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Making your content SEO and user friendly is one of the essential things you can do for your website’s overall visibility and success. On the other hand, creating SEO-friendly content often takes time and requires a lot of digital marketing efforts. But, they will eventually pay off — if done correctly. But why is SEO friendly content important?
Most individuals believe that user-friendly content cannot be SEO-optimised. This is a complete misconception since SEO-optimized content, high-quality content effectively increases your possibilities of appearing higher in search engine results in the first place.
What does SEO friendly mean?
SEO-friendly content is written in such a manner that it aids search engines in ranking it highly. While some marketers believe this implies it should be crammed with related keywords, it is intended to assist search engines in locating, comprehending, and linking your content to the subject you are attempting to cover.
Creating optimized content for search engines requires far more than just pouring keywords across your articles, videos, and other kinds of SEO content.
Why is SEO Friendly Content Important?
The majority of CEOs, small company owners, and new webmasters struggle to grasp why you need an SEO-friendly website and why you should make an effort to make it more search engine friendly. There are many reasons for this, but the following are the most important:
Enhance Organic Traffic
Because it is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPS), a search engine-friendly site will bring you more visitors (search engine results pages). When you consider that most individuals who use the search box prefer to pick one of the top five results, you can appreciate the significance of search engine optimization.
It will improve the usability of your website.
A solid search engine optimization strategy is beneficial not just to search engines but also to consumers. Incorporating SEO concepts into your own website may make it simpler to use, improving user experience.
It establishes your brand’s credibility.
When a website (or company) appears on the top page of Google, Bing, or Yahoo, users are more inclined to believe what they are reading. This benefits brand awareness as well as brand trust. Imagine you own a restaurant or dentist, would you prefer to cold call for leads or would you rather your target audience find you naturally through Google?
It is economically viable.
A well-optimised SEO website will generate targeted visitors 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without any need for PPC or other kinds of online marketing. While there is a cost associated with reaching that stage, the long-term advantages are much more significant.
It enables you to comprehend the desires of your most valuable consumers.
As a result, SEO generates high-quality traffic. By observing and analysing the behaviour of those users (such as how people arrive at your website or which internal links they click, how they depart, what they enjoy, and so on), you can get a better understanding of what your consumers want. And you can then tailor your website or goods to meet their requirements.
On mobile, SEO is much more critical.
More consumers and traffic may be obtained by a mobile-friendly website and a high ranking on mobile search than by a non-mobile SEO friendly website. With an increasing number of people looking for information or goods on their mobile devices while moving, it is critical to rank high in search results. Or you risk losing clients to competitors, particularly those shopping for local products or services.
A search engine friendly site has specific elements and qualities that assist search engines in deciphering the website’s purpose, which improves the likelihood of obtaining higher ranks in the SERPS. To write SEO friendly content on your website will allow you to get targeted traffic from Google and other search engines.
How to make your SEO content friendly
Conduct keyword research
Although SEO content is moving toward enabling users to produce thought-leadership and relevant content, keyword research continue to play a significant role. Selecting the appropriate keywords will assist you in dominating the search results and satisfying your target audience. When selecting your target keywords, keep the following in mind:
- The number of times a specific term is searched within a specified period. Using incorrect primary keyword research will result in a waste of time and money.
- Recognise the search intent behind the terms you want to utilise.
- Conduct research to develop competitive SEO content that has previously appeared in the search results.
Emphasise long-tail keywords. They may have a modest search volume, but they provide a good chance of ranking in the SERPs. When people are looking for more detailed information on a subject, they often employ lengthier keyword phrases. The following resources can assist you in doing superior keyword research for your SEO content:
- Use SEO tools
- Using Quora, generate new variants of your goal terms. Individuals use this tool to discuss industry-related issues.
- Use Google’s Related Searches feature to discover more about your consumers and what they are looking for.
- Google Autocomplete will recommend relevant keywords based on actual user searches. Additionally, SE Ranking has a tool – target keyword recommendations – that assists in selecting keywords in how people search.
- Conduct a search on Wikipedia for topic-specific articles. It is the human-created internet resource that people trust, utilise and reference. Additionally, it ranks well in SERPs.
- Visit several industry forums to see which issues and subjects are of interest to your consumers.
- Monitor your primary rivals and determine which keywords are generating a high volume of high-quality traffic.
- Utilise Amazon to generate target keyword suggestions. It owns the organic search results for all transactional terms.
Once you’ve identified the target keywords, ensure that they appear in the appropriate locations.
Make effective use of headlines and sub-headers
Utilising headlines and sub-headers benefits SEO in several ways. To begin, it makes your text skimmable, making it more straightforward for your target audience to read. People are more inclined to share easily readable information.
Likewise, this is true for search engine robots. While scanning your site, they’ll identify your headlines and utilise them to understand better your content, such as which sections are the most essential. Additionally, including headers and sub-headers improves keyword saturation, but keep in mind that this should not be abused to cheat the system.
Include hyperlinks to preceding relevant content
The amount of backlinks a piece of content receives is one of the factors used by search engines to rank it. Useful and relevant content attracts a large number of backlinks – both external and internal links.
If you want to increase traffic and rank your old content highly, you must link to it from your more recent articles. This assists search engine algorithms – and humans – in locating your most valuable content. To go one step further, we recommend implementing a topical cluster strategy.
Additionally, inbound links to trustworthy, high-quality websites help establish the legitimacy of your website. The more quality links your page has, the higher it will rank in search results. Additionally, including reputable references within the body of your writing establishes confidence with your readers.
Be cautious in your keyword selection.
Certain marketers prefer to sit down and begin their SEO writing. They postpone SEO optimisation till the very last minute. Others start by outlining the keywords they intend to include in their article.
You begin by selecting keywords that are pertinent to your subject. You may either come up with them spontaneously, utilise keyword planning tools such as the one provided by Google, or use a more sophisticated SEO tool such as Ahrefs or KWFinder (compare them here). Alternatively, you can pay an SEO firm to do it for you. If you haven’t already, you should begin with this guide to keyword research.
Once you begin writing, include your keywords in the title tag, headers, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and body text.
Improve the quality of your pictures
Images play a critical role in making your content engaging and sharing. People are much more inclined to purchase a business with an appealing and relevant website. You may optimise the images by using keywords and ALT tags in the image files. Ensure that you properly optimise the photo’s size. Massive images slow down the loading process and degrade SEO.
Reduce the size of the picture without sacrificing online visibility or quality. Numerous image editors allow you to do so through built-in capabilities. If yours does not have it, another option is to use the Squoosh app, a free application that will enable you to resize and compress your picture files rapidly.
Ensure that the content is shareable
Thus, you’ve written an SEO-friendly, content-rich, and entertaining post that people like to read. The following step will be to make it accessible. ShareThis and AddThis make it simple to include social networking buttons into your website, allowing visitors to share the information quickly.
Produce content of the highest calibre
Although this one should be self-evident, it is not usually followed. The most effective method to encourage people to read and interact with your content is to provide helpful and interesting content—search engines reward websites with relevant, high-quality content. Creating quality content takes precedence over almost every other criteria on the list.
Once you’ve developed a clear vision for writing friendly SEO content and structured it, try incorporating some of the following tools to streamline and enhance the writing process.
Use brief paragraphs
One thing to bear in mind is that your paragraphs should be brief. This does not imply that each phrase must begin on a new line; instead, paragraphs should be rationally organised and have their concept. Limit yourself to brief paragraphs (about 2-3 sentences).
Utilise many formatting choices, like adding bullet points, highlighting text, and changing the font. This simplifies the reading experience for mobile consumers and makes your content less dull.
Enhance the meta description
Google uses the meta description field to provide an overview of your SEO content underneath your title in the search engine results. It’s critical to make it visually attractive and helpful to get people to click on your blog posts. Meta descriptions should summarise the content of your post and include your target keyword, without stuffing too many keywords unaturally. The recommended length for meta descriptions is around 155 and 160 characters.
There is no assurance that your original meta description will show in the search results. Thus, the optimal approach is to choose your goal term and organically include it in your meta description. If Google discovers a match in your meta description, it is quite likely that they will utilise your tag.
SEO Image optimisation
Including and optimising pictures in your text is an excellent approach to convey your message effectively and enhance the reader experience. Image optimisation is comparable to conventional search engine optimisation.
Google Pictures cannot read language included in images, but it can understand their content to determine their relevance in search results. You must consist of descriptive Alt text as well as descriptive title tags, captions, and filenames.
Although the ALT text is not displayed to website users, it helps search engines better comprehend the subject matter. If a picture does not load on a specific device, users will get ALT text instead. Create optimized content that is valuable and interesting content that incorporates your primary targeted keywords organically and adequately in your ALT text.
Include logical links
Each time you publish a new blog post, add some words, figures, or ideas that may be clarified more.
This implies that you should include both internal and external links in your post. They assist your readers in delving deeper into a subject while remaining focused on the central idea.
An internal link building is an excellent strategy for assisting search engines in determining the relevancy of your content, increasing reader engagement, and lowering bounce rates. By linking to valuable external sites such as Wikipedia, you may increase user confidence and enhance the user experience.
Additionally, you’ll want to include descriptive anchor text in your links so that visitors understand what the link is about. Attempt to keep the number of links to a minimum. Nobody knows the optimal amount of links to include. Ensure that your links are relevant, natural, and beneficial to viewers.
To learn more about our link building processes, take a look at our link building strategies guide.
Use the shortest possible content length.
A regular blog post should include between 300 and 500 words. This is because Google prefers lengthier content since it garners more social media likes and mentions. As a result, lengthier postings have to appear at the top in search engine rankings.
The optimum length of the content is about 2000 words. However, writing 2000 words every time should not be your primary objective. First, you must offer the most valuable and informative content possible to your visitors since this will influence their search intent.
Mobile-optimize your content
Globally, mobile internet use has increased to 56%. Optimising your blog for mobile devices is critical for SEO, as Google increasingly prioritises mobile-friendly web pages. Since a result, it is essential to have a responsive website design, as Google penalises websites that are not mobile-friendly.
Additionally, you’ll want to optimise your website’s design for mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms. Simple navigation and layout assist users in rapidly locating the essential information. This implies you’ll want to conduct a load speed analysis on your website. Create content that loads quickly and enhances the overall experience for users by using Accelerated Mobile Pages.
You can use an SEO Audit to determine if your site has any problems, like site performance, mobile optimisation, or HTML validity. The program analyses all critical factors and offers practical recommendations for resolving any issues that may arise.
Continually update your content.
Even if you produce interesting and high-converting content, you must regularly publish blog articles and refresh your website’s content.
This is because Google wants to deliver the best results possible for users’ search queries. Consequently, if you do not post consistently, Google will not consider your blog post a valuable resource for searchers.
Once or twice each week is an excellent place to start. Allow time for your viewers to process your new content and react to comments on your article. Make use of copywriting ideas to help you enhance your writing abilities.
Make use of share buttons on social networking platforms.
Are you looking for free links? Make it simpler for people to locate your social share buttons and post your content on social media. Attractive buttons will entice readers to click and share your articles.
Make use of schema markup.
By using schema markup, you may assist search engines in better analysing your content. It categorises your articles and informs search engines about their contents.
Utilise Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to include markup into your blog articles quickly. For instance, to add schema markup to your title, select the appropriate section “Articles,” input the URL, and begin tagging.
The Role of User Experience (UX) in SEO Content
When it comes content importance in SEO, user experience (UX) is the secret sauce that often gets overlooked. It’s not just about relevant keywords and backlinks; it’s about how your visitors feel when they land on your web page. Search engines are getting smarter, and they’re increasingly prioritizing sites that deliver a seamless, engaging experience. So, what does that look like in practice?
Page Load Speed
First Impressions Count
Imagine clicking on a link, and then…waiting…and waiting. Not fun, right? That’s how your users feel when your page takes forever to load. And here’s the kicker: Google feels the same way. Slow-loading pages not only frustrate users but also send a clear signal to search engines that your site isn’t up to snuff. On the flip side, a zippy load time can keep users happy and engaged, which leads to better rankings. It’s like the digital version of making sure your house is tidy before guests arrive.
Mobile Optimisation
We live in a mobile-first world, and if your content isn’t optimised for those tiny screens, you’re missing out. Mobile optimisation isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore; it’s a must. Think about it—how often do you search for something on your phone? Probably more often than on a desktop. Google knows this, which is why mobile-friendly content is a big deal in SEO. It’s all about making sure your site looks great and works well, no matter the device.
Content Structure and Readability
Keep It Simple, Keep It Smart
Let’s face it: no one wants to read a wall of text. Break things up. Use headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to make your content easy on the eyes. Not only does this make for a better reading experience, but it also helps with SEO. Search engines love well-structured content because it’s easier for web crawlers to understand. So, if you want to keep your readers—and Google—happy, structure your content in a way that makes sense and is easy to follow.
Internal Linking
The Map to More Good Stuff
Internal links are like the breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel, guiding your users to other great content on your site. Not only does this keep visitors on your site longer, but it also helps search engines understand the hierarchy and importance of your pages. It’s a win-win: users find more of what they’re looking for, and your SEO gets a boost.
Visual Elements
A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words, But Don’t Forget the Alt Text
Images, videos, and infographics are fantastic for making your content more engaging. But here’s the thing—if they’re not optimised, they can slow down your site, which takes away from the importance of content in SEO. Make sure to compress images, use lazy loading, and don’t forget those alt tags. Not only do alt tags help with accessibility, but they also give search engines more context about what’s on the page. It’s the little details like these that can make a big difference.