SEO-friendly content primarily responds to the user’s query: the page’s topic is dictated by the audience’s questions. But not every SEO copywriter can create optimized SEO content. Following our SEO content writing tips will increase the value of your copywriting efforts and the website’s value to the user. Following them will ensure that you attract more traffic with content promotion.
Why is it so important to create SEO-optimized content?
Creating SEO-friendly content means writing about topics that focus on the target audience in search engines rather than trying to place keywords on all web pages.
Right now, search engines are actively evolving to close the users` needs as much as possible, given the specifics of the language and meaning of the searched phrase. They are striving to surface content that provides a detailed answer. Search engine updates confirm this:
- Google’s BERT helps the search engine determine the meaning of words given the context of the entire sentence. The implementation of this algorithm allowed Google to find more relevant search results and users to ask more natural queries.
- Ensuring the originality of such content is also crucial, which is where tools like the Editpad Plagiarism Checker and EssayPro plagiarism checker come into play, helping writers maintain the integrity and uniqueness of their SEO efforts.
For example, the query [math practice books for adults] displayed a textbook for grades 6-8 at the top of the search results. After the launch of BERT, a book called Math for Adults was at the top of the SERPs.
This major update was followed by iterative Core Updates, which improved the quality of the SERP based on intent, expertise, and content authority.
Tip 1. List and research keywords for proper SEO optimization
When you start writing SEO-optimized content, you must first select a semantic core (list of keyword phrases).
Keyword queries still play a fundamental role, even though modern SEO combines complementary factors.
When choosing them, think about the ultimate goal of search – how accurately they are chosen and how your content will compete with what’s already showing up in SERP. You should:
- Review the visibility of similar content from competitors. They can be used as the basis for creating SEO-friendly content after cleaning. As part of the semantic core cleanup, you can remove queries with a lack of demand or spelling errors.
- Focus on long keywords. They may have a low volume of demand, but they still have a high probability of ranking in search engine rankings. People use longer keyword phrases when they want detailed information on a specific topic. Due to the low long-tail keywords demand, it’s easier to end up in the top search engines. This will positively impact traffic and improve behavioral factors on the web page.
- Check the intent of the keyword when manually selecting words. The intent in informational search refers to the user’s need. For informational articles and SEO-optimized content, it is important that the content coincides with the user’s intent. Suppose a user is looking for “How to quickly close a website from indexing” and finds two websites: one briefly says that you should “Disallow: /” type in robots.txt, and the second tells how search engines work and mentions a way to close the website in the end. In this case, the user’s intention is better to close the first website, as he is not interested in how search robots to index the site and other technical issues. He is interested in short answers to the question.
- View search engine cues and pick up additional LSI keywords after you’ve compiled your semantic core. The goal is to improve the quality of the content. LSI keywords will allow search engine crawlers to understand that the content is thematic and is not written for SEO purposes. Also, LSI keywords can better describe the topic to the user and not spam keywords.
SEO-optimized content clearly and comprehensively responds to the search engine’s intent with high competence, authoritativeness, and reliability.
Tip 2. Structure your content to make it easy-to-read
Once you have decided on a list of queries and LSI for your optimized content, you can start writing. Follow some simple SEO writing tips:
- Determine your content’s scope and approximate structure with competitor analysis of your main keyword phrases. Look at similar content – what is the user’s attention focused on? Identify the golden mean among competitors. This will create optimal content for SEO and the user.
- When writing, try to give a complete answer to the user’s query and do not think about the density and number of occurrences of keywords.
- Use links or footnotes to those materials that may be useful to the user. With them, you can remove doubts about the validity of the information. This is important both for the user and for the Google search engine, which has focused on E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) in the last couple of years.
- Be sure to keep your text clear, logical, and coherent. This makes it easier for the user to perceive the content.
- Divide the text into blocks and add subheadings H2-H3. Such formatting will make life easier for users and help search engines view it quickly.
Typically, paper writers break content into smaller paragraphs with headlines, because it makes reading easier and engages readers.
Title-Description meta tags and H1 titles significantly impact your SEO goals and usability. Descriptive, clear, and memorable headlines help tell users what your content is about and what they’ll get when they click through to the website after reading it.
Increase your chances of higher rankings by optimizing your headlines for SEO:
- Use the most appropriate, targeted keyword at the beginning of your headline.
- The headline should be less than 60 characters. Google, since September 2021, has started generating its own headlines in the output.
- Describe the post’s content accurately and clearly in the Description meta tag. This will explain to the search robot what the page is and possibly increase CTR when the data in the tag appears in the snippet.
- To hook your audience and increase CTR, you can use emotional modifiers in the titles, such as “best,” “amazing,” “fun,” “free,” “how” (in the context of “How to cure angina”), and so on.
Also, in the Description meta tag, you can add different emojis to improve CTR and attract the audience’s attention. These characters can add originality to your snippet in the Google search engine and affect content promotion.
Conclusion
Writing SEO-optimized content is not an easy task. You need to understand what your target audience is looking for on the web, what type of content will be useful for users, whether there is any outright spam in the text, etc.
But even though its creation will require time and effort, it is a worthwhile investment in potential traffic and conversions. The main thing is to remember that content is created not for search engines but for people. If your content is interesting to users, it will be in the top 10 and bring traffic.
