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SEO Content Writing 101

By Annabelle Amery 
Annabelle@allthiscontent.com

Let’s Get Back to Basics: What is SEO?

With SEO swiftly becoming one of the fastest changing channels in today’s digital marketing age, it’s all the more important for businesses to keep up with the times. Businesses must remain malleable when it comes to not only SEO, but also their marketing strategies. Going back to basics, SEO – AKA Search Engine Optimisation – is a necessary marketing tactic if you want your website to stand out from the crowd and be easily found through search engines.

As a business owner, it’s incredibly important (not to mention, highly valuable) to invest in an SEO content writer who knows how to leverage SEO in order to drive more quality traffic to your site. The aim, after all, is to lead to conversions – and ultimately revenue – for your business. When it comes to good SEO, it’s not just about the quantity of traffic. There’s no use in having thousands of users click on your site, only to find that your page wasn’t what they were looking for and immediately divert away. It’s far more important to get high-intent traffic. That is quality traffic that will lead to conversion…which is what you are after, at the end of the day.

We’ll be focusing exclusively on Google in this week’s blog – as Google is responsible for the vast majority of search engine traffic worldwide.

You may be wondering what’s the magical formula that works, and what will get your site to rank at the very top of the search results page. Just how does Google rank pages in response to what users are searching for? And most importantly, how can you get this valuable high-intent traffic to your site? Here, we give you a quick overview of the whys and hows…

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Quality Not Quantity

Google’s sorting algorithm is uber-complex (at best). But simply put, Google is looking for pages containing not only high-quality but also relevant content, in regards to the searcher’s inquiry. Quality is also measured by the number of quality or ‘authority’ links to other websites. So if your site only links to low traffic blogs that no one else has read, a competing site that has linked to Wikipedia or NBC news will gain the upper hand. This is because the sources that it has linked to are more trusted and it will, therefore, assume higher quality. Yes, it’s a little bit link-ist, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Google’s algorithm is constantly being refined and altered. There are numerous factors affecting ranking factors. A few other elements that determine where Google will rank your site include:

  • The loading speed of your site – if your site is taking longer than a few seconds to load, users will become frustrated and click back, redirecting them from your page (come back!)
  • Mobile/device friendliness – if your site is the picky kind and hasn’t quite updated its device compatibility to mobile devices – then we have news for you! With more than 51% of browsing now via mobile devices, this is the bandwagon to jump on if you haven’t already.
  • Unique content – speaks for itself. More importantly, make sure your content is not duplicated.  
  • Bounce back and click-through rates – Google will take note on whether users are staying on your site (presuming the user has found the information they need), or bounce back to the Google search page and clicking on other links.

There are so many factors when it comes to good SEO. And it starts with a good SEO content writer who knows what they are doing. Here, we’ve chosen two main ways that you can get your website to the top.

1) Get Rid of Duplicate Content

Think of content writing as the backbone of your website. If your content is simply duplicated from another site, the two will be in direct competition, and your website may not appear in the search at all. You may have even duplicated your own content on your website.  

So how does content duplication occur?

  • Perhaps you are using product descriptions provided by a supplier and leave them unchanged.
  • You might have the same page in multiple places on your website.
  • Pages on your website may be too similar to one another.
  • You openly use another website’s content on your website.
  • You may have two or more websites selling the same goods to different audiences.

The solution: Be sure to make your content interesting and unique. A good SEO content writer should answer the question and not dilly-daddle around a broad topic. People search for answers. Successful content will always answer the question. If you have service pages on your website too similar to each other, you could make the pages unique or combine the two into one page. One valuable page will be far more successful than two weak pages.

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2) Keyword Best Practices  

Before you begin to diversify and jazz up your content, it is crucial to figure out what you are optimising for. You need to know the exact words that people are searching for in Google that you want your website to rank highly for. Otherwise known as “keywords”.

Determining the keywords that you want to target may sound simple enough, but it’s not. There are a few things you should take into account.

  • Search Volume – be sure to analyse how many people are searching for your chosen keywords, if any that is. The more people, the bigger the reachable audience. On the other hand, if no one is searching for a keyword then there’s not much point in stuffing it into your content. Another reason to be sure to analyse keywords before randomly picking a chosen few.
  • Competition – one needs to understand the competition involved when attempting to rank highly for specific terms.
  • Relevance – this may seem straightforward but alas, it is not. The search volume for a term means nothing if it is not relevant to your company’s prospects.

Be sure to redo your keyword research for each and every page on your site. With keywords and search trends rapidly changing, it is important to keep up with the times. You can use many tools including Google Trends and analytics to evaluate your options.

Applying Keywords

Once you have your keyword army, you’ll need to find the perfect locations to execute your battlefield plan. In other words, you’ll need to optimise your page by scattering about your chosen keywords. Each page should target a core term, or ‘primary keyword’ whilst also sprinkling in some related secondary keywords. Keywords should be appropriately spread out and flow with the unique content on the page.

The primary keyword should not only be in the title but also dotted about the page in headings, paragraphs and most importantly, in the meta title. We aren’t suggesting “keyword stuffing” where cramming in keywords looks unnatural. Keyword placement should be tactful and natural.

The Bottom Line

Be sure to create content that is helpful, intriguing and credible. And of course unique.

SEO is a complex and in-depth subject and this piece really only licks the top of the iceberg. If you want to rank near the top of the page and put yourself on the map, you may not know it yet but you need unique and specialised content. Content that converts and helps customers with high intent find their way to your website.

And that’s where we come in. If all this SEO talk is bringing on a migraine, All This Content can be your painkiller. We are SEO content writers specialising in page optimisation.

Get in touch with us, and see how we can improve your SEO content today.