If you want to get discovered as a writer, there’s an elephant in the room. Its name is SEO, and if you’re anything like I was, your immediate reaction is somewhere between a yawn and a groan.
I wasn’t into it either. For a long time, SEO looked to me like sketchy tricks designed to game search engines, the digital equivalent of stuffing keywords into a conversation to sound important. It felt beneath the craft.
I was wrong. And the three hacks I’m about to share with you require zero keyword research. They work because they treat search engines as what they actually are: the connective tissue between writers and the people who need them.
Good SEO is good content marketing
Here’s the bottom line that changed my mind: your audience wants to solve a problem or fulfill a desire. You can solve that problem or fulfill that desire. SEO helps you find each other.
That’s it. That’s the whole philosophy. Everything else is tactics.
Your name: the foundation of everything
Your name is the most basic piece of information someone learns about you after discovering you’re a writer. And it’s the one search term no one can take away from you.
Were you interviewed on a podcast? Did you author a guest post? Did you hand out contact information at an event? Word-of-mouth referrals all lead back to the same place: someone typing your name into a search bar.
Anyone interested in hiring you is going to Google your name. Your content should own the first page of those results. If it doesn’t, you’re invisible to the people most motivated to find you.
3 ways to get discovered in search results
When you claim spots in search results that demonstrate what you do, you stand out as a subject-matter expert who meets the needs of paying clients. Here’s how to start.
1. Your website
The first place I was regarded as a writer was my own imagination. (A common origin story, I suspect.)
It’s natural to acknowledge your creative abilities internally before anyone else has a clue you want to write for a living. The next step is getting out of your head and into the world, specifically, onto a website that shows you can actually write.
If someone searches your name and finds nothing that demonstrates competence, how are they supposed to believe you’re worth hiring? Your own website with writing samples, displayed in search results for your name, is the fastest path from “invisible” to “obviously professional.”
2. Your social media
Consider anything you write on social media as part of your writing portfolio, specifically, the most personal part. Every post, update, and comment builds the know, like, and trust factors that people need before doing business with you.
And don’t forget video. Nothing gives a stranger a more complete picture of who you are than watching you share your expertise on camera. A podcast works too. The medium matters less than the consistency, use your real name (or the only pen name you use online) across every platform.
You might have a brand name you want to become synonymous with your own. Include it. But make sure your primary name is there too, so search engines recognize who’s behind the brand.
3. Your supplemental samples
When it comes to writing for sites beyond your own, start small.
It’s tempting to pitch the biggest outlets in your niche immediately. Resist. Smaller sites are typically more open to guest writers, their audiences are engaged and enthusiastic, and these early bylines build the credibility you’ll need when you’re ready for larger platforms.
Supplemental samples also include writing you publish on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn Articles, places where your name and expertise are already discoverable.
The first step when you have no audience
All beginner writers share one thing in common: at some point, they stopped overthinking and started writing. They took a small idea, not the “perfect” idea, just the best one available, and followed it to completion.
There’s no perfect topic waiting for you. No perfect angle. No perfect conditions. There’s just you, an idea worth exploring, and the discipline to see it through.
Build your narrative under the search term no one can compete with, your name. Start now. The audience comes later, but only if the work exists first.