Write SEO content that will improve your Google rankings

If you want to write content that will get top rankings on Google, you need not only top quality, but also a search engine oriented approach. In this article, you will learn the best tools and techniques for writing SEO content that gets top rankings on Google.

The interest of SEO content for the user

In Google's YouTube series called  » SEO Mythbusting 101 », Martin Splitt (Web developer at Google) listed the key factors to achieve a good ranking on Google. One of the most important points was to provide useful content to users. And that’s exactly what writing good SEO content is about. The technical side of SEO is just another way, besides unique “useful content,” to measure and improve user experience.

Ranking factors are a basic way for Google to determine whether people like what Google is showing them. For example, the company uses bounce rate to measure the time a user spends on a page. If users immediately close a page, Google assumes that the content on that page is not very interesting and ranks it in a lower category. This is why you need to focus on creating content that is well referenced by Google and who matches user search intent.

What are the different types of SEO content?

To create useful SEO content, it is essential to take into account the type of search which you are trying to answer. The role your content plays in your own digital marketing strategy is also very important. You will find the main types of SEO content in the following sections.

SEO content for product pages

The first SEO content to focus on is pages describing the products and services offered. This type of content is often the easiest to write, very focused on keywords and generally covers these basic topics:

• What products or services do you offer?
• How and where to get them?
• What are the characteristics of your products/services?

Industry-specific SEO content

After the product pages, it is interesting to work on content that covers important terms for the sector in connection with the products and services offered. These pages are generally informative and help consumers answer questions they might have when choosing a particular service or product.

For example, someone who is considering learning to play the guitar might wonder whether it is best to start with an acoustic or electric guitar. A website for an e-commerce guitar store can answer this question in an article, and users who find your site on Google because of this question would have this in mind when making their decision.

SEO content for pages with related interests

The third type of potential content is much broader. This is SEO content for all the themes or interests that potential customers have and which are likely to interest them in your products or services. For example, the website of a hotel in the state capital of Hawaii may have a page that informs tourists about Honolulu's most popular attractions.

Keyword research is the cornerstone of good SEO content. The choice of keywords depends on the objective of your content.

SEO keyword research for product pages

If you're writing content for product pages of an e-commerce website, your keyword research will largely consist of find relevant ones for direct purchase. These are the phrases customers use to find and purchase your products and services.

Tools like Keyword Tool help you put yourself in your customers' shoes. These applications allow you to identify most promising search terms that match your products and services. They should then be narrowed down to a set of keywords that best matches user intent.

The biggest challenge is finding the right balance between search volume (how many people search for the term) and the competitiveness of a term (the number of other websites that optimize their content for the same term). Just because a term has high search volume doesn't necessarily mean you should choose it as the term for your SEO content. Indeed, terms with high competition are more difficult to optimize. Content that ranks on the first page with a less popular term may attract more website traffic than lower-ranked content that uses a term with higher search volume.

To find the best keywords for your products, you need to look at the terms that customers are using to search for your products. For example, the keywords “florist”, “flower shop”, “flower delivery service” have different values ​​​​in terms of search volume and competition. Additionally, you can add adjectives to your keywords to create long tail keywords such as “brown leather designer handbag” or “cheap handbag with shoulder strap”. This will allow you to limit your competition and better target your audience.

Keyword research for other pages

If you are doing keyword research for informative termsyour search should focus on terms that best match user intent. To do this, you must reproduce the questions or expressions that your customers enter into Google. Let's take an example:

For an article about learning acoustic versus electric guitar, you will potentially generate more traffic with « electric or acoustic guitar for beginners » than with « is it easier to learn to play acoustic or electric guitar » due to the higher search volume.

Ask yourself the following questions to determine the appropriate keywords :

1. Does the term have a reasonable search volume ?
2. Does the term correspond to theintention visitors?
3. Can I create a original and interesting content with this term?
4. Does the keyword have a link with the services and products I offer?

What is the optimal length of SEO text?

When it comes to SEO content, one of the most asked questions is how long it should be. Two factors in particular come into play: the objective of your content and the competition. On your product pages, you can include keywords in the title and description text of your products and list all their unique selling points (USP). If these pages offer direct sales, you must ensure that their content is always attractive and that he does not distract from the sales objective of the page. The use of a call to action (CTA) attractive helps increase the chances of conversion.

SEO content that answers questions or explains concepts will logically be quite long. This type of content matters generally 600 to 1,000 wordsbut can also reach 2,000 words depending on the subject covered. If you notice that your well-ranked competitors' articles are particularly long, it is wise to take this into account when developing your texts. However, the priority remains to produce interesting and useful content.

An important factor for good SEO content is a clear structure, including appropriate and relevant titles. The main title of your article (known as the H1) is probably the most important structural element for keyword placement. Your main keywords should be included in the H1. At the same time, it should be used as a hook for invite visitors to continue reading. The main title plays an important role in attracting clicks to the article. It is often the first thing a user reads from an article when it is linked to other pages and shared on social networks.

For the other sections of your article, you should choose secondary headings (H2, H3, H4) which, ideally, also contain relevant keywords. In general, your content should be structured like an inverted pyramid, with the most important keywords and information at the top and less background information at the bottom.

What is good keyword density?

When you insert keywords into your texts, you should always ensure that they do not harm the overall readability of the text. If you mention a keyword more than once in your text, it only helps ranking to a certain extent: if their use negatively influences the overall readability of a text, it is also likely that it will not rank very well. In this case we are talking about keyword stuffing (keyword stuffing).

Google considers SEO content to consist of introduce keywords naturally into your content. Content that seems heavy or artificial is automatically ranked poorly. The time you spend writing interesting content for potential visitors is therefore well spent, not only for your readers, but also for Google! Don't forget to include keywords in your meta title and meta description, as well as your image descriptions.