When I was a kid, I begged my parents for a skateboard because I wanted to be like the kids on Rocket Power. These do much more for a writer than generate clicks. When I worked at Inverse, for example, I covered the animated series Rick and Morty, and that show presents a unique problem to content creators. However, because I’m obsessed with Rick and Morty, I knew the search terms that fanatics like me wanted to read about. Because those articles got long-tail love, my team wasn’t asked to write things like “Rick and Morty Co-Creator Tweets…Whatever.” To plan all my pitches, I put all my long-tail search terms in a Google Doc and came up with multiple story ideas from each one. Inverse was already high on Google results for robotics, innovation, and AI, so I pitched or assigned out multiple stories on the intersection of Rick and Morty and technology. Posts like that may get clicks the first day, but they won’t help SEO over time. I knew, for instance, that Newsweek’s brand awareness would push my articles about geek media high into Google’s results, so I took the opportunity to report on Rick and Morty, B-grade horror films and anime from their arts desk, adding Newsweek’s name in the Google news carousel alongside smaller, less-trusted outlets. Readers didn’t want to hear another critic tearing down Batman v Superman. An SEO expert once told me that too many content creators think of Google as an evil robot to trick or manipulate.
When I was a kid, I begged my parents for a skateboard because I wanted to be like the kids on Rocket Power. For an anxious, nerdy kid like me, the idea of learning to skateboard with candy-dyed hair and running with a crew of cool dudes sounded like paradise.
Once I got it, though, all I really did was clumsily scoot back and forth on our driveway. On summer afternoons, I watched neighborhood kids mess around on their boards, laughing when they had to bail on a trick gone wrong. Didn’t they care that they looked stupid? It occurs to me now that I could have asked those kids for advice, but the idea of not mastering skateboarding immediately embarrassed me. So I gave up.
I’m reminded of this logical fallacy when I talk to fellow writers about SEO. We all hate traffic quotas, sure, but it’s astounding to me how many of us resent having to use technology at all. I wrote at Newsweek alongside veteran investigative reporters who struggled to take Google traffic as seriously as magazine subscribers, but this resistance isn’t just limited to older generations. If a writer hasn’t bothered to study basic SEO principles by now, they’re refusing to do so for one of two reasons: They either fancy themselves above it or they fear looking stupid.
If you’re publishing anything online, figuring out what Google wants will only help your craft. Despite how daunting it can feel, here are four reasons to teach yourself some basic SEO.
To improve your pitches
The sooner you prove yourself as a guaranteed source of traffic, the more likely your editor is to let you off the leash once in a while.
One way to get there is to focus on long-tail keywords, which refers to niche and less competitive search terms. These do much more for a writer than generate clicks. With a long-tail mindset, you’ll develop a level of expertise that generalists can’t match when they answer random questions for a wide audience.
When I worked at Inverse, for example, I covered the animated series Rick and Morty, and that show presents a unique problem to content creators. People constantly google “Rick and Morty” and “Rick and Morty Season 4,” so I knew that muscling my way onto that first SERP (Search Engine Results Page) was going to be arduous. However, because I’m obsessed with Rick and Morty, I knew the search terms that fanatics like me wanted to read about.
Instead of updating the same old “When is Rick and Morty coming back?” post each week, I wrote or assigned down articles about Rick and Birdperson’s experiences in the war against the Galactic Federation and whether Rick is an existentialist or a nihilist. Because those articles got long-tail love, my team wasn’t asked to write things like “Rick and Morty Co-Creator Tweets…Whatever.”
To plan all my pitches, I put all my long-tail search terms in a Google Doc and came up with multiple story ideas from each one. Inverse was already high on Google results for robotics, innovation, and AI, so I pitched or assigned out multiple stories on the intersection of Rick and Morty and technology.
Had I just fixated on Google Trends every day, I would have bored myself to…
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