038 - How to Write SEO Content

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Writing SEO content is very different from writing content for social media or other platforms. Your goal in writing SEO content is to attract visitors to your blog, to your website, and to actually rank on Google. There should be a conscious effort to understand how users will behave on your site, what they need, and how fast they got what they are searching for. Ultimately, it boils down to making visitors happy.

Podcast Highlights:

00:00 Prologue

00:42 Introduction of the topic

00:55 Understanding what Google wants to show users in their search results.

02:05 Tools that you can use to help in writing SEO content.

02:47 A good headline and meta title are necessary to draw attention to your article. (...What is the difference between Headline One and the Meta Title?)

04:41 Why are subheadlines (H2s) equally important?

07:33 The importance of monitoring your published article with Google Analytics.

07:52 Other tools that can track and collect data on the scrolls people do in your article.

08:37 Recap

09:40 End

Transcript for the episode Download

Resources:

Tools mentioned by Gert Mellak:

InLinks - https://inlinks.net/

Surfer SEO - https://surferseo.com/

Hotjar - https://www.hotjar.com/

Crazy Eggs - https://www.crazyegg.com/

How To Write SEO Content

One of the most evident building blocks of SEO is successful content creation. That is, there's no doubt that content and SEO go hand-in-hand. And it’s no secret that great content is essential for ranking well in Google.

Today’s SEO Strategies dictate that you keep focused on your target audience. What are the questions they’re asking, and what are the answers you should give from the standpoint of your brand?

So, let’s get started! This will show you how to gather research, outline your post, produce your content, and review it for SEO purposes and organic traffic.

What is the importance of SEO content?

Everyone is already familiar with the phrase “content is the king.” Google and other search engines have even stated that content is very important in terms of SEO success. They specifically said that one of Google’s top three search ranking factors is “content.”

One of the most difficult tasks for writers and content marketers is creating content optimized for search engines while simultaneously appealing to humans. This is, SEO copywriting is the most common approach to achieve this.

When you write for SEO, you want to make sure that your content is based on delivering people with relevant information that answers their questions. Search engines might rank your post in the top results for relevant queries if you write well-optimized content for your users. And you might attempt to improve traffic to your site and grow your audience by including an SEO strategy into your content.

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SEO Writing Techniques and Tips

Without SEO, your content could end up on the last page of the search results and the least search volume, and we all know how low organic traffic on those pages is. That’s why a strong link between SEO and quality content is essential.

Here are techniques and tips for writing SEO content that can help it reach further while also improving your SEO efforts.

Create a list of potential content topics

Seeking new content topic ideas to target in your articles, discuss in your videos, or publish to your social media platforms is one of the most time-consuming aspects of content marketing. However, when you find the best way to write content that your target audience cares about to succeed with SEO and content marketing, the whole procedure becomes ten times easier. But how can you come up with fresh and relevant ideas quickly?

Recognize the search intent of your target audience

Understanding the keyword’s intent is crucial. The search intent will determine the way we communicate with the reader.

Is your reader attempting to do the following:

Answer a question? (Add the term “what is” if you want to be more formal)
Seeking a definition? (Adding “defined as” or “means” may be helpful.)
Learning how to do something? (Try using the words “how-to” or “directions”)
Buy or compare a product? (consider "benefits, or value")

Get to the point: Make keywords out of your topics

The most crucial aspect of SEO content writing is keyword research. Once you’ve got the best and relevant issues, you can come up with relevant keywords as well.

But what is the broad importance of keywords? And why does this affect the content search engine ranking?

Keywords are crucial because they connect what people are looking for with the SEO content you’re giving to meet that demand. These are phrases that you think are essential to rank for in SERPs (search engine results pages) since your target customer is likely searching for them.

On the other hand, keyword research is the act of locating and evaluating search phrases that people enter into search engines intending to utilize the information for a specific purpose, such as SEO or general marketing. It can provide target inquiries, as well as their frequency, ranking difficulty, and other information.

Avoid keyword stuffing

To be clear, there’s a big difference between raising keyword density at the start of your next blog post and keyword stuffing, which is the technique of over-targeting your main term in an attempt to boost organic traffic search.

The former is a legitimate technique to demonstrate the relevance of your information, while the latter is an out-of-date type of deception and known as a black-hat tactic. This is you want to make sure that your keyword ideas appear in the following places:

Your website’s address (URL)
Your title tag
Your page’s first hundred words
In the case of an H1 tag,
In the case of an H2 tag

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How many keywords do you need to keep track of?

You’ve chosen which pages to optimize as organic landing pages, but how many keywords should each page be optimized for?

At the very least, some sites may have a single target keyword that only addresses one question. Even if they’re merely near variations, it’s much more likely that you’ll want to target two or three keywords on each page. More than four is overkill; after all, each page has only one title tag and meta description. You can estimate how many keywords we’ll track once you’ve chosen a range of keywords per page.

Use the language of your target audience

Having content in the appropriate language is the first step to success, just as it is with traditional SEO. Begin by developing content in the online dialect used by the audience you want to reach.

It is helpful to understand that their country highly influences people’s search queries. It’s also quite likely that they search for the same or similar content using different terms and phrases than someone on the native language market.

Suppose your target audience is likely to do internet searches in Australia, even if Australian is not the only language spoken in that country, having Australian. In that case, language content will help you connect with them. Although it may appear to be a lot of work and ineffective, providing information in their native language is useful, and many organizations are already doing it.

Think of the title that drives clicks

Statistics reveal that most people don’t go past the title of a blog post or article regarding SEO marketing. In such a case, if your title is bad, nobody will click through it.

Both search engine bots and users use the title to figure out what your post is about because it is the most visible piece of content on the Google homepage. As a result, no matter how important your content is, your click-through rate will most likely be low if a weak headline accompanies it. Your efforts to rank and attract traffic to your website will go wrong if your SEO headline fails to capture the reader’s attention - and mouse click.

Set aside a substantial amount of time to come up with the title. It should incorporate the main keyword from your content. It may be a waste of time at first, but trust me when I say that as your organic CTR soars and your page views soar, you’ll be glad you did it.

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Shoot out blog post H2, H3, H4 Tags and Beyond

We already established that creating captivating SEO headlines is an important aspect of producing high-quality SEO content that ranks. Why? The way readers interact with your content, on the other hand, has a cascading effect on search engine bots and the Google algorithm.

Headers are arranged in ascending order of priority, starting with the primary heading (H1) and ending with the lowest-level title (H6). This is classifying each headline into the following.

The SEO headline is about the post’s topic.
H2 headings separate your parts and classify the key ideas of your paragraphs.
H3 tags and all subsequent tags up to H6 further categorize and simplify the information.

Featured snippets impact SEO Content

Short snippets of the content displayed at the top of Google’s search results to swiftly answer a searcher’s question are known as Featured Snippets. The text of a Featured Snippet is gathered automatically from Google’s index of websites. There are different snippet types; this includes definitions, tables, steps, and lists.

Make your meta descriptions more effective

A meta description is a meta tag attribute that aids in the description of your page. This text sample may display in search engine results beneath your headline, though search engines may instead grab a snippet of text from the page’s main body copy.

Why does it matter?

Meta description tags can have a big impact on how well your website ranks in search engines. One value stands out in the meta description:

Organic ad text is what your meta description does. This implies that Google and other search engines will frequently display the meta description as a page summary when your ad ranks for a term.
The meta description is just as crucial as the ad text. An intriguing meta description has the potential to increase your organic search results’ click-through rate. You must be considerate in your meta description.

How to improve writing your meta description

The recommended techniques for writing amazing ad content are similar to those for writing strong meta descriptions:

In your meta descriptions, use well-researched, focused keywords.
It would be best if you communicated benefits and urgency.
Never utilize the same meta description throughout your entire site; make sure they’re hyper-relevant to the content on each page.
Encourage users to click by demonstrating value and appealing to their emotions.

Build Links

The process of getting other websites to connect back to your site is known as link building. Building links should prioritize all marketing teams who want to boost their site’s authority and drive search traffic.

Why do you need to develop links?

Although Google’s algorithms are constantly changing, backlinks continue to play a significant role in how search engines guide which sites rank for which keywords. Because links signal to Google that your site is a quality resource worthy of citation, building links is one of the numerous methods employed in search engine optimization (SEO).

Aside from that, increase the effectiveness of your internal connecting strategy. Internal links are used to connect your website’s relevant information. A well-thought-out internal linking strategy can aid in improving keyword ranks and content visibility.

Optimize and add images

Make sure your article includes optimized images before hitting the publish button. Including photos in your content adds interest and makes it easier to read. You can also use picture alt text to give search engines more information about your content. If you properly optimize your photos, you will have a better chance of appearing in Google image search for your target (or related) keywords.

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Does writing lengthy content matter than shorter ones?

Long-form content in web pages is useless if it does not provide value to readers. Google will be more concerned with how visitors interact with the material than with its length. This is where ideal content varies depending on the topic, the keyword, and the level of competition.

If a post has 2000 words, but visitors don’t spend much time on it or click the return button to move to another result, Google will likely think that your lengthy content isn’t answering consumers’ questions. If you focused on high-quality content, it would be more likely to contain a great deal of information and high-quality research, making it more likely to be high-EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

Key Learnings

Anyone can learn how to write for search engines. It’s a talent that can be learned quickly with practice and applying certain basic SEO principles and SEO tools.

However, remember to always put the user first. The most important thing is to create content that people want to read and then optimize the writing for SEO.

Now that you’ve learned what SEO content writing is and how to write it, you’ll need to spend some effort and time to make it stand out. Or even keeping up with the newest trends and generating SEO-friendly content that targets those high-traffic keywords can help you outrank even the most powerful websites.