In the multifaceted world of SEO marketing, there stands one discipline that many digital agencies tend to have a complicated relationship with SEO content writing. As a passionate content writer myself, I’ve witnessed firsthand content being viewed as simultaneously the most essential and inessential aspect of any SEO strategy. Today we will discuss some blog SEO tips to help you structure for both SEO and humans.
What many industry professionals often forget, however, is that high-quality content is the only thing that will be setting your SEO strategy aside from those of your competitors. Whilst SEO is a game of metrics and fighting to be seen, content is all about building trust and making connections with your customer base, ensuring that your increased visibility is being well-utilized.
This doesn’t stop digital marketing professionals from prioritizing search engine optimization over the quality of the content they produce and adopting an ‘ends justify the means’ approach to SEO content writing. The result here is that, more often than not, SEO content tends to be structured more for Google’s crawlers than the humans who actually account for your site’s overall traffic.
The fact of the matter is that anybody who finds themselves prioritizing bots over humans isn’t playing the long game regarding their SEO strategy, and any increase in your rankings is likely to come with an expiration date. With Google updates constantly foiling optimization strategies for agencies across the globe, the best method for ensuring that your SEO stands the test of time is simply to produce content of unwaveringly high quality.
How To Craft Quality Content That Both Bots & Humans Can Appreciate
The Art Of Titling
All SEO content should ideally be prefaced by a relevant and well-written title. You can use targeted keywords in your titles to ensure that they do stay relevant, but be sure to keep these keywords within the first 50 or so characters of that title. A good title generally shouldn’t be over 60 characters anyway. Speaking of keywords, you should also be aware to avoid keyword stuffing if you want your SEO strategy to be straightforward.
If your strategy involves targeting long-tail keywords, otherwise known as common phrases or questions that people type into search engines, you’ll want to ensure that your titles are reflective of instructional or informational content, acting as an answer to these specific questions or informational search queries. For example, if your SEO tools are reflecting that the phrase ‘how to start a fire without matches’ has a higher search volume, then writing a piece of content that directly addresses this question in its title may be more likely to rank than a piece which casually mentions the answer to this question in its body text.
It’s important to note, however, that you should always aim to deliver on the content promised by your title. This means that you can’t name a piece ‘How To Start A Fire Without Matches’, without actually providing a detailed process on how to achieve this goal. Doing this consistently may lead to your domain losing its authority in the eyes of Google.
Sub-Headings And Content Chunking
Digital content should always be easy to navigate, meaning you will absolutely need to refrain from publishing nauseating walls of text, and instead try to incorporate sub-headings into your content (especially so in long-form content), as well as practice content chunking. Chunking essentially refers to segmenting your content into easily digestible paragraphs, or ‘chunks’.
Alongside being a valuable methodology when it comes to structuring SEO content, chunking can hold the additional benefit of ensuring that your content leaves a lasting impression on its readers. It’s been clinically proven that people are more likely to retain written or numerical information if that information is delivered to them in clearly discernible sections.
In a similar fashion, sub-headings will help communicate to your readers exactly what the focus of your content will be. The best sub-headings also tend to incorporate keywords as well, so they can also be a fantastic tool when it comes to making sure your content stays consistently relevant and aligned with your SEO strategy. Just be sure that your sub-headings are formatted as H2 or header texts prior to publishing on your page, as this formatting will help Google bots differentiate between your header and body content.
If you’re looking to create content for a new website, penning a few preliminary pieces for your site all at once may be a fantastic way of finding the content template that works best for that particular domain and the style of content it requires.
Working With A Common Template For Writing SEO
- A title
- A tagline
- Three sub-headings with their own paragraphs
- A conclusion
- End it all with a call to action
Working with a template is going to make crafting your on-page content a lot easier and a lot more methodical, if you are an SEO professional who’s looking to dabble with content production yourself.
Always Aim To Fulfill The Search Intent
As we mentioned in the introduction of this post, providing your audience with value in SEO content should be considered a standard priority within the practice of SEO as a whole. Your end goal isn’t to rank highly, but to actually be the top result that any user wants to see.
In other words, you don’t just want to be the first link that they click, but also the last link they click too! Your content should ideally be designed to be the one source of information that your customer will need to fulfill both their original search query as well as any actions (i.e. making a purchase) that may be inspired by them receiving the information they need. This is the epitome of fulfilling the search intent of your target audience.
And that’s the fantastic part of crafting high-quality on-page content. If your content does rank highly and fulfills the needs of your user, then you can potentially utilize this high-ranking web page you’ve created as a landing page for future digital marketing campaigns or for your link-building efforts.
Creating enough high-quality inbound links sets up a positive feedback cycle where site visitors enter from other high-ranking domains to your own domain, prompting Google to see your site as an increasingly reputable authority in your industry.
Finally
It’s also worth noting that SEO content doesn’t just refer to on-site blog posts and long-form content. It also includes all of your web copy as well. That’s precisely why our SEO and content teams here at Digital Next tend to collaborate often on all the work that we produce for our diverse array of clients.
We believe in the power of high-quality SEO content, and strive to ensure that all of your site’s on-page content and outreach content should be held to consistently high standards. If you’d like to see what our writers and SEO specialists can do for you, then leave us an inquiry or fill out the form below to speak with an expert at Matchbox Design Group. We are located in St. Louis, MO and we offer many blog SEO tips.
Contact Matchbox Design Group Today!
If your website could use a refresh or you’re looking to drive more traffic to your site, fill out the form below and we’ll contact you to learn more about your digital needs.
