Does Your Freelance Writer Know About SEO?

Freelance writing is a rapidly growing service on the internet. You must have been working with an excellent freelance writer for your niche website or authority blog.

However, writing error-free articles doesn’t guarantee that the content is engaging and SEO optimized. I’m just curious: does your freelance writer know about SEO?

Well, I have been doing freelance writing for more than eight years. I have closely worked with companies and blogs across the globe.

I can ramble on for the next seven minutes and brag about the guest blogging on SEMRUSH, Thrive Global, and a bunch of other blogs.

Is it going to help you out?

Not so much.

Let’s cut to the chase.

You must have been spending your hard-earn money on putting out content to engage, attract, and convert the audience. Who doesn’t want to get extra visitors and pageviews? After all, it could generate more leads or increase email subscribers or bring more sales.

You don’t have to:

• Fire your current freelance writer
• Add more freelance writers to the team
• Buy an SEO software subscription
• Hire an expensive SEO expert

Your freelance writer could do a much better job just by understanding basic SEO.

You should email this blog post to your content manager or freelance writer instead.

I’m about to share a few fundamental SEO changes that could turn things around for your website.

Does Your Freelance Writer Know About SEO?

Let’s take a look:

The 70-character blog post title is long enough

Writing a long, hefty blog post title isn’t going to cut it. Instead, make a precise, to-the-point, and clear headline for your blog post that is understandable by the readers as well as search engines. The 70-character mark is the ideal length for an article title to appear in the SERP.

Have you seen pages that show up in Google, and you can read the headline halfway through? I mostly try to write 60 to 70 characters long blog post titles as a rule of thumb, but sometimes, it’s impossible to make it happen.

The purpose of writing a great blog post is to bring people to your blog so that they could find the solution to their problems. That said, when you’re writing a good blog post title, it puts so much responsibility on your shoulders that you don’t even know about. So try to stick to the 70-character blog post title.

Using the keyword in the title, URL, and subheading goes a long way

Adding a keyword in the first paragraph isn’t enough, and it might not be relevant anyway. You must have heard how Google is getting better at providing the exact answer to the query.

There has been a lot of debate around passage indexing, which perhaps means if a certain paragraph contains the potential answer to a query, Google might be able to find the answer, and eventually, rank the page based on that.

So you’ll be better off if you pay close attention to writing quality content and put the keyword in the title, URL, and subheading for clarity and relevance. It may sound like an old-school SEO technique, but it does the job without putting your website ranking in jeopardy.

Understanding the searchers’ intent is vital to writing good content

Searchers’ intent means what’s going on in the searchers’ minds when they’re searching in Google. You need to put yourself into the searchers’ shoes to understand their intent.

It doesn’t matter whether you have a keyword targeting approach, meaning you hunt down keywords through tools like Long Tail Pro, or else you do some due diligence on the topics. I’ve always taken the latter approach, though.

Not only do I keep my interests and strengths in mind while writing about the topics, but I also try to focus on the content clusters. For instance, if I wrote an article about an exercise machine for a home-based gym, and it brings some traffic, then I’d think of writing more articles on home gym exercise machines. This way, I’d be able to attract a similar audience along the way.

However, I don’t always hit the bullseye, but I have been able to write so many articles based on the searchers’ intent that drove thousands of visitors over time.

If your freelance writer doesn’t understand searchers’ intent and blindly focuses on the keyword tools, then you should talk to your writer.

Keyword stuffing in the content is a no-go

What are we back to the 90s-era? Keyword stuffing in any shape or form is a huge mistake. If you aren’t sure what keyword stuffing is, then let me explain it. When a content writer or blogger pushes so hard on adding a keyword in the content that the keyword becomes repetitive in the content, it’s called keyword stuffing.

Keyword density isn’t as relevant anymore in SEO as it used to be a decade ago. If you’re noticing this pattern in your articles, you must have a Zoom call with your writer and try to explain that keyword stuffing is a red flag.

Instead, your writer should focus on writing valuable articles that answer the readers’ queries. Take it from me as I’m writing blog posts for more than a decade: if you know what you’re saying and helping the audience through your experience, experiment, or exposure, you’re going to crush it with your content.

Using Google Images could lead to problems

I have heard stories where freelance writers screwed up site owners badly by using images they found through Google Images, and the site owners had to pay fines for using others’ images without their consent.

If your writer doesn’t know that using others’ images could lead to copyright infringement, then it’s time to have a Skype call with your writer. Not only could it lead to a Google penalty, but it could also get worse than that.

Images play an essential role in content SEO and readers’ engagement. However, it’s difficult to design images or come up with original screenshot examples. Content writers always have to rely on third-party websites to gather their examples. I won’t recommend using others’ featured images or Pinterest pins. I don’t even use stock photography website photos on the blogs.

You’ll be better off if you set the ground rules for the images or screenshots you want writers to produce along the way. I create most of my images in Canva, but if I have to take a screenshot from others’ websites to explain my point, I always try to link out to them for the image source.

Inserting unoptimized images could increase page loading speed

Unoptimized images are the ones that aren’t compressed for better page speed. One of the SEO mistakes is using unoptimized images on the blog. Most beginners have no idea what unoptimized images could do to the user experience and search engine ranking.

Some freelance writers are supposed to write and publish articles on their clients’ blogs. If you have delegated the publishing job to freelance writers, make sure to train them about optimizing the images before adding to the content.

I use ShortPixels on all of my niche websites to optimize images for better page loading speed. If you haven’t had a chance to try out any of the image optimization tools, then try out ShortPixel for free. I have been using the paid version for a while.

Internal linking is an excellent SEO tactic

Internal linking means you strategically interlink your relevant pages to engage the readers and search engine bots. Not only does it keep visitors on the site, but it also makes bots better understand your content. SEO experts pay close attention to internal linking when working on the site structure.

Your freelance writer got to have some knowledge about internal linking. It doesn’t end here, but instead, you should analyze the quality of internal linking the writer has done so far. If your freelance writer doesn’t internally link the right pages, you got to have some conversation about this issue.

It’s been a tried-and-tested strategy that internal linking helps improve ranking in the SERP. Sometimes, even internal linking doesn’t make much difference because of the fierce competition in the SERP, but it doesn’t mean it won’t work for other blog posts. So don’t overlook this excellent SEO tactic just because it didn’t work for a certain blog post.

These were a handful of SEO content writing techniques that both niche website owners and authority blog owners should know before hiring a freelance writer.

Do You Need a Freelance Writer?

Writing a blog post on a personal blog for fun is a piece of cake. Any college student with decent writing skills and with Grammarly’s help can cobble something together. However, it does not compare with writing for niche websites.

When you write high-quality, SEO-optimized content for a niche website, you must keep loads of factors in mind such as the main topic, article title, the value in the content, related posts, content clusters, sub-headings, content optimization, and many more things along the way.

Not only did I write this blog post for site owners, but beginner freelance writers could also benefit from the above-mentioned points.

Since I have been writing content for more than eight years now, so I shared several SEO tactics that could help any blog or site owner who hires freelance writers.

Moreover, if you need a freelance writer for your blog or niche website, I might be able to help you out.

Looking for a freelance writer? I’ve written hundreds of articles for clients over the past few years. Plus, I’ve published blog posts on popular publications/blogs such as Thrive Global, SEMrush, FreelancerMap, Visme, AllBloggingTips, BloggingCage, BeingGuru, and a few more. Feel free to reach out to me.

See you in the next one.

Take care.