SEO optimised content is not user friendly; this is a very big myth. Well written and well-optimised quality content helps leaps and bounds towards elevating your ranking in the search results. However, creating such hallmark and credible SEO friendly content requires a certain amount of dedication in the form of time, effort, and perseverance to see the task through until the end.
To ensure that happens, listed below are a few rules and pointers that serve to improve your content ranking among search engines.
1. Conduct a keyword research
While thought-leadership style content is important, narrowing down on a reliable keyword would help you assure yourself a high rank in the search results and subsequently quench your target audience’s thirst.
When you are on the journey to source the keywords, keep an eye out for the following factors:
- The search volume analysis for a particular keyword is to avoid the utilisation of incorrect keywords, which would be a waste of your resources.
- Take steps to realise the context or searcher intent of the keywords you are aiming to use.
- Look up resources to enable the creation of competitive content that already exists on the search results.
- Draw priority on long-tail keywords since they depict a low search volume propensity whilst still maintaining a scope for ranking high atop the SERPs. Notably, people tend to favour longer phrases when they are searching for something specific online.
- Once you are successful in identifying the correct keywords, please do not use them carelessly. Avoid keyword stuffing to make the content appear natural. The material on the page should not appear to be laden with sub-standard content due to the overuse of keywords.
Further, make sure to use the key at pertinent points such as Title, URL, Meta description, image names and alt image tags along with your content and headings alike.
2. Bring structure to your content
Creating content with a reminiscence of a basic structure already in place would make writing a breeze. This is because structure ensures discipline in writing, which allows you to accomplish your task more efficiently. Every content should be adorned with an introduction, main body and conclusion, topped with your own personal flair of writing to engage the audience. Lastly, don’t forget to include a prominent call to action to induce users to undertake the required action.
3. Curate Eye-Catching Titles
A wordy, lengthy and catchy title enables your readers to understand what the blog post is about to a more significant extent. Measures that can be taken to optimise one’s title for SEO include: using the target keyword right at the start of the heading, ensuring that it is less than 60 characters, i.e. as per Google’s search display criteria, and describing the page’s content correctly.
Further, a point to note would be to use sufficient emotional modifiers in your titles like best, amazing, surprising, among others, since these raise your CTR and attract the audience.
Additionally, employing the use of subtitles will further boost the readability of the content. Notably, the h1 tag should only be used once alongside the target keyword; overuse of the same tag can confuse the search engine to sight duplicate content. Instead, the h2 and h3 tags can be utilised to tag subsections within the content.
4.Craft SEO friendly URLs
URLs are regarded as a fundamental factor that accounts for better ranking due to their catering of enhanced user experience and easy sharing features. Here are some of the rules that ought to be considered at the time of crafting SEO friendly content through URLs:
- Make sure to mention the target keywords for every page; this enhances search visibility and page identification.
- Rid your URLs of redundant words and limit characters up to 60.
- Employ the use of hyphens for word separation.
- Utilise lowercase characters and prevent usage of words like a, an, but, and or.
5. Make use of small paragraphs
Ensure that the content is well segmented into small paragraphs that are sequentially sound. Include formatting devices such as bullets, highlighting, font styles or designs as points of differentiation. This helps break reading monotony and keeps even mobile readers engaged.
6. Optimise meta descriptions adequately
Meta descriptions allude to a descriptive summary of the content displayed by google beneath your page title on the search results page. These play a crucial role in drawing the reader’s attention and inspiring interest in the page’s content. These are estimated to be 155-160 characters in length, should include keywords and elucidate on the details of your content.
7. Optimise The Images Used In The Article
This is an ideal approach to getting on the search engine’s radar and simultaneously enhancing the reader’s visual experience. While Google is incapable of reading text within images, it can decipher the image content to label an image’s relevancy rate. But to enable this, one must mention appropriate Alt text and descriptive titles, captions and filenames.
8. Include Relevant Links
Do not back down from mentioning internal and external links to your article; these help the readers visiting your page delve deeper into understanding a particular topic. Additionally, internal linking increases the relevancy of your content in the eyes of a search engine spider. Conversely, external linking elevates trust and user experience. Take steps to mention description anchors to these links so that users can have a shortcut to understanding which is relevant to them.
9. Ensure that your content length is optimal
Google tends to favour longer content posts; hence the optimal word length is accounted for at around 2000 words. However, it is not paramount for you to write such lengthy articles every time but ensure that the most important data is at the top to ensure SEO friendly content. Quality is of priority at every step.
10. Take steps to optimise content for mobile
Mobile usage is on a never-ending upward surge; even in terms of search engine ranking, mobile-friendly content is ranked higher. Thus, it is crucial to create a responsive website design to avoid penalisation from Google. This includes adaptability with mobile, tablets, and desktops alike.
11. Ensure regular content updation
Despite writing highly riveting content, it would be a waste unless it is posted or updated regularly. Unless you post periodically, Google tends to disregard your blog as a candidate for a good resource. Once or twice per week is a decent updating capacity to satisfy Google’s requirements.
12. Include social media share buttons
Make sure that your social media share buttons are easily visible and accessible throughout your web content. These prompt users to click on them and induce free links.
13. Implement schema markup
Executing these will aid search engines to analyse your content more effectively. It segments every section of your content and essentially describes to search engines what they mean accordingly.
The following were the various tips to help you create SEO friendly content that will promise you value and serve you well in the long run.
