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Writing for Free: Yay or Nay?

“Never write for free!” Do you know how many times I’ve heard writers and content professionals say that? Too many to count. And I’m guessing you have too. I swear, I see some variation of it every time I sign in to LinkedIn. And while I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think touting it … Read More

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Gender Pronouns in SEO Content

Gender pronouns in SEO content are an important part of ensuring your content is correct, consistent, and kind. As subject matter expert (SME) quotes become one of the most popular ways for your content to stand out from AI-generated writing, accurately using each person’s preferred pronouns is essential. For example, interviews with industry experts, platform … Read More

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How to Write Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are small but mighty. Since they’re one of the first things a user sees in SERPs, they directly influence clickthrough, traffic, and, ultimately, organic conversions. While you can let Google set them for you, optimizing them is the best way to ensure your link preview and page content match. And that you have … Read More

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How to Format SEO Content

You may think that SEO is all about words, but that’s only part of what makes a given piece appeal to readers and search engines. How you format SEO content is also important. What your content looks like and how easy it is to read through also have an impact on how well it performs. … Read More

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SEO Headings

SEO headings (sometimes called headers) may seem like they aren’t important enough to affect your content’s performance in search results, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In reality, headers like H1s, H2s, and even H3s play a big role in how search engines understand your content. As an added bonus, they also help … Read More

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How to Update Evergreen Content

Evergreen content may last longer than trend-centered content, but unlike its namesake, it doesn’t just care for itself over the years. No matter how timeless your content is, it will still need to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis to ensure that it’s still following SEO best practices and optimization techniques. Unfortunately, there’s … Read More

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How to Write SEO Content

In reality, you can write SEO content any way you like. From listicles and microblogs to how-to guides and definitions, the possibilities are endless. But if you really want to make it shine for SEO, there are a few extra steps you need to take outside of just writing whatever you want and hitting publish.  … Read More

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SEO Style Guides

But style guides aren’t just about outlining writing rules like when to use serial commas (always). They can also be used to specify your SEO preferences, like how you want to handle outbound links or secondary keywords. That’s why having an SEO style guide for your writers to follow is essential to your SEO strategy. … Read More

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Substantive Editing, Copy Editing, and Proofreading

You may be surprised to learn that editing is a very important part of search engine optimization (SEO). High-quality content should always be reviewed for correctness, consistency, and clarity before being published. The most successful SEO content is written by those who understand that editing is made up of a lot more than just proofreading, … Read More

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Primary and Secondary Keywords in SEO

A lot of people make the mistake of only focusing on one keyword in their search engine optimization (SEO) content. But, by doing so, they miss out on opportunities to take advantage of contextual search and rank for new queries. When doing keyword research, I like to divide my list of keywords into two types: … Read More