How To Create Engaging and SEO Friendly Content
“Content is the reason search began in the first place.” — Lee Odden
Most websites create content that is only for SEO. Although SEO is crucial, they have to create content for an audience.
SEO-friendly content has attributes of engaging content that the audience wants. But it also is SEO optimized which helps search engines rank your website on Google.
Most people get obsessed with SEO when creating content which decreases their content quality because they are only focused on putting keywords and links, not focus on quality content.
Some people put too much energy into creating quality content. They forget to optimize for SEO because they believe. If we have quality content, Google will rank us on search results. But that’s not entirely true.
You have to find the balance between SEO and creating high-quality content. So you can put your energy into both to provide engaging and SEO-friendly content.
We will discuss some of the best ways to optimize your content for SEO. But at the same time, create content that is engaging for the audience.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that people search on search engines. Putting keywords on your content can increase your chances to rank on those keywords.
It is a crucial first step for optimizing content for SEO. But most people ignore the importance of keyword research. They sometimes think Google will automatically pick the keyword on their website, so they don’t have to put them manually.
But the problem is when Google will pick keywords automatically on your content. It may rank you on a keyword that doesn’t have any traffic. No matter how good your content was. You won’t get any traffic from Google.
So it’s better to manually put your target keyword on your content rather than let Google pick for you.
There are many free and paid keyword research tools that you can use to do keyword research. some of them are
Paid keyword research tools
Free keyword research tools
Short tail and long-tail keywords
A short tail keyword has one or two words in it and, a long-tail keyword has two or more words in it.
You have to focus on targeting the long-tail keyword because they can describe more about what the audience exactly wants.
The short-tail keyword has only one or two words that make it difficult to understand what the audience wants.
For example, if you target the keyword “ T-shirt”. You don’t know what type of t-shirt your audience wants to see or they want to see the new design of the t-shirt Or, they want to buy it.
There are so many questions that are still unanswered by this short-tail keyword.
But if you target a keyword “ black t-shirt for men” You know that a searcher wants a black t-shirt for men, which gives you a clear understanding of what they want. That is why the long tail keyword is crucial for ranking on Google.
Before you start doing keyword research, you have to know what keywords can increase your chance to rank on Google.
Some of the qualities a keyword should have to become your target keyword are.
Note: Target keywords don’t need to have all the qualities. But at least they should have more than one quality.
Low SEO Difficulty
SEO difficulty means how difficult it is to rank on a keyword. If you have a new website, find a keyword with considerably low SEO difficulty as possible.
If more high domain authorities are ranking on a keyword. Then SEO difficulty will be higher.
If the successful and trustable website is ranking on keywords. It is harder for the average website to rank on that keyword.
You have to find a keyword that has 0 to 40 SEO difficulty. When you have enough traffic coming into your website, You can move to a higher SEO difficulty keyword. But high SEO difficulty keywords will require you to put more time and work on your SEO.
High CPC(cost per click)
CPC means how much websites pay per click to rank on a keyword. If the CPC is higher, It indicates that websites are getting more value from this keyword. The higher the CPC, the more valuable the keyword.
Volume
Volume means how much traffic a keyword is getting. The target keyword should have at least 80 or more volume. If a keyword doesn’t get any traffic, then that keyword is not worth targeting.
Relevancy
If your target keyword is not related to the content. It doesn’t make sense to put these keywords on your content.
Choose a keyword that is highly related to the topic you are covering. It makes your keyword look like a natural word to the audience, and search engines can give you a higher ranking for that.
But knowing what keyword to choose is only half the work. Knowing where to put your target keyword is the most important and underrated thing. Some of the places to put your target keyword are.
- Title
- Meta description
- Starting of your content
- Ending of your content
- Middle of your content
- Alt image text
Write Daily
Google doesn’t give ranking only by doing SEO. Instead, it also wants content that is engaging and friendly.
By writing daily, you can improve your content quality. It will make your writing engaging for the audience.
No one is born with perfect writing skills. When you practice something every day, you will master that skill.
Great writers don’t produce engaging content from the start. They start writing every day. At first, their content wasn’t that good. But over time, they got better and better. Write daily to improve your content quality for the audience.
Research about a topic
You have to read other websites’ content on the topic. It can give better ideas about what content has already been created on that topic. So you can make your content unique from other content.
Researching about a topic can give you more knowledge about that topic. Which ultimately helps you create content that is more informative for the audience.
Before creating content, If you research that topic on the internet. Then the audience will more likely trust your content rather than just writing about something without researching that topic.
External and Internal link
External linking is the process of linking to different websites. Internal linking is when you link to different pages on the same website.
Both are crucial, so make sure you put external links on your content as well. But remember that you have to put links that help the audience.
At least put 4 or 6 internal links on your content and 2 to 4 external links. Make sure you don’t overdo it because it can negatively impact your website performance.
Write short paragraphs
In this digital age, people can’t read a 15 line paragraph on their mobile. You have to make your paragraphs like four to six lines, So your audience won’t get overwhelmed with how much they have to read.
Don’t use fancy words, Explain it in simple words
Most people used fancy and technical words. So the audience sees that they know about this topic.
But this is the wrong way to show that you know about the topic. You have to explain complex ideas in simple words, Which can fit into an average person’s mind.
This helps the audience understand your content and, they keep coming back because you explain a difficult concept more simply in your content.
Use images and infographics to explain complex ideas, simply
Humans are visual creatures. Sometimes people don’t understand something through writing.
So make sure you use images and infographics to explain them visually because the audience will understand more clearly through visuals.
Images and infographics also keep your audience engaged with content rather than plain words on your content.
Conclusion
Doing SEO doesn’t mean that you only think about search engines. Instead, you think more about what the audience wants and solve their problem more effectively than any other content. SEO requires a lot of hard work, but it’s all worth it in the long term.
You have to be patient in SEO to get great rewards in the long term. SEO is not something that you do once, It is a never-ending process even big websites that get thousands of traffic still do SEO because they know if they stop, then their traffic can go away.
You have to update your SEO strategy with new search engine updates. So you can keep your website ranked on Google in the long term.
