It’s common for businesses to launch their own websites and blogs to reach a wider audience, but this has created an oversaturation of online content that makes it harder for any brand to really stand out. Because of this, many websites are starting to use search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques and strategies to improve their rankings on search engines and increase their site’s organic traffic, engagement, and overall visibility.
However, even with all of these optimizations being done on various website elements, it’s important to remember that producing high-quality SEO content is still paramount when it comes to sustainable progress.
What is SEO Content?
SEO content is content that has been produced and optimized to increase a website’s chances of garnering a favorable ranking in search engine results pages. The quality of SEO content can be seen as one of the most important parts of an SEO strategy, especially as it is the main reason why users click on website links in the first place.
This is further supported by the fact that Google has said that content is one of the top three factors considered when it comes to ranking websites, with high-quality content—content that is specific, original, well-written, informative, and aligned with users’ search intents—naturally leading to better rankings.
By producing good and consistent content, you’ll not only be able to attract more users to your website, but also provide them with a great experience by giving them the information that they were searching for, both of which can be seen as advantages to search engine algorithms.
How to Write SEO Content?
If you’re looking to write great quality SEO content to boost the position of your website on search engine results pages, here’s how you can do it:
Step 1: Conduct Research for Your Content
Keyword Research
After choosing a topic that’s related to your field and industry, the first thing you should do is conduct keyword research—the process of finding and analyzing the right keywords for your content based on the keywords’ search volume, density, competitiveness, and difficulty.
By choosing the most relevant and popular keywords, you’ll not only be able to better optimize your content later on but also have a better idea of what your audience and readers are interested in.
Many free online keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner and Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool can provide you with a good selection of both long and short-tail keywords, which will give you a better-balanced list to choose from.
User Intent
Once you have your list of keywords, it’s now time to assess user intent—the reason why users are searching for a specific query in the first place. This is important because it helps you figure out what content format users are actually looking for when they search on search engines—whether it's a comprehensive how-to guide, a step-by-step article, a comparison review, or something else.
You can do this by searching for your content topic on a search engine and reviewing the first few results that show up, which are the most popular and useful content based on user engagement.
To give you an example of this, when you type in “write a story” on Google, these are the results that will pop up:
If you’re making content about storytelling, there are definitely many ways to go. You could write an article about the basic elements that every story needs, or even the different kinds of stories and genres that an aspiring writer can explore.
However, based on these results from the first result page—the page that features the best performing and most useful content—most users are looking for a comprehensive how-to guide that can help them through the writing process.
Step 2: Write Your Content
The next step is to actually write your content, and there are a few steps that can help you go through the entire process smoothly:
Start with an Outline
This may seem like an entirely tedious process, especially for content writers with a bit of experience under their belts, but an outline can greatly benefit your overall writing experience. Creating an outline for your article will allow you to structure your ideas and more easily arrange them in a way that will make sense for your readers and target audience. Here’s how to start:
To start, you can look at the articles that are currently ranking online and review the outline that they’ve used, as well as the information they discussed. Then after creating your own outline based on what you’ve found and substantiating it with your own research, you can choose to add a few additional subtopics in case you’ve missed anything. This will ensure that your content is comprehensive and stands out from existing articles.
The great thing about an outline is that you’ll be able to set up a foundation for your content, which isn’t always easy when you’re too busy typing away all your paragraphs. It also gets all the research out of the way early in the writing process. With a finished outline, you’ll be able to see an overview of how your article is going to look and have a quicker time making any necessary tweaks and changes.
Write Your Content
Once you’re satisfied with how your outline looks, it’s time to start writing your first draft, which will be much easier this time around as your outline should already contain all the information and details that you’ll need.
When writing your article, make sure that it’s detailed and comprehensive and covers absolutely everything regarding the topic. This will drastically skyrocket your chances of getting a great ranking on search engines by being much more useful to users’ search intents.
Another thing to keep in mind is that your content needs to sound natural and conversational. The way that your content is written can severely affect users’ experience on your website, and they won’t be leaving with a positive one if they can barely follow or understand what you’re writing about. This is especially important when you start adding keywords to your content. Remember that the finished product needs to be easy for users to read, otherwise it won’t rank.
Proofread Your Work
The final step in the creation of your content is to go over everything one final time, keeping an eye out for any grammatical or spelling errors. While these mistakes seem harmless enough, a single error might be all it takes to rub users the wrong way and make your brand and business seem unprofessional. With that, there’s a chance that your users will immediately view you as an untrustworthy source and leave your website, opting for another source instead.
Another thing to look out for is any sign of over-explanation and redundancy in your article. This refers to any paragraph that unnecessarily repeats or elaborates on ideas that were already well-established. Users are looking for quick and concise explanations that will give them the information they’re looking for, and over-explaining certain ideas and concepts can quickly lose their interest and attention. Proofreading will help you spot these parts and cut them down.
Step 3: Optimize Your Content
Once you have your content written out, it’s time to optimize it for search engines with on-page SEO strategies.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is all about optimizing the webpage and its contents using the following strategies:
- Using headers and subheaders to break your content apart and make it easier for users to read
- Adding different forms of media like images and videos to make your article more visually engaging
- Incorporating relevant keywords into the different elements of your content (e.g. title, meta tags, URL links, and headers)
- Crafting interesting and eye-catching meta titles and meta descriptions, which will attract users and help search engines rank your website based on quality and relevance
Technical SEO
Technical SEO focuses on making your website easier for search engines to crawl and index, while also improving user experience. Here are some strategies to consider:
- Optimizing your website to increase its loading speed
- Ensuring that your website is easily navigable and doesn’t lag
- Optimizing your content for both desktop and mobile devices
The point of all these optimizations is to deliver the best user experience to your readers as possible, keeping in mind that this will benefit both your search engine ranking and the performance and engagement of your website. Remember that these SEO strategies will get users into your website, but it’ll be the quality of your content—and whether it provides them with valuable information—that will decide if they stay.
There’s More!
The journey to optimized content doesn’t stop there. While it might be easy to think that your job is done, there are actually some other things that you might have to do down the road:
Update Your Content
Whether there’s a new development or innovation on the topic, it’s crucial that you stay on top of this and revise your content as soon as possible to reflect these changes, while also removing sections and parts that are no longer necessary. This will ensure that your content remains fresh and useful to your target audience, bettering your chances of getting a good rank in the long term.
Monitoring Data and Insights
Aside from updating your content, it’s also important to monitor your articles’ performance by regularly checking and analyzing your website’s data and insights. There are some great online tools and downloadable programs that can help you retrieve much more accurate and updated data like Google Analytics, Google’s Search Console, Adobe Analytics, and much more.
Adjusting Your Content Strategy
With these valuable data and insights, you’ll be able to make the necessary changes to your existing strategy to increase its chances of success in the long term. You can also use these as a basis for future content strategies. With that being said, it’s also essential that you stay up to date with the research you’ve already done—regularly checking on the performance of keywords, understanding any changes in user intent, and adjusting accordingly.
The Takeaway
Regardless of the number of optimizations you perform on your website, high-quality SEO content still plays one of the biggest and most important roles in the success and performance of your website.
The content of your website is pretty much the foundation that the rest of your SEO strategies will be built upon, so it’s crucial to create meaningful and comprehensive content that makes users’ time on your website worthwhile by giving them all the information they need, all wrapped up in a positive user experience.
