You Need At Least Basic SEO Knowledge As A Content Writer!

I will never forget the first online job interview I had on Freelancer.com. The first question that I was asked was:

“What do you know about SEO?”

The job was quite simple in theory since I just had to write a daily blog post on a health site but I was not actually considered after phase 2 of hiring process because I was honest and answered: “Nothing!” Many content writers lie and will try to say exactly what the employer wants to hear. This is a huge mistake and you will be caught every single time if tell a lie. I do believe that it is always better to be honest. My honesty got me a lot more work during the almost 10 years working as a freelancer.

Around 2 weeks after the SEO question I landed a new interview and a similar question popped up. I was, again, honest and this time I was told that I would go through a training schedule. My writing was good but it seemed that I needed to at least have basic knowledge about SEO.

“Why in the world is that since I am paid to write content for a site?”

This is what I thought. As time passed I realized how important SEO knowledge was for an online content writer. I was not writing just for people. I was also writing for the search engines. I had to understand what they need so that my articles would be successful. If nobody finds your articles, what good does it do that they are perfect and attractive?

The good news is that the algorithms used by search engines are evolving in the right direction and it is a guarantee that in a few years the quality of your writing will be far more important than the SEO rules that you will follow. However, it is still important to at least know some basic SEO facts since that is necessary when writing for a website. Basic knowledge is more than enough and you can basically learn all that you need if you are willing to do so. All the information that you need is already available online on SEO blogs and even on sites that help bloggers to improve.

The last thing I want to say in this article is not necessarily related to the need to have basic SEO knowledge as a content writer. I want to emphasize the fact that you have to learn all that you can as a freelancer in general. For instance, for a content writer it is not at all a bad idea to read the articles on ProBlogger. You can find tips and tricks for freelancers all around the internet. Learn all that you can since that is what will help you the most at the end of the day!