SEO Content Editor

Written By Rachel Abraham

The best search engine optimized content satisfies user intent quickly and sounds like a human being. My job as a website content editor is to help your blog post, landing page, social media post, or video script do both. Ready to get started?

 

What I think about while editing:

  1. Empathy with the reader, writer, and brand

  2. Brand voice and tone

  3. Concision

  4. Spelling, grammar, & punctuation

  5. Readability and format

  6. Organization and "flow"

  7. Plagiarism & AI

  8. Keyword optimization

  9. Accuracy and claims

  10. Screen reader accessibility

  11. How it looks on all device types

  12. AP Style, MLA or Chicago Manual

  13. SERP features and competitors

My editing services include:

  • Minor corrections (spelling, punctuation)

  • Helpful, actionable notes

  • Tools and resources

  • Readability evaluation

  • Plagiarism diagnostic

  • Summary evaluation

  • Upward feedback about talent and strategy

  • High-level analysis of rank potential *optional

    Rewriting goes a step beyond editing, including research, to produce new copy. Check out my services as an SEO content writer if you need rewrites too.

 

How to edit SEO Content

Job boards are filling with editorial positions for UX, UI and SEO content experts. These burgeoning specialties blend English professors' “consider the audience” approach to writing with scientific A/B testing and search volume calculation.

This 12-step guide redefines familiar writing and editing tasks and outlines how to edit SEO content. The goal is to help you organically rank on page one and drive people to your site. Let me know how this process works for you, if you have any questions, or just want to trade notes. Email me at rachel[at]theletterpurple.com.

What is good SEO content?

As quality gatekeepers, editors need to know what's good. In SEO, good content is…

  1. Satisfying.

  2. Front-loaded.

  3. Scan-able.

  4. Trustworthy.

Now, let's say you've started your new content editing gig. You have a 800-word draft from a writer or an old article that needs an update. Here's how to start:

Pre-requisite: An editor's understanding of keyword research

Content marketers, like those specializing in SEO, use keywords or queries (phrases people ask Google) to optimize landing page content. Keyword research tells us what people are searching for and how often. For instance, I can use SEMrush to tell me that “Mexican hot chocolate” was googled approximately 14,800 times in the last year—I was one of those searches.

Editors aren’t always tasked with keyword research, but linguists are some of the best people to interpret query intent. Who better than word nerds like us to tell the difference between “cost” and “charge” or “caterers hiring” and “hiring caterers”? Because of your understanding of word choice and word order, you may just be your SEO team’s secret weapon to parsing keywords by intent.

1. Focus on the target keyword and user intent.

A focus keyword is the search query a page is intended to rank for. That search query contains either an explicit or implicit question or problem. SEO editors translate knowledge of their audience and focus keywords into user intent.

The article you’re reviewing should answer the question or help solve the problem posed by the target keyword. For example, you want to give readers a:

  • Recipe if the focus keyword is “Mexican hot chocolate”

  • Tutorial for “how to create a vision board”

  • Map of local pizzerias for “pizza near me”

  • Calculator so they can “calculate take home salary”

Each piece of content you edit should target a small handful of keywords that share the same intent. For instance, that hot chocolate recipe page might also target terms like "spicy hot chocolate" but probably wouldn’t include anything about “French hot chocolate”.

Unsatisfying content won’t rank well or accomplish your traffic and conversion goals. If a writer’s draft doesn’t match the keyword’s intent, you need a rewrite—or a different target query.

How to confirm user intent

Google is great at predicting user intent by combining what they know about the user (your audience) and the linguistic analysis of a query (what and how they searched for something). See this in action.

Copy a focus keyword into Google and examine the search results (SERPs).Then, ask yourself:

  1. How does the draft I’m reading address this search?

  2. How does it improve on competing content?

  3. Does it address an audience or intent unmet by the results?

2. Use inverted pyramid style.

Use journalism’s inverted pyramid style to put the most important content at the top of the page (also called front loading). This helps satisfy users quickly.

Remember the last recipe page you visited? Did it make you scroll past ads and paragraphs just to get the ingredients and instructions? You don't have to be that baker. Although, long articles sometimes have their benefits. If pillar content is your strategy, give users the ability to jump to the important parts.

3. Keep it short and scan-able.

Lazy readers are the norm. Be:

  • Concise

  • Eye-catching

  • Well formatted

4. Build Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness.

Google rates sites based on expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Trustworthy brands are more likely to rank well across the board. How can SEO editors improve E-A-T?

You can:

  • Interview or hire experts to write copy or film a tutorial.

  • Consider the expertise in each byline.

  • Keep content within your brand’s authority.

  • Build brand authority with research and content.

Some SEO editors are tasked with hiring writers. If you are, look for professionals in the field. Experts are the best people to answer user questions accurately AND provide the solution—making them uniquely qualified to satisfy user intent.

Also, consider:

  • Building a citation strategy.

  • Sharing research methodology.

  • Nurturing new thought leaders.

5. Run diagnostics.

There are 3 automated quality checks you can run to save time while editing:

A. CTRL+F for key terms

Look up each key word in the title or target query. You don’t want overuse key terms; this is called keyword stuffing. One appearance per paragraph is usually enough.

Focus keywords are most effective in the:

  1. URL.

  2. Title.

  3. Headings.

  4. First sentence.

B. Check for plagiarism & AI generated copy

Plagiarism checkers come in different forms and prices. To save time, I prefer to use an all-in-one checker like Grammarly Premium, which compares content to a database of more than 16 billion web pages and academic papers and has an “Instant AI Detector.”

If the article contains plagiarized text, check the flagged content. Is it a common phrase? Is the source related to your topic? Ask your writer to revise whatever content flagged the program. It the draft is egregious, you should be able to reject the draft and work with a different writer.

C. Spellcheck for readability

Readability tools like Hemingway Editor, Grammarly, and even Word can assess the reading ease, grade level and passive voice of your copy. You can use these metrics to quantify quality standards and track improvement or writer progress. Aim for 8th grade or lower on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. Improving your content’s readability also optimizes for conversion.

6. Edit the snippet paragraph.

For many focus queries, Google has what's called a featured snippet. It's the short answer read by Google Assistant, Alexa or Siri.

  • Does your introduction directly respond to the focus keyword?

  • Does it include your focus keyword?

  • Is it between 40 and 50 words?

  • Optional: Consider adding a quick CTA at the end to reel people in from SERPs.

7. Inspect every link

  • Is it natural?

  • Does it concisely, accurately describe the destination?

  • Did the writer remove tracking info from the URL?

  • Does the link meet your anchor text strategy?

  • Did they link to that page more than once?

8. Look for eye-catching opportunities

Start every paragraph and sentence with eye-catching words to keep content engaging and scan-able. Check the final word in a paragraph and the last word of the article. You want these to be intentional.

9. Don’t abuse formatting

Too much bolding is worse than not enough. Be careful of multi-column tables and heavily indented lists since they may not look good on mobile devices. Speaking of mobile devices …

10. Keep screens in mind

Google encourages webmasters to think with a “mobile first” mindset. Half of internet traffic is driven by mobile devices these days, but there are certain digital destinations people are still more likely to engage with on desktop.

You can use tools like Google Chrome’s Inspect Element to see what your content will look like on iPhone, iPad or Android devices.

11. Think about CTA placement

Mark natural opportunities to include a call to action (CTA). You want the content and the usability of the page to go hand-in-hand. Converting organic users into loyal customers is a good way to make money for your business.

12. Lastly, summarize notes for the writer.

Let the writer know what to expect when they dig into your notes. Let them know how well they met the focus keyword's intent. Prioritize notes on tone, keyword use, plagiarism, and readability. 

Did they need a little more detail and clarity? Could the paragraphs be shorter? Did they use inverted pyramid? Highlight at least one thing you really liked, too!





Thanks for reading!

If you’ve made it all the way down here,

let’s be friends!

Rachel Abraham
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SEO Content Writer