SEO Content Writing 101
SEO Content Writing Strategies to Help Create a Strong Page Context
While using your target keywords in content for your web page is extremely important to helping your page rank for those terms, it isn’t the only thing. One of the most important parts of effective content writing for SEO is understanding the number of tools you can employ in order to build up a strong context around your targeted keywords. There are many ways to do this, from formatting and organizational strategies to how you plan for specific anchor text for links. While none of these strategies will make up for poorly written or keyworded content, they can help boost the effectiveness of your keywords as well as quickly and accurately signalling your page’s relevance to a reader.
Use Both Target Keywords and Latent Keywords
It’s important to remember when writing content for SEO purposes that the search engines will be taking into account everything on your page, not just picking out the keywords you’re targeting. While your target keywords should appear in your H1 and H2 headings as well as several times throughout your content, the search engines also want to see that you are actually talking about information pertinent to the keywords you’re attempting to rank for, which is why being mindful of any relevant latent keywords can help you write stronger content. Once you’ve done your keyword research and decided which keywords or keyword phrases you want to target on your page, take a minute to consider what other terms and phrases might be significant as well.
For example, if the keyword you’re targeting is “car electronics,” then in addition to using that phrase 3-4 times in your content, you should also make sure to include others like “car audio,” “car stereo,” “mobile electronics,” and other synonyms and relevant terms. This should happen naturally if you’re writing material that truly is significant for readers searching for your targeted keywords, but making a conscious effort to compile a list of these terms and use them throughout your page will ensure that your content strongly supports your keywords.
Anchor Text Can Help to Point Out Key Terms
Another great way of signaling to both the search engines and your readers that your page contains information relevant to their search is to include variations of your targeted keywords and strong latent keywords in the anchor text for your links. Not only does the blue, underlined text that signifies a link stand out more on the page—drawing your readers’ attention to key terms—but links to other relevant pages and content embedded in appropriately keyworded anchor text also show that your content is providing useful information for people searching for those terms.
Using the “car electronics” keyword example above, you may write an opening sentence like “For a great selection of car electronics online, visit _____,” with “car electronics online” linking to your main selection or catalogue page. Later in your content, you may also include the sentence “A reliable car GPS navigation system is essential for business trips or long road trips with your family,” with “car GPS navigation system” linking to the page with all of your navigation receivers. Here you could even link to an external page with relevant information regarding in-car GPS systems.
The point is that by doing this you draw your readers’ eyes instantly to two important phrases for the search terms you’re targeting—car electronics and car GPS navigation system—while at the same time linking to relevant pages. This, in turn, helps not only to get your readers to what they’re searching for but also to show the search engines that your page is in fact providing content significant to people searching for “car electronics.” A page like this is obviously much more relevant at a glance than one that simply uses the phrase “car electronics” multiple times in the first few paragraphs and then never mentions anything related to car electronics again, or one where all the links use generic anchor text like “click here.”
Keeping this in mind before you start to write will give you occasion to include useful phrases for anchor text during the writing process, as opposed to having to go back through your content afterward and either revise in order to include these phrases or force them into your existing content in a way that’s awkward and unnatural. This will also help ensure that your links seem to occur organically in your content, which makes them seem more relevant and legitimate. A reader is more likely to click on a link that seems to offer genuinely useful information than one that seems like it was shoehorned in just to get hits.
Use Visual Cues to Draw Attention to Important Information
Much in the same way that blue, underlined text signifying a link draws readers’ attention to it instantly, formatting techniques can be used to highlight other important information on your page. One effective way of drawing both your readers’ and the search engines’ attention to important keywords is by bolding or italicizing them throughout your content. Another technique is to organize pertinent information into bulleted lists. This has the dual function of drawing attention to this information as well as organizing it in a way that is easy for a reader to scan and digest. By using strategies like this to make important keywords and terms stand out, you make it easy for your readers to see at a glance if your page contains the information they’re looking for.
The search engines know that readers skim content online and that they aren’t likely to carefully read every single word on your page. That’s why using a number of the strategies discussed above to visually point out the important information on your page can help boost your rankings—it helps you highlight the value of your page and who it may be beneficial to. Of course, you can’t do this if you don’t have strong, well-written content in the first place, and no amount of strategy or technique can trick your readers into thinking your content is valuable when it’s not. However, using tools like this can help make your content more accessible to those who it is valuable for, and keeping these things in mind before and during the writing process will help you create stronger all-around content for your page. Contact Launch Digital Marketing in Chicago for more information on how to write more effective content for your web page.