One of the main factors of SEO is content. The words on your page and behind the scenes are read by crawlers of the search engines. It’s important to understand the fundamental steps of writing search engine optimized content. The better your content, the higher it will rank on the search engine pages. The best part? Content writing can be free if you do it yourself. 

You’ve probably heard the statement: “You need to be on the first page of Google in order to get any results.” For the most part, this is true. But now there is another more vital place. The snippet. If you capture this spot, you will see a heavy spike in visitors and hopefully conversions.

The first thing you need to focus on is audience. Who do you want to read your content? What is it that you’re targeting? For example, a candle brand should market to those living with “smelly” things, like pets, children, and sports players. They should focus their content on the good scents, and how they will overpower the stink.

The next thing, is research. Research everything. What issues does your audience have? Can you fix them? Can you guide them? Write your content based on your research. If your audience is having issues with finding recipes that taste good but are different from their norm, write something like “If you love Chicken Alfredo, you may LOVE Chicken Carbonara.” 

Moving on, keywords will be the next task to tackle. There are three types of keywords: short-tail, medium-tail, and long-tail. One word keywords are short-tail, they’re difficult to rank for and are highly competitive. Medium-tail consists of 2-3 words, while long tail is 3-5. The longer the keyword, the less competition. You’ll need to use the keywords in your title, beginning of the content, variations throughout, and you’ll need to make sure they’re organized and relevant. NO KEYWORD STUFFING!

The second to last step is to develop an outline. Think back to grade school and writing essays. You want to use the same process to make an effective post. Backlinko did some research and found that the average page that ranks first on google has about 1,890 words. You’ll need to keep that in mind when writing. The minimum post should be 500 words. 

The final step is to keep it consistent. Create a content calendar and stick to it. Plan and schedule your posts in advance. Search engines will give you points for posting regularly. We posted daily for about a week, and then stopped. When we looked at our analytics, our page views were cut by nearly 2/3rds. 

If you keep these steps in mind while writing content, you’ll see results for sure. Content marketing is a very useful tool in getting your clients and audience to see you as a leader in the field. Understanding the effect that your content has on conversions will definitely help you make writing content for your website a priority. 

If you need help with your content or blogging, be sure to reach out and check out our Blogging package at blueshiftwebservices.com/services/seo.