SEO-friendly content is content that’s created in a way that helps search engines, such as Google, find it and reward it with a high ranking.
Some online marketers think that SEO-friendly content should be stuffed with key phrases. In fact, having quality SEO copywriting and page structure aims to help search engines find, connect, and understand the topic you’re writing about.
So, making your content SEO-friendly involves much more than just shoehorning keywords into your blog posts, videos, and other forms of content. Read on for more specific advice to answer the question, “What is SEO-friendly content writing?”
How Can I Make My Content SEO-Friendly?
- Take Advantage of Headlines
Leveraging headlines does many things for search engine optimization (SEO). First, it makes your content skimmable, and thus easier for your target audience to read. Readers are more likely to share content that’s easy to read.
That also goes for search engine robots. When crawling through your website, a robot will detect your headlines and use them to understand your content better, such as what sections are the most important and so on.
It’s essential to note that having headings and subheadings increases your keyword saturation. However, this doesn’t mean you should abuse this to game the system. Instead, be smart about how many keywords you use in different headings.
- Understand Search Engine Ranking Factors
Before you can outrank your competitors, you must understand the foundational signals that search engines use when analyzing and ranking content. The most important ranking factors are content, site structure, links, and HTML tags.
Content
Google prioritizes content as the most crucial ranking factor. When you publish any content, whether it’s a webpage, blog post, or video, it must cover a specific topic in-depth. Also, your content must be well-written and provide value to your target reader.
Some of the most heavily weighted content ranking factors are:
- High-quality: Your content must be valuable and well-written.
- Research: Your content must demonstrate authority.
- Keywords: You must include search terms in your content appropriately.
- Freshness: Your content must be timely and relevant to what your readers are going through or struggling with.
- Multimedia: Well-written and valuable content must contain images, audio, and video to improve the user experience.
- Answers: Relevant content must answer the search queries directly.
- Depth: You must cover a topic thoroughly.
Understanding the meaning of each of these ranking factors and how to apply them is the first step towards creating SEO-friendly content. Using proper SEO copywriting technique is the first step in creating content that resonates with both your audience and search engines.
Site Structure, Links, and HTML Tags
Apart from content, other heavily weighted ranking factors are links, site structure, and HTML tags.
When search engines crawl and index your website, they also evaluate non-content factors, such as inbound and outbound links, page load speed, URL structure, time spent on-page, and keyword usage in tags to understand what your website is about and how to rank your web content.
Search engine algorithms are built to deliver Internet users the most relevant content from the best websites. Implementing site structure, HTML, and linking best practices within your web content makes it easier for a search engine to crawl and index your content. The faster and more accurately search engines crawl and index your content, the quicker you can improve search engine ranking and web traffic.
- Use the Right Keywords
While there is some debate within online marketing communities whether keyword research is dead, keywords are still a critical part of SEO.
Keyword research can help you:
- Determine the topics readers are talking about.
- Determine search volumes for various topics.
- Assess how difficult it will be to rank for certain topics.
Every piece of content you create must have unique primary keywords. You must also use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, defined as words which naturally appear in the context of your content topic, throughout your content.
Before you create any content, brainstorm topics you know your target audience cares about. Next, conduct keyword research to determine the best ranking opportunities. However, it’s imperative to note that the type of keyword you target will largely depend on the type of content you’re creating.
For instance, if you’re creating a blog post, you must target mid- to low-volume, low-competition long-tail key phrases, while comprehensive content, such as pillar pages should target shorter-tail seed keywords, with high competition and high volume. So, when writing a blog post remember that lower competition, longer tail keywords are easier to rank for and have higher conversion rates.
- Determine and Capture Searcher Intent
After finding a viable primary keyword target, decide how you’ll write about by understanding the searcher’s intent. Determine what the searcher is searching for when they type a search query into a search bar and cover the topic in a manner that meets their needs directly.
Google’s search evaluation quality guidelines suggest that there are 4 categories of search intent:
- Know: The search engine user wants to find information on a topic to answer a specific question.
- Do: The search engine user wants to learn how to perform a certain action.
- Website: The searcher is looking for a specific resource.
- Visit in person: The searcher is looking for a location to go to.
Before you write your content, identify which of the four categories your primary keyword falls under. Next, validate the category by analyzing the content that currently ranks for that keyword. Evaluate how your competitors have structured their content to satisfy the searcher’s needs. Then, structure your content the same way.
To satisfy searcher intent better than your competition, determine the aspects of search intent that top-ranking blog posts aren’t satisfying. You can figure out what these gaps are by looking at the “Related searches” and “People also ask” sections on the search engine results page.
Think Beyond SEO
It’s imperative to note that if search engine traffic is your only goal, your ranking will suffer. To please both the search engines and potential readers and return visitors, you must offer value beyond SEO. That means you shouldn’t produce “low-quality” content that ranks and gets clicks but doesn’t offer any value to the search engine user. If you create low-value content, your site could be penalized by Google and you’ll experience high bounce rates and low conversion rates.