The Secret To Writing SEO Content That Ranks

With over four billion web pages on the internet found mainly by the searcher using Google’s search engine, you have to stand out against your competitors and be found easily for the services you’re offering or products you’re selling.

On the high street, this would mean using colourful and attractive signage to draw people into your business, but on the internet, you need to take advantage of SEO keywords, specific words which optimise your website for search engines so people can find you.

So what is different about SEO content from regular content? Just because you have lots of pages on your website offering great information, chances are that your site will slip through the cracks of search engines if you haven’t attempted to implement the correct SEO keywords.

You can have a whole page dedicated to a certain topic, however, if you fail to insert specific words which would help people find you in the first place, then the search engine isn’t going to see your page as valuable and recommend it to searchers.

How To Create SEO Content

SEO content can be implemented on a wide variety of content styles such as your actual website, whitepapers and case studies, or even video and image tags. However, one of the main ways online businesses look to boost their SEO value is by carefully creating blog posts and articles, as there’s no limit to how many you can produce.

There are a few steps that you need to take to create the perfect SEO content, we’ll run through them here in a step-by-step guide.

Select a relevant topic

This needs to be something that is within your sector, heavily related to the service or product that you’re offering. Think carefully about what people will search for when they want to find your site. You can create a list of keywords by using keyword research tools and competitors research and use these to make the titles of your blog posts.

If you have a bakery, then you could create a post discussing the health differences between white and brown bread, or the best cookie cutters on the market, or even a how-to guide to create the perfect icing texture. Whatever it is, it has to be related to your industry, and the more blogs you have the more opportunity you have to target a variety of keywords that will draw people directly to your website to read them, also boosting your authority in the sector.

Look at the intent of searchers

What are people coming to your site looking for? Recipes, advice on finances, reviews of products? Are they looking for informative blog posts, a certain category page for purchasing specific products, or recent up to date news pieces in a certain niche? Are they searching for a quick answer to a specific question or an in-depth discussion on a controversial topic?

Google has spent a great deal of money investing in ways to understand on a deeper level what searchers are looking for when they use the search engine, so it’s up to you to tap into that and give searchers what they want, right there on your website. Once you know what your visitor wants, take steps to actively provide it for them in the most accessible way.

Trust the data

It’s no good second-guessing what your visitors want. Why do that when you can use a variety of tools to see exactly what people are searching for? For this, you need to know what your main keywords are, and which keywords your competitors are using to draw traffic to their website. You can have a few solid seed keywords that are most searched for, but the best way is to use a wide selection of variants too – see what is ranking well and aim to replicate that in your content.

Instead of just using simple keywords try and branch out and look at the synonyms and closely related words. For example, instead of just focusing on ‘how to make bread’, you should be looking to include long-tail SEO phrases such as ‘quick bread recipes’, ‘homemade bread’ and ‘how to use a bread maker’.

Create a draft of the blog

Once you have your topic, intent and set of keywords, it’s time to get to work writing the content itself. This can be a fairly difficult process if you’re not used to writing, however, once you get into the flow you should be fine. You can even outsource the content creation if writing really isn’t your strength.

Most blogs are created with a tone that is both informal and conversational, so aim to write in a similar way as you speak as a rule of thumb. Blogs should be at least 500 words, something that you should be able to achieve in under an hour with research time added in. Bear in mind that longer blogs rank higher, so if you’re providing a lot of relevant information, don’t be afraid to write a post that eventually turns out to be 2,500 words long or higher.

Create SEO meta information

An important aspect of SEO; this is something that is not seen directly by the reader on the blog itself, but this small snippet of meta description information will be used by Google to determine whether this page is relevant or not. It should be kept short, around 160 characters to prevent Google from truncating it.

This is the ideal place to add your main keywords. The meta title also pops up in Google search results and helps the searcher to determine whether it’s the right post for them which will provide them with the information they need.

Edit your content

Edit your content and check for things such as spelling and grammar mistakes. Break up long paragraphs into shorter, more digestible chunks. You can add your SEO in at this point if you haven’t done so already, it’s best to add keywords in at a 1% density, so that equates to one keyword for every 100 words you write.

You can choose to focus on one or two keywords or add in multiple variations so your page appears much more relevant to Google. Add images in too if you feel they give a visual boost to the topic, you should always have at least one per post. Once this is done, your post is ready to go live, so upload it and get it out there for the world to see. Don’t forget to share a link to it on social media like Facebook and Twitter to reach the widest number of people possible.

At Key Business Marketing, we offer a range of services, including content creation, SEO, PPC and social media management. Get in touch with us today to discuss your marketing needs and unlock your business' potential.