My “Write for Google Process” - The goal? Figure out the ideal headings so that my writing is mostly fill-in-the-blank.
You’ll notice that all of these steps do not include the actual writing of the article itself, this episode is all about getting set up on the right foot so that all you need to do is fill in the headings that you’ve figured out.
This process is largely hard skills and can be done completely without AI - but you can optionally add AI as an augment to assist you, as described below (Step 4).
Step 1: Keyword Research
Step 1.1: Google Suggestions
- Open a fresh incognito browser to google.com (could choose a regional Google if that’s what you’re targeting)
- Start typing in a keyword that I think I want to cover and see what the auto complete suggestions below show
- Try a few variants
- “CSS pseudo class”
- “what is a CSS pseudo class”
- “pseudo class css”
- As I’m typing these I pay attention to the auto complete to see which ones shows up the highest in the suggestions list
Step 1.2: Keyword Research Tool
- After I have my keyword selected, I go to KeySearch and type it in, in the Keyword Research tab
- I check the volume and the difficulty of the keyword
- I also check the search trends to see if the keyword is growing, shrinking, volatile, or plateaued
- Sometimes I need to change which keyword I’ve selected from the suggestions list due to lack of volume
Step 1.3: Top Results Analysis
- Once I’ve selected a keyword to pursue, I take a look at the top 4-5 results in Google
- KeySearch shows a some of these - and I’ll also Google it in a fresh incognito as well to see real first-hand results
- In these top results I’m looking at what they’re using as a title and a description - trying to figure out how they got to the top (what phrasing did they use, what keywords are there, is my keyword selection in there?)
- Sometimes I will take a look inside these top results and see what their headings are - I’ll check for common headings between the results, and differences - Ultimately I want to know what headings Google finds attractive and if I can fill any gaps between the articles (If there are heading differences between results, can I have one of each unique heading in my article? Is that too much for this topic?)
Step 1.4: “People Also Ask” Analysis
- I always look at the “People Always Ask” section of Google (the dropdown related questions)
- This step helps me see any related keywords that I can/should cover
- Anything that is related, but not directly related to my topic, may end up in an FAQ section at the end of the article to help with exposure - namely exposure to more keywords, and to help with crosslinking
- The People Also Ask section is a ripe resource for helping build out your blog - if there’s topics in there that you haven’t covered you can start researching and potentially writing about those topics (Bonus: If the post you’re writing includes an FAQ, you can start adding links to your future related articles once you cover them - crosslinking galore)
Step 2: Headings
- Based on all the research in Step 1 - I write out my headings
- Heading content is extremely important
- These tell Google and readers (remember people need to read these things!) what you’re about to write about below
- I try to write my headings so that a TLDR isn’t needed - users should be able to scan through straight to the info they want (and so should Google for that matter)
- Heading hierarchy is extremely important
- This tells Google and readers the importance of headings and also how the article is organized
- I envision my headings being a “map” for Google to find what it wants/needs from my article
- Consider an FAQ wherever feasible
- Not all topics are in-depth enough to justify one, but if your article if a fair length an FAQ is a great way to spread exposure to secondary keywords
Step 3: The Nitty Gritty
This step can be done right before publishing, it depends on your preference
- SEO Title: I try to make this the same as my H1/the name of my blog post
- I refer to my research to try and make a title that will compete with the top 5 results
- SEO Description (meta description): I try to keep these between 155-160 characters if possible, will definitely avoid short (< 120 character) descriptions wherever possible because otherwise it’s leaving real estate on the table on the SERP
- OG Image: I try to create an image that will be eye-catching on social media - I find myself not reading the SEO title on shared links on FB (for example), instead I’ll look at the link preview’s image first (ie for a guide I’ll include a lot of text that tells the person what they’re learning, for a more abstract piece I may use a nice landscape)
Step 4: AI Check-In
This is a new step in my arsenal that I’m still evolving
Check your work
- What I like to do is feed ChatGPT my headings (including my H1/article title)
- I explain that I just did SEO keyword research and that this is my breakdown for the article, asking it what it thinks about it
- It’ll offer insights into headings you could add or modify, suggesting other keywords if it thinks there’s opportunities in them
- I find this quick check in is a great way to get some validation and initial feedback on your work so far - and you don’t need to take all the advice it gives
- For example, if it suggests another keyword and my research shows that it isn’t a good one, I won’t include it
Writes and Re-Writes
- ChatGPT is great at re-writing things as well - if you’re written a SERP description but are struggling with the character count, you can ask it to re-write it at a particular character count
- You can feed your finalized heading structure to ChatGPT and ask it to write a draft where you can get started from - this step is quite controversial for some SEO experts - but if time is of the essence this is a massive speed boost
Content Plans
- My old pseudo-class vs pseudo-elements video on TT blew up recently and has continued to get views and feedback for weeks since
- I wanted to capitalize on this with an article, but all my keyword research indicated that I should be doing three articles (pseudo-class, pseudo-element, versus article)
- I was able to talk this idea out with ChatGPT to gain some feedback and insights to validate my idea in the end
- It agreed with my 3 article conclusion
- I expressed concern over spamming the site about the same topic three times quickly
- So it helped with additional ideas on how to spread that out
- Also the release order, it wanted the versus article first to capitalize on the TT video, but I mentioned that SEO was the main goal and so it aligned with my idea to write the two individual articles first, followed by the versus afterwards so we could crosslink them all together
FAQ
- How long will articles take to rank?
- Depends largely on the topic and how viral it is in the world of search, but generally it’ll end up on Google quickly (0.5-3 weeks) and start ranking seeing traffic in 3 months
- Why don’t we talk about the writing of the article itself?
- The heads are so boiled down using this method that whatever you write should be an organic take on a very SEO-centric heading and article structure (surrounding headings) - for me this helps prevent keyword stuffing as I’m just “filling in the blanks”
Links
