Writing for SEO While Keeping It Fresh
As long as the SEO landscape continues to grow and change, optimizing content will remain necessary. However, that doesn’t mean that content has to be bland or stuffed with obvious filler that bores readers. There are many ways to make your content appealing and engaging while adhering to universal SEO requirements.
Here are some steps to take to improve your website’s search engine optimization with well-written and widely promoted content.
Keep Content Concise and Readable
Many marketing agencies might be inclined to write content merely for SEO purposes, updating their blog with new posts that offer nothing new, with mountains of words and too much redundancy. Sometimes articles might even try to optimize for keywords that don’t naturally appear within the text. Apart from minimal assistance in the SEO department, there are other negatives that can result from this type of poorly constructed content.
Readers who come across content that is dull, repetitive, and obviously optimized are likely to stop reading and look elsewhere for information. To avoid this, marketing agencies should do what they can to keep their content as engaging and helpful as possible.
Optimizing for keywords is fine, and still encouraged, but cramming them in each paragraph to the point where it’s unnatural will only serve to hurt your website. Including a few instances throughout the content – in the body along with headers and subheaders – is enough to help boost your content in Google search results.
Trying to reach a minimum word count often results in redundant text if there isn’t enough information meet it, with the same points repeated through vaguely different phrasing. Readers are likely to catch on to this practice, and may grow tired of reading essentially the same thing multiple times within the same piece. If you can find more unique information that’s applicable to a web page, blog post, or article, adding it can strengthen your post. On the other hand, if you can’t offer enough details to meet that minimum word count, quality is better than quantity in this case. There are many other ways to increase your content’s SEO value.
Make Sure Content Remains Relevant
Feeding people outdated information is one way to lose readers. Marketing agencies can easily avoid this by staying updated in the industry by following other blogs, social media pages, marketing events, and many other informative outlets. If you’re looking for fresh ideas to include in a blog post or other type of content piece, take a look at competitors and other industry leaders for relevant topics that are likely to attract a readership. In some instances, you might find that you have insight that others don’t, which you can add to and share through new content covering the topic.
Other content ideas apart from informational pieces might include interviews with industry experts, infographics, case studies, surveys, and more. Each of these can offer a wide variety of content that educates and engages readers, encouraging more people to follow you.
Linking to relevant content within your own is also a good practice. There are several benefits to including hyperlinks to other high-quality content that can provide readers with additional info. The first is the fact that Google favors content that links to other high-quality content through relevant anchor text, while another potential benefit is the attention you may receive for linking. If an authoritative source happens to notice that you shared their content, they may feel generous and share your content through their social media outlets or other avenues. Subsequently, your agency will appear more relevant and worthy of following.
Expose Your Content in the Right Places
Content that simply sits on your website after you post it won’t get the kind of attention you want. While optimized content will benefit from higher SEO value, you can further improve your content’s keyword rankings in search engines by promoting content. The more Google finds your content appearing on reputable sites and social media, the more likely your content is to wind up on the first page of results for relevant keywords.
Sharing content also helps reduce the reliance on search engine optimization for exposure alone. If you share content on your social media outlets and others see and share it, word of mouth can bring a large amount of traffic to your content.
Place Equal Emphasis on Audience and SEO
Search engine optimization is a vital aspect of your content and a huge reason for publishing new blog posts and articles on a regular basis, but you should also create it with your audience in mind. In short, write for people, not for Google. People are the ones who actually read, share, and become leads for businesses, while Google simply helps you reach them.
When developing content for your website or elsewhere, think first about your target audience when planning and writing it. Then you can focus on implementing appropriate keywords, interlinking, and other aspects that go into your SEO strategy. With this in mind, you’ll be able to keep readers engaged, inform them, and get them to look to you as an authority worthy of their attention and, even more importantly, their business.
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By: ParadigmNext https://paradigmnext.com
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+ParadigmNextChicago
ParadigmNEXT, Inc. is a new kind of marketing agency that integrates the two sides of the brain: strategic communications and business know-how. Connecting creativity with expertise in multiple industries, we are able to deliver measurable improvements and maximum impact.