How to write SEO optimized content?

The content you place on your website can have various purposes. These purposes can range from providing information to establishing brand credibility to engaging users. Whatever may be the purpose of the content, it has to be SEO optimized content for a very simple reason. Your webpage has to rise above the humongous crowd of web pages available. If the webpage does not get the SEO ranking, all other purposes might be lost. Hence the importance of making your content SEO centric apart from other features it may have.

Steps to writing SEO optimized content

• Know your Audience
• Why are you writing the content in the first place?
• Use attractive headline
• Decide your keywords
• Use the keywords judiciously
• Content length and quality
• Writing style
• Use images and infographics
• Meta tags
• Internal and external linking
• Highlights
• Call to Action
• Social Sharing
• Final Check

If you follow the below points and apply some more logic to it, the webpage will rank well in SEO.

Know your Audience

A good understanding of the audience who will be reading your blog enables you to write the web page accordingly. Some factors in this demographic filtering could be the age group, education level, occupation, rural or urban and more.

Once you know who your target audience is, you need to write your content accordingly.

Why are you writing the content in first place?

Not to forget the sea of content available online, you need to be clear as to why you are adding to the already existing crowd.

What need information you are bringing to your users?

Is your content style different?

Once you have answers to these questions you should get into writing the content for your website.

Use attractive headline

The headline should raise the curiosity of the reader to make them check the page instantly. It should look to solve a potential problem they might be facing.

Action-oriented keywords like how to, why, top 10, must do, must see add to the cause and make users click the page.

Decide your keywords

You need to finalize keywords that you will be targeting through the webpage. You can make use of keyword planner in Google tools or any other online tools to identify these keywords.

There will be one primary keyword which should be related to the content and also have good traffic on them.

You can also identify few other related keywords which will be secondary keywords. The secondary keyword and the primary keyword will be very closely related to each other.

You should also have a look at the semantic keywords (LSI keywords) which can be roughly described as the synonym of the primary keyword.

Use the keywords judiciously

The primary keyword should be included in the title of the page and also in the URL. The placement of the keyword should not look as if forced but should appear coherently.

The primary keyword should also appear in the first 100 words that you write and in the concluding paragraph too.

The secondary keywords and the semantic keywords should appear every 100 words the body of the content. Again, they should be placed naturally and not forcefully.

Content length and quality

There is no length limit to the content of the website as long as it adds value to the users. However it should be at least 300 words for search engines to index them properly.

The content has to be original and engaging for the users. Good research in the topic will help you to plan and structure the page nicely.

Writing style

The writing style should be fairly simple using active voice primarily. Keep the sentences and paragraphs short.

Sentence length should be less than 20 words and paragraph should be less than 200 words. Break the paragraphs in small ones and use subheadings all around.

Avoid using complex terminologies and if you have to use them, define them properly.

Assume you are writing for a layman at best.

Use images and infographics

Use them abundantly.

Infographics bring the best out of your content and also provide good opportunity to create backlinks for you for free.

Make sure the infographics provide rich data to your content and are original at best. Keep the image size right so as not to make your website heavy.

The title and alt tags of the images and infographics should have keywords in them for SEO.

Meta tags

Once you are done with the content of the page, write nice Meta tags (title and description) with keywords in them. Try to keep the primary keyword at the start of the tags.

Character limit of title is 60 and description is 160 which should be adhered to unless you want Google to cut them short in the SERP results.

Internal and external linking

Link your content to your internal pages and external web pages with high DA and PA. The outbound links should open in new page as you do not want users to leave your website.

Make sure you do not place links on your keywords.

Highlights

Some content should appear as a highlight to catch the attention of the readers. It can be a table, or quote or even a cheeky image.

Try using blockquotes and style them to stand out in the text.

Call to Action

A clear call to action (CTA) should be placed at the end of the content and of possible at appropriate places in the content too.

The call to action is generally forms you ask your target audience to fill, if they are looking for your product or service, they can also be guided to the shop page if you are in e-commerce.

Social Sharing

Once published, share your page on social media and chats to push traffic on them. Once traffic starts to come, it’s a different ball game altogether and SEO efforts also get a boost because of it.

Final Check

Before publishing, give a round of final check for proofreading, and SEO alignment of the web page. Preferably share it with a colleague or even someone in-network and ask for their advice.

Inputs like what else did you miss or can be added or even removed will give you a good idea on the quality of the web page.

You can also use tools that check for plagiarism, just to be sure.

Check if keywords have been added properly in the headlines or not. Check if the keywords are well spread and not stuffed. The keyword density should not cross 2%.

If you follow these simple steps, you will have no problem, creating SEO optimized content. However, stay true to your objective of providing good content and rest all will follow it.