16 Key Skills For Successful Content Writers

Writing good content is more than just being a good writer.

I’ve been a full-time content writer for the past two years. I’ve written for industry-leading publications like BiggerPockets and for the smallest of niche side projects. I’ve even dabbled in book writing over the past eight years despite never actually publishing a book (I will at some point though).

Through all of my efforts, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of published words, written many thousands of unpublished words, and have done pretty well for myself financially. I’ve also learned a ton about content writing, marketing, and promotion.

Many writers believe it’s enough to simply put their articles out there and wait for something to happen. While some might get lucky, there’s more involved. In order to be successful in content writing, you have to be proficient at marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), editing, communication, research, and more.

But all of the above is not as hard as you might think. If I’ve been able to pull it off, then you can too.

In this article, I’m going to list sixteen key skills you need to become the best content writer you can possibly be.

Skill #1: Become a Concise Writer

I know. We’re starting off really basic here, but this skill is very important.

Writing good content isn’t about using flowery language and complex sentence structures. It’s about being really simple and to the point, but with a standard of language that grants authority to your expertise without scaring away the reader.

You need to be deliberate with your words. Write with purpose, not just to meet your word count targets. Deploy simple grammar (and correct grammar), be conversational, use the words “you” and “we” to better connect with your reader. Try to write as if they’re in front of you.

This alone will automatically make you a better content writer.

Skill #2: Break Down Complex Information

Most people who read articles online are searching for information because they have a question that they want to be answered. This is definitely the case with “how-to” guides and articles like this one.

With that in mind, what good does it do the reader if they come to you for a question to be answered, and all you do is confuse them more with complex language, big words, long sentences, and academic-style writing?

The answer? It does them no good (unless your audience is literally academics themselves).

Most content is written to answer questions, provide valuable insights, and give information in a digestible format.

For instance, one of my clients has me write about a very complicated subject: mortgages.

Believe it or not, mortgage markets are very complex and encompass every subject imaginable from basic real estate to economics to politics and law.

Yet, every week, I’m able to break down the latest news in the industry and present that information in a sophisticated, but digestible format.

How do I do this? I get to the point.

Instead of writing: “The market’s fundamentals indicate a late volley of QM originations towards the end of Q3 2021.”

I say: “The market seems to be heading for a late surge of qualified mortgages at the end of Q3.”

Yeah, the sentence is shorter, but that’s the point. You don’t have to stop and think about what I said.

Skill #3: Be Personable

You may or may not have noticed, but I’m talking to you.

Get what I mean?

I’m talking to you in the way I would if I met you in real life. This article is a literal translation of my voice. If you write like yourself instead of a robot, then you’ll build better connections with your readers.

This doesn’t mean you should be informal all of the time. There’s a time and place to be formal. But in articles like this, it pays to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to write the way you talk. As long as you have proper grammar and get the point across, feel free to be you.

Now, you might ask: “But I write for a company. How can I talk like myself?”

For one, writing for a company doesn’t mean you have to talk as if you’re an inanimate paper that says, “I’m a company”. There are people behind the brand.

Second, writing as yourself, for a company, makes it easier for readers to feel comfortable with the company’s products. No one wants to work with or buy from businesses. They want to work with or buy from people.

Third, some companies provide their writers with brand guidelines. For instance, some of my bigger clients have sent me brand booklets that go over tone and grammar requirements. Most of them ask for me to speak with my own voice.  

Skill #4: Know Something About SEO

Ah, SEO. The language of digital marketing.

It’s a requirement to know something about SEO (and digital marketing as a whole) if you want any chance at ranking articles on Google, increasing your freelance pay grade, or succeeding at all with content writing.

The good news is that it’s not as hard as you think. There’s a lot going on, yes. Plus, it’s not exactly a science. No one knows the exact configuration of Google’s algorithm and what it looks for in an article. However, we have a pretty good idea.

All articles need to check off a shortlist of boxes in order to be competitive. Let’s briefly touch on a few of the main ones.

Quality

First and foremost, your article needs to be really good. Deploying all of the skills in this article is the best way to put yourself in that position. Not only does your article have to rack up points on clarity, conciseness, style, and accuracy, but it needs to be designed well (on the website), feature links, and more.

We’ll touch on some of these things in more depth soon.

A Targeted Keyword

Gone are the days of keyword stuffing. Ranking for a keyword has nothing to do with using that keyword over and over again throughout the article. However, you should absolutely do keyword research and center your article’s topic on a specific word or phrase.

There’s a lot of information about keyword research. I’m planning on writing a guide for it, but for now, I’ll just link to this guide here.

I’ll note that keyword focuses can be different when you’re writing as a freelancer, especially if you’re writing news articles. Sometimes, editors won’t tell you if they’re looking to target a keyword. Sometimes they will. It never hurts to ask if they want you to target one.

A Sturdy Structure

Structure is very important for SEO. It revolves around the length of content (research finds that long-form content with more than 1,800 words ranks the best), the distribution of headings in the article, and the number of words under each heading.

Here’s a shortlist to follow:

And More

There are a bunch of other things that help SEO. Ranking strategies range in usefulness, but for someone who wants to really supercharge their writing, it helps to learn as much as you can.

The three points I just brought up, however, are fundamental to SEO and will help you get going.

Skill #5: Do A Lot of Research On Your Topic

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to know anything about your topic in order to write about it.

In fact, it’s a common saying throughout history that the top experts are often the worst at teaching. Here’s a compelling quote:

“It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. […] The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten. He sees the whole subject, by now, in a different light that he cannot conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren’t.”

C.S. Lewis

When I got started in real estate content writing, I knew absolutely nothing about real estate. Two years later, I’m still learning an awful lot.

You’ll never know everything about a topic. When you’re trying to rank an article, you need to know what content is already doing well anyway. So, while it pays to be original, being too original can actually set you back. This is why you need to become a hefty researcher.

I’ll also note that the strategy I’m about to lay out is controversial to writers. Most writers hold the art of writing near and dear to their heart, just as I do. However, in the realm of content writing, writers need to understand that originality is great, but not very marketable.

Unless you command an audience already or don’t care if anyone reads your articles or you’re someone who markets themself on Medium and that’s it, then you can be original. Go ahead and write about the most abstract topics with as little or as much research as you want. Do whatever suits you. But for everyone else, if you want to rank your articles, build an audience from scratch, and market yourself or your business effectively, then you need to cut the originality and stick to what works.

This does not mean plagiarize, copy everything your competitors say, and regurgitate the same information on every article. However, for the sake of marketing and appealing to a ruthless algorithm, you should touch on the same topics as your competitors, in your own words, and then add so much more in terms of value that it seems like you were the first one to produce the information.

With that being said, the subject of research requires a guide of its own. But here’s a short breakdown of the research process I use for just about every article I write:

  1. I choose my topic (or get assigned one).
  2. I search for the exact topic on Google.
  3. I browse through the top articles and scan through each, taking note of the headlines and the topics.
  4. I then take notes on the most important information in each article and come up with as many points that I can touch on as possible.
  5. I make sure that I cover all of the topics that have already been written about, then try to add more.
  6. I continue to comb through information and bring it all together.
  7. I write an outline.

This is the simplified version of my research process. Depending on the project, I’ll change some things up. The main takeaway here is that the originality of my articles comes from my own language and the additional points I make.

I always ensure that the articles I write include all of the points already made by the top articles for the target keyword, just in my own words. Doing this doesn’t make you a copycat. It does not make you a fake writer. It makes you smart.

Skill #6: Writing Outlines

George R.R. Martin said that there are two types of writers: architects and gardeners.

Architects are planners. They know everything that’s going to be in the piece before a single word is written. Gardeners are aware of what they’re writing about, but they may not know exactly what the text will say or the legnth of it. They just know their topic.

I happen to be an architect (although everyone has a touch of both in them). Every article I write comes with an outline in Notion (my favorite productivity app). Back in my early days of content writing, I would make simple outlines where I just wrote the headings down and went from there. This took less time, but the result was less informed articles with a lack of conciseness.

Once I started to write headlines, plus the main points, side points, references, details, mental reminders, and more, my writing became way better.

Granted, it takes a lot of time to write an outline, but it’s worth it. My pay scale dramatically increased when I approached my articles with organization in mind. Some of my outlines have surpassed 1,000 words. Those articles also turn into highly detailed works that get ranked, distributed, seen, and read.

Another amazing benefit of outlines is that you can make them, leave the topic, and come back to it months later to finally churn out the article. This is a huge benefit when you’re writing dozens of articles per year. It also lets you know how much information you can cover with your article before you ever open up a blank document.

I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve ditched midway through writing because I didn’t realize how little there was to write about or simply because the topic was incredibly boring and incompatible with me.

Seriously, start making outlines.

Skill #7: Learn the “One-Up” Strategy

We touched on it earlier, but the One-Up Strategy is basically how you create the best possible piece of content for your topic. I use this for most of my articles, including this one. Here’s how it works:

This strategy does not guarantee that your article will rank higher than your competitors. No strategy can guarantee that, in fact.

But this strategy does put you in great position to rank and essentially ensures that you’ve packed the most amount of content possible into your article.

Skill #8: Be Ready to Revisit Old Content

This only applies for content hosted on a website you manage, so like a personal blog. If you’re a freelance writer, this is likely not going to apply to you, although you might get major brownie points with editors for recommending changes. I’ve never actually done that, so let me know if that’s something you’ve done.

If you’re managing the content on your site, then you need to pay attention to the changing dynamics of the world and how your content relates to that. For instance, if you write a marketing article on “the best social media platforms to run ads on” then you have a great piece of “evergreen” content.

Evergreen content, if you don’t know what it means, is any content that has a long shelf life and can anchor your website for years to come.

The social media article is a perfect example of evergreen content because it’s likely to remain mostly the same for a long while. After all, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn have been around for years.

However, like everything, things change. So does the information in your articles. Revisiting your old articles and making edits where needed, linking out to new resources, and adding new information is one of the best things you could ever do.

Not only does it provide more value to your readers, but it also will force Google to reread your article. When this happens, you’re basically indicating to Google that you care about your content a lot. As long as the article is good enough, then you’ll have a real chance at ranking higher or maintaining an already high ranking.

Make changes to your old articles and you’re automatically beating over 95% of your competition.

Skill #9: Understand Your Target Audience

I personally don’t like saying this. It’s the most cliché thing to say in the world of marketing and no matter how many articles I’ve read about it, I never seem to find truly valuable information when it comes to actually targeting a segment of the market.

However, I have to tell you about targeting because it’s important.

The good thing about freelancing is that your editor will usually let you know who the target is. If you’re writing for yourself though, it becomes a little more challenging.

I’m going to give you two versions of finding a target market:

  1. The accidental target market.
  2. The purposeful target market.

The Accidental Target Market

This type of market is one that you stumble into. Basically, you start writing content and wait to see who finds you. This type of strategy makes a marketer’s head spin, and rightfully so. It’s hard to predict any type of success with this type of strategy. That’s why I call it accidental.

However, if you’re just experimenting with content writing, you have a personal blog where you just want to write things that you enjoy talking about, or you simply don’t know what you’re doing but you’re yearning to get started, then this method might work.

The keyword is “might”.

Here’s a quick story of my own experience using this method:

Once upon a time, I decided to become a real estate agent. While I’m no longer a real estate agent and I didn’t enjoy the profession at all, I appreciate what it helped me become: a writer.

I ended up starting a blog for my real estate brand. I figured I could get an endless source of leads by doing this. While my thinking was correct, my execution was questionable.

Despite publishing 40+ quality articles in five months and growing my user base from 0 to 400 per month, I didn’t receive one lead.

Why?

Well, I accidentally targeted a market that wasn’t interested in my services (home sales). Instead, I tapped into the “for sale by owner” or “FSBO” market. These were people who wanted to learn how to sell a house on their own without a real estate agent’s help.

My goal with these articles was to convince people that they couldn’t sell their house and therefore needed my help. But the issue was that I targeted a national audience when I only worked in my local market. I also gave such good tips that someone was probably able to sell a house on their own.

This is the danger of accidental targeting.

The Purposeful Target Market

It’s a lot harder, but it’ll probably pay off in the end.

As long as it’s done correctly, you can grow a blog quickly through targeting. Basically, all you’re doing is writing content geared towards a specific community of people that want to learn about whatever it is you’re talking about.

Finding these communities, though, can be challenging. Let’s go through the process that I use as a marketer and a writer to give you better insight.

  1. I pick a general topic. So, “marketing”, “business”, etc.
  2. I niche down to become a little more defined. You can read my guide to choosing a niche here.
  3. I look up the niche on Quora, Reddit, Answer the Public, different SEO tools, and more. (More info in a moment).
  4. I select topics revolving around that niche based on my research and create a content calendar.
  5. I write the content, analyze results, and make adjustments.

I’m not a big fan of buyer personas. I think they can become way too abstract and hard to follow. The best practice for me is to look up questions that people want answered, which is what you’re looking for in step three. Odds are, most people with a question have particular interests that are common in a community of people. When you answer a question, your target now becomes everyone that has the same question and its extended community.

The more questions you answer on a similar topic, the more ground you cover in that community.

The biggest problem is how much time it takes to pull this off. You need to answer a lot of questions with really good articles over a sizeable length of time. But once you build that infrastructure, things become really fun.

Skill #10: Get Really Good at Editing

Editing your own work isn’t that fun.

It’s slow, tedious, and requires a lot of critical thinking to make sure each sentence is optimized.

However, it’s a requirement for writing in general, let alone content writing.

Think of how long books spend in the editorial process. Some rough drafts are written in a couple of months. Editing can take over a year. Some books may take multiple years to edit.

While articles are not going to take you years to edit, you should give the same amount of care as you would a book.

Quality content will make you more money if you give it the attention it deserves. In my opinion, writing a piece is just a partial fraction of the content creation process.

10%-15% is research (more or less depending on the article), 30%-35% is writing, and 60%-65% editing.

These numbers have changed for me over time. At first, it was about 70% writing, 5% research, and 25% editing. But as I matured as a writer, I realized how important editing is. I treat most of my articles like a movie. I figure out my plot, do some research on it. Then I film.

Finally, I edit the movie with special effects, audio adjustments, lighting corrections, retakes, CGI, and everything that makes a movie great. Writing is an art, just like film, which means it requires meticulous attention to detail in the editorial process to truly create our best work.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple blog article about the best tips for running faster or an ultimate guide to cooking. All writing created for someone else to read should run through the scrutiny of editing to the maximum extent.

A side note: The benefit of freelance writing for larger publications is that most will have an editorial team. I still make my own edits and run through a process, but because of time and my trust in the editing teams I work with, I happily let them do their jobs and edit my work. The good thing is that my writing process has become so refined over the years that my rough drafts are halfway decent and editing runs much more smoothly.

Skill #11: Your Deadline is Your Deadline

Jerry Jenkins, a prolific author who’s published many dozens of books, puts it best: “Hold your deadline sacred”.

It’s probably the most simple, yet hardest principle of writing. It’s also one of the most important. Sticking to a deadline is crucial because of a few factors:

If you set a deadline to publish an article by October 1, then you better get that article published by October 1. Even if it means not sleeping that night and churning out the article, meet your deadline.

This is even more important in the realm of freelance writing, where deadlines are often set by editors who have a content calendar they need to adhere by. No matter how good your writing is, if you can’t meet their deadlines, your stock drops big time.

Reliability is key when you’re freelancing. Editors don’t like to pay untimely writers, especially the highest paying firms.

So, if there’s anything you take away from this list of skills, know that this one can make or break you as a writer.

Skill #12: Learn the Art of Headlines

Marketing, as you can tell, is a major part of writing. Headlines are an extension of that.

Whenever you scroll through search results on Google, which links do you tend to click on? The ones that are bland or the ones that catch your attention?

While it may seem like an easy thing to do, writing headlines are actually somewhat of a scientific process.

Here are a few things that make a good headline:

Here’s an example of a good headline:

example of a good headline

Here’s a bad example:

example of a bad headline

The first headline uses a number, the word “FREE”, and clearly states the target keywords. It also seals its authority by including “Official Georgia Tourism”. The bad headline is poorly formatted, has “USA TODAY 10Best” which can confuse readers, and offers no reason to click on the link.

A headline should entice someone to click on an article. Using a number gives someone an idea of how long an article is, but obviously, you don’t always have to use one. However, you should use some sort of “catch” word. Some of the best are:

There are a ton more, but you get the idea.

The optimal length for any headline should be about 60 characters. This is because Google will usually cut off your headline after this point which can hurt click rates.

You also want your target keyword in the headline. This is for SEO value, of course, but also to target the reader, as they likely used the keyword themselves. Pro tip: Try to keep your keyword closer to the beginning of the headline so that readers can easily spot it while scanning the search results.

Finally, your headline needs to be easy to read. Complicated headlines are not good. Most people scan when they’re looking for an article. They usually won’t read every headline or description. Keeping your headline tight and concise, just like your writing, is the best way to make it stand out.

If you want to analyze your headings, a great tool I use is this headline analyzer by CoSchedule. It breaks down each word of your headline and gives you tons of helpful statistics. It’s a super awesome and helpful tool.

Skill #13: Build an Editorial Process

I mentioned rhythm earlier. Writing is very similar to sports. When you’re in rhythm, you can’t miss. When you’re not in rhythm, you have a really hard time making anything connect.

The same is true in writing. Most call it “writer’s block”. I call it rhythm.

If you’re writing for a living or in pursuit of a writing career or want to build a blog. Whatever it is, creating and building a writing/editorial process is essential to longevity.

Sometimes, you just get tired of writing. You don’t have the ideas, the will, or the inspiration to put words together. This becomes a very real problem when you’re a freelancer. Most of the time you’re writing about things that other people want you to write about. While money is the incentive, if you’re getting paid cheaply, then it’s really easy to fall out of rhythm as a freelance writer.

Even in our own blogs or side projects, writing can get monotonous. Don’t feel bad about it. It happens to me and everyone else. However, you should do whatever you can to keep yourself in rhythm and power through droughts. This is where an editorial process becomes essential.

Your process can be whatever you want it to be as long as it works and can be sustained for a long time.

Here’s how mine looks:

In between, there are some minor things going on, such as SEO optimization, images if it’s a personal piece, or extra research. I try to write any given article in one day, unless they’re extremely long like this one. On a good day, I can churn out 3,500 words in a few hours. On a bad day, I can throw together about 1,200-1,500 but the quality is down in the dumps.

But overall, this is a process that keeps me on point and has enabled me to publish over 100 articles in the last two years, even with all of my other commitments in life. It’s purposefully simple. Overcomplication would make writing more difficult than it has to be.

I also have mini processes for some of these points, such as my editing process, but even that’s simplified into a few checkboxes for quality control.

Skill #14: Create a Good Blog Layout (Web Design)

This applies to those of you who have control over the website you’re posting content to. So, for instance, your personal blog or a company you own. If you’re just freelancing or something else, then this might not apply. However, in the past I’ve recommended to my editors that they should add some missing elements to their blog posts, such as a newsletter signup form, but that’s because of my eye for marketing.

When it comes to content writing, you might think that it’s all about the quality and a few SEO elements.

That may have been true in the past. I’ve seen some older blogs that look like the website’s design hasn’t been updated since 2008, yet they still get millions of visitors per year in traffic.

But they happen to be an exception because of how long they’ve been writing content. If you really want to make a splash, you need up your web design game.

As someone who’s a web designer myself, I can attest to the fact that this is essential in modern times. With the sheer volume of content that gets published each and every day by millions of creators around the world, you have to do something to stand out a little better than just having good content.

You don’t have to be a developer, a great designer, or even technically inclined to have a nice website. All you need is to either hire someone else or get a decent website builder.

When building your article layout, some essential elements to include are:

That’s really the most you need to make an article look good on screen.

As for the background and fonts, I’m not a fan of changing colors around. Keep black text on a white background. Serif fonts work best for the text of your body paragraphs. Headings look best with the Poppins or Montserrat fonts.

Whether you hire someone or build the site yourself, WordPress is the way to go. I use the Elementor plugin, which is a very powerful web builder created for beginners and the most advanced designers. But you can use whatever other builder you’d like.

Webflow is also a popular platform, but I haven’t gotten around to using it yet. What I would recommend is staying away from Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, or any of those other basic builders. If your site begins to grow, it’ll be a headache having to transfer to a stronger system like WordPress.

Plus, SEO isn’t as configurable on the basic builders whereas WordPress and Webflow are designed for it.

Let me be clear, though, because I’m sure some of you are intimidated by web development. You don’t need the best-looking site in the world. In fact, you don’t even need a pretty website. You just need something that looks good for reading and navigation.

Here’s an example of Nat Eliason’s blog. Nat is a major inspiration for me. He’s also had some insane success.

Nat Eliason.com

As you can see, there’s nothing special about his design. However, he makes it extremely easy to navigate his site and read content. His fonts are nice to look at, his writing is exceptional, and his content is super valuable. It’s a simple formula that works really well.

If you’re interested, I’m currently finishing up an ultimate guide to web design that’s turning out to be a novella in length. When it’s published, I’ll link it here for anyone who wants to learn pretty much everything about web design.

Skill #15: Pay Attention to Your Links

Linking to other websites in your articles isn’t actually in your best interest. You should never send readers off of your website unless that link is super important.

What you should be doing is building a large database of your own links so that your articles can interlink with each other as if you were creating your own version of Wikipedia. How do you build this database?

Keep writing!

The more content you have, the more relevant articles become to one another. It’s smart to track your larger articles on a spreadsheet so that you can make strategic internal linkages. Not only do internal links keep readers within your ecosystem, but they also spread SEO equity throughout your site. If you have a lot of internal links heading to a large piece of content, Google will recognize that you’re placing more emphasis on that article, which can help it rank higher.

Google generally favors well-connected sites, as it often means you have lots of content that is relevant to each other and therefore, might possess more authority than other websites in your space.

But why ever cite external links (links that leave your website)? Well, sometimes there are tools that deserve the link and are helpful to your audience (such as the headline analyzer I linked earlier). You also should cite statistics if it comes from a real study. What I mean by “real study” is if the study is from a blog article, don’t link it. Most blogs are not very credible. Only a small percentage of writers and blogs are actually credible and provide good information.

Cite real research firms, news organizations, people (like Jerry Jenkins and Nat Eliason), and tools. When in doubt, cite Wikipedia.

Pro tip: When you add any hyperlink to your articles, make sure you check the box for “open link in a new tab”. Do not allow readers to leave your article through hyperlinks.

Skill #16: Social Media Promotion

I’ll be honest. I’m not a fan of social media marketing. I’ve never been one to get excited over it. However, it’s a great way to put your content out there and start attracting readers.

You probably won’t be an overnight success, but when done right, you can actually pick up a few readers here and there just by plugging your content when relevant on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms.

A common method to use is Reddit marketing, where you plug content on forums that allow you to self-promote and link to something. While it probably won’t work in your favor the vast majority of times, you can hit a surge in traffic every now and then, which can help your SEO authority.

I tend to be much more of an SEO guy. I’d rather let my content speak for itself on the Google algorithm over time. But, promoting your posts is a great way to send social signals to Google, as well as get a few people to read your content, if not more.

Of course, when you develop a following on social media, you’re basically golden. You can just link your content whenever and you’ll get decent traffic. However, writers aren’t exactly the most glamourous people to follow on social media, so you might want to figure out other ways to make yourself stand out.

Final Thoughts

While you don’t need every skill here, you should work on developing most. Writing is an art that requires a lot of time and practice to become very good at. You’ll never be a perfect writer. No one is. But you shouldn’t be aiming for perfect content anyway.

Content writing is about creating value regardless of how that value is given. A novice writer might beat out the master writer because they’ve provided better value through easy-to-understand language, more information, or something else.

Don’t be intimidated by content writing. Just go for it.