One of the challenges of writing your own content is making sure that it is optimized for search engines, which in particular means Google. Google is a very large search engine and powers what many agree is at least 90% of the searches conducted online. Ranking in one of the top 5 spots on Google can help you net potentially hundreds of visitors a day. However, one of the key ranking factors is the quality of your content and if it is optimized.
Optimized or SEO content is content that’s optimized for search crawlers. What you’re essentially doing with optimized content is telling the search engine what keywords best describe the content and its target audience.
Optimized or SEO content is content that’s optimized for search crawlers. What you’re essentially doing with optimized content is telling the search engine what keywords best describe the content and its target audience.
In this guide, we will cover:
By the end of this guide, you should be able to create your own SEO content. You’ll also be able to check if the person you hired to write your content has optimized it for Google search.
As mentioned above, it is content that’s optimized for search engines. The goal is to attract search traffic by optimizing your content. You will need to figure out what would be a good fit for your industry and the keywords you’ll have to use for your content. When people search using the keywords you’re targeting, they will run into your page on Google, which will mean that they land on your website. So, now you see just how vital optimized content is for any business.
To optimize your content for search engines, you’ll need to do the following:
Think of keywords as the foundation of your SEO work, as these are the phrases or words prospective visitors are typing into a search engine. That’s why it is essential to use the same terms and phrases in your content, i.e., blog posts, webpage content, articles, descriptions, etc.
It is good practice to group your keywords in terms of relevancy. For instance, if you owned a car dealership in New York, your primary keyword would probably be ‘buy a car in New York,’ along with that the secondary keywords on your list would be ‘buy a used car in New York City,’ ‘buy a cheap car,’ ‘buy classic cars’ etc. These keywords would primarily be on your homepage, about us page, and products page.
Now you can have different categories of keywords too. For instance, if you also sell used Hummers, Dodges, and Chevrolets, you can have a separate page for each vehicle brand. So, the Dodges’ sales page will probably use a group of keywords like ‘Dodge Viper for sale,’ ‘76 Dodge for sale’, etc.
The important thing is to start with a list of keywords that best reflect your business. Then group them into primary and secondary keywords. You should come up with a page or post for each group of keywords.
The first thing that people see before they even read the first line of your article is the title. It also happens to be the first thing that Google’s search bots see. That’s why the title needs to be optimized both for potential visitors and search engines.
The easiest way to do this is to come up with a compelling headline that best describes your article or content. Then insert your primary keyword into the headline ideally at the beginning. Finally, your title should be within Google’s prescribed character limit. You can use a tool like SiteChecker to check if your title fits the limit. Alternatively, you can search for “Title Checker” and use any tool you think is quick and easy.
Let’s say, for instance, your primary keyword is “Cat Food” and your article is about the cat food types, here are a few examples:
When you Google using a search term, notice how each search result has a short description or summary of what is on the page. That titbit of text is very important not only for potential visitors but Google too.
Using the meta description, you only have 160 characters, to sum up your article or content, which includes your keyword. Ideally, the primary keyword and one secondary keyword should be in the meta description. However, if you can’t accommodate both then only the primary keyword should work well too.
Building on the previous instance, here is how the meta description will look:
Cat food and other feline products are causing many pets to become sick across the US. Here is what you can do to ensure that your pet food isn’t tainted.
The URL of your page needs to be optimized to provide search engines with a description of your page’s content too. Make sure that the URL includes the primary keyword or if the title has the keyword in it then it can be based off the title.
Building off our previous example here is how a couple of optimized URLs will look:
We’ve truncated a couple of words in the first instance, and the reason that’s done is to ensure the URL isn’t too long. You don’t want your URLs to be longer than they should. So, if you can shorten them while ensuring that the keywords are still in there then go ahead and do it.
The <h1> tag also called the title tag, is one that encompasses your title. Now you don’t have to do any coding if you’re using WordPress, just make sure to choose ‘Header 1’ or ‘Header’ in the edit box.
The same goes for all the other sub-header tags like <h2>, <h3>, <h4>… etc. Making sure that these tags are included will help search engines make sense of your article’s structure which is useful for ranking.
Over the years things have changed a lot, and now the common consensus is that you shouldn’t aim for a particular keyword density. However, in our experience your primary keyword or key phrase should make up 2-3% of your text. Secondary keywords can be added once or twice within the article.
You will also want the primary keyword in any one of your sub-headings. That said this isn’t super important and shouldn’t be done at the expense of making your content hard to read or look weird.
While there is a lot of controversy surrounding linking to external websites and how it affects SEO the fact is that having 2 or 3 outbound links can’t hurt. If anything if you’re linking to high-authority sites, it can be good in our experience.
The other reason why we advise people to use outbound links is that it improves a visitor’s experience. For instance if you’re quoting a line from an article in the New York Times, a link to the full article will give visitors a source which lends credibility to what you are saying. At the same time you’re allowing visitors to read the full article which improves their experience.
The one thing you need to make sure of is never link to dodgy, low quality or unknown websites. Also steer clear of sites that aren’t within your niche unless your article cites something they have published or its something that you think visitors to the website will find useful.
So, while outbound links take people to an external website, an inbound link takes readers to a page within your website. Inbound links are crucial for SEO. However, that will require that you source links from other websites, something beyond the scope of this article.
Adding internal links or interlinking helps you avoid you having to create duplicate content, which then competes against each other, and you also create value by sharing more information.
Internal links were shown to reduce the bounce rate because people are not as likely to click on links that take them away from your website. That means they stay longer on your website, which translates to a good experience in Google’s eyes.
Social signals are a big part of SEO today and so having those social sharing buttons will make it easier for visitors to share what they read. Not to mention the fact that having a button for the three major social networks at least will help to increase social sharing considerably.
We have left the most important part of optimizing your content for SEO until the very end of this guide. The reason for this is because you can only analyze and re-access once you have at least a few dozen pages live on the website. Knowing what is working and what isn’t takes time, it will require that you measure thing like page views, comments, links and social shares across all major networks.
If you are selling a product or service, it would be worth measuring your conversion rates. There should be a couple of primary goals of your analysis, such as:
There you have it, folks, just about everything you need to write optimized content. We admit while this guide covers the basics, it does not cover everything. That said, unless you’re in a highly competitive niche, the basics are all you need to create rankable content. However, if you’re competing against others who have excellent, highly optimized content, it would be a good idea to hire a professional. That way, there is little to no trial and error, which means you spend less time trying to figure things out for yourself and avoid costing you time and money in the long-term.
