Creating SEO-Friendly Content

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Now, on to the good stuff. Our 8 top tips for creating content that will move you up the rankings, instead of leaving you wallowing in no-man’s land. 

1. Understand your keywords
2. Use the correct structure 
3. Keep it snappy, no data dumping
4. Add in relevant internal links
5. Create SEO-friendly URLs
6. Optimise your images
7. Keep your content evergreen 

Understand your keywords

Before you even begin to write SEO-friendly content, you need to understand how people are finding your website. What phrases and keywords are they searching for before they find their way to you? Make a list of relevant keywords within your industry, your main services/products and pay attention to where your converted clients came from. With a list of relevant keywords that generate a high search volume, you’re ready to begin.

Think about your audiences’ intent. What are people reading your content for? If they’re searching for information, make sure you incorporate that into your copy. If they want to be told a story, make sure you’re compelling enough to keep them engaged. Realistically, your underlying aim is probably to convince them to take action. But, as we all know, the hard sell doesn’t tend to work too well in 2023. It could be useful to research the types of keywords including long-tail keywords in SEO.

Call to actions need to be strategically placed to hit your readers’ pain points, but not over the top and in abundance. Keep in mind your ideal clear customer journey and set up your content to ensure that you can lead engaged readers to exactly where they will want to go. 

Use correct structure 

Content has a higher chance of placing in the SERPs if you use correct H1 and H2 tags. Headings need to be short, snappy and give a clear picture of what the piece will be about to rank for the correct search terms for the search engine crawlers to recognise them, otherwise… they’re pretty much invisible.

Paragraphs of text need to be tagged with appropriate P1 tags for the same reason. Luckily, most content management platforms, like WordPress, will enable you to correctly tag your headings and paragraphs with the click of a button. Using the correct headings will ensure that search engines recognise your writing correctly and index it accordingly.

If you’re trying to rank for featured snippets, then accurate headings, use of bullet points and correct paragraph tags will be vital. If your current CMS isn’t doing this for you, you’ll be needing a new one.

Keep it snappy, no data dumping 

Typically, attention spans are short, and interest is fleeting with digital consumers, so changing the subtopic regularly and making sure you’re not writing an essay for each paragraph will help to keep engagement among your readers up. For each piece of content, there will naturally be two aims that remain the same throughout your marketing: 

1. Get searchers to click on your content
2. Get users to engage with your content 

Content that is heavy with data will often be monotonous and dreary for your audience, frequently filled with jargon and statistics that don’t translate into useful actions for them. Instead, try and provide valuable tips and tricks that they can take away and use in real-life situations.  

Add in relevant internal links

Content pages without incoming and outgoing links are not that useful. Okay, that’s an understatement. Each page needs enough link juice to rank in relevant searches and enough accurate links for search engines to properly comprehend where that content sits within your site and index it accordingly.

If you refer to a particular topic, link to an information page about the subject that is located somewhere else on your site. If you’re asking people to get in contact with you or fill out an application form, link to the relevant pages. The point is, each page on your website should have enough incoming and outgoing internal links so that visitors could access the desired page from multiple points in your site. 

Create SEO-friendly URLs

You looked at the URL for this blog post, didn’t you? Good job. Note how it’s relevant to the post’s content, it’s short and it has our keywords in. All very important aspects, when looking at creating SEO-friendly copy. Most platforms allow you to pick and edit your URLs and some even generate a URL based on your H1, so you barely have to lift a finger.

It might seem like overkill, but irrelevant URLs really do harm your SEO, so if you want to be found on page 1 of the search engines, every little helps, right? 

Optimise your images

In a very similar way to URLs, optimising your images is another valuable place to add your keywords. We cringe when we attempt to save an image named: 3100kjshdfn from a site information page entitled: Digital Marketing Trends In 2023. So, if you’re uploading images to your site, make sure they are named appropriately. E.g. digital-marketing-trends-2021-infographic.jpg. How easy was that? 

Keep your content evergreen

Repurposing and constantly updating your content is our final tip for improving the optimisation of your webpage. Search engines crawlers love recent content that provides up-to-date information and unique tips. So, going through your blog posts once a year and reviving dead content is a great way to create new, SEO-friendly posts.

Digital consumers always want to be ahead of the curve, so they’re not going to care about that piece you wrote in 2018, it’s all about the future. Not only will this technique save you time and resources, but it’ll give you a real shot at placing higher on search engine results pages. 

Round-up

There you have it. Eight of our top tips for writing SEO-friendly content, whatever your industry! If you don’t have the time to create your own content or are struggling to rank on those pesky results pages, then we can help. We even offer a free SEO audit for those businesses who want to understand their current position. Access this here.

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