatelocal.com and scroll to thebottom.
You're going to find a link for reviews there.
can read reviews.
We're also going to have buttons for you to leave a review on any platform that you sodesire.
Facebook, Apple podcasts.
Google, whatever it is, illuminatelocal.com, scroll down and click on reviews.

(04:07):
We'd love to hear from you.
And if you submit a review, we're going to read it here on the show, just like this onefrom Carmela Hagan.
She says, this great five-star review from Google, Jesse demystified Google and local SEOin a clear and simple way to get my business and website to be top search results.
Thank you for the great five-star review, Carmela and everybody else.

(04:29):
Again, if you.
feel that same way if we're bringing you that kind of value we would love to get a reviewfrom you.
In return go to illuminatelocal.com click on reviews.
Alright back to the show let's break uh SEO writing into I got four simple parts here thatI'm gonna kind of go off some bullet points that I've created.

(04:50):
So step one part one item one however you want to say it clarify why you're writing.
Before you start typing
Ask yourself, why am I writing this page or why am I writing this post or whatever?
Why am I writing this content?
Most likely it's because you want it to show up in search.

(05:11):
That means it needs to match search intent.
Okay.
Google does a great job of guessing.
If I'm a searcher, if I'm typing in something in a search, Google does a great job ofguessing what my intention is.
Right?
A classic example I use all the time is wedding band, right?

(05:31):
YouTube, I'm holding up my wedding band here.
ah If I did a search for wedding band, does Google think that I'm looking for jewelry ordoes it think I'm looking for a live band to play at my wedding, right?
Now, as a searcher, Google knows a ton about me.
It's been tracking me.
listens, it watches, it records my searches, everything else, right?
And so it's pretty good at guessing my intent.

(05:52):
But as the content writer here on the other end of the keyboard, you have to make surethat your intent on the content you're creating.
It's very clear and it has then that because then Google can match it up with my as asearcher, my intent, right?
So are you answering a question?
Are you promoting a service?

(06:13):
Um, explaining a process, showing a DIY, a how to write, uh, whatever it is, be clear onyour purpose because writing for SEO means writing strategically and intentionally.
So why are you writing this?
Make sure you have that.
identified in the back of your mind.
Second is do keyword research.

(06:35):
ah You can't rank for what people are not searching for.
Maybe you got a crystal ball and you're put some content out there for things that don'texist yet.
Example here I love to always use is Uber.
Back in the day Uber wasn't a thing.
We had taxis.
So, you know, nobody was searching for ride sharing or Uber, right?

(06:56):
Things like that.
ah
So if you had a crystal ball, great, you would have been creating that content ahead ofeverybody else.
But people weren't searching for that stuff, right?
So you can't rank for what people aren't searching for.
just, that just doesn't work.
So before you do write content, figure out what are people actually typing into Google?

(07:17):
Another great metaphor here is if you're trying to be found for red balloons.
Are people typing in red balloons?
Are they typing in party balloons?
Are they typing in red party balloons?
Right?
You just gotta figure out uh what it is that they're typing in versus what you thinkthey're typing.
Maybe you have some industry jargon in your mind.
Maybe you have the curse of knowledge for what you call the thing.

(07:39):
Don't do that.
You wanna do some keyword research.
ah There's tools.
You can go into Google and just do a search for whatever keyword you're thinking of.
Scroll down to the bottom.
I love telling this.
people all the time.
is super, super quick, relatively speaking and free typing your keyword into Google,scroll down and look for the people also ask or, you know, related searches.

(08:02):
It can look different depending on what you're searching for and where you're at.
But Google will give you examples of things that it thinks are related to what yousearched for that other people are searching for.
Just rinse and repeat that.
It could be like six or 10 examples at the bottom, depending on how you're seeing it andjust write those down.
So
The free tool, if you will, from Google is effective.

(08:27):
There's also a lot of paid resources out there.
Just do a search for keyword research.
You're going to find all kinds of companies.
Some might be free.
Some might have a small subscription, but they're going to try to pull in some data foryou to help understand the volume behind those keywords, how many people are searching for
that thing at any given month.
That's great.

(08:47):
A little bit more advanced than the free Google technique.
I do like if you're just starting out, if you're listening to this, if this is all new toyou, just do the free Google technique.
You don't have to spend any money yet or sign up for anything.
Because to an extent, at least what I'm trying to teach here, it's not about how manypeople are searching for the thing.
It's that people are searching for the thing.
Right.

(09:07):
And so if you use this free Google method, if Google saying people also searched for,right.
Well, people have also searched for that.
People have searched for that.
Right.
So you're going to be pretty darn safe.
So again, you can use the free Google option.
If you are doing paid ads within Google, uh there is a Google Keyword Planner tool andfunction within there where it's gonna show you all kinds of great keyword data.

(09:35):
Check that out if you are paying for ads on Google.
And again, if you just do a search online for keyword research, you're gonna come up withall kinds of options that are out there.
I'm not trying to endorse any particular.
brand or portal for that here on this episode.
So I'm not gonna go down a list of names, ah but at the end of the day, you wanna findyour main keyword for this article, right?

(09:58):
We're not talking about keyword research for your whole business here at all, right?
Just again, you're gonna write an article.
You've identified the intent of your article, what kind of content you're putting out.
Now you wanna make sure you identify what are some of the main keyword or keywords orkeyword phrases.
It doesn't have to just be one word, right?
It can be a phrase.
identify those main keywords for your topic in your article and gather any relatedquestions, know, phrases that are kind of around it and make a list of those.

(10:31):
That's going to be your roadmap for the things you want to hit on for your content andinclude in this article or post.
That would lead us to the third part, which is incorporating these keywords intentionally.
This is a big part of SEO.
is being intentional, right?
We don't wanna just stumble upon things or keep them as default.

(10:51):
uh We want to be intentional with what we're doing.
We wanna craft our pages and our posts here.
So once you know those keywords, here's where you're gonna wanna use them.
Your page title,
If you do a Google search, the biggest text that we see on the screen, that's usually yourpage title.
Google can rewrite that in some cases, but for all intents and purposes, uh have yourkeywords or a keyword or phrase that you want to be found for in your page title.

(11:20):
And then also in your primary headline, which is going to be called the H one or headlineone.
And that's like the, the, the big headline should be at the very top of the page.
You want to make sure you have a keyword or keywords, keyword phrases in that as well.
I also love seeing keywords or related keywords in the first paragraph right underneaththat H1, your primary headline.

(11:44):
And then just kind of repeat that cascading down the page.
Your sub headlines, uh content underneath those, you want to work in these keywords andphrases intentionally into your content.
Again, you want to make sure you're typing it in a way that reads well for human beings.
in addition to being scanned by the Googlebot here for being found in search, it has toread properly as well.

(12:10):
So don't be mechanical or artificial.
We want to be intentional with making sure we put our keywords in, uh but it has to bereadable and digestible for humans as well.
uh Another area people forget is the actual URL of your page, right?
So illuminatelocal.com slash whatever.

(12:32):
that whatever, right?
That's the URL slug of your page or post that you're creating and you're gonna want tomake sure that you're clearly identifying the intent, the topic, the keywords, however you
want to say it uh within that URL.
Often something similar to your page title or that primary H1 is going to be a goodstarting point for what your URL slug or string should look like.

(12:57):
A couple other areas you want to make sure you're intentional with your keywords.
is your meta description.
uh That is, again, we do a Google search, the big text you're gonna see when you click ona result in Google is usually the page title, then the smaller text under it uh isn't
always, but can often be the meta description.

(13:17):
And that's something on your web page or your content management system you're gonna haveto kind of input.
And that's just a brief, not beef, a brief description of the article, the content, whatit is there.
Another area that's kind of hidden that people will overlook, I wouldn't say this isadvanced SEO, but this gets a little bit more nuanced is the image file names and alt text

(13:44):
for any images that are gonna be on that page or post.
And what do I mean when I say image file name?
If I were to take a picture with my iPhone and just save it to my computer and ID fault ifit's, know, IMG1234.jpg.
If I were to just take that off my computer and upload it to my webpage,
That's the file name, know, IMG1234.jpeg.

(14:06):
Well, instead, if that's a picture of red balloons, I'd save it to my computer.
I would then rename it red-balloons.jpeg and then upload it to my webpage.
Now the file name of this picture is red balloons, right?
And that has a much more uh direct uh indicator on what this picture is and what this pageis about if it's about red balloons in that case.

(14:29):
uh Additionally, you have alt.
text, which you can modify for the images that you would include in your web pages.
And this is usually, and maybe even technically, this is for if it's a screen reader, ifsomebody is trying to just have the content read to them instead of reading it with their
eyes, it's going to, when it comes across an image, it'll say this is what the image is,the alternate text, the alt text.

(14:56):
But for SEO purposes, this is another spot for us to input, you know, a sentence or uh aphrase that contains our keywords in there.
That makes it relevant.
And then in general, so we're kind of hitting on some of the main technical areas here.
your H1s, your sub headlines, ah paragraphs directly under headlines, images, things likethat on how to use your keywords, but then just sprinkle them in naturally throughout the

(15:22):
copy.
Maybe throw a bold or an italics on some of them, uh incorporate some into bullet pointedlists, things like that.
um The keyword here is naturally, right?
Don't overdo it.
um Google smarter than you think.
A lot of these old tricks, just stuffing keywords, know, having half of the words on thepage be keywords or phrases.

(15:43):
ah Google smarter now, those are old tricks and your readers deserve better too.
That's gonna make it really hard to read.
So don't do that.
People will ask all the time.
Can't I just put a bunch of keywords at the bottom of the page?
That's a white page.
Can I make it white text so they're hidden?
No No, don't do that.
Don't do that.
It's not gonna work either All right moving on to the next part here Sorry, I'm relaboringthere a little bit but moving on to the next part is your your structure your format and

(16:12):
kind of the length For SEO writing and this is where most people I'd say I'd say fallshort
Before you write your article or post, at this point, you've got your keywords identified.
Do some searching and look at what the top ranking content for those keywords are.
Study it.
Ask yourself, how long is it?

(16:34):
What sections does it cover?
How is it formatted?
ah Just take a look at what's already dominating for those.
I should say, what's tactics and what's
architecture and style are those pages using for what's dominating that keyword search andthen model your content based on what's already working I'm not talking about copying it

(16:55):
at all or plagiarizing or cloning in any way but understand if you're trying to write anarticle about again red balloons and if you have 500 words of text written but the top 10
articles all have 2,000 well you're gonna need you're gonna need more content rightbecause Google's favoring that so
Do some searches, do some research, do a little reverse engineering, see what they'redoing.

(17:21):
How long is the content?
What are they doing for headlines, sub headlines?
How many sub headlines are they using?
A bunch of bullet points, long paragraphs, a lot of pictures, is there videos, right?
Things like that.
You want to make sure you're doing all of that.
And also I would say this isn't a hundred percent SEO here this last bit, but have a clearcall to action at the end.

(17:45):
This is good for search engines and AI agents because it helps them identify what the nextstep is, what the intent is.
But just for human beings, this gives them that next step.
Let's just assume you write a great article.
Let's just assume it ranks high in Google.
You want to make sure when somebody is done reading it or gets to the bottom of it or, youknow, mixed in between whatever you're providing them the next step, you don't ever want

(18:10):
people guessing at what they should do next.
So.
make sure have a clear call to action and that you have put that in front of people.
ah Now for you listening here, there's a call to action as well.
I would say go out to illuminatelocal.com and take our free SEO audit.

(18:30):
If you've already created a page that you want to audit or maybe you want to save this andgo through this process, do your SEO writing, publish the page and then go score it and
see how good that you did.
you can use our free tool, illuminatelocal.com.
Click on the yellow button for the free SEO audit.
You plug in your webpage.
This is something that's page by page.
And then you type in the keyword that you want to score it against or that you thinkyou're optimized for.

(18:55):
And it's gonna, within seconds, it's gonna run a quick report.
It's gonna pop a PDF up on the screen for you.
And it's gonna show you what's the good, bad, and the ugly for that page.
And it's gonna give you a checklist of things to fix.
So...
Head on over there, again illuminatelocal.com, click on the yellow button, take the freeSEO audit, and in just a few clicks, you'll know where you stand on that.

(19:18):
So, and it's gonna maybe help you um write a better end uh or final draft of your articleor post.
Okay, so hopefully that gives you a good outline and architecture on, you know, the basicone-on-one of what is SEO writing, how do you approach it, what makes it different, and...

(19:39):
how to have the right intent and all these things.
So as I always like to do, what happens if you don't, right?
What happens if you don't take SEO writing seriously?
Um, and if you don't incorporate these and you just slap out an article, like maybe youalways would have.
Well, you're going to spend probably hours creating that content.
Even if you use chat GPT or something else, you're going to input into it.

(20:01):
You're going to get the output.
You should be massaging it and not just throwing up straight chat GPT onto your website.
Um, you're going to have some time into this, right?
And then it may not rank, right?
Never gets found, never brings in new business.
Nobody ever finds it.
It doesn't get shared at the end of the day.
That's wasted time, effort and energy, um, and lost opportunity for you, uh, where if youwould've taken a little bit more time, had that intent, mixing your keywords, optimize

(20:26):
that page a little bit better with the right architecture.
Um, then you could have success.
Um, if you plan, if you research and you structure your content the right way,
you at the very least set yourself up for real growth and give yourself a shot.
You can attract the right audience.
You can rank for those keywords, the ones that actually matter for your business thatyou're targeting and turn that content into visibility.

(20:52):
I would say illuminate your content, right?
Make it glow, pun intended.
And anyway, visibility turns into sales, right?
It's a math, it's a numbers game.
uh
The better content you put out, the more eyeballs that are going to get on it.
The more eyeballs that are going to get on it, it's going to turn into sales for you.
There we go.
think that's a good ending point for this episode.

(21:14):
I hope there's some actionable items in there for you for SEO writing.
Um, that's different than just writing content, right?
Or creative writing.
It's that plus SEO.
And if you do it in the right way, it's going to help you rank and then get found online.
Don't forget to take our free SEO audit at illuminatelocal.com.
And if you have a question that you would like us to answer on this show, we love doingthat.

(21:38):
Just go again out to illuminatelocal.com, scroll down to the bottom, click on the link forquestions, submit your question.
If we use it on the show, we're to send you a free swag bag with some illuminate localgear in there, which is pretty cool.
So check that out if you are so inclined.
ah Thanks for listening to this episode and we'll catch you on the next one.
Take care.
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