What makes a good SEO content writer/marketer?

I think it takes a careful balance of writing skills and SEO knowledge in order to be a content writer in today’s market. The internet allowed anyone to become a blogger, making it tougher for career writers to stand out from the pack. Content writers need to have a certain set of skills (in addition to a great portfolio sample) to succeed in the online writing world, and I believe SEO knowledge is one of those skills.

In my opinion, here’s what a good SEO content writer should know about:

• How to perform keyword research to identify the best long-tail keywords for a specific industry.
• Where to put keywords: title tag, meta description, page title, subheads, naturally throughout the content.
• The difference between a page title and the title tag — and how to use each.
• How H tags work in a piece — they’re important for structure, and not for style.
• Image title tags and alt tags, and why they’re important for SEO.
• How to provide value with their content and not just regurgitate what already exists.
• A knowledge of voice and tone, and how to write in different styles to speak to different audiences.
• What buyer personas are, and how to use them to get content ideas.
• An understanding of anchor text and why you should vary it within a piece.
• How to link internally and externally.

These are only a few of the things that come to mind…I’m sure there are more, but I’m hoping the community can help me add to this list! :)