SEO alone is no longer enough to deliver the search results you want. Google also looks at your website content, and without a solid on-page content strategy, you won’t see the results you were expecting.
Good content not only satisfies the search engines but helps to keep visitors on your site if you have the information they are looking for in a quick, easy-to-read format.
Keeping your website content current, up-to-date and relevant is another important factor when creating a successful SEO content marketing strategy.
How To Write Content To Attract More Organic Search Engine Traffic
Have you heard the saying, “Content is King”? It is when it comes to conquering organic search rankings. While SEO will produce positive results for your website, this optimization tactic goes hand-in-hand with good-quality content writing. One absolutely needs the other to perform well in Google.
Why You Need Both SEO and New Content On Your Website
No matter how good your keyword ranking is for a content page when properly optimized, it doesn’t mean a thing if people clicking through to your website leave immediately. If the information you provide on your web page is poorly written, you’ll see high bounce rates in your traffic data analytics. This is always a blatant signal to check your on-page content. Even if you hold the number 1, 2 or 3 position in Google search results, your terrible content will instantly cause you to lose the site visitor. Kiss that lead or sale goodbye.
Why It Is Important To Write Good Quality Content
One key element to a successful digital marketing strategy is to produce and publish relevant content on your website. Writing informative, educational and entertaining content that focuses primarily on your website audience’s needs or interests helps build brand awareness by improving page and keyword rankings in organic search results and raising ad relevancy scores for PPC keywords and ad campaigns.
If there was a time to focus on writing good quality content, it is now. Google began ranking websites with well-written content when it released its March 2019 Core Algorithm Update and now continues with the most recent March 2023 Core Algorithm Update pertaining to ranking websites with good-quality content.
The search engine wants to provide users with the best information possible to answer their questions, solve their problems, find a product/service/business, and entertain themselves online by reading, watching videos, or playing online games. These Google core algorithm updates all address relevant content that matches a user’s search. Does your content meet this need?
Tips For Writing Better Content
Write Content For Humans, Not For Algorithms
Google is smart enough to know the difference between a well-written and thought-out page versus one hastily thrown together, hoping it will pull in some organic traffic from search engines. It also detects AI-written content which is becoming more and more popular; however, Google says AI content is against their guidelines.
If you’ve been producing content without doing any research or planning and hope that the page you created and the keywords you are attempting to target end up ranking in search results, you are doing it wrong. You must commit to a systematic SEO content writing strategy and consistently execute it. Google is paying attention, and if you produce spam quality, grammar riddled or bad content, the search engine will penalize your website for it.
Your Content Should Be Easy To Read
One of the biggest mistakes website content writers make when writing content for their website is using terminology the average person doesn’t understand. You have to know your audience to write content on their reading level that they can comprehend. If you are using many technical words or writing at a college level, you may not be connecting with your customers. The information you are providing is unclear and too challenging to read.
To understand why it’s essential to write content that is easy to read, check out the following quote from Wikipedia provides that provides the National average reading level for Americans.
The 15% figure for full literacy, equivalent to a university undergraduate level, is consistent with the notion that the “average” American reads at a 7th or 8th grade level which is also consistent with recommendations, guidelines, and norms of readability for medication directions, product information, and popular fiction.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
Please take a look at your web page content and read through it. Then send the link to 5-10 friends and family members who have no clue what you do or what your website offers and ask them to read your content. Wait a few days and ask them if they understood your provided information. You may be surprised by the feedback you get.
If they ask a lot of questions and stare at you with a weird look in their eyes, then it’s time to revisit your content and have it rewritten so it’s easy to read. Your content needs to written at a reading level your users understand and convey the information in a way that anyone visiting your website will understand.
Stay On Topic and Stick To What You Know
One of the most successful ways to improve your SEO is to write topic-related content about the industry, genre or niche you are an expert in. In the past, Google didn’t value “on-topic content” as it does now. This is now a heavy measurement for search engines to determine what your website is about.
Years past, poor-quality web pages with poorly written content would rank for high-volume search terms. This is when “writing for SEO” became a dirty little trick. Thankfully, search engines are dropping page rankings on these websites that used to create content about any topic they could think of to get some traffic from search engines.
An example that comes to mind from a few years while working at an automotive marketing agency was writing the “best restaurants in town” for a car dealership in Tennessee. The SEO specialist thought this was a good idea for an SEO content piece for an automotive dealership. Trust me when I tell you, it wasn’t.
Make an effort only to write articles about your area of expertise. By doing so, you create content to back up your authority as an expert in your field. Commit to writing content regularly that continuously offers accurate information and solutions to the search queries your site users are seeking the answers to.
Examples of SEO Content Pages
To give you some ideas for SEO content page types and website sections, here are some suggestions:
- Articles and Blog Posts
- Niche Category Pages
- Detailed Descriptions on Product Pages
- How To Guides & Tips
- Informative & Entertaining Videos
- Industry Glossary
Create Keyword Focused Headlines
Headlines are a great way to visually break up content and play a role in on-page SEO performance. By using H1, H2 and H3 tags within your content, you can use them to target keywords you want to rank for organically. The only rule of thumb I ask you to remember when writing keyword-rich content headlines is to avoid keyword stuffing or using vaguely worded headings.
Add Imagery To The Page
Visuals are what draw the user’s eye and add a connection to the content. The correlation between the graphic and the on-page content should be in sync.
While the design appeal is important, image file names and ALT tags are imperative to your SEO strategy. These two signal to Google, Bing and other search engines the information they need to determine what the graphic or picture consists of. The image name and ALT tag also reinforce the on-page content when they are named to be page specific.
Examples of SEO Image File Names and ALT Tags
As you can see in the examples below, both graphics’ file names and ALT descriptions effectively communicate to Google what the image consists of. Remember… search engines can’t see. You have to tell them what the graphic or picture is.
Standard SEO Image File Name & ALT Tag
I picked the “G” logo for Google, the same graphic they use for their favicon. Very basic, nothing to it. Just a simple file name and ALT description.
Image Name: google-logo-favicon.png
Image ALT Tag: Google Official Favicon
Descriptive SEO Image File Name & ALT Tag
I love flowers, so I picked this picture of beautiful blooming roses. It is an excellent example of creating image file names and ALT tags for pictures with distinctive details.
Image Name: pink-fuschia-roses-blooms.png
Image ALT Tag: Fuschia and Pink Roses In Full Bloom
Submit To Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
The last piece of the SEO content writing puzzle, submit your pages manually to search engines. Log in to your Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools account to submit your newly written page content for indexing.
This will accelerate the page getting indexed in search engine results.