Top 7 Tips to Writing Good SEO Content

The key to a successful website is content. It can’t just be any old content though. It has to be good quality content. This is the type of content that gets found in the search engines, shared, and keeps visitors on your website. Poor quality content does not do that. In fact, poor quality content may do a lot of harm to your business. Thankfully, producing content which is loved by the masses is not actually all that difficult. If you bear the following tips in mind, you will be well on your way towards giving your site a bit of a content spruce-up. Tip One: Think About What You Want to Write Before you start typing, you need to have a plan. You need to know exactly what you wish to put in the content. How detailed this plan is will be up to you. I suggest that you think about the following at the absolute minimum. The title. – This is actually the most important element of the content that you produce. The title is the element which compels people to read more. Make it eye catching but descriptive. Tell the reader exactly what they should expect if they read your content. Take the title of this article. It tells you exact content that you will read. You will discover seven tips for producing better content. You are reading this because you expect those tips. What is the goal of the article? – The title that you come up with well tell you a little about the overall goal of the article. You wish to go beyond this though. Are you looking to produce an informative post (like this one!), are you looking to promote a product or service that you sell? Are you looking to share a little bit of news? How is this piece of content going to impact your business? For example, an informative post tends to be designed to pull people into the website via the search engines or social media, same with news-related posts. Discussions of particular products or services are designed to make a sale. Who is your target audience? – Who are you writing for? This will dictate your writing style. The way in which you will write for a lawyer will be completely different than, say, if you were expecting a teenager to read your content. What do you wish to cover in the article? – Make a list. It doesn’t have to be detailed. You just need to know what you will be writing about. Think of this as similar to the essay plans you used to produce at school. Tip Two: Keep It Short Long content is not great for websites. People hate to read huge passages of text on a screen. You can get away with it in some cases. It is, however, suggested that you try to keep posts to a maximum of 1,500 words. Any more than that is too long. Most pieces of content should focus on one very specific point. If your article is getting too long, you may wish to break it up into a series of articles. This is a great way to keep people coming back for more and more. Tip Three: Write For Your Audience, Not the Search Engines A common misconception is that you should be writing for the search engines. Don’t do that. It isn’t quality content. When you write for the search engines, the reader of the content will know. The content will be almost ‘robotic’ in nature. Content produced expressly for the search engines is never going to keep visitors on your website for long. This does not mean that you can forget about those keywords, however. A good tip is to write the content in a natural manner. While you are doing so, forget about the keywords. Once you have completed the content and given it a bit of a clean-up, you can then start to incorporate the keywords wherever they will slot naturally. Don’t go overboard. Continue to read your content to make sure that everything sounds as natural as possible. Will this have an impact on your search engine positions? Nope! Well, it will. It will have a positive impact. Search engines are smarter than ever before. In fact, they are getting smarter each and every day. They know how to recognise good content and ignore content which has been produced primarily for the search engines. Good quality content will always be ranked higher in the search engines. Tip Four: Check the Content! Whenever you complete a piece of content, you should give it a proofread instantly. If you spot any glaring errors, then fix them. It is then suggested that you leave the piece of content to sit for a day or two. You can then go back to it with a fresh pair of eyes. At this point, you may start to notice that large pieces of content need to be changed. It is not uncommon for me to go back after a couple of days and completely rewrite everything. I think of new, slightly better, ways of saying something. You have to know when to call it quits, though. You can’t forever be editing a piece of content. If it is error free and reads well, it is probably ready to be published. Finally, run the content through a ‘checker’ such as Grammarly (it is completely free!). It will check for any spelling or grammatical errors. It is not perfect, but it gets the job done. Tip Five: Use Subheadings Good quality content is easy to navigate. Make sure you use subheadings. This will enable the reader to quickly browse to the section which they are most interested in. Even if your content is not ‘browsable’ like this, you should still break it up. Paragraph after paragraph is not pleasant to read. Tip Six: Use Reliable Sources When you are producing your content, try to quote relevant sources. I know it can seem a little bit strange to ‘link’ to other websites from your site, but it works. Firstly, linking to authority websites will tell the reader that you researched the content. This tells them that the content is reliable. In addition to this, the search engines love when content links to reputable sources e.g. Wikipedia and similar sites. You may actually notice a boost in the search engine results because of this. This means more people landing on your site, hopefully buying whatever you have to offer. Tip Seven: Be Original Make sure that your content is original. You should never just ‘rewrite’ articles that you find online, tempting as it may be when you are looking to save time. Instead, give the content your own unique spin. You do not even wish for it to follow the same structure as any other article found online. Perhaps the best way to get around this is to utilise a variety of different sources during the research stages. It is suggested that you try to cover ground that no other article has before. If you are an expert in your niche, this should be relatively simple. Good quality, unique content stands out from the crowd. If you are known for doing things a little bit different from the norm, people will come and visit your website. You may even notice a little boost in the search engine results. Finally, in a bid to stay original you should always run your article through a service like CopyScape (not free, but affordable). This will allow you to see if any elements of your content are the same as others pieces of content found online. If they are, make sure you change them! ‘Stolen’ content is the shortcut to getting your website shooting down the search engine results page. These are just a few tips to get you started in content writing. It is a lot to digest. I know. However, you will get the hang of it. The more you write, the easier it will become. As you start to become better with producing content, try to incorporate new elements into your writing. Throw in an image or video every now and then. It will make your content far more appealing to look at. If you continue to produce high quality content, you will notice a huge boost in the number of people coming to your site. This means more money in your pocket. That is always great, right?

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