Great content brings value to a website, not only for visitors but also for search engines, and should therefore be a key part in every SEO strategy. In order to use content effectively to boost your search engine rankings it has to fulfill some important quality factors, beyond the typical on-page optimisation elements. Low-quality content could even have a negative effect on your website visibility. In this article you will learn what these content quality factors are and how you can create content that meets them.
Why we need good content for SEO
Higher CTR – Content that is relevant and answers specific search queries will improve the CTR of your website and therefore the chances of getting a better ranking on search engines.
Enables implementation of keywords – Content allows you to use your strategic keywords, which will help you to rank for specific search terms.
Improves user experience – User experience has become an important SEO ranking factor in the last few years. Content is the reason why users visit a website, so by creating high-quality content you will also improve the user experience of your website.
Helps to generate backlinks – Backlinks from high-authority websites are an important SEO factor. By offering valuable content on your website, you will also increase the likelihood that other websites will link to your website.
Allows to build content hubs – Content hubs do not only help to organise the content of your site, but they also have a positive effect on SEO. Connecting content with relevant internal links will make your site a topical authority for this specific topic. Because they act as backlinks, internal links will also increase the link authority of the pages involved.
How to create search engine optimised content
The following process gives you a step by step approach to create high-quality content for your website.
1. Identify your topic and keywords
The goal of your content is to answer a question from your audience. Therefore you should focus on them and find out what it is that they want to know, what problems they are trying to solve and what interests they have. Once you have figured these things out, the next important step is to find the right keywords. This is necessary to make sure that your audience will find your content, based on what they put in their search query. Here we explain how you can conduct keyword research.
2. Create an outline
Creating an outline will help you to structure your content into readable chunks. This is highly important because it helps a visitor of your website to navigate and gain get a better understanding of the information provided. Since online readers don’t like unstructured texts, this will also affect the time that a visitor spends on a website, which is something that is likely to influence a websites ranking. Furthermore, a proper structure will also provide you with a good blueprint, which makes it easier for you to write your content.
3. Focus on your topic
To create great content you should focus on one topic to write about or one problem to solve, rather than trying to write about everything and anything. Also stick with only one primary and one secondary keyword during the whole article, as too many keywords in one piece of content, or keyword stuffing, can be harmful to the ranking of a web page and also make the article difficult to read. Focusing on one specific topic makes your content more relevant to certain search queries, which gives you a higher chance of a top ranking for a certain keyword.
4. Implement internal links in your content
Links to your content makes it easier for search engines to find them. Not only external links but also internal links are very helpful for improving your SEO. They connect your pages and therefore give search engines an idea of how your site structure looks like. By strategically linking to specific pages of your website, you can show search engines which pages are valuable and therefore improve the ranking of these pages. At the same time, they make it easier for visitors to navigate on your website. In our article “What is SEO On-page optimisation” you can learn more about internal linking.
5. Formats and rich snippets
To maximise the effectiveness of your content strategy you should consider creating content in different formats, not just text. Therefore you have to research which content your audience is most likely to engage with and share. Applying different formats will allow you to unlock additional results in Google SERPS, including images, videos etc.
Here are some examples of different content formats:
Blog articles – Blogs are the most common type of content and they can help you to position yourself as an authority in your industry. Furthermore, they provide opportunities to optimise your On-page SEO which will improve your search engine ranking.
Infographics – Infographics can be used to complement blog posts. They deliver information in an easy to process way, as they show only the highlights of a text that can be up to a few thousand words long. This makes them also popular to be shared, which gives it a chance to be widely spread over the internet and therefore generate backlinks for your page.
Videos – Videos have become popular in the last few years and their popularity will continue to rise. They are highly engaging, which will positively affect the user behaviour and therefore probably also impact search engine rankings.
Other factors
Content optimisation also includes technical aspets like the optimisation of title tags, meta descriptions and URLs. You can learn more about them and also other factors to further improve your search engine ranking, by taking a look at our article about SEO ranking factors in 2020.