The first steps to tackling SEO content creation

SEO can seem complicated at times and it can be stressful to try and wrap your head around it. After all, there are many factors to consider, many pitfalls to avoid and many stressful situations to maneuver, yet failing to do these things properly could result in the complete failure of your online business.

It’s no wonder that many start-ups find themselves stressing over SEO and that many established companies spend so much of their budget on it. 

There is an easier way of looking at it though, and in this article we’ll show you how in three simple steps.

1. Focus on well written content

There are numerous guides online telling you how to manage SEO. You’ll see things like “be careful with regards to keyword density” and “make sure the article is XYZ words long”. There is a lot to take in, and if you believe these articles then SEO content creation is an incredibly difficult task.

This isn’t entirely true, however. Sure, you need to know what you’re doing and you need to avoid a few pitfalls, but generally, where modern SEO content is concerned you only need to focus on 1 rule: Make it Good.

Think about it from Google’s point of view. They want to ensure that every time a user searches for something they are presented with the best and most relevant content. They don’t want to show them the content with the most keywords, they just want clean, original, and honest content.

This should always be your first goal, because as soon as you start getting caught-up in keyword density then you’re no longer writing to be read, you’re writing to be indexed, and Google doesn’t like that.

2. Get the reader’s attention

Now that we know Google prefers informative and well written content, there is just one question: how can it tell that content apart from the poorly written stuff? After all, it doesn’t manually review sites and there is no user feedback to help it either.

There are a few ways that it does this now or is looking to do it in the future.

• Length: Longer content is generally better, with articles of over 1,000 words fairing the best. However, the content needs to be useful and not superfluous.
• Relevancy: Your content should be relevant to your website and your readers and never stray.
• Original: Unique content is essential, as anything that is copied can result in serious penalties. However, it’s also important to write content that has a unique theme, voice or opinion.
• Accuracy: In an effort to penalize content that highlights dangerously inaccurate practices, Google has clamped down on articles that perpetuate myths and fallacies and is fine-tuning how it views content based on accuracy.

3. Keep the reader hooked

Finally, Google pays a lot of attention to how long a user stays on your website and what they do when they are there—do they read the full article and visit another page, do they immediately leave? It uses this metric to determine if a site has valuable content or not.

This information is displayed via something known as a bounce rate—the lower this is, the better. Publishing well written content will help to keep this rate low, but there are a few other things you can do as well:

• Limit Ads: Nothing causes a user to flee faster than pop-ups or ads that block content. Keep them to a minimum to focus on user retention.
• Insert Graphics: Readers want glossy magazines, not black-and-white books. Insert images, embed videos and keep them entertained.
• Loading Times: Fast loading times are essential to keep your bounce rate low, as users get frustrated very easily when they experience lag.

Conclusion: Keep it simple

A good writer who has knowledge of writing online content is really all you need for good SEO. Don’t force it, don’t hire someone whose only goal is to cram keywords, and make sure you’re writing to be read and not to be indexed, because the former will always lead to the latter.