Writing SEO content for humans
SEO is one of the areas in marketing where we are constantly challenged: We have to please the search engines and follow their rules, but we also want to appeal to our customers. The tasks required to succeed with SEO are many, but the foundation is still content. So how can we write good content that satisfies both search engines and people? Dartera, the SEO agency Bern helps you with this.
Here are three guidelines for creating SEO content:
- Find out what your target audience is interested in.
- Be an educator.
- Focus on a relevant keyword.
Find out what your target audience cares about
Everything should start with your audience, the people you want to reach. After all, your goal is to have the majority of your website visitors be people who actually want to buy your product or service.
Let's assume you have a good idea of who your typical customer is and what challenges they face. What are their pain points? What are the burning questions they need answers to?
A simple brainstorming session about your customers' needs will lead to a list of topics that are relevant to your target audience. Create an outline for your content calendar from this list of topics.
If the blogs or landing pages then focus on this specific list of topics, the website will be relevant to the desired audience.
A quick tip on the side: remember your FAQs. Many of the questions that appear in the content calendar list are perfect for a frequently asked questions page. The FAQ page is a great way to add relevant content to the website while providing good answers to visitors. Remember to write a new version of these questions and statements that is not an exact copy of your other content. It is important that each content on the website remains unique.
Be a trainer
Everyone who searches online is looking for answers. Warum sollte man also nicht derjenige sein, der den Leuten die Antworten gibt?
Instead of trying to sell something, focus on informing. This way you can demonstrate your expertise and improve your reputation.
When a blog someone reads solves an important problem that matters to them, that content feels very personal. This increases the time spent reading and improves user engagement, which in turn has a positive impact on your search engine optimization.
If you're already populating your website and blog this way, congratulations - you're writing content for people!
Great instructors have compassion for their students. When writing your message, put yourself in the reader's shoes and understand that they are struggling with a problem. Give them instructions that will help them overcome this problem. Show them that you care.
Sometimes the information you need to convey is complicated. Perhaps it seems too technical to explain the answer. Here are some ways to help with that:
- Make your article more accessible by using common metaphors. For example, we sometimes compare building a website to building a house.
- Include diagrams and fun illustrations alongside your descriptions. You can find great ideas for data visualization on Tableau.
- Add a short video introducing the same type of information with a friendly face and voice.
- If the content is about a product, show photos of the product actually being used by a person.
Long articles that convey a lot of free and helpful information with an insightful tone combined with supporting visuals are "unicorns." They create great trust with both search engines and people.
Keep a relevant keyword focus
Keyword topics are important for your SEO. You define your goals for digital marketing, and everything you do is aligned with those goals.
However, it is even more important that the keyword is relevant to the target audience.
If your list of target keywords is good, it contains terms that are important to your target audience - the people searching for your solution. (Remember the first guiding principle - Find out what your target audience is interested in?) These are the words that potential customers type into search engines, hoping to find the perfect answer. Google, Moz and other sources provide us with tools to research keyword ideas and estimate how many people use them.
So it must be important to include these keywords in the content you write, right? Yes, it is. But it's not a good idea to force a keyword into your content. Above all, it is not recommended to repeat the keyword too many times in an article. This will only make the content look unnatural and "spammy".
This is where authors often struggle, but there is a balance. Just go back to basics and think about people.
If the author focuses on the audience and education first, and the topics they want to cover are closely related to the business, the content will naturally be relevant. Keywords are likely to show up naturally in content.
Quality comes first. After that you can start the optimization.
Read through the content again, pay attention to which keywords are already there, and highlight them. Then pay attention to what similar expressions are next to it. If the post contains high-quality keywords at least a few times, it may be ready. If a keyword is only mentioned once, there is likely a similar phrase in a paragraph or two that can easily be edited to retain the keyword.
Read through the content again and make sure the sentence you edited still sounds natural and helpful.
Here, too, the focus is on relevance. If the keywords are relevant and the content is relevant, it should be fairly easy to make simple changes that don't sound forced.
Audience, education and keywords are your A team
These three simple guidelines will lead to better digital content. When you think of your audience first, you put people first. When you think like a teacher, you build trust and provide good information. By using keywords correctly, you ensure that the content meets the requirements of search engines and people.
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