Not only is creating SEO friendly content a major part in following the SEO strategy you’ve planned, but also for fulfilling it. Including any goals you’ve put into place and plan to achieve.
Though optimisation is one of the more important things to do for your content, it does take both time and effort. And the results aren’t instantaneous. It’s a whole process but your site will thank you for it in the long run as your chances of ranking higher will increase.
But how do you create content that is SEO friendly?
1. Research Keywords
Keywords play an important role in any content you create because finding the right ones helps you take charge over the search results. Each piece of content you create needs to have a different targeted keyword to avoid competing with your own pages. And the only way to do this successfully is through performing keyword research.
Being able to understand a searcher’s intent behind keywords, as well as the volume of searches for those keywords can lead to a better keyword focus and audience targeting. Researching keywords is also a great opportunity to see how your competitors are doing – what keywords they’re ranking for and in which position.
Perhaps you could focus on keywords that they’ve neglected or even brand name targeting – you could end up outperforming them as long as your content is relevant. Long-tail keywords may not have a high search volume but they can rank on the SERPs just as well for users looking for specific information.
But don’t worry, there are tools out there to help you! Doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or an expert. Google Keyword Planner or the SE Ranking Keyword Suggestion Tool are great places to start finding the best keywords.
2. Structure Your Content
No matter what type of content you’re creating, or for what industry it’s focus is, having structure matters. Though it’s not particularly picked apart and analysed by readers, having something unstructured will be noticeable. It’s messy, slightly chaotic, and can be hard to follow most of the time.
So the information you’re trying to share isn’t as obvious through the first read. Heck, maybe not even in the second read-through, either. And that’s not what we want. Because then we’re not providing a good experience to users nor are we giving them what they’re looking for. Massive fail.
Which is why we divide content into parts and structure it accordingly. It’s easier to write that way, and reads easier, too. A win-win situation, really. As long as there’s an introduction, main body, and conclusion, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter whether you have traditional copy or something more colloquial – in fact, colloquialism is better for blogging content. Something about being easier to relate to or whatever.
You can have paragraphs as small or as large as you want.
But too-large paragraphs are slightly off-putting so you should keep that in mind. Short ones are nicer. Makes us think there’s less to read so we don’t mind spending a little bit of time looking through it. (I think this has now become two points in one… Oh well?)
3. Meta Description Optimisation
Every new post you create allows you to write your won meta description which is basically just a summary of your content. Google displays this summary beneath your post title in the SERPs so making one that’s appealing, informative, or slightly persuasive will have a better chance of encourage readers to click.
It’s all about clicks in the end…
Meta descriptions are quite short so a rather brief summary is recommended, as well as squeezing in the target keyword(s). Not literally, though, it has to make sense within the summary. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee the one you’ve worked on will appear.
4. High Quality Links
Backlinks are heavily weighted ranking factors for Google so having high quality links can be the difference between you outranking your competitors or not.
But that’s not all! Links tell search engines much more than that. Internal links tell search engines and users a lot about the content and relevancy it has. If I linked one of our other blogs on SEO in this post, it not only tells users that it contains other helpful and relevant information – it tells the search engine, too.
5. Update Your Content
Regular and consistent content updates are favoured by search engines. This is one of the more difficult parts of SEO and algorithms – they don’t understand that life can get in the way sometimes. However, there is a solution for when creating new, fresh content is becoming more challenging.
Updating old content.
Especially old content that is still relevant now, and will stay relevant into the future, also. This is often evergreen content and evergreen content is king.
It stays relevant, it can help increase ranking, it is never considered ‘old’. And if it’s evergreen, it’s likely that your content will need less modifying, perhaps only a few time-related updates.
Content updates can also be done on some older posts you have, like blogs. Especially if you know more now than you did at the time of writing. Giving it a quick update, or a bit of a rewrite, with information that’s more accurate, informative, and helpful can increase rankings and traffic greatly. Just as much as if you posted something new.
6. Optimise for Mobile Users
More than half of the people using search engines or other digital spaces do so from their mobiles. Which means that 60% of users are visiting websites through the browsing app on their phone.
Now more than ever, it’s essential that your content is optimised and your website designed to accommodate these users as well. Loading speeds, content structuring, ease of navigation… all things to consider and analyse. Especially loading speeds.
Many mobile users trying to load a page won’t wait forever. They want it almost instantaneous. Then when the page loads, they want to be able to find the information they’re looking for quick and easy. That’s not even mentioning the website design, how it has to be easy to navigate to keep users from clicking off.
GrowTraffic: Get in Touch
Are you interested in optimising your site or producing content that is SEO friendly? Because if you are, why not get in touch with us?
GrowTraffic is an SEO agency with 10 years’ experience and winner of multiple awards. Promise that’s not a brag, just trying to prove that we know what we’re doing. Sometimes.
Just kidding. It’s at least most of the time.
You can email us at info@growtraffic.co.uk or give us a buzz on 0161 706 0012.
