Content marketing isn’t just crucial to the success of a search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign – it’s also a key factor in the success of a brand as a whole.
Whether you are looking to bring in new leads for your organisation, showcase your industry knowledge to build trust, generate more traffic to your site, maximise conversions or cultivate customer relationships – or a combination of all of these and more – content marketing can offer a wealth of benefits to your brand.
The Art of SEO Content Writing Has Changed a Lot Down The Years
Effective SEO content writing back in the late 1990s and early 2000s included tactics that would be seen as dubious and even harmful to a brand’s search engine chances these days. Think such things as stuffing keywords here, there and everywhere, and creating daft domains and subdomains such as internet-marketing-services.internetmarketingservices.info, just for the sake of catching the attention of search engine spiders.
So, what’s changed? Well, the ‘big one’ is an ever-greater emphasis on serving the needs of real-life human users, as is reflected in the much more sophisticated ways in which search engine algorithms operate these days. We’re no longer in the era when you could count on getting decent search engine rankings by merely ‘gaming the system’ with all kinds of odd strategies designed to appeal to search engines rather than human users.
After all, search engines ultimately exist to serve human users, so the priorities and needs of these two groups go hand in hand. When your business is creating SEO content, then, you should try to please both search engines and ordinary readers – otherwise, it is all a futile effort.
So, How Can You Write Better Optimised Content Today?
Central to the question of how to write SEO content is your ability to accomplish two goals with your content. One of these goals should be to appeal to the targeted end-user, whether that person is a customer, client, general reader or longer-term prospect, to give just some examples. The second goal will be to solve a particular problem with the content that you write.
So, here are some tips for compelling SEO content that achieves both of these goals:
Do Proper Keyword Research
The first step to launching an SEO campaign in general – never mind just writing SEO content – has long been keyword research. There are various, both formal and informal ways of doing this, including using the various keyword research tools available online, or working with a trusted SEO marketing agency like Success Local.
When picking out keywords to use for your content, you need to ensure they hit the ‘sweet spot’ of serving the needs of both your business and your likely customers. Your keywords therefore need to address your customers’ pain points.
Remember that once you have a good few targeted keywords, you will be able to start identifying different versions of those keywords that could be just as valuable to your brand’s SEO efforts. For more information, see our section on long-tail keywords below.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing!
As we touched on above, trying to shove as many keywords as possible into as many places as possible, is just flat-out bad for your SEO. If you’re constantly using the same keyword – for example, ‘cheap toasters in Leicester’ – line after line, even in parts of your pages where it’s out of place, irrelevant and jarring, you can be sure that both readers and search engine spiders will notice this.
Sure, keywords are still important in SEO. But overusing them in your content, and in ways that impact on the quality, readability and usefulness of such content, could lead to you being penalised in the search engines rankings. It all serves to make keyword stuffing utterly counterproductive to your SEO chances.
Research, Identify and Use Long-tail Keywords
What are long-tail keywords? These are the longer and more detailed search phrases that people tend to enter into Google when they’re seeking something more specific, as often happens when they’re closer to making a purchase.
If you think of an extremely short, general and popular keyword such as ‘cafes’ or ‘furniture’, for instance, the chances are that your business will never rank highly for these terms, as there’s just too much competition.
But what about a long-tail keyword like ‘cat cafes in Newcastle’ or ‘antique furniture in Leicester’? Well, your likelihood of doing well with these keywords is much higher, as is especially relevant if your business is a small or start-up one with limited resources.
What’s more, as these are more targeted keywords that appeal to the intent of users that are more relevant to your business, they help your brand to reach the people who’re particularly likely to purchase from you.
Pick Topics That Will Stand The Test of Time
Think about the types of content you could create for your brand, that will have a certain level of ‘immortality’ – in other words, that will continue to attract visitors to your site over time.
This isn’t to suggest, of course, that you shouldn’t write ever about topical news stories. More ‘evergreen’ content, however, can be a crucial part of your brand’s content marketing mix.
Good examples of such ‘immortal’ content subjects range from ‘how to’ guides and histories of a certain product or service, to more intricate case studies and pieces that focus on questions commonly asked by customers.
Combine Text With Relevant Media Content
As informative as your brand’s written SEO content can undoubtedly be, it’s hardly the only form of SEO content around. Images, video and audio content can all be useful for ‘spicing up’ and adding interest to your text, as is backed up by recent statistics. One study, for instance, found that 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand or business that they supported. Meanwhile, according to Forbes, the average user spends 88% more time on a website with a video.
Nor should such statistics be surprising, given that these types of content don’t have the same effect on a user as simple text. Visual and audio content is great for appealing to emotion, creating intimacy and engaging visitors, thereby giving those looking at your pages a more dynamic and ‘rounded’ experience.
The above are far from being the only elements that you’ll need to think about if you’re interested in how to write SEO content that will really get more human users – and search engines – taking notice of your brand and its offerings. This is one reason why you may decide to partner with a digital marketing agency that will help to ensure your content hits that ‘sweet spot’ and gets results.
Why not call 01788 288 800 now, so that our SEO professionals here at Success Local can help you to get your brand pointed in the right direction?
Posted in Marketing Mondays, News