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Following SEO Guidelines Still Matters For Quality Content Writing

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Follow SEO guidelines along with quality content writing

Follow SEO guidelines along with quality content writing.

Do you often wonder why your blog or website doesn’t rank well despite continuously publishing quality content? Why doesn’t quality content writing improve your SEO the way it should?

Just now I came across this wonderful and comprehensive post on Content Marketing Institute about why it is important that you follow SEO guidelines and don’t assume that just because you are publishing great content, Google is going to rank you well.

The post explains, with examples, some websites having high quality content but not ranking well for the target keywords and some websites with low quality content ranking well.

Why does this happen?

Following SEO guidelines while writing quality content makes a big difference

You may also like to read 10 fundamental qualities of effective SEO content writing.

I have often written on my blog that you should never compromise with quality because ultimately, it’s your quality that sustains and improves your SEO.

But, how do you get your content indexed and ranked in the first place and why is it necessary to get indexed and ranked in the first place?

I will share my personal experience and I have made this observation with multiple websites, blogs, web pages and blog posts.

In the beginning when you publish a blog post or a web page Google crawls it, indexes it and then ranks it according to its analysis.

For this, it uses SEO guidelines. I will come to these SEO guidelines later.

Then, when your content has begun to appear on search results, with the help of its users, Google begins to evaluate your quality and thereupon, it’s your quality that decides whether you’re going to maintain your search engine rankings, improve them, or lose them.

Why following search engine guidelines is important while writing?

The above Content Marketing Institute blog post gives examples of websites that rank well despite having low quality content.

Just an extra remark: the “low quality” websites used in the above example don’t necessarily have irrelevant or misleading content; it is just that, the quality of the written content is lower compared to high quality content on their websites that are not ranking well.

These websites make strategic use of their keywords in the title, the headline and the subheading.

Your keyword must be in the HTML title tag.

Then, your keyword must be there in the headline.

Then your keyword and its various combinations must be there in the subheadings.

Then, of course, there must be a careful sprinkling of your keyword and LSI alternatives throughout your text.

This is the standard SEO guideline that I follow.

Google has published its own search engine optimization guidelines, something straight from the horse’s mouth.

I follow these SEO guidelines along with ensuring that I write quality content.

Following these guidelines in the beginning helps your content get crawled, indexed and ranked for the first time.

Despite what Google says about only quality mattering, in the beginning, I have observed, it does not.

Quality begins to matter afterwards when your content is already indexed and the search engine users have begun to interact with it.

Why following the SEO guidelines matters in the beginning?

Google needs to make sense of your content before it can index and rank it.

Kindly note that this is not a hard and fast rule because sometimes websites and blogs randomly get ranked even without mentioning the search query being used even once.

Anyway, in the beginning, the keyword in your title (the keyword can be a phrase or a search term targeting an audience) appears as a hyperlink in the Google listings.

It has been observed that if the search term that the search engine user has just used appears as a hyperlink in the search results, there is a greater probability of her clicking the link.

This shows how important the text appearing within your title tag is – Google uses it as a hyperlink.

In fact, every search engine, and even social media websites, use the text in your title tag as a hyperlink.

Then, Google evaluates your headline to see what it contains to make further sense of your content.

Then, it begins to analyze your whole content and then uses its algorithm to index it and rank it.

This is one part of the story.

How quality content writing impacts your SEO

Once your content begins to appear in search results, people begin to react to it.

Suppose, someone searches for “content writing service to improve my SEO” and comes to my website.

She finds lots of useful information and consequently, she spends some time on my website exploring it further.

Since it’s only the quality and relevance that can keep her on the website, quality content writing plays a very important role here.

If she comes back to Google after a few minutes and carries on with the same search, Google assumes that although my website contains some useful information on the search she just carried out, she needs more information.

It may or may not improve my rankings for “content writing service to improve my SEO”.

Instead, after visiting my website for the first time if she comes back within a couple of seconds or a few seconds, it sends signals to Google that my website does not contain relevant content for the search term she just used.

Google takes it as an indication that my website shouldn’t be ranking at this particular spot for the search term just used, and hence, lowers my rankings for at least this keyword.

Quality content doesn’t mean you ignore SEO guidelines, and vice versa

Google is an algorithm, after all.

It often comes to light that Google uses human evaluators in many cases, mostly, but when it comes to processing millions of web pages every hour, it is the algorithm that analyzes your content and ranks it.

After that, how humans react to your content begins to either pay off or take its toll.

Hence, when writing content, you need to pay close attention to both its quality as well as SEO guidelines so that it becomes easier for search engine crawlers and ranking algorithms to make sense of your content for the first time, and each time your content is crawled, indexed and ranked.

How to strike a balance between SEO guidelines and quality content writing

It isn’t very difficult, actually.

Publish as much topical content as you can.

What is topical content?

Topical content is content that talks about a topic: for example, my this blog post talks about why it is important to not to neglect SEO guidelines even when you are writing quality content.

To my utmost knowledge and effort, I’m paying very close attention to the quality of my writing.

I have used the keywords “SEO guidelines” and “quality content writing” at all the necessary places including the title tag, the headline and all over the body text.

I follow this template for my own blog posts, my own web pages and also, when I’m writing for my clients.

Most of the clients, when they decide to hire my content writing services, don’t know how my process flows to accommodate both the search engine whims and the expectations of human visitors.

They just give me the topic. Or just a random list of keywords.

Then, I make sure that when I’m writing quality content, I also organize the content keeping the search engine guidelines in mind

 

How effective content writing and searcher intent are interrelated

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Connection between effective content writing and searcher intent

Connection between effective content writing and searcher intent.

There is a direct connection between effective content writing and searcher intent whether you factor in search engine traffic or not.

Normally, searcher intent is always talked about when you want to improve your search engine rankings meaningfully.

Whenever someone searches for your content (whether that person is aware of your website or not) she has an intention. It is very important to know what that intention is because even slight differences in the search queries change the intention. I explain below.

Suppose, you go to Google and search for content writer. There might be different intentions or reasons for looking for a content writer:

  • You want to know what a content writer does.
  • You are looking for a content writer job.
  • You want to read some content writing tips because you yourself are writing content for websites.
  • You are working on a blog post or an article and you want to know what the others have written about the query “content writer”.
  • You want to hire a content writer.

Now, the example that I have taken above, though, is not an appropriate example because it is a vague term, many people may use this search term while having different intentions.

The problem is, Google knows that even if people use a wrong query, if they don’t find the right information they are looking for, they are going to blame Google and may end up trying out another search engine.

Hence, Google is constantly working at knowing, in best possible manner, what is the searcher intent. What is the intention of the searcher when she is googling something?

Even when a searcher is using a vague query, Google considers the other search terms used by the user.

For example, she first searches for how to improve my SEO. While reading a blog post on “How to improve your SEO”, she finds out that she needs a content writer or a content writing service to improve her search engine rankings.

Then, she looks up the term content writer. Now, Google knows that she is looking for a content writer who can help her improve her SEO, and shows her the results accordingly.

This is her searcher intent: she is looking for a content writer to improve her SEO.

A blog post or a web page titled SEO content writer or Content writer to improve your SEO, will be written targeting that user, or that searcher intent.

The searcher intent can be categorized in the following manner:

Informational search intent

When someone has informational search intent when googling, the person is simply looking for information. Examples:

  • Where can I bump into Bigfoot?
  • How can I grow my muscles fast?
  • What is a Java SDK?
  • Is it safe to invest in cryptocurrency?

As you can see, in these queries, the person is just looking for information. At least of now, she has no intention of buying something.

Navigational search intent

You do navigational search when you don’t know the exact URL. You know the name of the company or you know the name of the service, but you don’t want to either type the long URL or you don’t know it. Examples:

  • Credible Content Writing Services
  • Google Analytics
  • Huffington Post
  • The SETI project

You search for the company name and among the search results, you find the URL and you click it.

Commercial search intent

In this type of searcher intent, although the user wants to buy, she is comparing between different products and services. Examples:

  • Best content writing service
  • Handy Cam reviews
  • Top-rated sitcoms on Netflix
  • Top luxury resorts in Punjab

Anyway, in these type of search intents, you can see that the person wants to compare various products and services so that she can make a better buying decision.

Transactional search intent

This is where the real business happens. Examples:

  • Hire an efficient content writing service
  • Buy OnePlus 50t (just in case)
  • MailChimp prices
  • Grammarly cheapest package
Identifying searcher intent

Identifying searcher intent.

How does efficient content writing help you target searcher intent better?

I have briefly written above that through efficient content writing you target searcher intent not just for better search engine rankings, but also to improve your overall conversion rate.

In terms of writing content, on what does your conversion rate depend?

Primarily, on what you have written on your website.

That very first headline.

That very first sentence.

The very first paragraph.

The way your writing transitions from one sentence to another and one paragraph to another.

The way you use headlines to highlight the most compelling portions of your message.

The way you organize your information flow.

Your writing style.

The emotional connection that your writing makes with the visitors/readers.

All these things, and some, combined, contribute towards your conversion rate.

Writing content for searcher intent makes effective content writing

People are becoming savvy when it comes to using Google (or any other search engine). They know that vague terms don’t bring up the right results.

Almost 50% searches are voice searches: this means, people speak into their devices when they are looking for information.

One thing about voice search is, people don’t speak like robots when they are searching.

So, when someone is searching for a content writer to improve SEO, she is unlikely to speak into her mobile phone something like, “Hey Google, content writer”.

She is more likely to say, “Hey Google, find me the best content writer for my business,”, or something like, “Hey Google, who is the best content writer for my business consulting services?”

Voice search example-find me the best content writer for my business

Voice search example-find me the best content writer for my business.

When people are searching using voice, they speak longer sentences because they are talking like human beings and not like robots. In most of the cases, they use conversational expressions and they use lots of extra information which they avoid when they are typing.

Another interesting and worth observing aspect about voice search is that people are mostly asking questions when searching.

They avoid monosyllables. And since they are finding information, they find information in the form of asking questions.

Hence, most of the search queries begin with “what”, “where”, “how”, “when” and “who”. They also use “find” or “which” a lot.

Knowing these terms can help you a lot in deciding what sort of content you must write for efficient content writing.

For example, “what is a content writer” simply means that a person wants to know what a content writer does, but, if someone searches for “where can I find a good content writer” or “which is the best content writing service”, the person means business.

Effective content writing involves knowing searcher intent and then writing content for it.

Content writing for searcher intent is good for humans as well as SEO

Efficient content writing based on searcher intent saves you from publishing lots of unnecessary content.

You want to educate people, undoubtedly. Hence, I’m writing this blog post that explains how efficient content writing and knowing searcher intent are interrelated. This is mostly educational post. I’m not exhorting you to hire my content writing services.

A big part of my traffic comes from my blog posts that inform and educate. This helps me in brand building. When search engine rankings of these blog posts improve, since they are also linking to my main website, the rankings of my business pages also get a boost.

But, if I get traffic just for informational and educational purposes, I won’t get clients. I get clients when they search for a professional content writer who can write for their websites, blogs and email marketing campaigns. They land on my relevant business pages through search engines.

Having said that, you need to carefully draw a line between creating content that gets you business and creating content that simply informs and educates your visitors.

Above, in the section where I have explained various searcher intents you read that the searcher intents can be of the following types:

  1. Informational
  2. Navigational
  3. Commercial
  4. Transactional

You need to decide what type of audience your content must draw to your website. The differences can be subtle and big depending upon the approach you take.

For a business website, two categories of searcher intent are important: commercial intent and transactional intent.

For brand awareness, you can also write content about informational intent but maintain a balance.

On my website, I maintain a balance of 60:40 – 60% informational content and 40% commercial & transactional content.

There is a reason why I publish more informational content.

It is easier to rank well for informational content providing answers to questions. Google gives preference to those blog posts and webpages that provide answers to queries beginning with “how”, “why”, “what”, and such.

Informational content encourages people to link to my website.

It also acts as a showcase because my target clients are interested in such type of content for their own website.

When they see that I publish lots of informational content on my own blog, they feel reassured that I am experienced in writing informational content.

Informational content is also important for people providing technical services such as programming, online education, and mobile app development. They want to convince their clients that they are knowledgeable.

They also help consulting services.

Above I wrote that writing efficient content according to the right searcher intent isn’t just good for your search engine rankings, but also from the perspective of usability and readability.

When you focus your content writing on searcher intent, you provide content that is needed by your human visitors. They get the right information because you’re not wasting your time and their time, and publishing content that your target audience is looking for.

Hence, a big part of efficient content writing involves knowing which searcher intent to target, how to strike the perfect balance between different searcher intent types, and then write compelling content.

Should you put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket when writing content?

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When content writing to not put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket

When content writing to not put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket.

After very long time I have read this highly intriguing blog post on what direction Google is taking and how content marketing (in my case, content writing) must take a proactive stand.

Right now, when you write content, there is a more than 99% chance that you want to improve your search engine rankings on Google. The search engine has a 92.17% global market share, after all. The search engine that comes second is Bing at a measly 2.78%.

So, understandably, when you are investing in SEO, you would rather focus on 92.17% than 2.78%.

Google is unpredictable, though. Years of investments in terms of man-hours/woman-hours and money go down the drain with a single update.

Google is a private enterprise. It is capitalism machine. It is not a social service. It wants maximum number of people using its search engine so that it can monetize them.

Eventually, in near future, Google wants to give you information even before you realize that you need to look it up.

People use Google because they find useful information, fast and conveniently. “Useful information” is the keyword here.

Search engineers and hundreds of PhD’s in mathematics are working round-the-clock to make sure that the users get the most relevant information they need.

To achieve that, sometimes they need to change their algorithm according to new observations.

The point is, they are going to change their algorithm at their convenience, whether the new change wipes off all your listings from the search engine or suddenly catapults you to the top position for you every keyword.

SEO content writing while not getting influenced by Google’s whims

Frankly, there is no foolproof solution. The above Content Marketing Institute blog post concludes with

SEO becomes a long-term experiential development strategy, not a game of matching semantics. As content marketers we are ultimately NOT trying to simply understand how people search for content – and are served it via Google – but rather how people are finding and experiencing the solutions to challenges they may not even know they have.

What does it mean?

Provide value instead of writing content according to Google guidelines. Focus on people instead of SEO. Make it easier for people to access your content and it will be automatically accessed by Google and other search engines.

Remember that content is all about experience. You already know that every instance of purchase is an emotional decision. Hence, your content, whether you write that content or publish a video or audio recording, must invoke an emotional response.

Your content must be a part of a journey. A bigger customer journey that does not begin and stop at your search engine rankings.

Rankings matter, yes. Keywords also matter.

But, your content is more than that. Keywords are just a guideline. For example, when you read a book, let’s say “Jude the Obscure” by Thomas Hardy, you know that the theme centers around a character called “Jude” who is always making “obscure” decisions about his life and people around him.

So, when I create a web page about “best content writing services”, instead of repeating the phrase multiple times in my content, I must focus on explaining to you why my content writing services may be the best for your need.

Create the context. Weave a narrative. Deliver value. Touch people emotionally. Then you don’t need to constantly worry about your Google rankings. You content attracts people due to its own, inherent quality.

Content quality versus content quantity – the debate still goes on

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Content writing-quality versus quantity

Content writing-quality versus quantity.

Frankly, I don’t believe there should even be a debate. When it comes to content writing and content publishing (for content marketing) quality always triumphs over quantity.

Ideally, if you have the money, and if you want to improve your organic search engine rankings quickly, quantity and quality go hand-in-hand. When I talk about quantity, I don’t mean blog posts having 4000-5000 words. I mean you publish multiple blog posts in a day, to the tune of 90 blog posts every month.

Publish three blog posts every day and within a couple of months Google begins to crawl and index your website multiple times a day. Your content begins to appear on the SERPs within a few hours, and sometimes, within a few minutes. I have seen this happening on one of my blogs.

The ideal number is, according to a HubSpot study, 11 blog posts every month. B2B and B2C companies that publish good quality blog posts 11 times every month, experience a spike in their targeted traffic.

Relationship between the number of blog posts and search engine traffic

Relationship between the number of blog posts and search engine traffic.

Also, publishing multiple blog posts daily shouldn’t bring your quality down. Your quality is of utmost importance.

But, if you don’t have the budget and the bandwidth, the next best option is completely focusing on quality. I would suggest one blog post every week of around 2500 words.

Make sure that you work with the quality content writer or blog writer. Don’t go for those cheap content writers because you will end up spending more money that way. You will pay them, and then you will pay them in the form of not getting any results.

Why quality and quantity both matter when writing content for your blog?

Google is hungry for new content. Its crawlers are continuously crawling the web to find new and updated content. Its ranking algorithm is designed in such a manner that it gives preference to the latest content.

Regular publishing also gets your content indexed very fast. As I have written above, when I was publishing more than three blog posts every day, my content would get indexed (another blog) multiple times in a day. Sometimes, my blog posts would appear in search results within minutes.

Just as Google is constantly looking for new content, it also expects you to publish quality content. This is because if the search engine does not find quality content for its users, the users will lose interest and may explore other search engines that are better at finding good, well-written content.

Google has developed its search algorithm in such a manner that if people don’t spend much time on your blog or website after finding your link on search results, it negatively affects your rankings.

Also, if someone uses a search query, finds your link, goes to your link and then within a few seconds comes back to Google and carries on with the same search query, Google assumes that the link that the user found does not contain the appropriate information for the related keyword and hence, again, this negatively affect your rankings.

Hence, both quality and quantity have a positive impact (or vice versa) on your search engine rankings. But, if you must make a choice between quality and quantity, always go for quality.

Use SEO tools along with content writing to improve your search engine rankings

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Using SEO tools along with content writing

Using SEO tools along with content writing.

I have personally experienced that content writing in itself can improve your search engine rankings. But with so many people competing for limited space on the SERPs, you need to take extra measures to highlight your content and make it easier for the search engine crawlers to make sense of it.

When you are regularly publishing content on your website or blog, I am assuming that you have a CMS or a blogging platform. Most probably you are using WordPress.

You may also be using something like Drupal or Joomla! but the basic thing is, when you are regularly publishing content, you need a publishing software. You can’t be creating and uploading independent HTML pages.

Every CMS gives you a GUI to write and publish content. Within your content you can have HTML elements such as <h1> and <h2> tags, images, hyperlinks and bulleted lists. You can also have page title and description meta tags.

In most of the cases, these are more than enough to improve your search engine rankings and there shouldn’t be a need to use an extra SEO tool.

Nonetheless, as I have mentioned above, to make sure that your quality content is crawled, indexed and ranked by Google and other search engines, you use SEO tools to analyze your content and incorporate keywords.

Do I use SEO tools along with content writing to improve my own search engine rankings?

Yes I do.

What SEO tools do I use along with optimized content writing?

In the very beginning I used the All-In-One WordPress SEO plug-in. Oh yes, I have been using WordPress since time immemorial.

Although WordPress allows you to create the title of your blog post or web page, per se, there are no or little provisions for adding meta tags. Besides, sometimes, you want your blog title and the actual HTML title to be different.

The blog title is the main headline that you see atop every blog post. Normally, it comes between the <h1></h1> tag.

The title of a post is the meta tag <title></title> and so is the description <description />.

WordPress by itself does not have provisions to add these bits of information. There are important for your SEO. To add them, you need an SEO tool.

As I have mentioned above, in the very beginning I was using the All-In-One WordPress SEO plug-in but later, I don’t know when, I started using the Yoast SEO plug-in. Both these plug-ins allow you to enter title and description information. The advanced version of Yoast SEO also analyzes your text for keywords.

For a few years I have been using SEOPressor. This is also a WordPress SEO plug-in. Along with giving the usual stuff like deciding separate title and description for your posts and also for Facebook and Twitter postings, you can enter three keywords and it analyzes your text.

Sometimes, when you are using your keywords, you may end up overusing them. SEOPressor warns you if you are overusing or under using your keywords and then makes suggestions. It also makes LSI keywords suggestions – alternative keywords that you can use to improve your SEO.

If your text-image ratio is low, it advises you to add more images.

I don’t use SEOPressor often (although I pay for it every month) because I find it constraining. To mark your blog post “optimized” you need to score beyond “75”. Since lots of effort is involved to reach the mark of “75” and beyond, instead of focusing on the quality of the content, you may end up trying to reach that mark.

Besides, reaching that mark isn’t a guarantee. Many times, I have been able to feature my blog posts among the top three results on the SERPs despite scoring below “60” by the SEOPressor analyzer. Conversely, even after crossing “90” the posts appear on fourth or fifth page.

But, anyway, whenever I want to make an extra effort at creating an optimized post, I use it.

Do I use another SEO tool along with content writing?

Not necessarily. Being a content writer, I am more obsessed with creating quality content rather than worrying about the SEO features recommended by the SEO tools.

I believe, or rather, I have experienced, when basic SEO needs are taken care of, such as having your keywords in the title and description, having your keywords in the first 100 words of the blog post or web page and then scattering them with different alternatives throughout the text, you begin to get higher search engine rankings.

I also use the Google Search Console regularly to submit the newly created blog posts or the old blog posts that I have just updated. You don’t need to wait for Google to come and crawl your content. You can submit your link and ask Google to crawl it. This way, your link is crawled, indexed and ranked comparatively quickly.