How to write content that ranks high?
There’s good news and bad news. Bad news first in order to successfully cultivate an online audience and client base, you not only have to create quality content, but you have to create quality content that ranks high. This is not an easy task for anyone. So the good news is that we will give you some techniques which will help you figure out how to do just that.
Where to Start?
When deciding on the topic of your content, you need to start with a topic that is useful to the audience you want to attract. Providing information they can really use will keep them coming back. Then you need to package that helpful material in an entertaining, unique way. There are more blogs than people on earth today, so almost any topic you can think of has something about it online already.
Google wants content that is original with a fresh perspective, even if it is a well-known topic.
More than likely you will be writing for a specific industry, so a good place to start is checking out blog topics for that industry. You’ll probably see a fair amount of repetition among the topics, but that doesn’t mean you should discard them. Your job as a marketer and SEO specialist is to figure out how to present that information in a new way.
Watching Trends
Now that you have a handle on the topics of interest for that industry, how do you prioritize? What will help you decide is to watch trends generally with consumers, and in that industry. For sales industries, you know the sales trends on products which means you can plan for high-ranking content, publish it months before, and let it rank over time.
Another part of understanding trends is looking at what is new and up and coming. For example in the marketing and virtual world, augmented reality (AR) is starting to make its way in everyday consumer life. Starting to write content on how to use AR in marketing would be an excellent idea.
Remember that SEO is a low and slow game. If you are going to write content, publish it early, ahead of your competitors so that you can start ranking faster and become an authority on a topic. This makes spotting those trends even more important.
Looking for Keywords
Using the right keywords is obviously a big part element in getting your content to rise to the top of the pile. And once you know which keywords you want to use, one of the biggest problems is figuring out where to put them.
Because you are writing content to be read and enjoyed by humans, and it needs to make sense, be fun for the readers, and be well-written. But you also need those keywords quickly identified by the search engines of the world. How do you get those vital keywords into your articles in an organic way? What is enough and what is too much?
First, just write your engaging pieces for your fellow homo-sapiens. Write engaging content that is unique and fun for your viewers. The next step is to put those vital keywords into your articles. In previous SEO tactics, you could just write your main keywords over and over again. Now the recommended tactic is 3% percent of your article should be keywords. How do you do that?
Here is a breakdown of numbers of words in a blog to how many Keywords need to be in the article:
| Words in Blog | SEO Words |
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If you are going to put keywords into a blog it can’t look deliberate. So use your main keywords and then your related keywords.
For example, let’s say you have a restaurant and you are going to promote a new dish. The new dish could be a new pasta you are going to sell, so pasta would be a main keyword related keywords would be noodles, sauce, angel hair pasta, ingredients. Googles algorithm is intelligent enough to understand that these are food words and relate to them to your target keywords.
Creating HTML Structure
Finally, when creating and putting your blog into your website you need to think about your HTML structure. Have you seen the H1, H2, Bold formatting in your CMS those are called tags. They are an actual structure for your website to tell Google what you think is important on you your blog. A common problem is that most bloggers or business owners use the H1 and H2 as a sizing format, which is wrong.
So here is a quick break down and hierarchy to understand how to properly use those tags.
- Title Tag <title>
Most Important main title of your blog/page. - A Href <a href>
Keyword heavy pages that link to other pages. - Img Alt <img alt>
Tags on your images that can be used to put keywords in. - H1 <h1>
These are part of the header family. <h1> only one per page and <h2>, and <h3> are to be used sparingly. - Meta Description <meta description>
Include a target keyword, and description and a call to action. Maximum characters 300. - Blog <Strong>
Pointing out important words be strategic.
Hopefully this format will help you start to better structure your blogs for Google, and the other search engines. Remember that laying out these structures help you tell Google important with your content, and then Google can use your rich keyword content to deliver your website to your customers. And remember SEO is a low and slow game, all of this takes time so always do your research and plan your content.
