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How do I write search engine friendly content for my clients?

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How to write SEO-friendly content

How to write SEO-friendly content.

Sometimes it becomes difficult to come up with interesting content to write about on a regular basis on my blog. I was answering to a Quora question and I thought, answers to some of my Quora questions can also be used to write blog posts.

I was providing an answer the following question: How do I write content that is SEO friendly?

Steps to writing SEO-friendly content:

  1. Include the main keywords in the title.
  2. Include the keywords in the meta description.
  3. Mention the keywords within the first 100 words of your write up.
  4. Focus on writing answers to specific queries.
  5. Write for search intent.
  6. Write shorter sentences.
  7. Use headings and subheadings.
  8. Focus on longtail keywords.
  9. Link to other blog posts and web pages from your current blog post or web page.
  10. Write short paragraphs.
  11. Summarize using bulleted points.

To be frank, I have written on the topic multiple times on my blog, but I can always add new things. I’m constantly learning new ways to write search engine friendly content. In this post I’m going to expand what I wrote on Quora.

Should you go overboard with writing SEO-friendly content?

The problem with writing SEO-friendly content is that sometimes people go overboard and ignore the bigger picture. Your content succeeds not because it gets you higher search engine rankings, it succeeds because it provides relevant information that can be quickly understood.

For many website owners and bloggers it’s SEO that’s most important. This does you more harm than good.

Even if right now you have better search engine rankings because you think you have cracked the search engine algorithm, if you’re not satisfying your visitors, the rankings go down.

This is because your rankings depend a lot on your bounce rate. If people find your link, come to your website, and then leave immediately because they don’t find the information they are looking for, Google and other search engines know that.

So, even in the beginning if you can improve your rankings because of “strategically” using your keywords, ultimately, it all boils down to how people interact with your content.

What exactly is SEO-friendly content writing?

I don’t believe that SEO-friendly content writing means content writing that improves your search engine rankings. Your search engine rankings depend on 200+ factors.

So, solely focusing on writing SEO-friendly content doesn’t help you much.

What is SEO-friendly content writing?

It is writing in a manner that it makes it easier for search engine crawlers to crawl your main content. Once the main content is crawled, the search engine algorithms should be able to make sense of your content. They should be able to make out what you are communicating. This, is SEO-friendly content writing.

Do I keep SEO in mind when writing content for my clients?

I definitely do.

Valuable content is necessary, but how I present that valuable content can have an impact on search engine rankings. Here are a few things I do when writing SEO content for my clients:

Include the main keyword in the title

There is a difference between the title and the headline. The title here means the string of text that appears in in the title bar of your browser window when you visit a website. This is the title:

Example of the website title containing keywords

Example of the website title containing keywords

By main keyword I don’t mean a single word. Target for a phrase of around 3-4 words. Nobody searches for a single word. People either ask a question or search for a phrase that contains a few words.

Many content marketing experts may tell you that it doesn’t really matter if you use your main keyword in your title, but it does. Whether the Google algorithm takes the keyword in the title into consideration are not, is another matter.

There is a logical reason why you must have your main keyword in your title.

Research has revealed that when a part of the search query that a user has just used appears as a hyperlink in the search results, the user is more likely to click the link.

This sends more people to your website or that particular link.

And if your link is relevant, this signals to Google that the rankings of this particular link should be raised.

Include the keywords in the meta description

I know, sometimes meta description text may not be a part of content writing, but many times my clients ask me to write the meta description too.

When you include your primary and secondary keywords in the meta description, Google highlights them.

Example of the meta description containing keywords

Example of the meta description containing keywords.

Again, this prompts more people to click your link and this in turn improves your bounce rate, which in turn, improves your SEO.

Mention the keywords within the first 100 words

I have arrived at this logic by trial and error.

When the search engine crawler comes to your website it may not get a chance to crawl your entire piece of content. Hence, if it does not encounter your main keywords, it may not associate the keywords with the body text.

Therefore, it is important that you mention your primary and secondary keywords within the first 100 words of your web page or blog post text.

Create a context though. Don’t just randomly use the words

Focus on writing answers to specific queries

Google loves the question-answer format. People ask questions and Google find the answers.

For example, you may have come to this post if you searched for “How do I write search engine friendly content?”

I’m not saying that you should always write in the format of question-answer, but this sort of content fares better than the usual content.

Write for search intent

If you want to know what is search intent, you may like to read my blog post on the same topic: Why search intent is most important when writing content for your website.

Search intent is a very big factor when Google is evaluating your content. It is the intention with which a search engine user uses a query when searching for something.

You can easily write content targeting specific search intents described in the above link. The more you write content targeting specific search intents, the more SEO-friendly your content is.

Write shorter sentences

Shorter sentences are easier to read. They are also easier for search engine algorithms to process, analyze and evaluate.

Using shorter sentences does not mean that you are a novice writer. In fact, it shows that you are a confident writer. You have got nothing to prove to anyone.

Well, that’s a different issue, but one of the biggest benefits of writing shorter sentences is that you express a single thought in a single sentence, which makes it easier even for your readers to read. It doesn’t tax the brain.

Use headings and subheadings

Screenshot of headings and subheadings

Screenshot of headings and subheadings.

Headings and subheadings amplify your primary and secondary keywords. They also make it easier to organize your content under various sections. Headings and subheadings also make your writing scannable.

Since you use your primary and secondary keywords in your headings and subheadings, the Google algorithm thinks that they must be important to your message.

Focus on longtail keywords

Shorter keywords are quite competitive. For example, if I try to optimize my writing for “content writer” or “content marketing services” it may be difficult for me to rank for these keywords because they are highly competitive, and many bigger companies are already ranking quite high for them.

So, what do I do?

I aim for something like “indisputable benefits of content marketing”. This makes it easier to rank my content.

You will be surprised to know that most of your traffic comes from longtail keywords.

Longtail keywords exist in the form of longer such queries. They are phrases that contain 3-4 words.

Link to other blog posts and web pages from your current blog post or web page

Contextually, though.

Suppose, I want to elaborate on the indisputable benefits of content marketing. If I have already published a blog post on it, I will be creating duplicate content needlessly if I explain the same thing again. Hence, I just say, in case you want to read about the indisputable benefits of content marketing.

This does not just make it easier to refer to your existing content, it also allows the search engine crawlers to come across your old links in case they haven’t yet been crawled.

Write short paragraphs

The logic is the same as writing short sentences. It is easier to read shorter paragraphs. Both for humans and the search engine algorithms.

In fact, there are many renowned content publishers who use just a single sentence in a paragraph, but you can easily use a couple of sentences.

Another benefit of writing shorter paragraphs is that they are easier to read on mobile phones.

Summarize using bulleted lists

Just as headings and subheadings make your content scannable, so do the bulleted lists. People tend to read the bulleted lists more than plain sentences and paragraphs.

In bulleted lists, you don’t even need to write complete sentences. You can sum up your points in monosyllables. In bulleted lists, the information is more important than how you write it.

These are the main points that I wanted to cover. If you take care of them, it can make it easier for you to write SEO-friendly content.

Don’t obsess over SEO as long as you’re delivering meaningful content

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I was just reviewing a web hosting package for someone I know and came across an add-on package that tells you whether you are publishing SEO-friendly content or not.

Do these “SEO packages” really help? What about the SEO add-ons? I recently removed an SEO plug-in from my WordPress setup.

SEO is of two types:

  1. Structural SEO
  2. Content-based SEO

Although there are also on-site and off-site SEO tactics, but in the context of my current blog post, I’m just going to stick to the two above-mentioned SEO types.

What is structural SEO?

This makes sure that the basic structure of your website or web pages/blog posts is SEO-friendly.

To make sense of your web page or your blog post, the search engines like Google take into consideration the keywords within your title. This is debatable, but most of the SEO experts agree that a title containing your keywords is particularly important.

Your title is also important because it appears in search engine listings as a hyperlink.

Screenshot of title and description

Screenshot of title and description.

Multiple studies have revealed that if your title contains the words that have just been used in the search query, the greater number of people click your link.

The same goes with the description. Your keywords or parts of your keywords should appear in your description because then these keywords are highlighted by Google.

Hence, every web page for every blog post must have a clearly defined title and a description.

There is also a “keywords” meta tag but it is no longer relevant.

Another important aspect of structural SEO is, how easy it is for the search engine crawlers to access your main content.

If the crawler has to go through lots of source code (JavaScript, CSS, HTML, add-ons and plug-ins) before accessing your actual content, this negatively affects your search engine rankings. It is because sometimes the crawler leaves your website or a particular web page or blog post without even evaluating your main content because most of its time goes into crossing the jungle of your source code.

How fast your web page or blog post loads also has a direct impact on your overall search engine rankings. Make sure that your web pages and blog posts load fast, preferably within three seconds.

So, these are the components of structural SEO:

  • The title containing the main keyword or the search query.
  • Various combinations of the keyword or the search query in the description.
  • Easy access to the main content for the search engine crawlers.
  • Faster loading blog posts and web pages.

Most of the content management systems these days allow you to preset these structural SEO components. For example, in WordPress you can use Yoast SEO to make sure that whenever you publish a new web page or blog post, you separately enter the title and the description.

Structural SEO is not something that you need to do repeatedly.

What is content-based SEO?

It is mostly writing content that is most suitable to the query being used by your user.

Suppose a user looks for “Which is the best content writing service in India?”

To satisfy this query, you can either list 10-15 content writing services and then choose the best among them, or you can explain why your content writing service is the best in India.

In both the cases, you should remain true to the topic. You must talk about the best content writing service in India. When the user visits this link, he or she should get the answer he or she is looking for.

This doesn’t mean that the answer must be perfect. Maybe the search engine user doesn’t want to find information about your content writing service or why your content writing service is the best. He or she may be just looking for a comparative analysis of multiple content writing services.

Whatever you write, just make sure that you are providing an answer to the question being asked.

The next thing to keep in mind is, mention the main query or the keyword within the first 100 words. There is a logical reason.

The search engine crawler doesn’t always go through your entire text. It may simply go through the first few paragraphs, or even less. Hence it is important that the crawler comes across your main keyword or the main search query string as early as possible.

Other than this, there is no need to obsess about SEO. Focus on the quality, and to an extent the quantity of your content. Publish regularly. Right on relevant topics. It doesn’t matter whether you write 400 words or 4000 words.

What matters is the substance. Don’t necessarily extend the length of your web pages or blog posts simply because research has proven that most of the web pages and blog posts that get featured on the first search result page contain more than 1300 words. It differs from industry to industry.

The Importance Of SEO Copywriting In Search Engine Marketing

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The importance of SEO copywriting in search engine marketing

The importance of SEO copywriting in search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing or SEM involves improving your organic search engine rankings and search engine advertising through PPC campaigns or other engagements.

The importance of SEO copywriting rests in the fact that it improves the quality of your SEM strategy from multiple angles.

Many businesses use a combination of organic SEO and paid search engine placements.

I have observed that if you initially pay Google for placements, even your organic search engine rankings begin to appear faster in the search results.

Hence, it is better that if you have just started publishing quality content and Google hasn’t yet started crawling and indexing your content on regular basis, you can gain quick visibility through running up few PPC campaigns.

How does SEO copywriting help you in SEM? Why is it important?

As mentioned above, how you define search engine marketing depends on your strategy.

You may want to completely depend on improving your organic search engine rankings.

You may not want to spend a lot of money and effort on high quality content, but you quickly want to increase your search engine visibility and you’re ready to pay for every click that you get.

Normally this happens when people are not aware of the benefits of improving their organic search engine rankings through strategic SEO copywriting and instead, they want to go for a quick fix.

Paid advertising is costly. You are paying for every click.

The search engine users know that since you cannot improve your rankings naturally, you are paying to increase your visibility.

Hence, trust factor is lower compared to organic SEO.

I’m not saying that you should refrain from paid search engine marketing altogether.

In fact, you can make strategic use of it.

But you shouldn’t make it into a major search engine marketing strategy.

The ultimate goal is to improve your SEO organically, and this is where SEO copywriting can help you.

Below I am listing a few reasons why SEO copywriting is important for your search engine marketing strategy whether you want to pay for your visibility you want to improve your SEO organically.

SEO copywriting reduces your PPC costs

When you pay Google for your search engine placements, you have a PPC arrangement.

There are also other modes of advertising, but this is the most prevalent one.

You pay for every click.

Your listing appears in the “sponsored” section.

Google declares it openly that you are paying for the placement and your content is not appearing in the search results because of its inherent quality and relevance.

This happens with every search engine. I’m using the name of Google because it is one of the most used search engines in the world with more than 97% market share.

So how does effective SEO copywriting reduce your PPC costs?

In two ways:

  1. Through actual reduction in the amount of money you pay per click.
  2. Through improving your ROI – you generate more business per click.

It is in Google’s interest that more people click your sponsored link because you are paying for every click.

But then, after a while, it will be counter-productive because paying for every click will prove to be so expensive that you may have to deactivate your campaign for a while.

Google doesn’t want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

Hence, it rewards you by reducing your PPC rate if your placement generates more clicks.

The amount of money that you pay is inversely proportional to the number of clicks you can generate.

Through efficient copywriting, you can make more people click your paid placements and as a result, end up paying less to Google.

Suppose, initially you pay $ 0.5 per click for your current placement.

The copy of your ad is really good and it encourages more people to click your advertisement.

After a while, Google begins to charge you $ 0.45 per click for the same position.

This way, Google will go on decreasing your PPC if more people click your ad.

This is one way copywriting brings down your search engine marketing costs if you are paying for your placements.

The other way is by increasing your ROI.

In a PPC campaign, you use aMr landing page.

If you get 100 clicks from Google, you expect to make at least 5 sales.

If your SEO copywriting is not convincing, you may make 2-3 sales per 100 clicks, or even less.

If your copywriting is convincing, you may make even 10 sales per 100 clicks.

Hence, the success of your PPC campaigns depends on how convincing and well written the copy on your landing page is.

SEO copywriting organically improves your rankings for your main keywords

You need to resort to paid advertising on Google because you don’t have good organic search engine rankings for your main keywords.

If your links naturally appear in the SERPs, then there is no need for you to pay for the placements.

Just imagine – if you go for paid placements, you are paying for every click.

Referring to the above example, if you are paying $ 0.5 per click, for 100 clicks, you will be paying $ 50. For 1000 clicks, you will be paying $ 500. And so on.

But what happens if you organically improve your search engine rankings?

People can find your links among the top results and when they click your links, you don’t pay for those clicks.

Hence, whether you get 100 clicks or 10,000 clicks, your cost doesn’t increase.

In fact, it is free traffic.

Can you easily increase your rankings for your primary keywords?

Not if you have great competition.

For example, if I want to improve my search engine rankings for “SEO copywriting services”, it may be very difficult because top content writing and copywriting services are already ranking quite high compared to my website.

So, what do I do?

This brings us to the next topic…

SEO copywriting organically improves your rankings for longtail and related keywords

While you continue with your effort of improving your rankings for primary keywords, you should first focus on improving your rankings for longtail and related keywords.

Hence, instead of aiming for “SEO copywriting services”, I may aim for “The top 10 benefits of SEO copywriting”.

If you’re running a real estate business in Mumbai, instead of trying to just improve your rankings for “real estate business in Mumbai” you can write content around “Why it makes sense to work with a local real estate business in Mumbai”.

Longtail keywords may not directly bring your business, but they increase your visibility and then this visibility brings you business.

If you publish informative content covering your longtail keywords, other websites and blogs have a reason to link to your website or share your link on their social media timelines.

This brings you the much needed visibility.

When people link back to you, it also improve your search engine rankings for your primary keywords.

Effective SEO copywriting brings down your bounce rate

Your bounce rate has a direct impact on your search engine rankings.

Your bounce rate tells Google whether you have valuable content on your website or not.

If people immediately leave your website after finding your content in search results, it tells Google that people are unable to find what they’re looking for, for the keyword they are using and finding your content.

Here is a small video that explains the relationship between your bounce rate and search engine rankings:

Hence, your content begins to lose its current rankings for the keyword.

Again, I will give my own example.

If someone searches for “best SEO copywriting services in my area” and comes to my website and within a few seconds goes back to Google to carry on the same search, Google downgrades my current rankings for the search term “best SEO copywriting services in my area” because it assumes that my website doesn’t have relevant information for the topic.

On the other hand, for the same search term when someone finds my link and goes to my website and spends some time going through my web page and even explores other webpages for a few minutes, it tells Google that my website has relevant information and consequently, it upgrades my rankings for the same search term.

This is how your bounce rate affects your current search engine rankings.

Relevant SEO copywriting gets you more backlinks

Getting authoritative backlinks is an inalienable part of your SEM.

What motivates people to link to your content?

Relevance. Value. Engagement. Topicality. Authority.

All these attributes can be incorporated through relevant SEO copywriting practices.

Concluding remarks

SEO copywriting is a big part of your search engine marketing strategy.

It renders a direction to your SEM.

It brings down your costs.

It gives you lasting search engine visibility once you have been able to convince Google that your content is relevant for particular keywords and search terms.

Relationship between quality content writing, bounce rate and SEO

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Relationship between quality content writing bounce rate and SEO

Relationship between quality content writing, bounce rate and SEO.

While writing web pages and blog posts I have multiple times explained this concept – the relationship between quality content writing, bounce rate and SEO.

All these are so tightly intertwined when you want to improve your search engine rankings, that any topic on one of them automatically invokes the importance of the others.

Hence, I have created a small video to explain the concept in an animated form.

Let me first quickly explain the three concepts.

Quality content writing

When you are publishing content on your website or blog, don’t publish it just for the heck of it – just to improve your search engine rankings.

I won’t pretend.

Everyone wants to improve his or her search engine rankings because unless you get targeted traffic, nothing much is happening.

After all, there is a reason why the SEO market is worth more than $ 80 billion.

Even when I’m publishing content on my blog or updating my website, my aim is to improve my SEO.

So, yes, when you are writing content and publishing it, you’re mostly doing it for your search engine rankings.

But if your sole purposes to somehow show up on the SERPs, you will get yourself trapped in a self-defeating loop.

Just as you cannot be famous just for the sake of being famous (unless you are Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian) and you can’t make money just for the sake of making money, you cannot have good search engine rankings for the sake of search engine rankings.

You need to offer something valuable.

Your rankings are the currency and the recognition that you get for providing value, for providing something people are looking for.

This is where quality content writing helps you.

Money is a byproduct of the value or the service you deliver.

Your search engine rankings are the byproduct of the value you deliver through your content.

Search engines like Google want to make sure that the users can find the best possible content for the searches they are carrying on.

Hence, if someone searches for “what is the relationship between quality content writing, bounce rate and SEO”, she finds my link only when Google can make out that I’m actually describing the relationship and not simply stuffing the keywords.

Initially, Google simply crawls, indexes and then uses its own AI and logic to rank my content.

After that, it begins to use human intelligence – it observes how people react to your content once they find it on Google.

Hence, the following topic…

Bounce rate

Bounce rate has different meanings in different contexts, but in terms of SEO, it means how much time a user spends on your particular piece of content after arriving from Google.

For example, if you come to this blog post from Google and leave within a few seconds and go back to Google, this blog post has a higher bounce rate.

It doesn’t offer you what you’re looking for.

Google assumes that this link doesn’t contain valuable information for the search term for which it is showing up on the SERPs.

For every such bounce, Google reduces my rankings for this link.

The converse is also true.

When you come to this blog post from Google and read a big portion of the blog post and even check out other parts of my website, Google assumes that this blog post in particular and my website in general, contain valuable, useful information.

Consequently, Google improves my SEO for this link for the search term that was used.

Hence, to reduce my bounce rate, it is very important that I provide quality content writing for this blog post.

This brings us to…

SEO

Search engine optimization.

It is the dream of every person who has a business on the web to get his or her website featured on the first page of Google, preferably among the top three search results.

People are literally ready to sell their souls for this coveted position.

This is what different SEO experts say you need to improve your search engine rankings organically, naturally and legitimately:

  • High-quality content containing your keywords.
  • Efficient use of meta tags.
  • The number of quality back links (people linking to your website or particular URLs).
  • The quality of interaction people have with your link once they find it through your existing search engine rankings.
  • Social sharing your link enjoys.
  • The age of your domain (the older, the better).
  • The frequency with which you publish fresh content on your website.

Now, except for the age of your domain name, every other aspect that Google uses to improve your SEO is attached or related to quality content writing.

The Google guidelines say that you should regularly publish high-quality content.

Your content must take care of your keywords while it delivers value and engages the readers.

Unless there is something worth linking to, why would people link to your website for individual blog posts and web pages?

Unless there is worth sharing, why would people share your content on their social media timelines?

Hence, Google has connected everything with quality content.

I have explained this whole concept in the above video.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does it mean?

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

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

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

Rankings matter, yes. Keywords also matter.

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

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

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