Writing search engine friendly content is quite interesting and intriguing and one can hear a lot during SEO discussions that content is king but how to write search engine friendly content is not something that people learn in their schools and colleges.
Anyone trying to rank their website and content would have fantastic results if their content is search engine friendly and follows the guides
I am going to share some tips on writing search engine friendly content.
Keyword Research
The first thing first is Keywords. When it comes to writing for your website, you should target keywords and topics that are being searched by a lot of people.
If the topic that you are writing about is not searched by a lot of people, your content will not reach a larger audience.
For this, you should use a keyword research tool that can help you find popular search queries. Some of the popular keyword research tools are:
- Google Keyword Planner
- UberSuggest
- KeywordsEverywhere
- Keysearch
- Google Suggest
Simply, type a keyword or topic that you plan to write about, and the tool will give you related search queries with the search volumes.
Search volumes here mean the approximate number of times that particular keyword phrase is used in a month.
Remember that this number is not an accurate number but will be good enough to give you an indication of the popularity against other keywords.
Related Words
One important tip that I would like to add here is that whenever you start your keyword research, use the base words and Google with them.
At the bottom of the search page of Google, you will find a few keywords that are nothing but phrases used by people others which are related to the keyword searched by you.
These phrases will also help you further refine your target keywords.
How to use Keywords in the Content
Once you are sure about the keywords to target for each page, you should start writing the content targeting them.
You might ask that would simply selecting the keywords be enough?
Obviously No.
There are several elements that the search engines give weightage to while deciding which website to rank for a particular keyword.
After we are done with the keyword research, we have to make sure that these keywords are used in the elements that search engines like. Some of these SEO elements are:
- Page Title
- Meta Description
- Heading Tags (H1-H6)
- On-page content
- Images (file name and Alt tags)
When we say, writing content targeting those keywords, it means that those keywords should be used in the above-mentioned elements for the targeted page.
This makes your articles and blog posts search engine friendly.
Addressing the Intent
This one is a bit advanced but a crucial and important one in the coming days.
A lot of SEO professionals would say that longer content ranks better.
Following this, a lot of content writers are just writing to increase the number of words and do not even care whether they are addressing the topic or answering the question that the user is expecting this piece of content to answer.
To make your content search engine friendly, a lot of seasoned SEO experts are now recommending you to understand the intent of the user and build the content around that intent.
Linking to other Sites
Sometimes SEO professionals ask that is it good for us to link to other websites?
They ask this question because they fear that linking to other websites can be harmful and can degrade the website’s authority and rankings.
The answer is again about the balance.
Are you linking out to 50 websites from a single post?
Are you linking out to relevant sites?
Are you linking to pages whose content is related to this post of yours?
Are you using promotional anchor texts while providing links?
If you think you are OK with the above questions then you should link out without any fear.
Summary
Do not write only for search engines. The objective should be to write for the users but also keep in mind the keywords.
When you upload your content on any website, make sure you utilize those keywords in the elements that are liked by the search engines.
At the same time, do not overstuff your keywords because it will ruin the fun of reading your content. It is all about balance and optimization.
You might want to conduct an SEO audit regularly and keep reiterating your content and overall optimization.
Probably, that is the reason why this field is called Search Engine Optimization 🙂
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