... Skip to content

Drop a comment below if you’ve ascertained anything cool for authors!

Published by Brad Johnson on 01/08/2020

https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/614982578/0/convinceandconvertconsulting/

How to Make Content SEO Friendly

Building consistent organic search traffic is every digital publisher’s dream. But what does it really take to make your content SEO friendly?

The good news is it is not a rocket science.

On top of that, despite what many people think, it has nothing to do with “tricking” Google into thinking your content is high-quality or SEO friendly.

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, which basically means making sure a search algorithm can easily access and understand your content. There’s no dark art involved.

Here are the steps you should take to make your content SEO friendly:

1. Match Your Content Idea to a Searchable Phrase (Search Query)

So you have an idea in mind which you feel like writing about. This is where any content creation starts: “I have something to say on this topic, and I feel like it will be interesting and/or useful”.

Is anyone searching for this topic?

Chances are, if you have come up with the topic, there should be other people who may feel intrigued enough to research it in Google.

But how exactly are people searching for it?

This is the key question you should ask if you want to generate organic search engine traffic to your future content.

You need to know what people type in a search box when trying to find answers to questions you are covering in your content.

So your first step is to find those actual search queries.

This exercise is also useful because it helps research. Knowing what people are typing in Google’s search box will likely help you discover interesting angles, narrow your initial idea down to make it more specific and even structure your future article to make it more useful.

So even if you don’t really care about organic search positions, keyword research is useful to do.

But how?

The keyword research process — at its core — hasn’t changed much over the years. We do have much more data to work with, but the actual process is the same.

These days, we have a variety of tools that help you identify a keyword to focus on. Here are a few tools and approaches you can try:

1.1. Type Your Terms into Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is a great tool for that because it offers “All keyword ideas” tab that broadens your initial idea to related and synonymous terms.

So if you were to type [grow tomatoes] and click through to that section, you’d find both phrases containing the term (e.g. “how to grow tomatoes”) and related concepts (e.g. “when to plant tomatoes“):

Ahrefs

This broadens your outlook and helps you come up with more words to include in your copy.

1.2. Discover What Your Future Competitor is Ranking For

If you’ve done at least some research on your content idea, you may have found some resources that are on the same or similar topic. So use those URLs to discover what they are ranking for.

Serpstats’ URL Analysis section is great for that:

SERPstat

Notice that Serpstat is also showing all “extra” search elements that show up for each query in Google, so you get a good idea of what your future target SERPs (search engine result pages) may look like.

Note that both of these platforms offer “keyword difficulty” metric signaling of the level of your future organic competition. Obviously, the lower the keyword difficulty is, the better.

On the other hand, the higher the search volume, the more clicks each SERP may drive. So you want to try and pick a keyword that has high search volume and low keyword difficulty.

Here’s a more detailed guide on keyword research for you to become better at it. And here are even more keyword research questions answered.

2. Put Those Keywords in Prominent Places

While the process of researching keywords hasn’t changed much, the way we use keywords within content has.

These days, we don’t sacrifice the quality or flow of our copy for the sake of keyword density. In fact, we don’t pay attention to how many times we have used those keywords on-page.

We do use those keywords in prominent places on the page to make both Google and our human visitors more comfortable and confident there.

To put it simply, upon landing on your page, your users should clearly see terms they initially typed in the search box. That will put them more at ease and prompt them to linger a bit longer.

Keyword prominence means making your keywords visible on the page. It helps both search engine optimization and user-retention. Both of these help rankings.

Basically, you want those keywords to appear in:

  1. Page title
  2. Page URL slug (which in WordPress will be transferred from your title anyway)
  3. First paragraph
  4. Page subheading(s)
  5. Image alt text (Do make those alt text descriptive as it helps accessibility)

Keyword prominence

Many SEO plugins (like Yoast and SEO Editor) can handle a lot of these SEO elements, so it is a good idea to pick one.

3. Use Semantic Analysis to Match Google’s Expectations and Make Your Content More Indepth

As I have already stated before, Google has moved away from matching the exact query to the pages in its index. Ever since its Hummingbird update, Google has slowly but surely become better and better at understanding each query context and searcher’s intent behind it.

To match that context better and optimize for the intent, use semantic analysis, which is basically about clustering each query into underlying and related concepts and covering you in your content.

Text Optimizer is a tool that takes Google’s search snippets for any query and applies semantic analysis to identify areas of improvement. Text Optimizer can be used for writing new content from scratch:

Text Optimizer new content

You can also use the tool to analyze your existing content to identify areas of improvements:

Text Optimizer existing content

As you can see, Text Optimizer also helps analyze whether your content meets the query intent.

To increase your score at Text Optimizer:

  • Choose the most suitable words for your content and include them naturally into your article. Avoid keyword stuffing. Only choose terms that you find fitting your current context.
  • You may modify sentences or write new ones until you reach at least 80%

4. Diversify Your Content Formats

Google loves textual content, but the Internet in general and Google in particular has moved beyond text-only. Web users expect to see more formats, including videos and images. And Google recognizes that demand for content diversity, so it will feature all of those content formats.

In my previous article for Convince and Convert I described how videos improve SEO on many levels, including more exposure in search engine result pages and better on-page engagement.

With that in mind, any time you work on your article, think which other content assets can be created to enhance its value and improve SEO.

Luckily, creating videos doesn’t require any budget or skills. With tools like InVideo you can turn your articles into videos in a matter of seconds:

  • Select “I want to convert article into video” option
  • Paste in a maximum of 50 sentences (I usually use the tool to turn my article takeaways or subheadings into a video)
  • Pick the template and let the tool do the job
  • You can upload your own images (screenshots), tweak the subtitles and select the music

Invideo options

You are done! Now, upload the video to Youtube, add a keyword-rich title and description and embed it to your article.

For images, you can use Venngage or Visme to create nice visual takeaways or flowcharts (in case you have instructions to follow).

5. Set up an On-Page SEO Monitoring Routine

Finally, there’s always room for improvement, so monitoring your organic traffic is an important step here.

The must-have tool for that is Google’s own Search Console, which will show you which queries are sending you traffic. Just check your “Performance” tab regularly:

Google's own Search Console

Another useful tool to have is Finteza, which shows your organic traffic performance allowing you to dig deeper to see whether your organic traffic clicks engage with your ads.

Finteza

… or whether each search query sends traffic that brings conversions.

Finteza conversions

6. Don’t Forget External (Off-Site) Signals

Obviously, it is more to Google position than on-page optimization. You still need those backlinks that would help Google assign some authority to your content. But that’s a topic outside of the scope of this article. Besides, there’s a lot of content already written on that. And here’s another collection of tips on how to build links.

Finally, the above steps apply to any kind of optimization, whether it’s a blog, product pages or lead-generating landing pages.

I hope this guide will help you optimize your content to make it easier for Google to understand and hence help the search giant’s algorithm assign search positions it truly deserves.

The post How to Make Content SEO Friendly appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

Published inWriting

5,608 Comments

  1. Facebook Marketing Facebook Marketing

    I have been browsing on-line more than 3 hours these days, but I by no means found any attention-grabbing article like yours. It is pretty worth sufficient for me. In my opinion, if all webmasters and bloggers made good content material as you did, the internet might be a lot more helpful than ever before.

    08/07/2021
  18. Timothyembox Timothyembox

    provigil for depression adrafinil

    08/29/2021
  32. Whitneyker Whitneyker

    modafinil weight loss modafinil

    08/29/2021
  35. HazelSix HazelSix

    can you buy hydroxychloroquine over the counter aralen medicine

    08/29/2021
  42. ElileHigGreasia ElileHigGreasia

    is plaquenil an immunosuppressant plaquenil

    08/29/2021
  65. Williamemuch Williamemuch

    buy modafinil online modafinil

    08/30/2021
  91. Anthonybax Anthonybax

    what is hydroxychloroquine sulfate buy hcq

    08/30/2021
  98. Samuelabund Samuelabund

    modalert 200 reddit modalert

    08/30/2021
  112. Anthonybax Anthonybax

    is hydroxychloroquine cloroquina

    08/30/2021
  121. Manuellowly Manuellowly

    side effects for modafinil provigil

    08/30/2021
  150. Porindgrino Porindgrino

    where to buy chloroquine plaquenil

    08/30/2021
  201. RobertNer RobertNer

    modalert 100 price india modafinilo

    08/31/2021
  205. Thomassal Thomassal

    provigil for sale adrafinil

    08/31/2021
  217. Anthonybax Anthonybax

    chloroquine primaquine clorochina

    08/31/2021
  230. Williammib Williammib

    is hydroxychloroquine an immunosuppressant plaquenil price

    08/31/2021
  242. Anthonybax Anthonybax

    is hydroxychloroquine an immunosuppressant hydroxyquine

    08/31/2021
  250. Whitneyker Whitneyker

    hydroxychloroquine update today plaquenil

    08/31/2021
  267. Normanhycle Normanhycle

    provigil dosage modafinil

    08/31/2021
  282. Williamemuch Williamemuch

    modafinil and alcohol modafinilo

    09/01/2021
  283. Louisebup Louisebup

    chloroquine hydrochloride chlorochin

    09/01/2021
  285. Timothyembox Timothyembox

    provigil side effects modafinilo

    09/01/2021
  386. Colinsoofe Colinsoofe

    provigil half life provigil

    09/01/2021
  411. Whitneyker Whitneyker

    hydroxychloroquine update today plaquenil

    09/01/2021
  450. Whitneyker Whitneyker

    provigil for adhd provigil

    09/02/2021
  451. Louisebup Louisebup

    chloroquine uses buy hcq

    09/02/2021
  474. DavidItere DavidItere

    modafinil interactions adrafinil

    09/02/2021
  519. Williammib Williammib

    quinine vs chloroquine plaquinol

    09/02/2021
  527. Louisebup Louisebup

    hydroxychloroquine dosage aralen hcl

    09/02/2021
  567. AshleyAnorn AshleyAnorn

    modafinil reviews adrafinil

    09/03/2021
  576. Manuellowly Manuellowly

    modalert review modafinil

    09/03/2021
  616. Richardrorgo Richardrorgo

    modafinil mechanism of action modafinilo

    09/03/2021
  692. DavidItere DavidItere

    modafinil side effects modafinil

    09/04/2021
  698. lallSarmTodasor lallSarmTodasor

    chloroquine phosphate canada plaquinol

    09/04/2021
  703. Williammib Williammib

    plaquenil medication buy hcq

    09/04/2021