It’s a given that content marketing and creating SEO-friendly content go hand in hand; fusing SEO and content strategies is a key step in upping your online marketing game. Useful, engaging content rivets your target audience and herds them toward your funnel while leveraging good SEO techniques and systems makes sure you’re visible on the SERPs (and hence to that target market). You shouldn’t mull over where to focus but instead find a balance between these two—you need to learn how to create what’s called SEO content.
What Is SEO Content?
Before delving into how to create top-notch SEO content, let’s first break down the term: SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is all about making digital assets like websites easy to find on the more popular search engines like Google. And content? Well, that’s any info you find online.
So, when we talk about SEO content, we’re talking about web content made specifically to attract traffic from search engines. It’s content that appeals to both people and search engines alike. Remember that the goal isn’t just to rank high on searches and get lots of traffic. It’s also about pleasing your audience.
Types of SEO Content
SEO content isn’t limited to full-text articles, and full-text articles aren’t limited to just one type. Here are the types of SEO content you can fill your website with:
- Articles – This can be anything from a feature piece, a niche-related news item, or an interview with an industry influencer. Check out magazine-style websites; this is the kind of content you’ll likely find.
- Blog Posts – Most businesses do not just have an official website, but also a blog site. That is because people are more likely to follow blogs than visit business websites. A blog is one of the best ways for you to build authority for your website because it allows you to engage with your audience and is likely to attract more links. Blog posts can be any type of content, provided it is engaging, relevant, and informative.
- Directories – This is an article that contains several useful links to resources related to a particular topic. For example, if you maintain a blog about travel, you could draw up a list of the best resorts/hotels to stay in at a particular destination, with links to their websites.
- Glossaries – People these days hardly use a dictionary. When there are terms they do not understand, they turn to Google. If you happen to operate a business that belongs to a highly specialized niche or industry, you could capture some healthy traffic by publishing a comprehensive glossary.
- Guides – A guide is a how-to article that provides details on doing certain things. You have the option of posting a full guide on your site or simply posting a summary and then providing the full guide to visitors who fill out a subscription or registration form. Note, however, that while a registration form can be a good way to generate sales leads, it can also reduce the amount of traffic you drive to your guide.
- Infographics – These are images that contain valuable data, usually presented in bulleted format. If you choose to use this type of content, remember to carefully optimize the web page as a whole because search engines cannot read the text on the image.
- Lists – Surely, you’ve seen this kind of content many times before. Whenever you do an online search, there’s bound to be at least one result with this kind of title: “Top 10 Ways to…” or “Top 5 Places to…” People are more likely to click on this kind of title and read the whole post because a list is quite easy to scan.
- Product Pages – If you maintain an e-commerce website, then this type of content is the bread and butter of your site. You have to make sure your product pages are as attractive to your target market as your blog and other web pages are.
- Slideshows – A slideshow can be the perfect way for you to present related images. If you run an apparel business, for example, and you want to show the trends for the upcoming season, you may do so in slideshow form. Just like an infographic, it is important to properly optimize the title, file name, captions, etc. of your slideshow because search engines cannot read the images you present.
- Video – Search engines are placing a higher value on video content these days, primarily because people typically prefer watching videos to reading lengthy, full-text articles. Videos are more likely to be shared across the web. You can create videos illustrating business-related processes or demonstrating how to use your products.
How to Write Excellent SEO Content
Creating content for SEO isn’t as tricky as it sounds. To make sure your content pleases both your audience and search engines, focus on two things: value and keywords. Provide real value to your audience and use the right keywords. That’s 90% of what you need for online marketing success. Now, for the other 10%, here are some tips to help you out:
1. Choose interesting and relevant topics.
Writing SEO content requires more than just optimizing—it needs to be interesting too. If your topic isn’t engaging, all the optimization in the world won’t help. Nobody searches for boring stuff. Test your topic with friends and family. If they’re not interested, brainstorm some more.
2. Write excellent titles.
Whenever someone conducts an online search, the titles are the first things they see on search results. If your title doesn’t catch your target audience’s attention, your content won’t be able to do anything for your business. It’s a good idea to incorporate your main keyword in your title, if it reads naturally and still makes the title catchy.
3. Format your content for readability.
When you’re creating content for SEO, think about how people use the internet. They’re usually busy and don’t have time to read everything. That’s why it’s important to make your content easy to skim. Use clear headings and bullet points for articles and infographics. And for videos, keep them short and straight to the point. This way, more people will engage with your content, helping your SEO efforts.
4. Include links.
If there is related or relevant content on other pages on your website, link to those pages. This will help get people to stay on your site for longer periods. It will also make site visitors appreciate your site even more. Wherever possible, link to external sites of high authority as well. This will help improve the authority of your site.
5. Be careful of your keywords.
While keywords are important for earning good search rankings, overdoing them can get you penalized with non-existent rankings, so be very careful when using keywords. Incorporating your main keyword once or twice into a single piece of content should be enough. Your content should only be guided by your keywords, not filled to the brim with them.
6. Don’t forget your call to action.
Yes, web content is meant to provide valuable information. But more than that, it should also help you accomplish your overall business goals, which logically include generating more sales and revenue. After consuming a particular piece of content, what do you want a site visitor to do? Read more content on your site? Visit your blog? Follow you on social media? Check out your products? It wouldn’t hurt to ask them outright to do just that towards the end of the content.
7. Always create a meta description.
Other than the title, search results also show the Meta description of your content. This is a quick summary of the content and tells the user exactly what your content is all about. Make your descriptions as catchy and interesting as your titles to maximize the chance of a user clicking through to your site.
By learning how to weave SEO and content marketing strategies together, you can increase your site traffic exponentially. So, stop listening to the old SEO vs. content argument and start using both to achieve your business goals NOW.