How To Write SEO Optimised Content For Your Website And For Google?

L Vlugt - June 5, 2023July 12, 2023

With roughly 8.5 billion searches per day on Google alone, you can see why SEO is important. SEO is the process of optimising your website to improve the ranking on the search engine result page. Search engines are only as good as the results they show, which is why they only show the most relevant and high quality websites. 

SEO copywriting is the process of writing content whilst targeting the relevant keywords to increase your organic search traffic. As paid advertising costs rise and organic traffic continues to dominate the search engine traffic, strong SEO content has become a valuable advantage.

When writing copy for SEO purposes there are a number of things to consider. For this blog article we have created a checklist on how to create the best Search optimised content.

How do search engines determine what is good content

Search engines discover and rank websites and web pages by crawling and indexing each of them. This is a continuous process of updating the index with new content or changes ensuring that the search results reflect the latest information available on the web.

Search engines discover new and updated content by crawling the internet using so-called crawlers, also referred to as spiders. They continuously move from one webpage to another and add new content to the index. The crawlers analyse the page’s structure, headings, title tags and other elements to understand the content. 

The information is then processed and stored in a huge database, also known as the index. The index holds all the high quality content that has been discovered and collected by the crawlers on the internet. Once a search query has been put through, the search engine will go over the content in the index and rank the web pages based on relevance and quality to the search query. This specific order is what will appear for the user as the search results and determines the ranking. 

By writing your content whilst keeping SEO best practices in mind, you can help give the search engines a better understanding of what your page is about and it will be more likely to rank.

The most common best practices to follow for the best results when writing your SEO content are;

• Target keywords and phrases that match the user’s search terms and search intent. Search engines determine the relevance of your content by looking at the keywords in the text, headers and tags.
• Focus on creating unique, informative and engaging high-quality content.
• Regularly update the content as search engines aim to provide the most relevant and up to date content to its users. 

This will increase the chances of ranking higher whilst resulting in a steady growth of your organic traffic. 

Find the Digital8 Content Writing Tips

1. Match search intent

   As search engines are committed to providing the most relevant content, it is crucial to understand the underlying reasoning behind the user’s query. This will allow you to write content that aligns with the user’s search intent, thereby making your content more likely to appear at the top of the search results. Once you know the search intent, you are able to write content that is relevant, valuable, and aligned with what users are searching for. By meeting user expectations, you can improve your visibility, engagement metrics, and overall SEO performance. The four types of search intent are:

   1. Informational – ‘How to grow tomatoes’
      Informational searches are performed when users have the intent to collect information or learn something specific. They often start with words like ‘How to’, ‘What is’ or ‘Tips for’. Search engines prefer to show informative content such as articles, guides and blog posts that provide answers or explanations.
   2. Navigational – ‘www.tomatogrowers.com’
      Navigational searches happens when users have a specific destination in mind, the queries often include specific URLs or brand names
   3. Commercial – ‘Tomato taste reviews’
      Commercial searches are all about finding information about products or services to compare brands and read reviews. They indicate that users are seeking further information before moving to the purchasing stage.
   4. Transactional – ‘Buy tomatoes’
      Similar to commercial search intent, however, in this case the user has the intention to make the purchase. Often the search query includes words like ‘Buy’ or ‘Order’ and the search results often include product listings and online stores.

2. Perform keyword research

   By researching the keywords you can identify the specific words that are being used in search queries to find certain information, specific products and or services. It is a critical part of writing SEO content as it allows you to optimise your content for your target audience. There are several keyword research tools in the market are useful to use such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz Keyword Explorer. They can provide valuable insights into the search volume, keyword difficulty and related keywords. When determining which keywords to use, it is important to consider search volume as well as keyword difficulty of each keyword. For example, the higher the search volume, the higher the keyword difficulty is and the harder those keywords are to  rank for. Which is why it is recommended to focus on long-tail keywords. These often have lower search volume and keyword difficulty however, they often have a high intent.It is important that your keywords align with the search intent of your target audience to improve your visibility and grow the organic traffic to your website.

3. Create high quality content

   Search engines prefer to rank high-quality, relevant content. Which is why it is important to ensure that you create unique, informative and well structured content that aligns with your target audience’s search intent. High quality content creates a better user experience, establishes authority and attracts backlinks. These all in turn improve the search engines ranking. Investing in high-quality content significantly improves your SEO performance and helps you to achieve long-term success.

4. Use headers strategically
   

   Headers are an easy way to help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy, making your website more easy to crawl. They also improve the readability of your page for your page visitors, thereby improving their user experience. When writing your H1 it is important to ensure that it contains your main keyword and that it describes your page’s subject. The H2 and H3 can be used to organise your content and allow users to scan over the content for the information they are looking for.

5. Optimise the meta description
   

   Meta descriptions are an important part of your SEO strategy as they appear directly  on the search engine results page and describe the content of your webpage. They are the first impression of your page that a user will see on the search engine. Which is important to ensure that it includes your keywords and convinces the searcher that your page contains the information, product or service they are after. We recommend writing a meta description of maximum 120 characters in an active voice with a call to action.

6. Use your visual content

   Not only does visual content allow you to convey complex information in a clear visual way, it also can create valuable backlinks. For example if you create high quality content, it is more likely to be shared, thereby creating valuable backlinks. Backlinks are references to your content from other websites, these references are used to determine the authority of your website. When adding images, it is important to ensure that they are compressed and properly formatted to keep the page load speed optimal. It is important to provide Alt text for each image on your website as it is an alternative for both search engines and people that use screen readers to read the content. Best practice for writing alt text is to keep it less than 125 characters and include any related keywords for further content

7. Strong backlink building strategy

   We already briefly touched upon backlinks and explained that they influence a website’s authority. There are a few factors which determine the quality of the link, such as the popularity of the linking site, the topic relevance and the trust in the domain. Search engines regard high-quality backlinks as votes of confidence for your content and website. This is especially the case when the backlinks are coming from reputable and relevant websites in your industry. There are a few things you can focus on to generate high quality backlinks as part of your link building strategy. For example, develop relationships with influencers in your industry, publish content on third party websites, and write SEO content that attracts organic traffic.

8. Responsive website and content

   With the rise of smartphones and tablets, it is crucial that both your design and content are responsive across all devices. This means that your website and content automatically adjusts its layout and design to fit various screens. As responsive websites lead to better user experience, they are favoured by search engines. This combined with high-quality content significantly improves your SEO and increases the organic traffic.

Now that you know the basics of SEO content writing, you can get started on optimising your own content and start ranking higher on the search engines. Digital8 Brisbane SEO agency team and content writers are always happy to jump in and help you and your business! Feel free to reach out to us for our SEO and Content Writing services, let’s grow your business together.