Content SEO – Executive Summary.
Your Ultimate Guide to Creating Content That Ranks
Table of Contents
What Is Content SEO?
Content SEO is creating content with the intent of ranking in the search engine results. When a user searches for something related to your content, you want it to show on the first page of the results. Content SEO includes the content you write as well as the way it is structured on your webpage.
Essentially, content that ranks well considers three main elements:
● Keyword strategy
● Site structure
● Copywriting
Search engines, like Google, read your website to determine what information is offered and how helpful it will be to the person searching. The words you use on your site are part of what determines whether your site will rank. The words in your content need to align with what the searchers are looking for.
Keyword Research
You’ve probably heard of keywords and how important they are to SEO. But what are they really, and how can you make them work for you?
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of identifying specific words and phrases that you want your web pages to rank for. Knowing what your audience is searching for is the key element to generating organic traffic to your site. Keyword research helps you to know what words and subjects you should be aiming for.
Keyword research can essentially be broken down into four main parts:
● Establish the goals of your content strategy
● Make a list of the keywords that match your content to your target audience
● Understand search intent
● Create landing pages for the keywords
Why Is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research is how you determine which search terms your audience is using to find information, products, answers, etc. It’s crucial to the success of your content strategy that you and your audience are using the same terms. Proper keyword research is what makes your content work for you and makes the effort of optimizing your website worthwhile.
Heads or Tails?
Keywords don’t have to be a single word. Some keywords are actually made up of multiple words. Sometimes, keywords can actually be key phrases.
There are two main types of keywords:
● Head keywords are typically made up of 1-2 words and are more difficult to rank for because they are generally more broad terms.
● Long-tail keywords are generally made up of 3-4 words that are much more specific and therefore have less competition and are easier to rank for.
While some keywords are broad and therefore more competitive, others are longer and more specific. This makes them easier to rank for, because fewer people are using them in their content.
You’ll probably target a few general, short-tail keywords and more that are long-tail. Because the competition is lower, it’s easier to rank for long-tail keywords. Also, you may find it easier to target a specific search intent with a long-tailed keyword.
The best way to find good long-tail keywords you can rank for is to focus on a niche. Niching down involves targeting a very specific group of people within your market. You can rank higher by targeting your content to that very specific group with those long-tail keywords.
By writing high-quality content about a very niche topic, you can beat out even the largest competitors for those long-tail terms.
How Many Keywords Should You Have?
Even the smallest business will likely end up identifying more than a hundred relevant keywords. You don’t have to create content for each of them all at once. Use the keywords you want to rank for first in your first pieces of content and you can gradually add the rest as you create more content.
Keyword and Search Intent
One thing search engines are really paying attention to these days is the intent of the search query being used. What type of information is the searcher looking for when they type in your keywords?
There are four types of search intent:
● Informational intent: User’s trying to find answers to particular questions about a specific topic.
● Transactional intent: The user is looking to make a purchase.
● Commercial intent: Thinking of making a purchase in the near future, the user is doing research and gathering information.
● Navigational intent: The user knows the specific website they want to visit but rather than entering the specific address, they enter the name into the search engine.
Knowing the intent of your visitors’ searches will greatly improve your ability to create the content they’re looking for.
Within the four main categories of user intent, there’s a significant amount of variation in what exactly the user is looking for. Search engines also make some assumptions about what people are looking for. Remember the web is worldwide. Sometimes it has to take into account that your search query isn’t as literal as it may sound.
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
By searching the keyword and examining the search results, you can get insight into what people are looking for when they use your keywords. SERPs are a direct source of information about what users are looking for. SERPs can also show you new keyword opportunities and how you can adjust your SEO strategy.
Adapting Keyword Strategy
Keyword strategy doesn’t ever stay the same. Much like the algorithms developed by search engines, they evolve over time. Your strategy should evolve along with your business and content.
Site Structure
Site structure is important for ranking so it’s important that you do your best to create a structure that is pleasing to the search engines, as well as your customers.
What Is Site Structure?
Site structure refers to how you organize the pages on your website. It’s how the pages are grouped, linked, and presented to the person visiting your site. If you have a solid structure, your website and your rankings will benefit.
Why Is Site Structure Important?
Site structure is important for ranking. It’s important for three main reasons:
- Good site structure helps search engines understand your site.
- It helps you avoid competing with your own content.
- It creates a better user experience.
The Ideal Structure
Ideally, your site structure should look like a pyramid. At the top is your homepage. On the homepage there are links to other pages one level down, like category pages. Those pages link to pages even further within your site, and so on.
Pages targeting competitive keywords should be higher in the pyramid then those targeting less competitive long-tail keywords.
Improving Your Site Structure
If you didn’t set up your website in a perfect pyramid from the beginning, don’t worry. There are still a lot of things you can do to improve your structure and SEO content.
Copywriting for Content SEO
The final important aspect of a successful SEO strategy is copywriting. Your content should be well formatted, attractive, and easy to read or skim. You want people to come to your website and browse for a while.
Start With an Original Idea
A good start for high-quality copywriting is to write content that is original. Your articles should be new and original. What you’re looking for is content that is inherently different from all of the other content that exists on that topic. Write content that your audience wants to read.
Original doesn’t necessarily mean brand new in the world of SEO content. If your article is completely new, that automatically makes it original. But, giving your professional opinion on a topic can also count as original content.
Consider Your Audience
Writing original content means thinking about your audience and what information they’re looking for. Consider these questions:
● What do you want to tell or teach your audience?
● What’s the main message of your article?
● Will the reader recognize the purpose of your article?
● What would you like the reader to do once they’ve read the article?
Readability
Your content must be easily readable. If visitors come to your site and are confronted by a solid wall of text, they’ll leave quickly.
Readability includes many factors including:
● Text structure
● Sentence length
● Clear paragraphs
In addition, you’ll want to consider skim readers and include plenty of bullet points and white space.
Other factors affect readability as well. Try incorporating these suggestions:
● When you can, use short and simple sentences for easier processing.
● Avoid difficult words – try writing at about a sixth-grade level.
● Always try to use the active voice.
● Write in an appealing, conversational style
Content, Context and Search Intent
Search engines are now able to understand user queries better and determine the intent of the user. It can determine if you are looking for a product to purchase or just information related to that product and then it tries to find the pages that fit that intent the best.
This means that you should change your focus from just trying to use your keywords a lot within your text to paying attention to the words you use around it.
Consider these points while writing your text:
● Is your topic clear within your text?
● Does your piece have a clear purpose?
● Are you providing information or a product to purchase and does that align with what users are looking for?
Creating Intent-Based Content
When you’re ready to start creating your own intent-based content, try these tips for utilizing your keywords and other words that are related to them.
- Choose a keyword: Look over your list of keywords, choose one from your list, and search for it on Google.
- Analyze the results: Which intent is most common in the results? Is there a dominant intent? Are there videos, images, or related searches?
- Shape your content: Now that you know the general intent behind the keyword, create content that matches what users are looking for.
Optimize Content for Readers and Search Engines
Findability is a term used to describe increasing the likelihood that search engines will take your content for the search engine results page. Optimizing your content for search engines is a requirement if you want your SEO content to be easily found by them.
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