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. Learn what they are and how to use them below.
Using optimized style guides:
- What is an SEO style guide?
- Why should I use an SEO style guide?
- Who should use an SEO style guide?
- How do I make an SEO style guide?
- Do I need an SEO style guide?
What is an SEO style guide?
A traditional style guide is a document that lists the technical writing rules and guidelines you want your publication to follow. For example, when to capitalize titles and whether to use em-dashes.
An SEO (or digital) style guide is similar but lists rules specifically for digital publishing. It should include rules and guidelines for:
- Headings
- Bullet lists
- Internal and external links, including follow and no follow links
- Keyword spelling variations
- Call-to-action (CTA) text
- How to capitalize primary and secondary keywords
- Meta descriptions
- Title tags
- Related articles or blog posts
- Country-specific spellings and terms
- How to use gender pronouns properly
A style guide can cover anything and everything when it comes to your house writing and editing rules.
But it should be customized for the different types of content that you write and for each client or website you have.
Why should I use an SEO style guide?
Part of writing high-quality content lies in its consistency. Spellings, headings, and CTA text should be uniform across your website — both for the visual appeal and the SEO benefits.
Most SEO best practices are similar for different pieces of content.
For example, what should be an H2 in a blog is usually the same in an article or on a landing page.
When you create consistent, standardized rules to follow for content creation and building new web pages, it helps you to maintain a strong SEO strategy that maximizes your content creation efforts and gets you results.
Plus, it helps your writers, editors, and content overseers to create, edit, and publish content faster and with fewer errors since everyone will be following the same rules and best practices.
Who should use an SEO style guide?
SEO style guides come in handy for:
- Content managers and managing editors
- In-house and freelance writers
- In-house and freelance editors
- Copywriters
- Pay-per-click (PPC) specialists
Even web developers and programmers can benefit from SEO style guides to determine content hierarchy, standard CTA messaging, and more. While they aren’t necessarily content producers or reviewers, they occasionally have to add additional elements to new pages like popup messages, buttons, and headers.
Even though not all of these roles focus on SEO, you still benefit from having consistency across your website. Since most SEO best practices mirror digital publishing best practices an SEO style guide helps to keep all of the content that you post up to snuff.
How do I make an SEO style guide?
Ideally, your SEO style guide should be flexible. Since best practices change with algorithm updates and industry innovations, your SEO style guide needs to be easy to edit and modify.
A digital, master version that can be accessed by anyone who needs to see it works best.
Start making your SEO style guide by brainstorming and listing the SEO rules that you already follow. Consider things like how you structure titles, address alternate product names, and links to your own content.
Write out your existing rules and then review your site content to determine where you think you need to make some decisions.
For example, if you don’t have standard button messaging, now is the time to create it.
When you come across new situations that don’t have standard rules or best practices, add to your style guide and let everyone who uses it know that it’s been updated.
Typically, you should review and update your SEO style guide at least once a year to make sure that it’s in line with recent trends and search engine updates.
READ MORE: How often should I update SEO content?
Do I need an SEO style guide?
If you write, publish, or edit SEO content, then yes, you should have an SEO style guide. It’ll keep your content clean and consistent across different pages and ensure you meet (and hopefully exceed) SEO best practices.
This article was originally published in March 2021. It was last updated in October 2024.