When done right, SEO can dramatically spike traffic to your website. The benefits of SEO-friendly content not only include a rich source of new potential customers, but also the chance to decrease your pay-per-click advertising spend.
It is imperative of course you recognize that having a strong SEO foundation to your website will drive long-term results. It is important to recognize that this is a long-term game, not a short fix. Indeed we would highly recommend staying well away from any dubious or black-hat SEO techniques.
Google’s algorithms that rank websites in search results are clouded in secrecy. However, we know there are some key factors to consider when creating SEO-friendly content that definitely helps. Let us discuss those right now.
What does it mean to write SEO friendly content?
Google wants to deliver the best possible search experience to its users. Therefore it is vital that you focus on creating valuable content that answers a user’s query.
Now of course that could mean anything right? But let us focus on the type of user search for one moment. This will fall into one of four categories.
- Informational intent – think ‘how-to’ guides, recipes, workouts, product demonstrations etc.
- Navigational intent – a user is searching for a particular piece of content or brand.
- Commercial intent – the user is looking to buy a product and is looking for reviews, price comparisons, cheapest price etc.
- Transactional – the user wants to buy right here, right now.
So before you start tapping away on the keyboard, you need to understand which type of content you are creating, and who your audience is.
It is all well and good having a well-optimized blog or article, but if your bounce rate is high because the content is worthless, then Google will see that and push you down the rankings.
How many keywords should I use for SEO friendly content?
Now you have nailed the audience proposition, it is time to focus on the keywords. That is what makes content SEO friendly.
Simply put, optimizing your content for keywords and key phrases will help search engines like Google understand what the content is about on your website.
When a user taps a search into Google, it immediately crawls every website on the internet looking for ‘ranking signals. The strength of those signals is a sure-fire way for Google to identify the most relevant content related to the user’s search.
Now there is a temptation for all marketers to cram as many keywords as possible into the text, but that will just confuse the hell out of Google. Instead, focus on one primary keyword, which you use in your page title and heading titles.
Having lots of keywords you could potentially rank for is great. The key to long-term SEO success is to create individual pieces of content related to each one, place internal links where relevant, and watch dedicated high-value traffic visit your website.
Is structure important for SEO friendly content?
In a nutshell, absolutely.
The temptation is to knuckle down and write 3000 words. But the user experience will leave much to be desired. Therefore, inserting subheadings will make your content easier to read.
As we just mentioned, Google’s algorithm works by crawling websites to pick up ‘signals’ from your website, determining how accurate your content is to your prospective visitor’s search query.
One of the ways it does this is by crawling for Heading Tags.
- A H1 tag signals the page title.
- A H2 tag signals a subject related to the page title, and the H3 tags are related to the H2 tag.
- Each H2/H3 tag should be keyword optimized and answer a question that a user is likely to enter into Google’s search bar.
Furthermore, Google draws on the user experience to determine rankings.
When your content is easier to read, the higher the engagement from a user. This means they are less likely to click off your website.
The example below shows the difference headers can make to your content.
By using heading tags, you can optimize your website and improve the user experience. That is a winning combination.
Key tips to create SEO friendly on-page content
- Long articles (3,000+ words) tend to receive at least 3x more traffic than shorter articles. However, writing for the sake of SEO will result in users bouncing off your site, so keep in mind the users experience when creating long articles.
- Indeed, if you have a long article, why not add in a table of contents at the beginning of the article to let visitors quickly go to the desired section.
- Create engaging, authoritative content by using questions in subheading, and then providing a succinct answer!
- No-one likes to read long sentences, so make sure to break-up the content in easily digestible short lines. The same goes for paragraphs too!
- Where possible, use numbered lists or bullet points, just like this one, to get across key information!
Finally, here is why you should use images to create SEO-friendly content.
If a picture tells 1000 words, then why not use one or two to break up your web page into interesting, readable sections?
Images can also help boost SEO performance too, but only if it is done in the right way. Our top tip is to make sure the images you upload are not too large, or if you use a WordPress CMS, then a plugin like Smoosh will re-size your images so as not to affect load speeds. If a page takes too long to load, users will click off, meaning you will lose valuable traffic.
Google cannot see images on a webpage, but it uses alternative text to understand what the image is about. This means you can plug in your keywords as image descriptions that will be noticed by search engine crawlers.
So rather than labeling your images “file 1” and so forth, you should make them more SEO friendly e.g. “How to add alternative text for images on WordPress websites”.
To summarise:
The most important rule when it comes to creating SEO-friendly content is to create content that will help answer a user’s search. Creating content for the sake of it will only lead to minimal results and frustrations. When you do that, the SEO fundamentals will drive users who stay and engage with your brand.
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