When it comes to SEO it’s all about the content
Long gone are the days of spamming your website with your target keyword to get to the top rankings in search engines. It was easier then for websites of little value to outrank others, which was a frustrating experience for the audience.Thankfully search engines got smart to this. Their main objective these days is to find us the most relevant page for our search and keep us happy.As a consumer this is great, but for a business how do you rank highly in search engines now you can’t use your keyword 50+ times?! This is where good content writing comes into play.
What is SEO?
Let’s start with what is SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. This decides where a website lists in a search for the keyword or phrase you’ve searched for in a search engine such as Google. As a business your main goal is to get as close as possible to the top of that search list, and ideally hit the top spot!
What are search engines looking for?
Search engines send out their spiders to crawl through websites looking for those keywords/phrases. If someone was searching for “things to do in Southampton”, for example, the search engine will be looking for websites where this phrase appears in page titles, meta descriptions and the content itself.It’s also going to judge how many people have been to this site, how long they stayed and did it give them value to be there. It knows this by factors like the sites bounce rate and duration on pages.If you’ve crammed your keyword into a sentence that doesn’t make sense on a page with no other useful content then chances are your potential customers are going to leave pretty quickly and search engines such a Google will penalise your website for being of little value…down you go in the rankings!
Keeping your website fresh with content writing
Think of your website as your shop window. Keeping a website fresh with new content will not only help with SEO but will give your potential customers plenty of reasons to visit!If you created your website 5 years ago and it’s not been touched since there’s a chance it may be out of date, and sites around you offering fresh new content may start ranking above you.This is one of the reasons a blog feature on a website can be so useful. It allows you to create fresh and new content, target specific keywords, and still maintain a clean looking website. If not a blog then new product pages, articles, guides, etc. can also help.
Creating well optimised content for your site
It’s not always easy to give time to your website and writing a blog whilst running a business is probably the last thing you want to do, but creating well optimised content could mean your shop window is the first people see.The first thing is to establish what keywords/phrases you want to rank highly for. Google’s Keyword Tool is useful here to see how many people search for your search term, it will also give you alternatives that may better to optimise for.Then you need to create the content, a blog post for example. Feature your keyword/phrase in the title of the post, the meta description of the page, and of course within the content itself.Make sure what you’re writing makes sense. There is no point cramming a keyword in just to feature it, tailor your content to work with the target words you are optimising for. An article for example on “The top 10 things to do in Southampton”.Add links to your content, it could be to related products on your website or even useful information on another website. It will all add to the value of your page and in-turn to the value for the search engine.Share your content. Use social media and marketing emails to drive traffic to your newly optimised page. The more it’s visited the more it will be valued by the search engines and it’s a great way to get it noticed.Be patient, it can take a few months for the SEO to start to really make a difference, but by continuing to create content you will be adding value to your site and the more highly it will be recognised.