Tag Archives: seo content

Content is king when it comes to improving your search engine rankings

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You cannot improve your search engine rankings without your content so it’s not just in the field of conversion where your content rules the roost, it is also your SEO. So if you want to improve your SEO, the primary focus should be your content.

This infographics at Brafton.com uses the recent Content Marketing Institute study to graphically explain that when it comes to integrating SEO with content marketing, 88% B2B businesses put more stress to it. 82% businesses have, one way or another, acquired new customers through their blogs and 67% have been able to generate more leads. Here are some illuminating content marketing statistics I have written about in one of my previous blog posts.

Statistically, 347 blog posts are published every minute every day and 2 million blogs are written every 24 hours but this is not the reason why content becomes the king of the Kingdom of SEO. It is because high-quality content, content that is engaging and valuable, enjoys higher search engine rankings compared to use less content created just to boost SEO.

Can you optimize your web content writing for search engines as well as users?

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Is it possible to optimize your web content for search engines and at the same time for human users? This is a perennial question for people constantly worrying about how to write web content. No matter how much you deny, you need content from both ends of the spectrum – you want your content to convert and you also want your content to rank well on search engine result pages.

This blog post by Umair Qureshi rightly says that both can be achieved, and I personally believe it is not even a big deal as long as you stick to your topic. Nonetheless, he has included in the blog post a nice template that you can use in order to optimize your web content both for search engines as well as human visitors or users. This is how the template looks:

Template for creating search engine optimized as well as user-friendly web content

In the image he has taken an example of chocolate donuts from Mary’s bakery. He has shown how to create your headline and where strategically to use the key phrase “chocolate donuts” and its various combinations at strategic locations.

This is a standard procedure to write an optimized webpage without spamming the hell out of your content. The basic idea is to use your keyword or expression in such a manner that it is fairly represented from within your content without over-using it. You can also use its various versions. For example, if I want to optimize this particular blog post for “web content optimization” I can use various combinations such as the whole thing, then “web content”, then “content optimization” and then somewhere “web”, somewhere “content” and somewhere “optimization”. The above-mentioned template is a nice starting point. You can create your own by referring to this one.

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Does keyword-rich content help you improve your SEO?

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“SEO content” is still a buzzword among content writers and content creators. What does it exactly mean? Ideally it means your content should help you improve your search engine rankings so you should write it in a manner that the search engines like Google find it easier to index and rank for your chosen keywords. Nothing wrong in that, but some people take it way too seriously. But it’s not their fault, many of the tactics being considered obsolete these days definitely worked a year or so ago. For instance, using your target keywords in your content was a definite yes-yes while writing webpages, blog posts and articles. Plugins and add-ons like Scribe SEO still recommend placing a certain number of your relevant keywords at strategic places. For instance, if I’m writing about my professional content writing services then this expression plus its various combinations must appear on the link and this is logical. Otherwise how would you tell the search engine to even consider your webpage for these terms?

Google still uses keywords these days but more than focusing on the exact keywords its algorithm uses something called Latent Semantic Indexing. The expression sounds ominous, but what it means is, if I write something on the topic of business content writing services and if it ranks well, it should also automatically rank well for professional content writing services because the algorithm may find identical patterns between the two words: professional and business. It is the way we use language in the normal world. There are many words who may be similar or identical and more or less convey the same meaning. The method is used to extract the meaning of the text you have written rather than simply analysing the words you have used.

So what about using keywords in your title, headlines, bulleted lists and other places? There is no reason why you shouldn’t use them, especially in titles and headlines, but there should be no compulsion also. Don’t use them unnecessarily. Create your title in such a manner that it conveys the core message of your content and prompts people to come to your website but you don’t need to stuff it with your keywords.

SEO content in the new context is more about creating meaningful, useful content. In fact I have written this multiple times on my website as well as my blog that when you are creating good, useful content you are actually creating SEO content. Focus on the quality, stick to a routine, use the language your target audience uses and make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content and most of your SEO job is done.

Are you still creating content for machines

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Content for Machines

Creating content for machines shouldn’t be taken literally – it simply means that creating content to improve your search engine rankings rather than making it more effective for your human readers. People often have this misconception that if they create content that caters to the whims and fancies of search engine algorithms they will be able to get better search engine rankings for their blog posts, articles and hopefully, business websites.

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. Search engine ranking algorithms are not paragons of accuracy. You still get search results that make no sense but enjoy higher listings nonetheless. The world can be unfair that way and you can do nothing about it. This is a reason why you still find people creating content that caters more to the machines and less to the humans. Does this sort of content help you get more business?

Depends on your targeting. If your business involves generating ad revenue then yes, sometimes this trick helps, but not always. If your business involves direct sales or promoting affiliate programs, then it doesn’t help much because your visitors don’t feel convinced, because the language is not convincing.

So what do you do? Do you create a mix of content – sometimes for the machines and sometimes for the humans? I’m neither against nor for. But being a content writer I am more in favor of writing and publishing content for your target audience – your prospective customers and clients. When it comes to your search engine rankings you cannot depend on one single factor. Even if you have exceptional content most of your target audience won’t be able to find it unless you have got yourself a way to spread it across the Internet or at least across the places where your target audience can be found. Ideally your search engine rankings depend on:

  • The quality, quantity and size of your content
  • The number of high quality incoming links
  • Your authority as an author/expert
  • Your level of engagement on social networking websites, especially on Google Plus if you want to target Google
  • The age of your website

All these aspects have one underlying common factor – your content.

You will need some time to create a vibrant space for yourself on websites like Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter, and you can create this space by sharing highly useful and interesting content from all over the web but when it comes to getting targeted traffic to your own content, you have to build it brick by brick, and these bricks are made of your individual words.

Stop worrying about creating content for machines because even machines want content that is good for humans. They are far from it but most of the mainstream search engines are moving towards that direction. Sooner or later they will start ranking content that actually deserves to be ranked. Then all the manipulations that you have incorporated in order to make the machines happy will go down the drain and your time will be wasted. So it is better to think long-term, create high-quality human-friendly content so that by the time search engines learn to rank high quality content, you already have that content. This will be a massive advantage.

With no keywords [100% (Not Provided)], is SEO content history?

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Keyword data not provided

First of all, let me make it clear, there is no such thing as “SEO content”. You should always write content that is useful to your visitors, that provides the right information to your prospective customers and clients, and that is easily accessible. Stick to these guidelines and you have got “SEO content” on your website. Nonetheless, when you create content, you keep your primary keywords in mind while preparing the text. This is for obvious reasons. Up till now, the convention has been that if people are using certain words to find you, shouldn’t you be using those words? Suppose people are looking for content writing services, shouldn’t I use these three words as often as possible, while not overdoing it?

Recently Google has started encrypting every search – it means the various analytics programs that told you what keywords people are using in order to come to your website will no longer be able to do that. Here is an interesting take on this latest development:

Why does Google hide this valuable information in this awesome free tool called Google Analytics that they recommend you sign up for? Why do you think? My guess is it’s to encourage paid search engine marketing possibly through their Google AdWords product. I mean why else would you hide this useful information?

Whatever reasons Google has got, it is not going to show you the keywords for which you get traffic, and that’s that. It’s a big company, lots of businesses depend on it, and it can really take decisions that can wipe off smaller businesses just like that. Deal with it.

How do you deal with it? Most of my clients provide me a list of keywords when they want me to prepare content for them. Although more than keywords, what’s important is the message that is delivered through the content, but keywords are a big factor. You can use common sense to prepare content according to your main keywords. But how do you know that you are getting enough traffic for those keywords? If you are trying to optimize your website for multiple keywords, how do you know which keywords are already optimized for and which ones you still need some effort? In the absence of this insight, what sort of content do you create?

Google deciding not to show you keywords doesn’t mean that keywords no longer matter. After all it’s the keywords that people use in order to find the information they need. Although Google is shifting its focus on context rather than the words that you use – you may like to read my previous blog post titled Preparing your website content for Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. Despite that, keywords are going to matter and this is why…

The entire AdWords business depends on keywords because people bid on them. The advertisements on Google’s advertising network appear on the basis of the keywords people use to carry out searches. So do you want to know what keywords drive the most traffic to your website? Sign up for AdWords. Even if you are not interested in PPC advertising, you can use its PPC ad-creation tool to do research on keywords and find out the most relevant and the most widely used keywords in your industry. By spending some money you can also find out for which keywords people click your links the most.

The best thing to do is, stop worrying about keywords and start publishing content people find useful. In fact this can be a blessing in disguise. Almost since the beginning of the Internet businesses all over the world have depended on search engines for traffic. I’m not saying you completely start ignoring the search engines because millions of people use them to find products and services they need, but people are also using other sources like social networking websites, blogs, review websites and informative articles to make up their minds. In fact, trying to find good information on search engines can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. On the other hand if you ask your peers, friends and followers (whether face-to-face or through your social connections on the Internet) you can find exactly the sort of information and advice you need. Start networking with people. Build your clout and authority. Improve your author rank instead of solely focusing on page rank and keyword density. Let people send traffic your way rather than search engines.

If you are not publishing a newsletter, then perhaps this is the right time to start one. Have a signup box somewhere on your website and encourage people to drop in their email ids so that you can keep in touch with them. In fact, the conversion rate from your emails is much higher compared to the traffic that you get from search engines.

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