SEO is one of the most lucrative yet tricky arts to digital marketing.
It’s something that even experts can struggle to fully understand, due to the fluid nature of how search engines like Google define their results in terms of accuracy and quality.
Like we say here at Aqueous Digital, search never sleeps.
With Google essentially being the online metro through which people find their way across the internet, you can’t afford to ignore your Search Engine Optimisation. But how do you produce SEO content that will bring in the organic traffic that you want?
How do you write SEO content?
Writing SEO content involves a concept that might seem like a paradox to some. Although you’re writing content that you want Google to appreciate, you’re not writing for Google; instead you’re writing for its users, the humans that conduct two trillion searches every year.
That means SEO content writing is in some ways a peculiar form of writing. It’s a form of marketing with technical criteria that must be met to rank well and be appreciated by search engines, but it’s also all about quality and wholly embraces the art form of good writing.
With that in mind, the writing must be high-quality and written for the human. It has to make sense and have structure. If you’re writing about SEO in Manchester, for instance, you can’t contort your use of language just so that the word ‘Manchester’ appears on every single line. That might actually serve to push your writing in the opposite direction. It would likely be penalised by Google, and instances of ‘keyword stuffing’ such as that is entering the realm of tactics referred to as black hat SEO.
For SEO content to be recognised and appreciated by Google, it has to answer a need beyond simply being a piece of marketing. Good content can serve a number of purposes:
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Education
Your business may do something incredible and vital to society, but its highly technical nature might make it hard for the layperson to grasp. This is the perfect excuse to furnish your website with some well-written content that answers the questions your customers might have. It imparts free value to them while presenting a chance to rank highly on Google under searches that people perform in the hunt for a company just like yours.
Inspiration
Some products don’t reach their full potential until they’re in the hands of people who know what to do with them. For instance, a company selling high-quality art supplies may find that potential customers aren’t quite getting to the buying stage, because they don’t know what they would do with such a product if they were to actually buy it. Inspirational content can answer this need, once again imparting value to your customers, but also providing essential cornerstones that can become a part of the customer journey. And numbered lists rank very nicely thanks to their ease of readability and the organised nature of the writing.
Entertainment
Your content doesn’t have to be selling anything if you don’t want or need it to. It might be that you simply keep your blog fresh with humorous interviews with members of your team, funny news articles, or tongue-in-cheek parodying of more serious types of content but with your own unique tone of voice keeping things light-hearted. This kind of content can drive organic traffic very well, particularly if readers find it good enough to share and link back to.
Information
Many searches are done with the goal of finding a source of information. This could be the result of someone learning of a concept or product for the first time and looking to know more about it. Uncomplicated, informative SEO copy will hopefully not only guide them to your page, but cement your brand in their mind and start the process of acquiring them as a customer.