Complete SEO Content Writing Checklist

In this SEO content writing checklist, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to write effective web content that is both engaging and informative for your audience while being easily crawlable and indexable by search engines.

Creating high-quality content is one of the most useful tools companies have in their arsenal for expanding their brand recognition and growing their client base. After all, there is no entity on Earth with a greater reach than the Internet.

In the past two decades, the world has transformed into a digital marketplace. With 81% of retail shoppers starting their shopping experience with online research, consumers are more and more relying on search engines to inform their purchasing decisions.

Naturally, the more relevant queries you can rank for, the wider the impression your brand will leave on potential buyers. As such, writing SEO-friendly content is one of the most important steps your business can take to ensure you are accessible to your target audience.

The easiest way to ensure your content is both engaging for your audience and optimized for search engines is through my SEO content writing or blog marketing services. You can contact me for a free quote.

Alternatively, while it can take years to master the skills, you can start your own journey to self-writing your content with this complete SEO content writing checklist.

Step 1: Researching & Planning

Creating SEO content begins with thorough research and planning. Follow this checklist to ensure your content is optimized for your potential clients and search engines with effective keyword research, SERP analysis, and competitor research.

Keyword Research

1. Identify main keywords related to your topic using keyword research tools(Ahrefs, SEMrush, KeySearch)
2. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find additional supporting keywords and alternative phrasing.
3. Choose the keywords with high search volume and low competition to target.
4. Include a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords specific to your potential client’s needs.
5. Create a list of both the primary and supporting keywords you want to use in your content.
6. Determine the purpose behind your target keywords (informational, navigational, transactional). This will play an important role in how you outline your content.

Competitor Analysis

7. Identify your top competitors in search results.
8. Analyze their website content for keyword usage and take note of keywords for which you can outrank them.
9. Examine the type and format of their website content (blogs, guides, service pages).
10. Find gaps in their website content that you can fill with better information.

Step 2: Structuring Your Content

The next step in crafting compelling, SEO content is creating an outline that includes your title tags, header tags, and overall flow. Follow this checklist to craft a well structured content outline ready for execution.

Align Your Format to Search Intent

• Outline your content to be aligned with the search intent of your primary keyword(e.g., provide detailed information for informational intent).
• Ensure your content answers common questions directly and solves problems for your target audience with informative, actionable steps.

Include Your Title Tag

• Write a unique title for each page and post.
• Include the main keyword in the title.
• Keep titles under 60 characters to avoid truncation in search results.
• Make titles descriptive and compelling to encourage clicks (Higher CTR = positive user signals for search engines.)

Include Headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.)

• Use an H1 tag for the main title of the page.
• Include the main keyword in the H1 tag.
• Use H2 tags for main sections and H3 tags for subsections. (You can use H4 & H5 tags to break up larger chunks of text.)
• Ensure headers are descriptive and relevant to the page content.
• Use headers to break up text and improve readability. Try to limit text to a maximum of 300 words without a header.

Step 3: Content Creation

With your outline in hand, you can now get started on actually writing your content. Follow these SEO guidelines for content writers to ensure your web copy caters to both readers and search engine crawlers alike.

Originality and Uniqueness

• Ensure your content is original and offers unique insights or perspectives.
• Avoid duplicate content that can harm your web content’s ranking. This is especially true for if the duplicate content is featured on the same website.
• Use tools like Copyscape to check for plagiarism before publishing.

Keyword Placement

• Place your main keyword in the title, preferably near the beginning.
• Avoid keyword stuffing; aim to use your primary keyword once per every 300 words of copy.
• Incorporate related keywords naturally throughout the content.

Readability

• Use short paragraphs and bullet points to break up the content.
• Aim for a Flesch-Kincaid readability score of 60-70 for general audiences (or for the reading level of an eighth grader.)
• Use subheadings to guide readers through the information.

Content Length

• Aim for a minimum of 800-1,000 words for blog posts and informative web content.
• Longer content (2,000+ words) tends to perform better in search engine results.
• Prioritize quality over quantity; ensure every word adds value for your client.

Step 4: Adding Visual Elements

Improve the user experience of your content by incorporating visual elements. Follow this checklist to ensure your content is aesthetic and pleasing to your audience.

Image Optimization

• Use high-quality images relevant to your content.
• Compress images to improve page load speed without sacrificing quality.
• Name images descriptively using keywords (e.g., “seo-content-writing-checklist.jpg”).
• Use image file formats like JPEG or PNG for compatibility and quality.

Video Content (Optional)

• Incorporate relevant and engaging videos into your content.
• Optimize video titles and descriptions with keywords.
• Use transcripts or captions to make video content accessible and improve SEO.

Data Charts & Infographics

• Create informative data charts and visually appealing infographics to present complex information.
• Use relevant keywords in titles and descriptions of data charts and infographics.
• Ensure data charts and infographics are visually appealing, easy to understand, and mobile-friendly.
• Provide a brief description or summary of the data presented for accessibility and SEO purposes.

Step 5: Adding On-Page SEO Elements

Now, with your content written and beautified for your audience, you can start incorporating those on-page SEO elements that make your writing appealing to search engines. Follow these steps to ensure search crawlers can easily find and index your content.

Meta Descriptions

• Write a unique meta description for each page.
• Include the main keyword in the description.
• Keep meta descriptions under 160 characters (Aim for about 140 characters)
• Summarize the page content clearly and include a call to action.

Alt Text for Images

• Write descriptive alt text for each image.
• Include relevant keywords in alt text to improve SEO.
• Keep alt text concise but informative, describing the image’s purpose.

URL Structure

• Keep URLs short and descriptive.
• Include the main keyword in the URL. (A good practice is to use your primary keyword as your URL slug).
• Use hyphens to separate words in the URL.
• Avoid using special characters and numbers.

Internal Linking

• Add links to relevant pages within your website.
• Use descriptive anchor text that includes keywords relevant to the target page’s content.
• Ensure that each page has several internal links. (Aim for one internal link for every 200 to 500 words.
• Update old content with new internal links when relevant and as you publish new content.

External Linking

• Include external links to reputable sources that boost your own credibility.
• Use descriptive anchor text for external links.
• Regularly check and update external links to avoid broken links.

Step 6: Content Review and Editing

Before publishing, you should take a step back from your content and reapproach it for a final round of revisions with a fresh set of eyes. Here are some quick tips on how to edit for error free content.

Proofreading

• Review your content for spelling and grammatical errors.
• Check for consistency in writing style and tone.
• Read your content out loud and listen for any inconsistencies or weird wordings.
• Use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor for additional proofreading assistance.

Step 7: Publishing and Promotion

With your final edits made, you can finally go ahead and hit that publish button. While this is the end of the SEO content writing process, it isn’t the end of the content management. Your next responsibilities are to ensure the technical aspects of your new webpage are available to search engine crawlers and promote it to various external networks. Keep reading this SEO content writing checklist for more information on how to manage your technical SEO and off-page SEO efforts.

Step 8: Checking The Technical SEO

While not the responsibilities of an SEO content writer, you are going to need to know how to monitor your technical SEO if you are going to handle your own content creation. You can do so by following the checklist below, or hire me to manage your content production with my blog marketing services or SEO & content marketing packages.

Submit Your Webpage for Indexing

• Use Google Search Console to manually submit your URL for indexing.
• Use Bing Webmaster Tools to manually submit your URL for indexing.
• Regularly check both platforms for indexing errors or issues.

Mobile-Friendliness

• Ensure your new page has a responsive web design that seamlessly adapts to different screen sizes.
• Test your site on mobile devices to ensure usability and readability.

Page Load Speed

• Minimize server response time by optimizing server configurations.
• Compress images and CSS files to reduce page load time.
• Enable browser caching to store frequently accessed data locally.

Step 9: Promoting Your Content

You still need to promote your newly published work. Follow these steps to develop an effective off-page SEO strategy that’ll have you ranking atop the SERPs.

Social Media Sharing

• Share your content across relevant social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest).
• Craft engaging captions and use relevant hashtags to increase visibility.
• Encourage followers to like, comment, and share your posts to broaden your reach.

Email Marketing

• Create email newsletters or campaigns to promote your new content to subscribers.
• Personalize emails with segmented lists based on subscriber interests.
• Include compelling CTAs (Calls to Action) and links to drive traffic to your content.

Backlink Building

• Identify authoritative websites and blogs related to your niche.
• Reach out to these sites to request backlinks to your content.
• Create valuable content that naturally attracts backlinks from reputable sources.

Step 10: Monitoring and Analysis

You should never leave your content to wither away after publishing. Regularly monitoring and analyzing your website’s performance and email metrics is crucial for optimizing your strategies and achieving your goals. Follow this checklist to effectively track and analyze key metrics to determine when it is time to update your content.

Tracking Rankings

• Monitor your keyword rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to track changes in keyword positions over time.
• Identify keywords that are performing well and those that need improvement.

Analyzing Traffic

• Use Google Analytics to analyze traffic sources, user behaviour, and engagement metrics.
• Track metrics such as bounce rate, average session duration, and page views.
• Identify trends and patterns in traffic to understand what content resonates with your audience.

Adjusting Strategies Based on Performance

• Review analytics data to identify strengths and weaknesses in your current strategies.
• Make data-driven decisions to adjust content, SEO tactics, and promotional efforts.
• Experiment with new strategies and monitor their impact on performance metrics.

SEO Auditing

• Conduct regular SEO audits to assess your content’s performance.
• Check for keyword optimization and relevance.
• Review meta tags, headers, and internal linking structure.

Updating and Refreshing Content

• Regularly update outdated information and statistics.
• Add new insights or developments to keep content relevant.
• Refresh meta descriptions and titles to improve performance.

A Final Note

With this actionable SEO content checklist, you now have everything you need to produce effective SEO content that will not only rank on Google but will resonate with your target audience and position you as an authoritative source within your market.

But you don’t have to go alone to it.

Writing effective SEO content isn’t learned overnight, and it takes time to produce. I should know. I make a living doing it.
Instead of juggling content writing with the already busy demands of actually running your business, why don’t you contact me for a free consultation. I would love to detail how my SEO content writing & blog marketing services can benefit your brand while giving you more time to spend on the things that matter – running your business.

Kurt Norris

Kurt Norris is the founder of Kurt’sCopy, where he helps B2B, e-commerce, SaaS, and local businesses craft compelling content and SEO strategies that deliver measurable results. With over six years of experience, Kurt specializes in creating data-driven campaigns that drive traffic, increase conversions, and establish brand authority.