Whether you are writing for your company website or the company blog, you want whatever content you create to be good – something that provides value for your readers, and portrays your brand in good light. You also want your content to be search engine optimised, that is because great content is of little use if nobody can find it.
Although creating good quality content is probably the single best way of optimising it, there still exists the need to ensure that the content on your website is both palatable for consumers as well as search algorithms. Writing good content is only the first step to SEO optimisation.
Here are some strategies that you should keep in mind while creating content to maximise its SEO potential.
- Eliminate content duplication. You need to ensure that your content is Google does not find duplicated content to be valuable, and as such will penalise it. Regurgitating the same content for multiple product pages on your site, for example, or just copying text from your blog to your website and vice versa will lead to penalties and as a result, diminished rankings.
For better SEO performance, make sure that every piece of content created for your website is phrased uniquely even if the idea behind it is not original. Use tools such as Copyscape to ensure that you are neither plagiarising yourself or others when creating content.
- Aim for readability.Google’s bots favour articles that are easy to read for wide audiences. You should, therefore, use short sentences and paragraphs, include lists in your content, limit the use of difficult words, and minimise the use of passive voice. For good SEO performance, focus on creating content that is good, punchy and concise – put together in a way that makes it easy to consume.
- Optimise your title. Use catchy headlines for your content and make sure to keep the word count at a Google friendly range of between 55-60 characters. Also, ensure that the URL of any particular page on your website matches the title and contents of the page. Random URLs are not good for SEO.
- Be structured.Structure your content in way that makes it easy for people (and bots) to follow along and get the basic idea of what you are saying, even by skimming. Use heading tags to break up long content into several sections. You can also use numbered or bullet point lists where applicable.
- Use keywords. Keywords are, and will continue to be – at least for the near future –, an important part of SEO content. The way you use them, however, determines how effective they are for SEO. Avoid keyword stuffing and never sacrifice the quality of your content for keyword count. Use your keywords as you would salt on food; just enough to taste.
Quality content remains to be the most important signal for Google search rankings, and it will only continue to grow in prominence as Google continues to improve its search algorithm. Using the right approach, you can create content that pleases both bots and people alike. It’s not the easiest of tasks, but the results are well worth it in the long run.
