SEO content on websites is the composition of written text, images, and video that attempts to rank well in search engine results pages. SEO or Search engine-optimized content can be created by a variety of methods including writing blog posts, creating infographics, creating images, or even producing videos for YouTube.
SEO content writing is when an individual or company creates a blog, article, or any other type of content specifically for the purpose of increasing a website’s visibility in search engines. It consists of developing quality articles that are optimized with keywords and keyword phrases which will help increase traffic to your site.
SEO content is important because it impacts how your site appears in the SERPs and how many people will be inclined to click through to your website. It will therefore impact your traffic and engagement rates, which can impact revenue.
SEO content also matches footsteps with the raised standards and new algorithm updates rolled out by Google. Eventually, you have better chances at targeted marketing to improve the user conversion rate.
Let’s dive into some detailed benefits of using SEO content for your business page and how to do it yourself with SEO software.
If your content is getting discovered in Google, it will tell the users that you are an expert in answering their queries and is likely trustable. If the brand discusses all aspects of the topic and provides a detailed guide, then your brand name is more likely to stick with the users. then you can consider them experienced.
People don’t always look for the products directly. Sometimes, they are simply looking for solutions to their problems.
These are some of the search queries people have. Your product could match the answers they seek. However, you will need to incorporate these search queries in the SEO content you are drafting. Knowing the problems, and the type of solutions or content that the user is looking for, you can better optimize the content for higher discovery.
Money is the ultimate objective for any business. The process of getting revenue starts with an interest that turns into a lead which turns into an MQL. If your content is ranking in Google, it will bring consistent organic traffic without you having to spend a dime on ongoing promotions to bring users to your product. SEO content is your weapon to sustainable long-term organic growth.
SEO content types refer to the various content formats that are identified by the search engines to maximize organic traffic on your website. Here, we will talk about the popular formats that most businesses use to attract, nurture and convert their users.
These pages are designed to provide information about the product to the users. This content includes product features, specifications, and answers to the queries raised by potential customers.
The blog post is an entry (article) that you write on a blog. A blog post can contain various forms of content such as text, videos, images, etc. Blog posts are where most companies focus on bringing organic traffic.
Listicles are every marketer’s favorite. You can share tips, methods, techniques, and even places using this format. 10 ways to unclog your bathroom- this is just one such example of how listicles work.
They also happen to be a reader’s favorite. They know what to expect from these articles. They will look at the broad headings and read through the content.
An in-depth and informative piece on a particular topic is called a guide. It offers complete knowledge for the topic to the user. It breaks down every concept, and detail to match the queries posed by the end customer. The idea behind creating a guide is to intrigue the users and generate maximum leads. You will be able to maximize traffic through search engines if you invest quality time and effort into writing a guide.
Ranking through videos, a new-age content format, is gaining popularity. A lot of people are using videos, actual footage, and even animated videos to create awareness for their brand. Videos attract users. It pulls the audience towards your business website.
The combination of information with images is known as infographics. You can easily skim through the content and grasp the information. It is used majorly to grab the user’s attention and engage them on the site for a while.
The images give away most of the content. The text is used to explain the small portions that are important for the end-user. The market is flooded with ready-to-use templates which will help you offer an exclusive infographic for your target audience.
If you want to provide content in a presentation form using images, then slideshows are your best bet. It is a powerhouse of SEO content. You can optimize the images as well as the content.
You can use this format to craft content for a variety of topics. “The 2020 Oscar Winners”, If this is your topic, then slideshows are the best way to showcase it. You can talk about the winners, the category, what they did and other details.
The fancy dictionary that teaches your user about all the terms that are specific to your industry is a great way to attract their attention. You are educating them, and making them aware of this particular niche. It can help them engage, learn, and walk to the nurture stage. Glossaries provide all the information and can be optimized for specific queries too. If you want to boost your visibility for intent-based queries, then add a glossary.
This helps identify all the related websites and resources for a particular topic. You can add the places from where people can avail of a particular product. Say, people want to buy bath toys for their babies. Add a directory of all the websites and offline locations from where they can buy these toys.
The three key elements to creating and ranking content are keyword research, content organization and creation, and content promotion.
This helps optimize the content in sync with the user intent. You know the queries being entered by the users to search for the topics in your niche. It makes looking for keywords efficient and leads to effective optimization.
You should organize the content as proper headers. The transition from one part of the content to another should be smooth. For organizing effectively, you should create comprehensive content briefs.
Distributing the content on appropriate channels will help you increase visibility. Sharing content through social media, content sharing platforms, getting backlinks, and informing authority websites about your content is the crucial part of content promotion.
To create the best SEO content, tons of research is required. Below are the steps on how to create SEO content.
There are many steps involved in creating the most SEO-optimized content for Google. Outranking’s research automation collects all of this information and gives step-by-step instructions on optimizing content for higher reach.
Read the difference about copywriter vs content writer vs SEO writer.
The top three search engine results receive more than 66 percent of all clicks. You should learn keyword analysis best practices if you want to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime chance to finish in the top three places.
Keyword research is the process of compiling a comprehensive list of keywords on which you want to rank. Any SEO digital marketing content strategy should start with keyword analysis if you want to attract organic traffic. Keyword research will help you figure out which keywords matter for your business.
Keyword research has three steps:
If you do your keyword analysis properly, you should have a strong idea of the words users use and the keyword phrases you want your site’s pages to rank for. This outline will be used to help you build content that aligns with what the users need.
People try to go to a particular page, but Instead of typing the URL Into a search engine, they type a word and look for a specific website to find what they need and know already exists on that page. for example, “Drift customer journey”
People looking for answers to specific questions or facts about a specific subject serves as an informational intent. For example, “Growth marketing interview”.
People who are looking to buy things In the near future and doing studies before doing so. For example, “best customer onboarding software”
Transactional intent: Following their commercial motive, people are trying to buy stuff. for example “Buy iPad”
The exact number will depend on your budget and the time frame of the results you want to achieve. For most small businesses, it is recommended to target a small set of seed keyword lists first (each keyword has more than 100 searches or volume per month) and then expand the list eventually. The higher the search volume, the higher the chances of fierce competition to rank. It is good to check keyword difficulty, keyword cost per click and search volume to prioritize which keywords to target.
This Is due to the fact that a keyword phrase containing the same words In a different order, or with more or less “stop words” (a, in, the, about, etc.) counts as one keyword. For example, If one of your keywords Is “growth marketing,” It’s very possible that your site will automatically rank for terms like “marketing growth” “Growth in marketing,” and so on.
Don’t get confused with keyword research tools and SEO content creation tools.
There are many keyword research tools in the market and some big names are Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, and Ubersuggest.
Outranking.io is an SEO content generator and optimization software that uses AI-powered tools to help you create content around your keyword intent and related search terms using SERP analysis, Natural Language Processing (NLP) SEO, and using GPT-3 to write sentences. Outranking.io automates all the research tasks and curates the information that you can use to build SEO outlines, briefs, and content rapidly.
Continue reading this tutorial to learn how to use Outranking’s SEO content software to create the best SEO-optimized content.
Creating SEO-optimized content starts with selecting a focus keyword. Let’s look at what a focus keyword is:
You are going to want to select a keyword to create content based on your niche, the difficulty to rank for the keyword, the number of searches(volume), and most important: Your goal (Awareness or Buying Intent). Before we continue with the tutorial on how to select the focus keyword for your content let’s look at some quick basic concepts.
Throughout this tutorial, we will use the example of a company that sells to growth marketers – iterable.com that has a SaaS platform to optimize the customer journey and they sell to growth marketers.
So in this case, it would make sense to capture the eyes of users looking to do “growth marketing” or improve “customer journey”
Long-tail keywords are keywords with 3 or more words in a search query. For example “Growth Marketing Strategies”. If competitors are taking up all the spots in google for “growth marketing” and it is extremely difficult to rank for this keyword, it would be a good idea to create your content around a long-tail keyword. Chances are you can rank faster, for example, “Growth Marketing Strategies”. See below example taken from Outranking’s “I need Ideas” feature that shows that competitive density for “Growth Marketing” keyword is much higher than “Growth Marketing Strategies” and thus chances you can rank for the later keyword higher and faster are higher than “growth marketing”.
Now let’s say your website has some authority and you want to try and rank for “Growth Marketing” which is almost twice as difficult to rank, the way you need to approach is to create content that is inclusive of all important elements of SERP (Search engines ranking pages). This means creating more sections, targeting more keywords, and making sure all SEO content tags are optimized better than your competition.
These are some very basic ideas, do your keyword research if these ideas are not sufficient.
Meta titles or title tags are one of the most important ranking factors for a web page for SEO. Meta titles can be written in two ways.
When someone searches for a keyword in Google, the title of the listing page comes from the meta title.
Google shows 60-75 characters on the listing page. This means the first 60 characters are the most important, but your title can be longer(you may target additional keywords). Having the right highest frequency keywords in the meta title and keywords that increase click-through rate is extremely important.
Outranking.io gives you step-by-step guidance on how to create your meta title. After a few seconds (can take up to a minute and a half), the SEO Content Editor screen will load with all essential information:
The SEO Content Editor section on the left has <META_TITLE> </META_TITLE>, Place your title in this tag to allow Outranking.io to score it and provide suggestions.
Head over to the Title tab by clicking on Step 1 and click the “See title ideas” button or simply clicking on the title tab. In this tab, you will find the top 20 meta titles of ranking pages(SERP). Use ideas from there and create a unique title.
Click on the copy icon shown in step 1 of the below image. Use the refresh icon to rewrite the existing meta title using AI that fits your use case. You can also combine sentences from multiple sources and use AI to rewrite or fix errors in the sentence by selecting the text you want to rewrite and clicking Rewrite.
This is the most important step. This step will help you target more related searches that can help bring more traffic for other related searches. To create the best title, the title needs to target the focus keyword as well as 1 or 2 other related searches.
Head over to Step 2 to optimize meta title for SEO
Next up is the meta description
A meta description is a short description that summarizes the webpage content in approximately 160 characters. A meta description is also one of the important ranking factors for a web page for SEO. The meta description can be written on web pages is written as below
<meta property=”description”>Your description </meta>
When a user searches in Google, the search engine ranking pages show a short approx 160 character description of the web page. This description often comes from the meta description tag. Although Google has started extracting the most relevant text that summarizes the content of the web page and showing that, it is still a good practice to add meta description for a web page since it gives us an opportunity to tell search engines and users what exactly the page is about. It is also an opportunity to target additional keywords.
The meta description should be approximately 160 -180 characters with focus keywords as well as the highest frequency keywords in the first 160 characters.
The content editor section on the left has <META_DESCRIPTION> </META_DESCRIPTION>, Place meta description in this tag to allow Outranking to score it and provide suggestions.
Click on Step 3: create a meta description. In this section, you will find the important keywords (derived from the highest frequency keywords) to include in the title. When you construct the description, make sure to include almost all of the suggested keywords in this section in the first 160 characters. Your meta description needs to be at least 160 characters.
To see ideas click on the “See meta description ideas” Button or click on the “Meta Description” tab.
Use ideas from here, combine relevant sentences from ideas, and create a unique meta description.
Once you have the right meta description the buttons with relevant keywords will turn green
Click on the copy icon to insert the meta description that fits the content. Use the refresh icon to rewrite the existing meta title using AI. You can also combine sentences from multiple sources and use AI to rewrite or fix errors in the sentence by selecting the text you want to rewrite and clicking Rewrite.
This step will optimize meta title to target more related searches that can help bring more traffic. To create the best meta description, the meta description needs to target the focus keyword as well as 2 or 3 other related searches.
Head over to Step 4 to optimize meta description for SEO
Next up is the Headline
A headline in SEO is often referred to as an SEO H1 tag or heading of the content.
A headline is one of the ranking factors for any content. It tells the users what the content is about and allows you to target additional keywords that can improve search engine discovery.
Click on Step 5 “Create H1 tag”, where you will find the highest frequency keywords that are used in the heading by your competitors. Create a headline with as many keywords as possible from this list. To see all the heads your competition is using just click on “See heading ideas”.
Once you have the headline created, optimize the headline by going to Step 6 “Optimize H1 Tag”. Use some of the related keywords from the list that fits your topic or click “See keyword ideas to use in heading” to see additional keyword ideas. Ideally, you need to target 1 main keyword and at least one long-tail keyword in the heading. Check out this article on how to optimize a blog post title.
Sections, subheadings, or H2 tags are some of the most important elements of SEO content. Sections define the structure of the document and tell Google what the user might find under them. Having a very well-defined document structure also gets more engagement from the users. Sections are also an avenue to target keywords that users might be searching.
When creating sections you should aim for a higher content depth than your competition. So, for example, the average number of sections on the first 20 pages of SERP is 20 and the maximum is 30, you should target at least the average and if possible close to or higher than the maximum sections.
Click step 7 in the instructions panel. Here you will find information about how many sections your competitors are using. Click on “See sections ideas” to see the AI blog outline generator syndicated outlines. You can also click on the sections tab to navigate to outlines.
Sections the main tab is divided into three internal tabs:
Outline: This is AI-generated most relevant outlines to your focus keyword. If you want to see more sections that your competitors are using, you can click on the “Sections from SERP” Tab to see all the sections your competition is using.
You can drag the outlines, click on them and edit, delete them from the video, or rewrite using AI.
Select the ones you want to add to the outline and click the “Add outline to Editor” button.
Once you have shortlisted your outline and inserted it in the SEO Content Editor, it is time to optimize these sections with the right related searches. The goal should be to target at least one unique related search keyword per section. If possible, target more but don’t start keyword stuffing. Everything should read naturally and for humans.
Head over to Step 8 from the instructions list and see some of the keywords you can include in your sections. The ones you are using will show in green and the ones you can use will be in grey. To see the full list of keyword ideas to use click on the “See keyword ideas to use in sections” button or click on the sections tab
Questions people are asking can come from many sources, but the most important part is to answer the questions that are related to your topic. To find relevant questions you can look at “People also ask” data, you can look at competitor’s content and identify questions or you can use social listening signals to extract these questions.
Outranking.io curates this questions research and shows all the questions in one place and helps you optimize your content to have the right questions.
By answering customer questions, your organization will prove that the content itself is the customer experience. By doing it well, you will create a positive experience. You can also explain how your product or service can become part of the solution.
Google also shows a “People also ask” box on most SERP pages. This answer box has the 4-5 most relevant questions your audience is asking related to the focus keyword. Answering other variants of these questions can help address what the audience might be looking for. This can also improve your chances of ranking for a question in this box and potentially bringing additional traffic. See the example below.
We suggest you as many questions as you can without making your content look like an overkill. It is good practice to answer at least 4-6 questions.
Start by expanding Step 10 “Add questions”. Here you will see all the questions your competitors are mentioning in their content as well as questions from Google “People also Ask”. Use some questions from here or if you need more ideas click on the “See ideas for Questions” button or Questions tab.
Select questions that fit your topic from this list and add them to your outline. If you need to rewrite these questions either use the refresh icon or manually change them after adding these questions to the editor.
Make sure to use questions in <Strong>, H2, or H3 tag.
Although not as important as the content itself, URL also plays some role in better ranking. A good URL should be human-readable (so special characters) and should contain your focus keywords as well as some highest frequency keywords your competition is using.
To build a URL using outranking.io, navigate to the instructions tab and click on “Step 11: Create an URL”. In this box, you will find the highest frequency keywords your competition is using. Use all keywords listed here and if possible add more from the full list. You can access the full list by clicking on “See all high-frequency keywords”
If you’ve been haphazardly generating content in the expectation that some of it will rank, now Is the time to buckle down and commit to a more methodical SEO marketing plan for the site.
To describe and optimize your SEO content plan, follow these four steps:
First, determine your SEO content strategy goals as a website or business. Are you looking to drive sales through your website? Do you monetize your site via ads and therefore just want to increase traffic and return readership? Your goals will determine what types of content you should focus on.
Determine your website or business’s priorities first. If you want to increase the website’s sales? Do you use advertisements to monetize the blog and this just want to boost visits and attract readers?
If you want to Increase product revenue, you can choose engaging, insightful product pages that are tailored for both search and conversions. Your secondary emphasis may be on practical blog material that shows where and how to use your products, with specific links to certain products (though It’s better If your blog Isn’t completely self-promotional).
Know your target group – polls and analytical tools will assist you In getting a deeper understanding of your average customer or client. Try designing brand personas, which are fictitious characters that represent the potential web users and consumers. Then Imagine what sorts of material those personas will be Involved In.
If you run a b2b website aimed at c-level executives, for example, you may want to produce high-level white papers that can be downloaded and stored for later reading.
If your business targets teens, you might want to focus on frequent updates with less text and more images and video. You’ll also want to be sure your site is optimized for mobile usage.
You should start creating an editorial schedule until you know who you’re going after and why. An editorial calendar is a timetable that determines when new content will be released and what form of content will be published. This will help you adhere to a daily schedule (creating new content on a regular basis Is particularly Important If you have a blog), as well as keep you from trying at the last minute to come up with an idea for new content.
Here are few pointers for designing and sticking to an editorial calendar:
Finally, keep an eye on the site’s numbers. Analyze the ranking for your focus keywords on a regular basis to see what’s effective and what Isn’t. Page visits, connections, feedback (on blog posts and other forms of content), social shares (Facebook likes, tweets, etc.), and conversion rates are all good Indicators of popularity and Interaction. Two objectives should be the focus of the Investigation:
If you tried to optimize an article for a certain keyword, but it’s getting more traffic for a different variation of that keyword, then go back in and re-optimize it for the new keyword. You can also focus on adding more high-quality backlinks to your content.
Outbound links matter for SEO. They may not increase your visibility but, they will add to your content’s credibility. Here are pro-tips to identifying and including outbound links for your content.
it is important to identify and incorporate technical SEO to enhance page performance and improve its visibility. Here are the most crucial technical SEO elements for on-page and on-site optimization.
Every business should remember that their online customer has a limited attention span and very low patience level. don’t test it with a website that takes time to load. You should ideally keep your page loading speed to within 2 seconds. Here are a few factors that should help increase page loading speed.
Optimized Images: You can use vector images on your page so as to reduce the page weight. However, if you are using proper images, compress and optimize them for better loading
Minimized Files: Optimize and compress the Java, CSS, and HTML files to increase loading speed.
Browser Cache: Leverage the cache for optimized loading speed. Once the cache includes the website or the page, the next time it is loaded, the speed is automatically doubled
Pagespeed optimization tools
There are many pagespeed optimization tools available, some free and some paid. Below are some free pagespeed diagnostic and optimization tools you can run a URL through and quickly get feedback.
To start with, use Google Page Speed Analyzer.
It is important to note that most of your users will open the website on mobile devices. You should script your website to enable mobile-friendly and responsive screens.
Make sure that the images and fonts are optimized for the different devices. As soon as the website is opened on the mobile screen, the web page should be tuned for the device specifics
Coding and CSS files should be defined to meet the mobile standards. If you have achieved a well-defined and responsive site, you will engage your users better and for a longer time.
All of us feel that if we knew the mantra we would all be building our best versions. The truth is that we all know the mantras or, at least the metrics that Google skims through to rank your website. We know the metrics; if we started incorporating them into our everyday selves, then we would be able to optimize successfully.
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors after the content itself in getting the webpage to rank well.
To understand if there is a chance for you to rank for a keyword sometimes it is essential to see what kind of page author and backlines competition webpages have.
How to see the backlink of competing webpages for a focus keyword you are targeting?
In Outranking.io you can navigate to research and find this information. This gives you an idea of the number of backlinks and the quality of backlinks you will need to outrank your competition.
Your work doesn’t end with writing and optimizing the content. You have to track the content performance as well. Here are a few things to consider when measuring and monitoring your content.
Rank tracking is the process of monitoring how your page performs in search engines for a particular keyword or set of keywords. Does it rank on Google’s 1st page or 2nd page? Is it shown in Google featured snippets? In order to get your SEO campaign on track and find room for improvement, you need to regularly check the ranking of search engines for all keywords you target.
Ranking tracking is an important part of SEO. It provides you with information about the site’s position on SERP. Most importantly, keyword ranking is still one of the most important KPIs in SEO.
A rank tracker tool enables you to monitor your rankings and measure your page performance based on the location, time, and search engine.
Use ranking tracking tools and their dashboards to track the effectiveness of SEO content creation efforts. Monitor and obtain historical records of:
Monitor SERP ranking changes for a custom set of target keywords individually. View a snapshot of progress over a period of time.
Track keyword rankings in multiple geographic locations, devices, and languages.
Create the ranking report into a presentable PDF and download or share it.
Track your SERP ranking positions for keywords in segmented groups like Positions #1–3, Positions #4–10, Positions #11–20, and Positions #21–30.