While you’re writing content for Google, you must have your audience’s questions, concerns, and pain points in mind to have high-ranking content.
You may know how to write content for a website. But to create high-quality content that ranks high on Google’s SERPs is a different ballgame. It requires an SEO content strategy with target keywords (that aren’t just the highest volume and lowest keyword difficulty), optimization, and unique storytelling for each piece to connect with your audience.
SEO content writing is a major facet of digital marketing today. If you aren’t writing for search engine optimization and your consumers effectively, your brand is essentially invisible online in a competitive digital market.
Here’s how to write content for your website to improve its performance in the SERPs and better support your bottom line.
Brands often make mistakes when writing website content, like spammy sales language in informational blogs or keyword stuffing on service pages that doesn’t sound natural. It can do the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve with your SEO since Google doesn’t reward content that isn’t relevant or helpful.
While you’re writing content for Google, you must have your audience’s questions, concerns, and pain points in mind to have high-ranking content. Remember, you’re still writing for humans—not just search engines!
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to write content for a website to achieve higher rankings.
Before you begin writing SEO website content, create an outline first. It acts as a template for everything you need from start to finish to ensure you don’t make mistakes or miss any crucial steps along the way.
Whether it’s web copy or a blog post, most SEO content structures are similar in their processes.
When creating your outline, include the following placeholders to fill in as you go:
Content outlines will differ in detail depending on the type you’re creating. For example, product page copy is short-form and will most likely use social proof as their external links. On the other hand, blogs will link to external reputable resources and can be short or long-form.
Keep in mind that you’ll update this as you go, and an outline shouldn’t be set in stone as you may discover new information when writing.
Do you know the goals for the content you’re creating and who you’re trying to reach? If you don’t know the strategic importance of each piece of content you’re creating, it won’t be effective and can negatively impact its SEO performance.
When you have a topic that you want to write about, ask yourself, “Who are the readers of this content?” If you don’t know the exact audience demographics, reference the content marketing funnel.
By creating unique content for each funnel stage, you can meet your users where they are in their buyer’s journey. Some consumers may be ready to buy in the bottom funnel and want a straightforward answer before purchasing instead of reading an in-depth top-funnel blog.
Others may be in the middle funnel stage and want an accurate comparison between two products that aren’t clearly biased to make a better purchase decision.
Here’s where common SEO content categories fall in the marketing funnel:
When you understand your content goals and reader demographics for each piece, you can better solve their needs. It also sets you up for better success during keyword research, so you select the right search intent based on the funnel stage you’re writing in—which we’ll dive into more below.
After determining your content goals, target audience, and funnel stage, brainstorm a general topic of what you want it to cover. This is the first step you’ll take when starting keyword research. You’ll end up finalizing the topic later once you have a target keyword.
As mentioned above, your keyword research should do more than select the ones with the lowest keyword difficulty and highest search volume. While these attributes can find you great SEO opportunities, they shouldn’t be the only factors to consider if you want to target the best keywords in your content.
Below is a step-by-step process for effective keyword research and avoiding common mistakes.
In the first step of your keyword research, search for your general topic on Google and review the top SERPs—those are your direct competitors for this content piece. Also known as a competitor SERP analysis, it provides insights that Google is showing you what qualifies as top-ranking content for that topic. It’s like finding out the secret SEO sauce.
However, this doesn’t mean to copy what your competition is doing exactly. Google doesn’t reward duplicate content without added value, either.
Analyze the attributes that contribute to their higher rankings and see what they all share in common, including:
Also, look for key details they might be missing where you can position your SEO content to outrank. Remember, Google prioritizes helpfulness and relevance. If you find that the competition is only providing surface-level details on the topic or lacks infographics to visually support the content, this can help your website rank higher in the SERPs.
Next, take those top-ranking pages you found and do a content audit. Utilize SEO tools, like SEMRush and Ahrefs to analyze its performance. They have features like content gap and backlink analysis to see what’s contributing to its high SERP ranking with recommendations you can do to outrank.
Check for the following during a competitor content audit:
With this approach, you’ll be able to streamline your keyword research process next.
After a competitor SERP analysis and content audit, you now have a base list of target keywords. Don’t just copy the competition’s keyword lists. One of the most common mistakes brands make with keyword research is wrong search intent—the general reason behind a user’s search query.
While some content has mixed search intent, it’s not always the best-case scenario. For example, if you optimize a top-funnel (informational) blog with bottom-funnel (transactional) keywords, it can turn users away because it’s not relevant to what they’re searching for. They’re looking for helpful information, not product pages or shopping ads.
Remember, Google doesn’t reward irrelevancy if you use the wrong keyword search intent for your SEO content. Confirm the keywords are aligned with your content’s funnel stage by comparing the search intent.
Search intent keyword examples include:
You can also automate this process with SEO platforms, which tell you a keyword’s search intent. This way you know which keywords to use based on the persona’s funnel stage you’re targeting.
In addition to search intent and standard keyword metrics, like search volume and keyword difficulty, look for other types of keywords that can boost your content’s performance. Long-tail and question-based keywords are also effective keyword research strategies for SEO content writing.
According to a study, 92% of search queries use long-tail keywords to find more specific results. Keywords with low search volume and keyword difficulty can also be great low-hanging fruit opportunities to boost organic traffic in your website’s content—so don’t rule those out!
From there, you can build your finalized keyword list to select your focus and secondary keywords to optimize your content.
Now that you have your target and secondary keywords set, go back to your outline to update your content structure:
This outline will be the foundation you’ll need to finally start writing website content.
With the preliminary steps complete, you can now begin your SEO content writing process. If you don’t know how to write content for a website, reference Google’s E-E-A-T framework. It’s their content model that can help you create helpful and relevant information that their algorithms prioritize.
E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s designed to provide users with a higher standard of content and a better search experience when looking for information online.
Many businesses always reference “high-quality content,” but do you know what that entails?
Examples of low-quality E-E-A-T content include:
All the efforts you put into writing content for your website can harm its SEO performance if you’re making these mistakes when creating it.
How to Write Content for Your Website Effectively
With an understanding of SEO writing mistakes to avoid, here are the best practices you should follow.
Examples of high-quality E-E-A-T content include:
● Easy Readability: Small paragraphs and bullet point lists to share information in a visually digestible way.
● Organized Headings: Users should be able to quickly scroll through your web page and know what it’s about.
● Supportive Visuals: Aim for helpful infographics or use stock images relevant to your topic.
● Compelling Storytelling: Grab users’ attention with a hook statement in the introduction, a persuasive CTA in the conclusion, and smooth flows in between.
You want to keep your readers engaged, so don’t make it harder for them to understand your content when it’s the solution they’re searching for.
Once your content is complete, you must optimize it with on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. Optimization ensures search engines discover your content and provide it to users when using related search queries to your topic.
On-page SEO is straightforward. It means optimizing the content on the physical page itself and involves a few different steps.
Optimize your content with your target and secondary keywords naturally throughout the text. The amount of keywords you use should balance with your word count. Also known as keyword density, this prevents you from over-optimizing your content. As a rule of thumb, add one to two keywords for every 100 words.
Also, aim to have your target keyword as close to the introduction as possible naturally. It’ll help Google and your audience know what your content is about instantly.
In addition to your content, optimize your keywords in your metadata. This is the language that Google uses to better understand your content.
Best keyword optimization practices for metadata should include:
Keep all metadata sounding as natural as possible so it doesn’t sound forced by keyword stuffing.
Like keyword density, your link optimization should also consider your word count. As best practice, aim to have five to six internal links per page to prevent overoptimization. Internal links help keep users on your website by navigating them to other helpful information related to the topic.
Add internal links to other blogs, case studies, and CTA in the conclusion—which is often a contact form, service page, or products. Use rich anchor text that’s relevant when hyperlinking to encourage users to click through so they know what the other page is about.
For external links, one to three per page is a rule of thumb. Always use reputable resources with high Domain Authority (60 and above) so Google recognizes your content as an authoritative and trustworthy resource—aka, E-E-AT. You can also use external links that your competitors are using from your content audit when possible.
Now you can finally publish your SEO content!
Off-page SEO is the optimization that occurs off your website. Examples of off-page SEO include social media posts and link building. However, the first step after publishing your content is ensuring that Google and users can discover it.
Once your content is published, always request indexing on Google Search Console (GSC). If Google can’t crawl (find your content) and index it (store it in their database), neither will your audience. You can monitor the status in GSC to see if there are any issues that Google has with crawling or indexing it.
Common indexing issues include broken links like 404 errors and duplicate content. GSC will provide reports so you know how to fix them, like replacing or removing broken links and editing duplicate content.
Link building is arguably one of the most important ranking factors on Google. When websites with high Domain Authority link to your site, it shows Google that you are an authoritative and trustworthy resource within your niche. In return, it generates referral traffic that has more qualified leads since a brand they trust is referring your company.
Go above cold email outreach and utilize more effective link building strategies:
When you only cold email outreach, you’re essentially asking for a favor as a stranger. Provide something of value in exchange instead.
Technical SEO is what happens behind the scenes of your website. This type of optimization helps how your web pages are displayed and ensures they provide a strong user experience (UX). In addition to easy content readability, it should be simple to navigate too.
Include the following in your technical SEO optimization:
Users nowadays will quickly leave for a competitor’s site if your site has poor UX, making technical SEO a crucial part of your content strategy.
While anyone can technically write website content, that doesn’t always mean it’ll give you the results you’re looking for. At Reach Marketing Pro, our SEO services include professional SEO content writing and optimization. We also focus on your website’s functionality so your content provides a stronger user experience.
Whether you need a persuasive product page or a compelling case study to showcase your successful track record, we can help you create high-quality SEO content your website needs to stand out.
Our team will keep you informed throughout the content creation and optimization process with monthly performance reports to measure and track success.
Ready to reach your SEO content writing goals?
Contact us to get better website content that ranks today!
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