Category Archives: SEO

Factor in machine learning when content writing

Content writing for machine learning and AI.

The search engines are increasingly being powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to this interview of Fabrice Canal, Principal Program Manager at Bing, Microsoft.

So, keywords are not important?

For a few years, keywords are going to be important because to be able to ignore the keywords completely and just focus on what your message intends to deliver, the AI will need to be much smarter.

Nonetheless, even at this nascent stage, your SEO depends more on factoring in machine learning and searcher intent and less on the keywords and the search terms.

When you genuinely want to improve your search engine rankings – mostly customers come to your website and not random searchers – you need to know the intent of your average visitor.

I will give you my own example: I publish content for two reasons:

Attract people who will pay me for my content writing services.
Attract people who would like to link to my content, share it on their social media profiles, and in general, help me spread my content as far as possible.

I keep it 60:40 – 60% of my content is for spreading information and 40% is to tell people what I can do with my content writing services.

How important is searcher intent for content writing effectiveness?

The term “searcher intent” was introduced in the wake of the BERT update from Google. It stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. It is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. It not only helps the machines to understand what the words in a sentence stand for, but also the context and the nuance.

Neil Patel on his blog gives very good “Before” and “After” examples of how the BERT update affects the search results.

The point is, the search intent of the search engine user is carefully analysed by the background AI to show appropriate results.

After all, people should be able to find information they are looking for instead of what search engines like Google and Bing think people are trying to find.

Therefore, Fabrice Canal says that the ranking algorithms at the search engines are constantly evolving and the machines learn on their own what people are searching and what search results they need.

What is search intent?

I have explained it multiple times on my website, but I will quickly recap.

Knowing the searcher intent means knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for. The search terms need to be interpreted according to their need and not according to just the words being used.

Thanks to BERT when you search for “the benefits of apple” the search engine completely ignores the Apple company which, previously, it did not. All the top results are about the benefits of eating apples.

On the other hand, if you search for “I have an apple” Google gets confused and starts showing results from various “Apple” products and reviews. It is not taking an inference from my previous search and then sticking to the fruit instead of the tech company.

Anyway, knowing the searcher intent during content writing keeps you focused and helps you write content your target customers and clients are looking for.

Again, I will come back to my own example.

Suppose someone searches for “need a content writer”.

This becomes confusing for the search engine. Is the search about the qualities that are needed in a content writer? Does it mean “I need a content writer”? Does it mean “do you need a content writer?”

Big difference. When someone looks for “I need a content writer” it is a person who needs a content writer.

When someone looks for “do you need a content writer?” question is being asked whether someone needs a content writer.

These are very subtle things, but they can have a big impact on your search engine rankings. Even if the rankings of your core content pieces don’t fluctuate much, the sort of traffic that you get may not generate you much business.

What do I do to solve this problem?

I solve this problem by writing highly targeted pages. For example, instead of trying to target something like “need a content writer” or “I need a content writer” I try to write about “content writer needed for a web design agency” or, “looking for content writer for the real estate company”.

This brings us to the discussion of using longtail keywords. These keywords or search terms may appear long, and you may think that very few people may use them, but at least these people will be clearheaded and precise.

For example, when someone searches for “looking for a content writer for email marketing” and then comes to my website, I know that the person is actually looking for someone who can write email marketing campaigns.

You will get higher conversion rate.

The topic of this post was content writing for machine learning.

Search engine engineers at Google and Bing suggest that don’t worry much about keywords. With every new update, keywords begin to matter less. What matters more is the essence of your message.

Hence, focus on quality. Focus on relevance. Focus on searcher intent.

How to improve search engine rankings of your old content

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Improving SEO of your old content

In this blog post you are going to learn some ways you can use your old content – content that you have already published – to improve your SEO.

Main topics covered in this blog post

How your old content is invaluable for your SEO
Choose blog posts or web pages you want to improve for better SEO for chosen keywords
Add more content to thin content
See if you can improve the title and the description
Use images under different sections and headlines
Use your main keywords within the top 100 words
Place your keywords strategically across the body text of your blog post or web page
Aim for Featured snippets optimization for better SEO
Use your keywords in headlines and bulleted lists
Improve the overall quality
Make your content mobile friendly
Use your keywords in the last paragraph
Conclusion about using your old content to improve your rankings

If search engine traffic matters to your business, you must always be thinking how to the improve search engine optimization of your website or blog. You constantly need to work on improving your search engine rankings. For that, often you add new content such as blog posts, web pages and articles.

Why fresh content is constantly needed for better search engine rankings? Why does fresh content improve SEO ranking?

There are multiple reasons. Whenever you buy something, you want the latest. The search engines want the same thing for their users. They want to provide them the latest possible information available on the topic they are searching for.

Even people want the latest information. When you want to learn about content marketing or digital marketing, do you want to read what people were doing back in 2014 or you want to know what people are doing in 2020?

Hence, this tendency — both in humans and machines — to constantly look for new content makes it necessary that you regularly add fresh content to your website or blog.

Although adding highly targeted fresh content is always a good and recommended strategy, do you know that you can also improve your search engine rankings by making changes to your existing content. Your old content can also help you improve your SEO.

In this post I’m going to discuss how.

How your old content is invaluable for your SEO

Old content is valuable for your SEO.

If you don’t want to spend money on writing and publishing fresh content on your website, you can increase as your ranking for free by improving the quality of your existing content.

Remember that whatever SEO you enjoy right now, it has been built on the foundation of your old content, your existing content.

If your website is a few years old and you have been regularly adding new content to your website, you already have a repository with you.

When you had just posted those blog posts and web pages, they may have enjoyed higher search engine rankings but as they got old and as the others published better versions or fresher versions, your high-ranking content got relegated to lower rankings during the proceeding months and years.

The problem sometimes is, you have already covered some important topics in your old content. If you want to write again on these topics, you may end up writing and publishing duplicate content.

Sure, the content will not be exactly similar, but you may have a similar headline or title and most of the information may already be existing in older blog posts and articles.

As a result, you feel bound and constraint. You want to improve rankings for those keywords but since you have already covered them in older blog posts, you do not want to take chances with newer blog posts.

You can be creative with the same ideas. I have multiple times written how you can re-purpose your old content and how you can rejuvenate it and I’m still writing this blog post.

Anyway, the point is, your old content is already indexed and ranked. All you have to do is, spruce it up with updated information, more data, better use of primary and secondary keywords and various other things.

Here are a few things you can do to improve your SEO using your old content:

Choose blog posts or web pages you want to improve for better SEO for chosen keywords

Choose blog posts and web pages that need improvements.

Which keyword rankings you want to improve? In which blog posts and web pages you have already covered those keywords?

If you use a content management system like WordPress you can easily search your existing posts and find out titles that match your keyword/keywords.

Quickly search on Google how they currently rank. If they are not ranking well, you can add them to an Excel sheet.

In case you’re using a tool like SEMRush you can quickly run your links through its system and find out what sort of content better ranking links are publishing.

Take note of the information, the number of words, the use of keywords in the title and other attributes of those links.

This will give you an idea of how to change your own web pages and blog posts.

As a less expensive alternative you can also use Serpstat that gives you more or less the same information but without overwhelming you with excessive data and overbearing expense.

Anyway, the point is knowing which pieces of your old content ranking are lower than they were ranking previously for your chosen keywords and what improvements are needed.

Add more content to thin content

Add more content to thin content for better SEO.

I’m not crazy about creating long pieces of blog posts and web pages just for the sake of improving SEO, but the size does matter if you’re not regular.

Have you added small blog posts and web pages (300-400 words) thinking that the sheer number would improve your SEO?

They may have given you the initial push and a false sense of security, but ultimately Google seems to prefer long form content, anywhere between 1500-3500 words.

Google aims to provide as much information as possible through a single link so that the user doesn’t have to waste lots of time hopping from one link to another.

If a user finds your link on Google, clicks it, comes to your website, goes through your content, and then comes back on Google and carries out the same search, Google assumes that she didn’t find what she was looking for.

It’s like, she has a problem, she is looking for a solution, Google suggested your link, she visited your link and since she carried out the same search Google assumes that its suggestion wasn’t appropriate and then uses this action to decide your ranking.

The more such incidents take place, the lower your rankings become.

Hence, for every keyword or title, put in as much information as possible.

Consider refurbishing of every piece of your old content as a full-fledged project. Don’t make it into a rush job.

Carry out a thorough auditing. Make note of where you can add new content. Research data. Organize your content in such a manner that your visitors can easily find the information they are looking for.

Increase the length beyond 1500 words.
Organize the text under headings and subheadings.

See if you can improve the title and the description

Re-write title and description of your old content.

Your title and description, the meta information, has a significant impact on your SEO. After all your title appears as a hyperlink in the search results and the hyperlink is followed by the description.

Data has shown that if the search term a user has just used appears in your title as hyperlink, she is more prone to clicking the link.

So, when you are modifying your old content, try to incorporate your main keyword into the title of your blog post or web page and also mention it once, with variations and alternative words, within the description.

Maybe initially you were not very SEO-savvy and you ignored this part of search engine optimization, but now you can make these improvements.

Use images under different sections and headlines

Use images for different sections and headings.

I have seen that this has a positive impact on your search engine rankings.

Creating quality images for different sections and headlines can be a time-consuming undertaking, but it is worth your time.

You can use the images to incorporate your keywords but make sure you don’t unnecessarily stuff your keywords otherwise it can have a negative effect on your SEO.

Images also improve your rankings in Google Images.

Use your main keywords within the top 100 words

Use your keywords within the first 100 words.

There is a reason for that. It involves both humans and machines.

Humans are in a hurry. They want you to talk about the real thing as soon as possible. The real thing is contained within your keywords assuming your using appropriate keywords.

For example, in this blog post, I’m telling you how to use your old content to improve your SEO.

I have used words like “old content”, “improve SEO” and “search engine optimization” within the 100-word-bracket.

You don’t have to force it. In the beginning of every blog post or web page, just write a small intro of what you’re going to achieve through this blog post or web page. If you do that, you will be automatically covering your primary keywords.

When search engine crawlers crawl your content, sometimes they leave midway due to 100+ reasons. They draw conclusions about your content based on whatever information they were able to glean while partially crawling your content.

This way, if they have crawled even a single paragraph of your link, they will be gathering the relevant keywords from your content and using that information to rank your content.

Place your keywords strategically across the body text of your blog post or web page

Strategically use keywords across your body text.

Google can easily make out if you are using your keywords just to improve your SEO.

Hence, do not repeat unnecessarily. Spread your keywords over the entire length and breadth of your blog post or web page.

I follow two rules:

Use your keywords every 150-200 words and not less.
Use different variations of your keywords.

For example, I don’t always have to use SEO. I can use search engine optimization. I can use higher rankings. I can use ranking high. I can use better search results. I can use Google rankings. I can use top search results.

These are called LSI keywords – Latent Semantic Indexing.

They give Google an overall idea of what you are talking about in a diverse manner. The algorithm can draw meaning through contextually stringing together your words and sentences for better rankings.

Aim for Featured snippets optimization for better SEO

Example of Google featured snippet

Featured snippets are the highlighted, non-sponsored, search results you sometimes see at the top of the search results page.

This Search Engine Land blog post says that if your content gets shown in the Featured snippets section, there can be great SEO gains.

The key is, providing the most appropriate answer to the question being asked by the Google user.

Use your keywords in headlines and bulleted lists

Use your keywords in headlines and bulleted lists.

It is important to use your keywords in the page elements that are used to quickly scan your content.

Search engine crawlers give great credence to your text contained within your headlines and bulleted lists.

By simply scanning through your headlines and bulleted lists, people must be able to get the gist of what you are trying to communicate.

Using this logic, search engine algorithms analyse your content based on the scannable elements of your web page or blog post – headlines and bulleted lists.

Improve the overall quality

Improve overall quality of old content to improve SEO.

You can add more links as references. If the existing images in these blog posts and web pages are very heavy, you can reduce their size.

In case there are some spelling mistakes you can take care of them. Think of all the ways you can improve the overall quality of your blog posts and web pages.

Make your content mobile friendly

Make your content mobile friendly.

Do you know Google ranks your content based on how it looks on mobile devices? If your content does not fit well on mobile devices, it loses its rankings.

You do not have to worry if you have a liquid layout, which means it easily fits on various screen sizes. If this is not the case, you seriously need to consider revamping your website layout.

People on mobile phones do not read long sentences and heavy paragraphs.

Use small paragraphs. Rarely go beyond two sentences in each paragraph.

Use smaller sentences. Smaller sentences are easier to interpret both for humans and search engine algorithms.

No matter how advanced AI gets, if you create overly complicated sentence structures, it becomes difficult for the algorithms to understand what you are trying to say.

Hence, mobile and user-friendly content means

Use shorter sentences.
Use shorter paragraphs – not more than two sentences.
Keep a simple sentence structure.
Don’t digress from your main topic.
Don’t use ambiguous, confusing words just for fun sake.

Use your keywords in the last paragraph

Use keywords in the last paragraph.

Your last paragraph is like the last thoughts that people have after going through your blog post or web page.

You can sum up everything you have described in the blog post. This gives you an opportunity to use your keywords in the last paragraph.

Conclusion about using your old content to improve your rankings

In the race to continuously add fresh content sometimes we end up ignoring our old content, which can be a gold mine.

My experience also tells me that it is easier to revamp existing content than to come up with new content writing ideas.

You already have the material in front of you. In many cases all the needed thoughts are already there. The title is already there. All you have to do is, improve it.

In fact, before publishing your next, new blog post or web page, go through your existing content and make all possible improvements.

Why search intent is most important when writing content for your website

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Knowing searcher intent for better content writing.

By now you have read a lot about search intent or searcher intent on my website and blog. Just came across another blog post on the importance of knowing the search intent before writing your next piece of content.

What is search intent? How does it affect your content writing?

When someone queries Google (searches for something) she has an intention. She wants to find a piece of information that she needs. What is her intention? Why is she looking for that information?

This is search intent.

Why is it important to know the search intent?

If you do not know the search intent of your target audience, how do you publish content your target audience is looking for?

For example, I want traffic for “content writing services” and not for “how to become a content writer”.

Sure, I’m constantly publishing blog posts on how to be a better content writer and how to improve your content writing skills, but these posts are to inform my prospective clients how much I know about content writing and how I can use this wisdom to write quality content for them. Yes, when I’m drawing traffic from my prospective clients, I’m also drawing traffic for people who just want to learn about content writing and have no intention of giving work to me.

Anyway, there are many benefits of getting people to your website who are looking for useful information but have no intention of giving work to you or buying from you (they can increase your brand visibility in many ways).

Searcher intent can be of the following types:

Informational intent: People are simply looking for information, such as “how can quality content writing improve my search engine rankings?”
Navigation intent: You look for “credible content writing services” on Google instead of typing the URL if you want to come to my website.
Transactional intent: You want to find out how much my content writing services are going to cost.
Commercial intent: You need a content writer for your business.

Google wants to provide you the best answers for your searcher intent and it is continuously improving its algorithm to make sure that you find what you are looking for.

For example, if you simply want information, you do not need to find information about the commercial aspects of any product or service related to that information. You just want information.

Similarly, if you want to buy something, you are more eager to know how you can buy that thing (for example, my content writing services) instead of wanting to know how to become a better content writer.

Subtle differences that can make big differences.

Knowing searcher intent can help you come up with targeted content.

Write content that provides useful information to increase your brand visibility and generate future needs.

Write content that tells people how they can benefit from your product or service to get more customers and clients.

Provide them commercial information so that they can make up their mind about doing business with you.

Knowing searcher intent helps you write targeted content.

Is your content writing sabotaging your SEO?

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Is your content writing sabotaging your SEO

Content writing isn’t all SEO.

Although 99% of my clients approach me to write content for them so that they can improve their SEO, sometimes, search engine optimization is their least concern.

In fact, they even feel awkward about talking about writing content for improving their rankings. Recently I worked on a landing page copy that explains visitors why it is important to focus on keywords. But that’s a different issue.

The connection between content writing and SEO

To understand how your content writing has a direct impact on your search engine rankings, you must think from the perspective of search engine algorithms.

What is the purpose of a search engine algorithm?

It wants to find the best possible information for the user.

Now, a typical user isn’t concerned about how a search engine like Google manages that.

If she doesn’t find the right information, she is going to assume that Google isn’t good at it, even if she herself is not using the right search terms.

For example, there is a big difference between searching for “content writer” and “I need a content writer”.

When you search for “content writer” what do you mean?

Do you want to become a content writer?

Do you want to know how a content writer works?

Do you want to know what the term means?

How does Google know what you want?

Although it shows you the results, these results are not going to be precise because the search term may carry different meanings for different people (intention).

On the other hand, if you search for “I need a content writer” or “looking for a content writer for my business”, or “SEO content writer for real estate website”, Google knows what you’re looking for and accordingly, shows you the results.

Hence, as a professional service providing content writing, although “content writer” is a search term that represents what I do, it doesn’t exactly help my clients find me when they need me.

What I write and publish on my website, consequently, has a direct bearing on my SEO.

How your content writing may be sabotaging your SEO

You harm your SEO when you are constantly writing and publishing content your customers and clients are not trying to find.

As explained above, for my own website, I’m not interested in optimizing for “content writer” because one never knows what the searcher is searching for.

I’m not saying that people searching for “content writer” are definitely not looking for a content writer for their business, but it is such a high-competition keyword that it is not worth my time.

One of the biggest mistakes people commit is that they don’t do the needed research when preparing a list of their keywords.

The bulk of your traffic doesn’t come from your primary keywords such as “content writer” or “web designing” or “mobile app development” or “running shoes”.

I’m not saying these terms are not good. It would be excellent if you could rank on the first page for these terms.

But bigger companies, or individuals and organizations who have already built a considerable quantity of high-quality content around these keywords, are way ahead of you.

Even if you try to catch up with them, since they have already had a head start, you will be spending all your resources on these keywords, with little success.

This is one reason: focusing on primary keywords.

The other reason is, assuming that your target customers and clients are going to find you anyway, no matter what you publish.

Remember that search engine algorithms don’t have feelings.

They depend on artificial intelligence. They depend on machine learning. They analyze your words. Hence, if you don’t use the right words, they’re not going to pay attention to you.

So, even if your messaging is correct, if you are not using the right keywords, you are going to sabotage your SEO.

When does content writing improve your SEO?

When you are writing content for your website, you must focus only on those keywords and search terms that are going to fetch business for you, directly or indirectly.

I have used the caveat “directly or indirectly” because you also need content for brand building.

Not all traffic converts.

For example, if more people know about the fact that I’m a content writer, it is better for me.

When they need a content writer, they will know how to find me.

If they like what I constantly publish, when someone they know needs a professional content writer, they may recommend my website.

Hence, when you are writing content for your website, focus on two possibilities:

Content writing for brand awareness.
Content writing to get customers and clients.

Make a list of topics that will help you raise brand awareness. Then write content on those topics.

Make a list of topics that can fetch you customers and clients. Then write content on those topics.

Easier said than done, I know.

This is where you will need to spend time on research.

You cannot simply assume that people are going to use certain keywords and search terms because you feel that they should be using those keywords and search terms.

Pay close attention to Google suggestions.

Use Google Analytics to know what keywords and search terms convert better compared to the others.

Use your own logic.

What is the intention of people searching for content on your website?

Although you are writing and publishing content to improve your SEO, you also want to inform people, to educate them, so that they can make a better decision.

Hence, if I create a web page or a blog post on a topic like “looking for an SEO content writer”, I may be writing something like How to hire the best SEO content writer to improve your rankings, but my purpose is not to educate you and then send you somewhere else.

No, I tell you how to hire the best SEO content writer and then also tell you why I am your best SEO content writer.

This is brand awareness as well as selling your business.

Focus on precise keywords as much as possible. It may mean generating more content, but it also means reducing advertising costs. And of course, improving your conversion rate.

5 SEO improvements you can make through content writing

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5 SEO improvements with content writing

Over the years I have developed some insights into the workings of SEO. I’m not an SEO expert but when people contact me for my content writing services, they mostly want to improve their search engine rankings.

Since I’m constantly trying to improve my rankings, whenever I have to implement non-content writing SEO features into my website, I do some reading, I develop an understanding, and then I implement the changes.

Nonetheless, on this blog, whenever I talk about SEO improvements and search engine optimization in general, I talk in terms of content writing – how to write and publish your content in such a manner that it improves your search engine rankings.

It gets you targeted traffic.

Why targeted traffic from search engines is very important

Targeted content writing

You don’t want traffic from search engines. You want targeted traffic. Traffic that converts.

I have seen entrepreneurs and individual businesspersons trying to generate traffic no matter what. This doesn’t help.

I often like to cite my own example.

I had a web design business website in the early 2000’s. I built most of its traffic through content writing for my own website and for other websites (which then linked back to my website).

The problem was that I filled my website with “tutorials”. Instead of attracting businesses who wanted someone to design their websites, I was attracting aspiring web designers who were looking for some good tutorials.

I was good at writing tutorials. They were educational and funny at the same time. People enjoyed my tutorials. But they didn’t give me work.

Initially I was happy that I was getting lots of traffic. But then, with every passing month, the number of assignments kept coming down.

Personally, for me, it was a blessing in disguise. Although web design, both design and programming, came easy to me, my soul was into writing. That was the reason why people enjoyed reading my tutorials.

Hence, in 2004, I wrapped up my web design business and started providing professional content writing and online copywriting services.

This time I didn’t commit the same mistake. Although I routinely published content on my website and blog, I focused on getting clients, B2B clients, rather than people who wanted to learn content writing and copywriting.

This entails knowing what your customers and clients are looking for and then writing and publishing content based on your findings.

With this out of the way, below I list 5 SEO improvements that you can implement through your content.

1. Write content catering to the searcher’s intent

Write content for searcher intent

I have written about searchers intent multiple times on my blog.

Whenever you use Google, whenever you search for something, we always have an intention. You don’t search for time pass.

When something is wrong with your mobile phone, you try to find out if someone else faced the similar problem, talked about it and found a solution, so that you can solve your problem.

When you’re working on a school assignment, you want to research about your topic. You are looking for information.

When you want to buy an appliance, you want to know which model or which brand is the best choice for you.

In the times of the Coronavirus outbreak, you want to know how fast it is spreading, where it has slowed down, what are the latest dos and don’ts during social distancing, and how to make sure that you and your loved ones don’t get infected. You search accordingly.

When you need quality content for your website or blog, you search for something like “content writer for my business” or “content writing service for my business”, or something similar.

Hence, there is always an intent.

Intent can be of the following nature:

Navigational intent: Someone searching for “credible content” to find the URL of the website.
Commercial intent: Something like “need a content writer for SEO”.
Informational intent: Something like “can I improve my rankings with SEO content writing?”.
Transactional intent: Something like “how much does quality content writing cost?”

You can write and publish content based on different intents.

Searcher’s intent for your industry may be different.

Do you need to target every intent? It depends.

Even if people are not buying from you right now, you need to increase your brand visibility. So, it is always better to target all intents: navigational, commercial, informational and transactional.

But, maintain a balance.

As I have explained above, when I was promoting my web design services, I was mostly targeting people – unintentionally – who themselves wanted to become web designers.

There is nothing wrong in targeting those people, but I shouldn’t have focused mainly on those people.

2. Compile a list of keywords for creating content writing titles

Importance of keywords in SEO content writing

Keywords are very important.

Although there are many SEO experts who discount the role of keywords in your search engine rankings, I’m pretty sure even they secretly use keywords when producing content for their clients.

In terms of writing content, keywords are the search terms, or the search phrases people use trying to find information about your business.

There is no use targeting keywords with high competition. For example, if I want to optimize my website for “SEO content writer” it may be difficult because there are thousands of other people and businesses who are aiming for the same search term.

Instead, I may try to optimize for “SEO content writer for my web design agency” or “SEO content writing service for my dental implants clinic”, and such.

These are also called long-tail keywords. They are very precise. They may generate less traffic and they may be less competitive, but the traffic that they generate is more targeted and converts better.

Create a list of such keywords and come up with interesting and engaging (also informative) content topics.

You can use a service like Ubersuggest and Answer the Public to find the search terms you should be targeting through your content writing. For a very long time I have also used services like Serpstat and LongtailPro.

A good thing about a service like Ubersuggest is that it also shows you what topics the other websites are covering using the same keywords as yours.

Whatever service you use, the basic idea is to compile a list of topics based on your targeted traffic and then routinely start writing web pages and blog posts centered around those topics.

3. Use headings, subheadings and bulleted lists at every opportunity

Use headings and subheadings when writing content

On web pages, headings and subheadings means using HTML tags such as <h1>, <h2>… and so on. When you use your primary keywords within these tags, Google takes them very seriously. It assumes that since you have used your keywords or search terms within heading tags, they must be very important to you and for your content.

Just because Google takes text within these headings very seriously, it doesn’t mean you should overuse them.

On a web page or on a blog post, the <h1> tag should only be used once, preferably as the page header. If you use it multiple times, its importance begins to diminish.

What about the <h2> tag? Although you can use this tag multiple times on a web page, if you repeatedly use your keywords within this tag, even then it can send wrong signals to Google.

Remember that headline tags are for organizing your content under appropriate sections so that your content becomes scannable.

When working in MS Word you must have observed that you can expand and contract your sections under headings. This is so that it becomes easier for you to read long documents.

The same logic is applied when organizing content on long web pages and blog posts. The heading tags are for organizing ideas. If they happen to use your keywords, it’s icing on the cake, but don’t use them just for the sake of using them.

Bullet lists is another great place where you can use your keywords. When trying to make sense of your content, aside from the title and the headings, the Google algorithm also looks for important pieces of information in your bullets list section.

4. Don’t just use your primary keywords when writing content for your website or your blog

Use a diversity of keywords when writing content

When you are writing content for your website or your blog, whom are you writing the content for? You are writing for people.

Hence, you should focus on delivering value.

It is understandable that to improve your search engine rankings you want to use your keywords and search terms, but if you are creating content just to use your keywords, it doesn’t solve purpose.

The artificial intelligence used by Google’s ranking algorithms takes into account the way people interact with your content while deciding your rankings.

If people don’t positively interact with your content, your rankings begin to deteriorate.

Google takes notes of how much time people spend on your website (inferior quality content doesn’t hook people).

If people carry on the same search for which they found your link it means they didn’t find the information they were looking for on your web page or blog post and hence, your link shouldn’t have the rankings it currently has.

Therefore, it is very important that your focus remains on providing value and then within that focus, you adjust your primary, secondary and long-tail keywords.

5. Write content in mobile friendly format

Write mobile friendly content

By 2019, 42% people in the world used voice search in one way or another. By 2025 72.6% people will be accessing the Internet just on the mobile phone.

This means most of your customers and clients will be accessing your website from their mobile phones. They should be able to consume your content easily on their mobile phones.

What does writing content in mobile friendly format mean?

Write shorter sentences.
Use simple yet professional language.
Avoid using multiple sentences in a single paragraph.
Avoid using compound sentences.
Make your content as scannable as possible.

Basically, people should be able to easily read your web pages and blog posts on their mobile phones.

Google has developed a technology to find whether your web pages and blog posts are mobile friendly or not and if they are not, it negatively impacts your search engine rankings.

SEO has majorly shifted towards your content these days. How you format your content and what value you deliver leave a big impact on your search engine rankings.

In fact, once you have taken the basic steps to optimize the structure of your website including, including correct information in the meta tags, all you have to do is, make sure that your content solves its true purpose.

When writing and publishing content, follow these guidelines and watch improving your search engine rankings right in front of your eyes.