SEO for Content Writers

The most important thing to know about SEO: write for people, not search engines. Google's own helpful content guidelines say it plainly — content that's clear, specific, and genuinely useful will outperform content that's been stuffed with keywords every time. They've gotten very good at recognizing natural, helpful writing, and very good at penalizing the opposite.

What follows are content decisions that make a real difference in whether people find your pages. These aren't technical SEO tasks (we handle those on the development side).

Page titles and headings

The page title (what shows up in the browser tab and search results) and the main heading on the page are two of the strongest signals to search engines about what the page is about.

• Be specific. "Volunteer Opportunities" is fine. "Volunteer Opportunities in Portland" is better. "Volunteer to Deliver Meals in Portland" is best.
• Put the important words first. "Meals on Wheels People — Volunteer" is weaker than "Volunteer to Deliver Meals — Meals on Wheels People." Users scan from left to right and search results truncate from the right, so the most important words should lead.
• Don't repeat the org name in every heading. The site already establishes who you are. Headings should focus on the topic.

Image alt text

Alt text serves two purposes: it describes the image for people who can't see it (screen readers, broken images), and it helps search engines understand what the image shows. Write it for the person first, search engines second.

• Describe what's happening, not just what's in the frame. "A volunteer delivers a meal to a smiling woman at her front door" is better than "volunteer" or "meal delivery."
• Skip "photo of" or "image of." Screen readers already announce it as an image.
• Keep it concise. One sentence is usually enough. If you need more, the image might be doing too much work.
• Don't keyword-stuff. "Meals on Wheels Portland Oregon volunteer meal delivery service donate" is not alt text. It's spam.

Meta descriptions

The meta description is the short summary that appears under the page title in search results. You won't always write these directly (sometimes the CMS generates them), but when you do:

• Keep it under ~155 characters. Google doesn't publish an official limit — they display snippets based on pixel width, and the length has fluctuated over the years. Around 155 characters is the practical safe zone for desktop; mobile truncates earlier (~120 characters). Google also frequently rewrites meta descriptions entirely if it thinks it can generate a better snippet from the page content.
• Describe what the visitor will find, not what the organization does. "Request home-delivered meals or find a dining center near you" beats "Meals on Wheels People provides nutritious meals to seniors in the Portland metro area."
• Include a natural call to action when it fits. "Learn how to sign up" or "See open volunteer roles" gives the searcher a reason to click.

Structured data (JSON-LD)

You don't need to write or understand structured data — we handle the implementation. But it's worth knowing what it does: structured data tells search engines specific facts about your organization and pages in a format they can read directly. It can help with things like:

• Organization info that feeds into Google's knowledge panel (alongside your Google Business Profile, which is the primary driver for how your org appears in search)
• Local business details for dining centers with addresses, hours, and phone numbers
• Job postings appearing in Google's job search

The content you write — organization details, dining center hours, job listings — feeds directly into this. The more accurate and complete that content is on the page, the better it works in search results. We wire it up; you provide the substance.

What you don't need to worry about

We handle the technical SEO on the development side — things like site speed, structured data markup, sitemaps, canonical URLs, and mobile optimization. Focus on writing clear, specific, useful content. That's the foundation everything else is built on.