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What are the key elements of creating high-quality and engaging content?

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Key elements of high-quality and engaging content

Key elements of high-quality and engaging content.

Once you know the key elements of creating high-quality and engaging content, and then write content accordingly, you can

  • Attract new customers and clients with greater frequency.
  • Increase brand awareness.
  • Improve your search engine rankings.
  • Generate more leads and sales.
  • Build sustainable relationships with your audience.
  • Increase social media shares and engagement.
  • Come across more opportunities for collaboration and partnership.
  • Increase the chances of your content going viral and gaining widespread attention.
  • Position yourself as an authority figure in your field.

Why is it important to know the key elements of creating high-quality and engaging content?

The importance of knowing about the key elements of high-quality and engaging content

The importance of knowing about the key elements of high-quality and engaging content.

What is engaging content? Here are its attributes:

  • Relevance: Engaging content should be relevant to the target audience’s interests, needs, and preferences.
  • Originality: Key elements of engaging content include uniqueness and originality. It should provide fresh and valuable information or perspectives.
  • Value: High quality content is valuable to readers by offering practical advice, insights, or entertainment. It should provide a clear benefit or solve a problem.
  • Clarity: Engaging content is easy to understand and digest. It should be written in a clear and concise manner, avoiding jargon or complex language.
  • Visual Appeal: Including visually appealing elements such as images, infographics, or videos can enhance engagement. These visuals should be relevant and complement the written content.
  • Emotional Connection: Engaging content evokes emotions and resonates with the audience. It could be through storytelling, relatable examples, or addressing common pain points.
  • Authenticity: High quality content is authentic and genuine, establishing trust with the audience. It should reflect the brand’s values and voice consistently.
  • Interactivity: Engaging content encourages interaction and participation. This can be achieved through surveys, quizzes, contests, or inviting comments and discussions.
  • Variety: Providing diverse content formats and styles keeps the audience engaged. This includes articles, videos, podcasts, interviews, or case studies.
  • Call-to-Action: Including a clear call-to-action guides readers on the next steps and encourages them to engage further with the content or the brand.

There may be a slight difference between engaging and high-quality content so I’m listing the attributes of high-quality content separately.

Attributes of Superior Content:

Attributes of superior content

Attributes of superior content.

  • Relevance: High-quality content is relevant to the target audience’s interests, needs, and preferences.
  • Originality: Key elements of great content include uniqueness and originality, providing fresh and valuable information or perspectives.
  • Value: Outstanding content offers practical advice, insights, or entertainment, providing a clear benefit or solving a problem for the audience.
  • Accuracy: Superb content is factually accurate, supported by reliable sources and research.
  • Clarity: High-quality content is written in a clear and concise manner, avoiding jargon or complex language that may confuse the audience.
  • Depth: High-quality content delves deeper into the topic, providing comprehensive information and going beyond surface level coverage.
  • Authority: Exceptional content establishes the author’s expertise and credibility, supported by qualifications, experience, or evidence of thought leadership.
  • Readability: First rate content is easy to read and digest, with proper formatting, headings, and paragraphs that enhance readability.
  • Structure: Top notch content has a logical flow and structure, making it easy for readers to follow along and understand the information presented.
  • Engagement: Superior content engages the audience through storytelling, examples, and relatable experiences, capturing their attention and interest.
  • Visual Appeal: High-quality content incorporates visually appealing elements such as images, infographics, or videos to enhance engagement and comprehension.
  • Variety: Great content provides a variety of content formats and styles to cater to different preferences and learning styles of the audience.
  • Actionable: Premium content provides actionable steps or recommendations that the audience can implement to achieve desired outcomes.
  • Evergreen: Exceptional content has lasting value and remains relevant over time, not being limited to trends or specific timeframes.
  • Shareability: High-quality content is shareable, compelling readers to share it on social media platforms or with their networks, increasing its reach and impact.
  • User Feedback: First-rate content encourages user feedback, comments, and discussions, fostering engagement and creating a sense of community around the content.

The key elements of high-quality and engaging content

Key elements of high-quality and engaging content-second

Key elements of high-quality and engaging content-second.

1. Compelling Headline:

  • A captivating headline grabs the audience’s attention and entices them to click and read the full content.
  • It should be clear, concise, and highlight the main benefit or value the content offers.

2. Relevant and WellResearched Information:

  • High-quality content provides accurate and reliable information that is relevant to the target audience.
  • It demonstrates thorough research and incorporates data, facts, and examples to support the main points.

3. Unique Perspective or Angle:

  • Engaging content presents a unique perspective or angle on a topic, offering fresh insights or a different approach.
  • It adds value by providing a new viewpoint that hasn’t been extensively covered before.

4. Clear and Concise Writing:

  • High-quality content uses clear and concise language, avoiding unnecessary jargon or complex terms that may confuse the audience.
  • Short sentences and paragraphs improve readability and make the content more accessible.

5. Visual Elements:

  • Engaging content incorporates visually appealing elements such as images, infographics, charts, or videos to enhance understanding and engagement.
  • Visuals should be relevant, high-quality, and support the main message of the content.

6. Storytelling:

  • Incorporating storytelling techniques in content makes it more engaging and relatable.
  • It helps create an emotional connection with the audience and makes the content more memorable.

7. Use of Examples and Case Studies:

  • High-quality content includes relevant examples and case studies to illustrate concepts or demonstrate real-world applications.
  • This adds credibility and practicality to the content.

8. Personalization:

  • Engaging content speaks directly to the audience, addressing their specific needs, challenges, or aspirations.
  • It uses language that resonates with the target audience and makes them feel understood.

9. Variety of Content Formats:

  • High-quality content offers a variety of content formats, such as articles, videos, podcasts, or interactive quizzes.
  • This caters to different learning preferences and keeps the audience engaged.

10. Easy-to-read Formatting:

  • Engaging content utilizes proper formatting techniques, such as subheadings, bullet points, and numbered lists, to improve readability.
  • It breaks down complex information into digestible chunks and makes it easier to scan and understand.

11. Actionable Tips and Takeaways:

  • High-quality content provides actionable tips, steps, or takeaways that the audience can implement immediately.
  • This empowers the audience and adds value by helping them achieve specific outcomes.

12. Emotional Appeal:

  • Engaging content evokes emotions, whether through storytelling, relatable examples, or addressing pain points and aspirations.
  • Emotional appeal captures the audience’s attention and creates a deeper connection with the content.

13. Audience Interaction and Participation:

  • High-quality content encourages audience interaction and participation through comments, surveys, or social media discussions.
  • This fosters engagement, builds a sense of community, and encourages sharing.

14. Credible Sources and References:

  • Engaging content includes credible sources and references to support the information presented.
  • It strengthens the content’s authority and builds trust with the audience.

15. Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Design:

  • Premium content is optimized for mobile devices, ensuring a seamless reading experience across different screen sizes.
  • Responsive design allows the content to adapt and display correctly on various devices.

16. Engaging Introductions:

  • Engaging content starts with a strong introduction that captures the audience’s attention and sets the tone for the rest of the piece.
  • It may include intriguing statistics, compelling questions, or intriguing statements.

17. Well-structured Organization:

  • Exceptional content follows a logical and well-organized structure, leading the audience from one point to the next smoothly.
  • It includes clear transitions between sections to maintain flow.

18. Engaging and Relevant Subheadings:

  • Engaging content uses subheadings that are not only informative but also capture the audience’s interest.
  • These subheadings break down the content into smaller sections, making it easier to navigate.

19. Inclusion of Quotes and Expert Insights:

  • High-quality content incorporates quotes from industry experts or thought leaders to add credibility and provide diverse perspectives.
  • Expert insights contribute to the overall authority and quality of the content.

20. Call-to-Action:

  • Engaging content includes a clear call-to-action that guides the audience on the next steps to take.
  • It can be a request to subscribe, share the content, or explore related resources.

21. Authenticity and Transparency:

  • Outstanding content reflects the author’s authenticity and transparency, presenting information in an honest and genuine manner.
  • It establishes trust with the audience and strengthens the content’s credibility.

22. Voice and Tone Consistency:

  • Engaging content maintains a consistent voice and tone throughout, aligning with the brand’s personality and values.
  • This creates a cohesive reading experience and reinforces the brand’s identity.

23. Regular Updates and Freshness:

  • Valuable content is regularly updated to reflect current information and trends.
  • This ensures that the content remains relevant and provides the most uptodate insights.

24. SEO Optimization:

  • Engaging content incorporates relevant keywords naturally throughout the content to improve search engine visibility.
  • It also optimizes meta tags, headers, and descriptions for better indexing and ranking.

25. User-First Approach:

  • High-quality content prioritizes the needs and interests of the audience, focusing on providing value and a positive user experience.
  • This includes considering accessibility, page load speed, and overall usability.

To create prime and engaging content, include compelling headlines, well-researched information, unique perspectives, clear writing, visuals, storytelling, personalization, varied content formats, easy-to-read formatting, actionable tips, emotional appeal, audience interaction, credible sources, mobile-friendliness, engaging introductions, well-structured organization, relevant subheadings, quotes and expert insights, clear calls-to-action, authenticity, consistent voice and tone, regular updates, SEO optimization, and a user-first approach. Incorporating these elements will help you produce valuable and captivating content that engages your target audience.

The impact of high-quality and engaging content on your SEO: 15 Key Benefits

The SEO impact of high quality and engaging content

The SEO impact of high quality and engaging content.

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), superb and engaging content plays a crucial role in improving your website’s visibility, attracting organic traffic, and driving meaningful engagement.

Let’s explore 15 ways top-of-the-range and engaging content can positively impact your SEO efforts.

1. Enhanced User Experience:

  • High-quality content improves user experience by providing valuable and relevant information to your audience.
  • Engaging content captivates users, increases time spent on your website, and reduces bounce rates, signaling positive signals to search engines.

2. Increased Organic Traffic:

  • Producing high-quality content that aligns with user search intent attracts organic traffic to your website.
  • Engaging content encourages users to visit, explore, and share your content, leading to increased visibility in search engine results.

3. Lower Bounce Rates:

  • Engaging content reduces bounce rates as it holds users’ attention and encourages them to explore other pages on your website.
  • Lower bounce rates indicate to search engines that your content is relevant and valuable, which can positively impact your rankings.

4. Improved Dwell Time:

  • High-quality and engaging content increases dwell time, the duration users spend on your website.
  • Longer dwell times signal to search engines that your content is valuable and satisfies user search queries, potentially boosting your rankings.

5. Increased Social Signals:

  • Engaging content is more likely to be shared on social media platforms, generating social signals.
  • Social signals, such as likes, shares, and comments, can indirectly influence SEO by increasing brand visibility, driving referral traffic, and attracting backlinks.

6. Higher Clickthrough Rates (CTRs):

  • Compelling headlines, meta descriptions, and featured snippets can significantly impact CTRs.
  • Engaging content with enticing titles and wellcrafted meta descriptions can attract more clicks from search engine result pages (SERPs), leading to increased organic traffic.

7. Lower Bounce Rates:

  • Engaging content reduces bounce rates as it holds users’ attention and encourages them to explore other pages on your website.
  • Lower bounce rates indicate to search engines that your content is relevant and valuable, which can positively impact your rankings.

8. Improved Keyword Relevance:

  • High-quality content naturally incorporates relevant keywords and phrases that align with user search queries.
  • Engaging content that effectively uses keywords can improve your website’s visibility in search results and increase organic traffic.

9. Increased Backlinks:

  • High-quality content that provides unique and valuable insights is more likely to attract backlinks from other websites.
  • Engaging content that is cited and linked by authoritative sources can significantly boost your website’s domain authority and improve your rankings.

10. Improved Page Authority:

  • Engaging content that attracts high-quality backlinks can improve the page authority of your content pages.
  • Higher page authority increases the likelihood of ranking higher in search results and gaining visibility for relevant keywords.

11. Higher Time on Page:

  • Engaging content that holds users’ attention leads to longer time spent on your webpages.
  • Increased time on page signals to search engines that your content is valuable, potentially boosting your rankings.

12. Reduced Duplicate Content Issues:

  • High-quality and original content reduces the risk of duplicate content issues, which can negatively impact your SEO efforts.
  • Engaging content that is unique and provides fresh perspectives helps search engines understand the value your content offers.

13. Improved Crawlability and Indexing:

  • High-quality content with clear structure and formatting is more easily crawled and indexed by search engine bots.
  • Engaging content that is well-organized and utilizes appropriate HTML tags can improve the visibility and accessibility of your content to search engines.

14. Enhanced Semantic Relevance:

  • High-quality content that incorporates semantically related terms and concepts can improve search engine understanding.
  • Engaging content that provides comprehensive coverage of a topic signals expertise and relevance, positively impacting your SEO efforts.

15. Higher SERP Visibility:

  • High-quality and engaging content that satisfies user search intent is more likely to rank prominently in search engine result pages (SERPs).
  • Improved rankings and visibility in SERPs increase the likelihood of attracting organic traffic and establishing your brand as an authority in your industry.

How do key elements of high-quality and engaging content improve conversion rate?

High quality and engaging content improves your conversion rate

High quality and engaging content improves your conversion rate.

High-quality and engaging content plays a crucial role in improving conversion rates for businesses. Let’s see how the key elements of high-quality and engaging content contribute to higher conversion rates.

Relevant and Targeted Messaging

High-quality content begins with understanding your target audience and crafting messaging that resonates with them.

By addressing their needs, pain points, and aspirations, you can create content that speaks directly to their interests.

This targeted approach captures their attention, keeping them engaged and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Compelling Headlines

The headline is the first thing users see, and it needs to grab their attention instantly.

A compelling headline communicates the value proposition of your product or service and entices the reader to explore further.

By piquing their curiosity and generating interest, a strong headline encourages users to stay on your page and increases the chances of conversion.

Clear and Concise Writing

High-quality content avoids jargon and complex language. Instead, it utilizes clear and concise writing that is easy to understand.

Short sentences make the content more digestible and engaging for readers.

By presenting information in a straightforward manner, you can effectively communicate your message and capture the attention of your audience, leading to higher conversion rates.

Visual Appeal

Engaging content goes beyond text.

It incorporates visually appealing elements such as images, videos, infographics, and charts.

Visuals help break up the text and make the content more visually stimulating.

They can effectively convey information, evoke emotions, and enhance the overall user experience.

By incorporating relevant visuals, you can engage users on multiple levels and increase the likelihood of conversion.

Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA)

A high-quality and engaging content piece is incomplete without a compelling call-to-action.

A CTA directs users to take the desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or requesting more information. It should be clear, persuasive, and prominently displayed.

By guiding users towards the next step and creating a sense of urgency or value, a strong CTA encourages conversions.

Social Proof

People are more likely to trust and engage with content that is supported by social proof.

Including testimonials, case studies, reviews, and social media mentions in your content provides credibility and builds trust.

Social proof showcases the positive experiences of others, reinforcing the quality and value of your offerings.

By incorporating social proof, you increase the trustworthiness of your content, thereby boosting conversion rates.

Personalization

High-quality content is tailored to the individual needs and preferences of the target audience.

Personalization can be achieved by segmenting your audience and creating content that specifically addresses their unique requirements.

By delivering personalized content, you demonstrate that you understand and value your audience, which in turn leads to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Storytelling

Humans are wired to respond to stories. Engaging content often weaves storytelling elements to captivate readers and create an emotional connection.

By sharing relatable narratives, anecdotes, or case studies, you can evoke emotions and make your content more memorable.

Storytelling helps in building a connection with your audience, which increases their engagement and the likelihood of conversion.

Consistency and Frequency

To maintain engagement and build trust, high-quality content should be consistently delivered to your audience.

Regularly publishing fresh and relevant content keeps your audience coming back for more.

By offering consistent value, you establish yourself as an authority in your industry, enhancing credibility and increasing the chances of conversion.

Optimized for SEO

A crucial aspect of high-quality and engaging content is its search engine optimization (SEO).

By incorporating relevant keywords, meta tags, and optimizing headings, you increase the visibility of your content in search engine results.

When your content ranks higher in search engine listings, it attracts more organic traffic, resulting in increased conversions.

High-quality and engaging content is characterized by relevant and targeted messaging, compelling headlines, clear and concise writing, visual appeal, compelling call-to-action (CTA), social proof, personalization, storytelling, consistency, and SEO optimization.

By incorporating these elements, businesses can create content that captures the attention of their audience, builds trust, and increases the likelihood of conversions. It is essential to offer value, resonate with the audience, and guide them towards taking the desired action.

How does Google define “Helpful Content”?

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How does Google define helpful content

How does Google define helpful content

The news of Google rolling out the new “helpful content” algorithm update is all over the Internet.

I too covered the news a few days ago.

Although content has been at the center stage of every algorithm that Google has rolled out, it is for the first time that the term “helpful content” has been specifically highlighted.

According to Google, in a nutshell, “helpful content” means the content

  • Is created for a specific, targeted audience.
  • Delivers what the searcher is looking for.
  • Shows expertise.
  • Portrays trustworthiness and credibility.

In its blog post on the “helpful content” algorithm update Google has shared some information on what it considers helpful content.

Google suggests that you write and publish people-first content.

Don’t obsess over your search engine rankings.

Don’t write content to make search engine algorithms happy.

There are certain indicators that can tell the Google algorithm that you are writing content for the search engine and not for people.

Google asks you to make the following observations when writing and publishing content on your website or blog:

  • Do people who directly come to your website (not from Google) find your content helpful and useful?
  • Does your website content have a central theme around which you have published detailed content?
  • Do you write articles and blog posts with first-hand experience, and do you share in-depth knowledge of your field?
  • Do people find enough information such that they no longer have to search for the topic somewhere else?
  • Do people feel satisfied after reading what you have published?

What does Google want you to stop doing when publishing content?

  • Stop publishing different versions of the same topic hoping that one of the versions will rank well on Google.
  • Don’t scrape content from other websites just to fill your website or blog with content.
  • Don’t use topics just so that they rank well on Google.
  • Don’t use automated tools to write and publish content on your website and blog.
  • When creating content from other websites, don’t just merely summarise – add more value.
  • Don’t extend your article or blog post to a certain word count just so that it ranks well.
  • Don’t write about a niche topic unless you are an expert in it or you have in-depth knowledge about the topic.
  • Don’t answer questions for which you don’t have a definite answer such as a health-related question or the release of a movie.

Other “helpful content” recommendations by Google

  • Write blog posts and articles from different perspectives, such as, both pros and cons of using a product or a service.
  • When reviewing a product, go beyond what the provider or the manufacturer says, and share your own first-hand experience.
  • Describe in detail how a product performs in different areas – for example, how a mixer grinds different categories of vegetables.
  • Put yourself in the shoes of your readers – would you trust the information you are sharing on your website or blog?
  • Are you sourcing facts and statistics from authoritative websites and blogs?
  • Doublecheck your content for easily verified factual errors.
  • As much as possible, provide information that is original, research-based, and well analysed.
  • Cover exhaustive information about a topic.
  • Deliver in the body content what you have promised in the headline or the meta title.
  • Create content people would like to bookmark, or share, or recommend.
  • Link to useful information on your own website or other authoritative websites.

Google recommends focusing on search intent

People search with different needs.

In this document Google shares some major motivations with which people use the search engine.

  • I want to know: People are looking for information, knowledge, and news.
  • I want to go: People are mostly looking for local businesses where they can go and entertain themselves or have food.
  • I want to do: This is primarily how-to content when people want to solve a problem and are looking for a solution.
  • I want to buy: They are ready to buy, and you just need to keep them focused.

You may also like to read: Why search intent is most important when writing content for your website

What stops your content from improving your search engine rankings?

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What stops your content from improving your search engine rankings

What stops your content from improving your search engine rankings

Have you been posting content without much success with search engine rankings?

This can be frustrating.

Especially when you are putting in lots of effort and money into publishing high quality content on a regular basis.

How well your content ranks on search engines depends on multiple factors.

High-quality, relevant and engaging content is fundamental.

Without good content there can be no rankings.

Your search engine rankings depend on

  • How much content you have already published.
  • Your content publishing frequency.
  • Your content publishing consistency.
  • The niche of your content.
  • The topics you have been covering.
  • The relevance of your topics.
  • Your click-through-rate on search engine listings.
  • Your bounce rate.
  • Search engine optimization level of your content.
  • Social proof your website and individual links attract.
  • The quality of incoming links from external websites.
  • Internal linking of the content within your website or blog.
  • How easy or difficult it is for the search engine crawlers to access your content.
  • The age of your domain.

There are 200 odd factors that decide the search engine rankings of your content.

The factors that I have listed above are under your control.

There are many factors that are not under your control and they occur over a period of time, provided you keep publishing and promoting your content.

Nonetheless, how you write your content, how you choose your topics, and how you format your content, can have a significant bearing on your search engine rankings.

Over the years I have observed two types of problems that clients face:

  • Less search engine traffic.
  • Decent traffic but no business.

Less search engine traffic happens when content is not published regularly.

Decent traffic but no business happens when incorrect topics are chosen – topics that are not relevant to the target customers and clients.

Below I am listing a few reasons why your content may not be ranking well on search engines.

You are not choosing the topics your readers want

There is no direct connection between what you are publishing and what your readers are looking for.

This may result in your website attracting good traffic but not generating much business, or not generating traffic at all.

You need to have a clear idea of what people are searching for in relation with your business.

For my Credible Content blog I want to attract search engine traffic for the following topics

  • Content writing
  • Copywriting
  • SEO copywriting
  • SEO content writing
  • Email marketing copywriting
  • Social media marketing content writing

And such.

All my topics involved one of these expressions.

When you are writing content to improve your search engine rankings it is very important that in the topics you use the language and the expressions that are normally used by your target audience.

You are choosing topics that are too competitive

Are you writing on topics 25 other websites already rank on top?

It is normal tendency to want to write on topics that you are easily finding in search results thinking that they are in high demand.

Yes, they are in high demand, but many top-ranking websites have already occupied the top space for those topics.

SEO copywriting tips Google screenshot

SEO copywriting tips Google screenshot

Instead of going for very popular topics, use longtail keywords to come up with topics that are highly useful, but not very competitive.

For example, for me, it would be better to not write on “SEO copywriting tips”, but write on something like “10 SEO copywriting tips for beginners”.

I may attract fewer visitors, but at least, there is a chance I will get higher rankings for a less competitive title and there will be an audience for it.

You are not publishing content with greater frequency

This is important in the beginning when the Google search engine crawler hasn’t yet started crawling your website.

The crawling frequency depends on the frequency of content publishing.

The more often you publish, the greater is the frequency of the Google crawler.

If there is no routine, if you don’t publish content regularly, the crawler does not visit your website or blog regularly and hence your content is not included in the search engine index.

Even when it is included, it may take months before it can appear in search results.

So, what should be your content publishing frequency?

In the beginning, I would suggest, if your budget allows, two blog posts or web pages everyday.

I know, you may think it is too much, but if you want to improve your search engine rankings fast, then this is a good way to go.

Publishing twice and then submitting your URL to Google will get your content indexed faster.

You let Google know that your website is being updated with great frequency and hence, it should be crawled accordingly.

Once your content has begun to show up in search results, you can gradually reduce your frequency from two publications to one in a day.

It is recommended that you update your website at least 16 times every month even if you have good search engine traffic.

You are not using your keywords properly

How you use your keywords is very critical to the success of your search engine optimization campaign.

You need to use your keywords as exact phrase and as different parts.

Your main phrase must appear in the title of your web page or blog post.

For example, if I want to optimize my blog post for “SEO copywriting tips”, then this phrase must appear at least once in the title.

It can be a part of a bigger sentence or a bigger phrase, but it must be there.

Your main keyword must also appear within the first 100 words of your blog post, article, or web page.

There is a reason for that.

When search engine crawlers crawl your content, they may not get enough time to crawl the entire piece of content.

Midway they may leave for other sections of your website, or may even leave your website altogether.

Hence, use your main keyword in the beginning itself – this is because your main keyword represents the fundamental idea of what you are writing.

Without overusing, use different combinations of your main keyword (in my case, it would be “SEO”, “copywriting”, and “tips”) all over your text.

Use the exact phrase in some of the headings and subheadings.

If possible, also use the exact phrase at least once in bulleted points.

Also make sure you don’t over use your keyword.

In my case, instead of constantly using “SEO copywriting tips” I can use “writing tips”, “SEO writing”, “SEO tips” and “tips on SEO copywriting”.

With practice you learn to strike a balance.

You are publishing thin content

Most of the SEO experts recommend that your individual web pages and blog posts must be a 1000 words or more.

My blog posts average around 1000-1300 words.

Although Google considers less than 400 words as thin content, how many words you need depends on your competition.

If you run your longtail keyword through a tool like SEMRush it will tell you, based on your competitors, how many words your present blog post or web page must have to get a decent chance of ranking well.

Most of my clients ask for 800-1000 words, which is fine.

Personally, I believe, as long as you are publishing relevant content, there is no such thing as thin content.

Nonetheless, research has shown that the top 10 pieces of content that rank on Google, are more than 1000 words.

If, despite publishing regularly, your content is not ranking well, this could be one of the reasons.

For a couple of months, try publishing blog posts and web pages that are more than 1300 words.

Your Google click-through-ratio is low

Your search click-through-ratio is the number of times people click your link divided by the number of times your content appears in search results.

If, despite appearing in search results, fewer people are clicking your links, it tells the Google algorithm that the current rankings of your links are not solving their purpose, and as a result, your current rankings are lowered.

Therefore, despite the fact that sometimes your content is appearing in search results, just because people are not clicking your links, your rankings are lowered until they are way down the listings to be found.

Your bounce rate is high

I’m talking about the bounce rate in terms of traffic coming from search engines like Google.

Bounce rate means the number of people immediately leaving your website after finding your link on Google divided by the total number of people finding your link on Google, clicking it, and then coming to your website.

Google knows how much time people spend on your link once they find the link in search results.

If, after finding your link on search results and then clicking it, people hardly spend a few seconds on your web page or blog post, the Google algorithm assumes that your link doesn’t deserve its current rankings for the keyword it is showing up right now.

It assumes that the link does not have the information people are looking for, for the associated search term, and hence, your rankings are lowered.

These are a few factors that stop your content from ranking well on search engines.

There may be more factors that are directly in your control, or not in your control, but as far as your content goes, if you can take care of the above, you can significantly improve your search engine rankings.

Importance of E-A-T for writing SEO content

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The importance of E-A-T for writing SEO content explained

The importance of E-A-T for writing SEO content explained

The term E-A-T came to be recognized after major Google algorithm update in August 2018. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness – three attributes of your content that help you improve your search engine rankings.

Theoretically these are not new concepts. For more than a decade now Google is increasingly making it difficult for websites to rank well, especially those websites that publish lots of random content just to improve their search engine rankings.

E-A-T is Google’s new standard to gauge the relevance of the content that you write. It isn’t simply the quality now. Sure, quality still matters, but in addition to quality, you also need to show your expertise, your authority, and the level of trust that people show in your content.

What exactly is Google E-A-T?

The expression E-A-T began to appear in various SEO articles after a major Google update in 2018. The finer nitty-gritty of the E-A-T part of the algorithm isn’t exactly clear to anyone but in this SEO guideline, Google seems to define “low quality pages” as pages “lacking expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness”. Untrustworthy pages have the lowest E-A-T quotient.

To rank well, according to the Google update, the following needs to be considered:

  • The level of expertise of the creator of the main content.
  • The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the authoritativeness of the main content itself, and the authority of the website.
  • The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the trustworthiness of the main content itself, and that of the website.

Expertise can be of two types:

  • Something like a medical journal where highly expert people write about medicine and treatments.
  • Less formal expertise such as restaurant or movie reviews.

It depends on how much the writers and their websites are trusted and believed by the readers and viewers.

The most important factors for E-A-T web pages may include

  • The main content quality and quantity.
  • The main beneficial purpose of the content (the web page or the blog post).
  • The expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the content as well as the content creator.
  • The reputation of the website and the author.

How to write content according to Google’s E-A-T

Google’s intention is to find and showcase the most reliable and trustworthy information to its users. This is its reason to exist. If people don’t find trustworthy information, they will stop using the search engine and another search engine may fill the gap. You need to write content keeping that in mind. Here are a few things you can do

Write content based on search intent

Why are people looking for your content? Exactly what is the information they seek to solve their problems?

Further reading: What is search intent and how knowing it improves your SEO

When people are looking for content on my website they have to reasons

  • They are looking for a professional content writer and copywriter.
  • They want tips and information on content writing and copywriting so that they can either write themselves, or link to the blog post to add value to their own content.

When people link to my content it improves my search engine rankings. Also, when people are easily able to find my content on Google they more eagerly contact me for work thinking that I can achieve the same for them (which, on many occasions, I do).

Hence, whenever you are writing your content or editing existing content make sure why you are writing, what purpose it solves, and whether it delivers exactly what the readers are looking for.

Write blog posts and web pages in question-answer formats

The reason is quite simple. People are constantly asking Google questions and Google intends to provide answers. If you already write in question-and-answer format you deliver a ready-made template to Google.

Writing in the question answer format also helps you write according to the search intent. When you answer a question, you already know what you are writing about. Similarly, when people find your content on Google they already know what answer lies ahead, and more eagerly click your link, improving your CTR, and in the process, elevating your search engine rankings further.

Increase your authority as an author

This happens over a long period of time, but ultimately, it begins to have a bearing on your search engine rankings, especially considering E-A-T (the authority part). Do people refer to you as an expert? Do they mention you as an expert or an authority figure when they link to your content? Do they recommend you?

These things are interrelated. Unless you have content people are not going to find it and if they don’t find it, how do they know that you are an expert in your field?

Now, unless they know that you are an expert (based on E-A-T), how are you going to improve your search engine rankings so that they can find your content?

It may become a vicious loop, but it doesn’t have to be. You need to begin from somewhere.

Be active on social media. Use websites like Quora and LinkedIn. LinkedIn these days have many forums you can post your answers in and once you have built a presence, you can start sharing your content over there.

Pay close attention to search engine optimization when writing content

Don’t just write and publish content because you think you are an authoritative figure in your field. Yes, this definitely matters, but you need to make it easier for Google crawlers to crawl and index your content. For that, you need to follow some SEO conventions when writing and formatting your content.

What can you do?

Use an appropriate title that truly represents what you are writing. Preferably use your keywords or an SEO tool when formulating your title.

Use headings and subheadings like <h1>, <h2> and <h3>. Use <h1> just once for the main heading of your blog post or web page. You can use the subheading tags for multiple headings to make your content scannable.

Sometimes Google crawlers don’t go through your entire blog post or web page. They just skim through the headings and subheadings and bulleted points. Make sure you have useful information in these tags.

Why pay close attention to search engine optimization when writing content?

As I mentioned, it will make it easier for crawlers to make sense of your content and increase your chances of appearing in search results.

However low your rankings are, sooner or later people are going to find your content and start interacting with it. After that, your further rankings depend on how people interact with your content. This is where writing content according to search engine optimization standards is going to help you.

Find credible data and cite authoritative sources

Content writers, especially thought leaders, do lots of research when writing content. They find research data, quote it, and then link to the original sources. This renders credibility to their writing. It’s easier to trust numbers. Find information from multiple sources so that your readers don’t have to do that, and they can find all the credible information at the single source.

If you are an organization, you should also encourage your writers to improve their authoritativeness. You can invite well known authors to write for your blog. Write and publish lots of long form content because it is considered more authoritative and informative compared to thin content. Researching and citing sources also elevates your E-A-T factor.

SEO content writing: Should you write content for robots or humans?

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SEO content writing – should you write content for robots or humans

SEO content writing – should you write content for robots or humans

This is an age-old question, and it has been asked and answered umpteen times.

It is quite tempting to target search engine robots when writing content because after all we all want to improve search engine rankings. Not just improve, but possibly, get our legs at the first spot.

A FirstPageSage analysis has found that links that rank at the top on Google have an average CTR of 39.6%. Compared to this, the CTR of a link at the fifth position drops to 5.1%.

Therefore, it is tempting that writing for robots takes precedence over writing for humans. The problem is, it can be a pyrrhic victory if all the traffic that you generate does not lead to proportional business.

Whom to write for when you write content for SEO?

This Moz blog post tries to answer that. Although we all know that ultimately it’s the humans find your content on search engines, click the link, and come to your website or blog, to do whatever you want them to do, how to strike a balance?

Is there even a need to strike a balance? Shouldn’t good content automatically rank well on Google?

There are two worlds regarding this: an ideal world and an actual world.

In the ideal world, and even Google sometimes claims that this ideal world exists, you should simply focus on quality and your rankings are taken care of on their own.

It is like the concept of Dharma: you do your deed, and the outcome comes on its own.

But in the real-world things can be quite chaotic. Roughly 70 million new posts are published just on WordPress. Hundreds of billions of web pages are competing on Google to get at the top spot. Therefore, you cannot take the search engine robots for granted no matter how much you simply want to write for your human visitors. You need to strike a balance.

How do you do that?

SEO content writing: how to balance between robots and humans?

I’m writing about my own experience with search engines and humans. When I’m writing SEO content for my clients my first priority are the humans. I believe you write content so that it generates business for you. If it doesn’t generate business for you, no matter how much traffic you get, it is of no use.

On the flipside, no matter how good and relevant your content is if you don’t get targeted search engine traffic, all the effort of writing quality content goes waste.

Here are a few things I follow:

Use the primary search term in the title

This often proves effective. The primary search term must be an expression your visitors are most likely to use when looking for information regarding your topic.

For example, the focus of this blog post would be “Should I write SEO content for robots or humans?” or something like that.

Distribute the primary and secondary keywords throughout the text

But don’t force them. Keep them contextual. These are for search engines as well as human readers.

When you are making a list of primary and secondary keywords make sure your list contains all the words your target audience is likely to use. Be mindful that the way you talk about your business might be totally different from the way people talk about your business.

Use your keywords within the first 100 words.

The reason for this is that the Google crawlers may not crawl your entire web page or blog post. They may leave midway. This way, they will gather all the necessary keywords from the first or the second paragraph.

Use your keywords in headings and subheadings

Just as humans may skim your web page or blog post without reading the fine print, Google crawlers may do the same.

Both robots and humans skim your content by quickly going through headings and subheadings. If you use your target keywords in your headings and subheadings Google crawlers can make out what message you are trying to convey and they will also know what keywords you are using.

Write compelling titles and descriptions

These are meta tag descriptors, and they appear in search results when your link is ranked and displayed. The meta title appears with a hyperlink in the description appears below.

These are your marketing messages. Usually the main headline of your blog post or web page is the same as your meta title but they can also be different. Through your title you are targeting the search engine users.

Even if your link begins to appear in search results, if the title is not inspiring enough, people are not going to click. Use your copywriting skills.

Remember that if your CTR is low the rankings for the same link begin to deteriorate and if your CTR is good, the rankings improve.

Just as your title, your description is important too. Your description gives you further chance to convince search engine users to visit your link and read what you have written.

Use simple language

Writing is a beautiful, expressive medium. As a writer I wouldn’t advise you to curb your writing skills, but remember that people are reading your blog post or web page because they are looking for information and not for great literary work.

Use simple words and expressions. Express just a single idea in a single sentence. Don’t have paragraphs more than two sentences.

You can use a Flesch score analyzer in the beginning if you are not used to writing SEO friendly content. It scores your text between 0 to 100. The higher your score, the easier reading your content is. It can give you statistics such as ease of readability, average sentence length, and average number of syllables per word. According to various scores

  • A score between 90-100 is easier to read for a fifth grader.
  • A score between 60-70 can be easily understood by eighth and ninth graders.
  • Score between 0-30 is easily understood by college students.

Structure your content using the proper HTML tags

Appropriate HTML tags contribute a lot towards your higher search engine rankings.

<h1> is used for the main headline. It should be used just once on a web page or blog post. If you repeat it for every headline, it dilutes its effectiveness.

When you divide your text under various headlines the individual headline can be highlighted using the <h2> tag. They should preferably contain your keywords.

<h3> can be used for smaller subheadings that may come under the bigger headings of <h2> level.

In between you can also have bullet points as the Google algorithm thinks they usually contain useful information.

Be mindful of the length

Longer blog posts and web pages are known to perform better than the smaller ones but the rule is not written in stone.

Even a 300-word blog post can rank well depending on the reputation your domain enjoys and your brand presence on the web.

Nonetheless, write at least 1000 words. This is what I suggest to my clients. Even when I’m writing for my own blog I aim for 1000 words.

I have published more than a thousand posts and I have a decent presence on Google, so sometimes, I can also get away with small blog posts of 300-400 words.

My personal experience is, it is a mixture of frequency, relevancy, and eventually, the number of words you use, that decide your search engine visibility. The more high-quality content you publish (at least one post every day) the faster your content gets indexed by Google.

If you follow these guidelines, you pretty much automatically write for search engine robots as well as humans.