As you look around for ways to improve your business's visibility and marketing reach, you may stumble on the phrase "writing for SEO" again and again. But unless you live in the digital marketing world, your first response (and a completely valid one) is probably "What the heck does 'writing for SEO' mean?" So let's take a moment to examine that question and explore some basic ideas about creating content that helps you make a bigger online splash.
First things first: SEO stands for search engine optimization. It encompasses a whole range of techniques that content creators and web development specialists employ to help their clients score higher on online search results. The more frequently and prominently your brand pops up in response to your target audiences' online searches, the more successfully you can draw these valuable prospects to your website, at which point they've entered your sales funnel. (Keeping them there may call for other marketing measures, of course, including the placement of the right content in the right places. But that's a topic for another day.)
Effective SEO can involve everything from how your web developer structures, tags, and codes your website to the choice of URL. But it also hinges on what kind of content you write and how you write it. Fortunately, you can win half the battle here simply by writing web pages, blog articles, and other online content that genuinely matters to your target market. Google rates relevance very highly indeed, so the more relevant your content appears, and more of that content you produce, the higher you're likely to show up on those all-important search results.
Of course, you want both your audience and the major search engines to be able to understand and absorb that content easily. Consider breaking the content into easily digestible paragraphs, including bulleted or numbered lists where relevant. If you use headers, make sure to tag them with the proper hierarchy of H1, H2, H3 etc. The addition of images always helps, especially if the images contain relevant verbiage in their tags.
The presence of links can also play an important role in your content's SEO. When you include links to authoritative, respective information sources, you're demonstrating your own value and reliability as a trusted resource. If you really write high-quality content and build your reputation, other websites may even start linking to your web content, encouraging a fresh stream of incoming traffic from impressed readers who want to learn more from (and about) your organization.
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned keywords yet. Yes, the use of relevant, commonly-searched keywords will help your content rank higher. However, the old days when you could just keyword-stuff a page or article and expect brilliant results are long gone. In fact, search engines now punish suspected keyword-stuffing efforts. So by all means use those keywords, but use them only as the content calls for them. Focus on creating relevant, high-quality content, and you can't help but use the right keywords in a sensible manner.
Need help creating the kind of content you need for successful SEO? Then you need the services of a skilled, experienced professional copywriter. Contact me today!
