The performance of a website can be tied to the quality of the content.
The most competitive websites produce content that is optimized for search engines (SEO). Creating content with SEO in mind can help to significantly increase the organic visibility of a business or brand online.
Business owners or brand managers who are looking to enhance the digital presence of their brand should understand why — and how, SEO-friendly content is necessary to achieve these goals.
Why Should You Write Content with SEO in Mind?
Consider all of the content that’s available on the internet — it can be easy for small business websites to be overlooked or outranked by competitors.
SEO-friendly content can solve this by leveraging the intent and habits of users with strategies like keyword research to produce long-form articles, blog posts, and other informative resources on specific topics.
This strategy is ideal for engagement in addition to establishing trust with users.
By writing content for SEO, a business owner can cater to the needs or interests of the target audience — in turn, driving more traffic to the website.
Tips for Writing Content for SEO
Unless there is someone in-house who is well versed in writing content for SEO, business owners may find it to be beneficial to work with a professional marketing agency to handle the heavy lifting.
But it’s important to understand what can help a piece rank well.
The content that trends or ranks highly in organic searches should contain the following:
- Target Keyword: Found by way of thorough keyword research, the target or primary keyword should be prominently featured in the title, meta description, and body.
- Captivating Headlines: Whether it’s a blog post or other form of website content, the headline should be attention-grabbing, informative, and under 60 characters.
- Specificity: If the topic is too vague, it likely won’t perform well. The highest-ranking pieces explore a specific topic and includes long-tail keywords or phrases that speak to the searcher’s intent.
- Multimedia: Each piece of content for SEO purposes should be accompanied by an image or video to enhance the user’s experience.
Ensuring each piece of content is SEO-friendly requires in-depth research, optimization, and data analysis.
Such processes can take time and a comprehensive understanding of a proper SEO strategy, which most small business owners may not have.
An experienced SEO strategist or content creator can design articles that inform users, making the website — and ultimately the business or brand as a whole, more visible.
Enlisting the help of an SEO expert and content creator helps to ensure a detailed analyses of keywords is conducted, and thoughtful content is created. Each of these components helps to ensure the content will rank well due to the findings.
Keyword Research to Find Sought-After Topics
Developing content for SEO purposes starts with choosing the right keywords and relevant topics.
An SEO strategist uses online tools in addition to tried-and-true strategies to find the highest-ranking keywords for a topic.
Generally, this includes analyzing the content produced by competitors to see what topics are trending for businesses or brands within a specific industry. It could also address topics that are not often covered.
A well-trained SEO strategist may also compare different combinations of long-tail keywords or phrases to discern which terminology earns the most results or searches.
The strategist can then list the keywords in order — highest ranking being at the top.
Each piece of content should have a unique target keyword, even if the topic is like another. Otherwise, it can hurt the effectiveness of the searchability surrounding the topic.
The reason why focus is given to long-tail keywords as opposed to just one-word search terms is because long-tail keywords are more specific, which caters to users who have a goal in mind.
Such users generally become highly engaged with the results they find, leading to more conversions.
Special attention is also given to the related searches section at the foot of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) to create tailored pieces of content.
The data is then collected, organized, and documented for future reference.
A diligent SEO professional also regularly updates these results over time, so it contains only the most relevant terms.
Structure Content for Searcher Intent
Content written for SEO aims to answer a particular question or help achieve a certain goal.
With the keyword analysis completed and a target keyword(s) chosen, the SEO team is then able to tackle the piece of content now that they have an understanding of the searcher’s goal or intent.
Searcher intent can be categorized into four types:
- Informational: Users searching with the intent to gain more information on a topic generally use words like “how” or “what,” or terms like “guide” or “tutorial.” This words are typically associated with a question or reflect needing help.
- Navigational: As the name implies, searchers with navigational intent are looking for a specific website or page.
- Commercial: Users with commercial intent are considering a purchase and investigating their options, so they tend to use keywords like “review” or “comparison.”
- Transactional: If the user is ready to make a purchase, they are likely searching with transactional intent and inputting terms like “coupon,” “sale,” and “price.”
Once the searcher intent is identified, the content can be structured to suit the need.
Make Content Skimmable with Small Blocks of Text
High-ranking articles incorporate a balance of simple language, shorter paragraphs, and are easy to read.
Ultimately, creating SEO-focused content balances SEO strategy with good storytelling — a tactical skill that’s best exercised by those with industry training.
Content for the web is easily digestible when broken into small blocks of text, rather than long paragraphs like you might find in a printed newspaper or magazine.
Given how much time people spend on a computer, tablet, or mobile device, it’s vital to create SEO-friendly content that is also easy to read on such devices.
Regularly Update & Improve Content to Maintain Rankings
To continue performing well, the content found on a website must be routinely updated.
Updating content for SEO includes re-optimizing individual pieces where applicable to incorporate a better target keyword or replacing old links with a newer, more relevant option.
Doing this can help to keep search volumes, conversions, and rankings high.
Consider Enlisting the Help of an SEO Professional
Writing content for SEO is a technical and time-consuming task, but the results are well worth the effort.
Business owners or brands who struggle to make time for creating SEO-friendly content may want to invest in a professional marketing agency to help.
A quality marketing agency has SEO-savvy creators who can customize content and strategies with the best interests of your business in mind.
The digital marketers at Elevation Ten Thousand work together to create tailor-made content for SEO with the goal of helping the brand or business increase its digital presence.
At each stage of development, the content creation and SEO teams can reassess, update, and add to a website to help its ranking.
For more information on how we can help your business or brand thrive online, contact us.
