Your content will drive traffic only if it aligns with your readers` search queries. To succeed in that, apply Search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO is the path through which search engines avail content to the relevant users. It implies the actions taken to help a website rank higher on the search result pages.
To facilitate SEO,
- Use suitable keywords
- Create readable content
- Organize content metadata
- Add links to your content
- Market content on social media
However, the question is, how can you apply these elements? That`s what this article helps you learn so you can optimize your content.
Use Suitable Keywords
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| Keywords by Tumisu: Pixabay |
Keywords are the backbone of SEO. They are the words people type to search for content online.
For example, when somebody wants to know the best cars to buy, they can type, “the best cars”. The phrase, “the best cars” is the keyword.
As an online marketer, you should know the right keywords to use to make your content searchable.
There are two types of keywords, including
Short-tail Keywords
Also known as head keywords, these are keywords composed of one or two words. They are mostly about broad topics.
For example, a person searching for jobs online may type, “online jobs”, which generalizes any online job available. It doesn’t specify a definite one.
Long-tail Keywords
These are keywords made up of three or more words. Unlike the short-tail ones, they are specific.
For instance, if you want online jobs and search for, “online graphics and design jobs,” that`s specifying a particular job. You don’t want any online job but graphics and design.
Long-tail keywords are longer than short-tail keywords. They help target a definite audience, hence increasing the potential to drive traffic.
Elements of Keywords
People use keywords and rely on search engines to match them with relevant results. That`s why when creating content, you should know the terms people use and target them for your content to surface in the searches.
Here are the components you should consider getting the perfect keywords for your content:
Keywords Intent
The audience values content that serves their search objective. To satisfy them, you should know your audience`s needs before creating content.
Keyword search Intent refers to the purpose for which readers perform searches, and it`s categorized as follows:
Informational Search Intent
Informational intent is used when people search for content to learn something. It involves using keywords like how, what, why, where, and when.
Here is how people may type to imply informational intent:
- How to make money online
- What is an online marketing
- Where to find online jobs
However, sometimes people may just type a particular service or product. In that case, search engines guess the audience`s intent per the search made. An example is the keyword “Home School”. The search engines will match you with results such as
- Where to find homeschooling programs
- What homeschooling means
- How much homeschooling costs
Navigational Search Intent
This refers to searches that target a specific website. Your website should be the one being searched to appear in these searches.
An example is when searching for, CNN News; you will find only results related to that particular website.
Commercial Search Intent
People perform these searches when they have intentions of buying soon. They use keywords showing interest in certain products or services.
Commercial searches include keywords like best, affordable, cheapest, reviews, comparisons, etc.; examples are- Best content creation cameras
- Affordable laptops for freelance writing
- Internet marketing course reviews
- Sonny Television vs. Samsung Television (comparisons)
Transaction Search Intent
People perform these searches when looking for something to buy at the moment.
Transactional intent uses keywords like buy, sale, purchase, price, offer, etc.
People type the exact thing and even the place from where they want to buy it. Though not always the case, transactional keywords can include the exact product or service brand name.
- Lenovo laptops for sale near me
- Transcription course prices
- Perfect places to buy office leather shoes
- Harrier car discounts in Kenya
Therefore, when you create content, ensure to target keywords that can fulfill your content`s purpose.
Do not use informational keywords if you want to achieve quick sales, and do not use commercial keywords in educative content.
Audience’s Persona
For content to be successful, it must appeal to the target audience. That can happen if it speaks in a language representing their character, which is what audience persona implies.
Therefore, your content should target people with similar preferences. You can do this by studying people`s demographics, which include people`s
- Age
- Education
- Occupation
- Marital status
- Cultural background
This helps produce content targeting specific people. For instance, old and young people have different clothing preferences. You can`t use the same keywords in content that`s for marketing clothes to young people as to the old.
Furthermore, you must use formal language in formal business content, like when marketing law services. However, casual content—such as when marketing phones or social media marketing courses—requires a conversational tone.
To know your audience persona, check your competitors` websites and social media pages. This will help you know their most selling products and the kind of people who buy.
If most of their sales come from young people, that means that the products or services are marketable to young people and vice versa.
You can know the people who buy by checking the testimonies and people`s comments.
Apart from getting ideas of what to sell, competitor research helps find clients` interests and dislikes, which helps in improving your business.
You can also use audience persona tools and get much more precise results faster. Some of the best audience persona tools are
Keyword Density
Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword appears in content compared to the content`s word count.
The appropriate keyword density is one to three keywords in every 100 words.
Also, ensure keywords flow naturally with the context of the content. Forcing them makes content sound unnatural and can be difficult to understand.
Furthermore, forcing or repeating keywords unnecessarily is regarded as keyword stuffing. That leads to lowering a site`s rank or being removed from the search engines' indexes.
Besides, using very few keywords is also unacceptable. The purpose of keywords is to help search engines understand the content`s context with which to match relevant searches.
Search engines consider repeated words as particular content`s main focus.
Therefore, if you use few keywords, you will confuse search engines and lower your content rank. That can also make the content rank on irrelevant keywords that won`t give you quality traffic.
Keyword Volume and Competition
Use keywords with a high search volume and less competition. High search volume keywords increase the chances of making content visible on relevant searches.
Keywords with less search volume are less searched and using them results in low traffic, which lowers websites` rank.
Search volume implies how many monthly searches a keyword gets.
On the other hand, keyword competition, also called keyword difficulty, is how difficult it may be to rank for particular keywords.
To rank, use long-tail keywords. They target a specific audience, enabling content to reach only people in need of the services or products.
Short-tail keywords are mostly difficult to rank for. This is because many established sites already rank for them, making it difficult for small sites to rank.
For instance, if you have a new health website, it`s difficult to compete to rank for the keyword “health” for which Hopkins Medical ranks.
If you want to use such a keyword in a new site, make it long-tail and target a specific audience. You can, for example, make it, “kibaki health solutions in Texas.”
That will help you rank, considering that it targets a particular business in a specified area. When people search for such a business, it will be easy to find it.
To get comprehensive, timely results about keyword competition and volume, you should use tools such as
What you need to do is paste your keyword into the tool and click on search. It`ll give you the monthly volume and competition.
Here is content that covers more about how to find suitable keywords for your content.
Write Readable, Helpful Content
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| Image by ANTONI SHKRABA production: Pexels |
It`s impossible to keep readers on your content if it`s unreadable. In fact, according to the Nielsen Norman group, readers don`t read online, they scan the content. To make your content scannable, use the following components:
Create a Compelling Title
Unless your content title intrigues readers' attention, even when your content is valuable, nobody will click on it.
To make your heading enticing, ensure it explains how your readers will benefit from your content. That is to say, be specific.
An example is when you are writing about how to avoid 9–5 jobs. In that case, ensure the reader knows, upfront, what will make them avoid the said pain point.
Here is how you can write it:
How to Avoid 9–5 Jobs through Freelance Writing
That way the readers know the exact way that will help them avoid the said obstacle. Thus, they will be attracted to click and read the content.
Write Short Sentences and Paragraphs
Short sentences are easy to understand, especially if you use simple language. Additionally, they make content fast to read.
Using long sentences can easily cause you to make grammar mistakes—apart from being hard to read.
Therefore, make your sentences short and ensure every sentence aligns with the topic sentence in a paragraph.
To achieve that, create short paragraphs, and each one of them should carry a single idea.
Here is an example:
I love singing. It relieves me of stress. That`s why every evening I go to the choir.
In this paragraph, every sentence supports the topic sentence, which is I love singing. Therefore, singing is the main idea of the paragraph.
Use Lists
In content, items are unreadable when arranged linearly. To make them easy to read, arrange them in lists.
To make the list more readable, ensure to use numbered lists when listing sequential items and unnumbered lists for items that don`t follow any sequence.
Here is an example of a sequential list:
Steps to washing a dog:
- Wet your dog with warm water
- Apply it with shampoo
- Rinse it thoroughly
- Wipe it with a dry towel
You cannot rinse the dog without, first, wetting it. That`s how to know when you need to use a numbered list.
On the other hand, unnumbered lists have no specific order. You can arrange them in any way and still be understandable. Here is an example:
If you want to lose weight, you should avoid foods such as:
- Ice cream
- White bread
- French Fries and Potato Chips
- Pizza
- Cookies and Cakes
Use Bold and Italics
When people read fast, it`s easy to not identify important information. Bold and italics are the ways to put emphasis, catch readers` attention, and slow readership so they don`t pass the important words.
To emphasize the words you want readers to give attention to, use bold. For example,
English grammar is essential if you want to get online writing jobs.
The phrase English grammar is the most important in the phrase. Bolding makes the readers unable to skip it.
For words that require less emphasis than bold use italics. Such phrases include quotes, conversations, titles, etc. Here is an example:
“If you want to be rich, hang out with rich people,” Danton said. The quoted words are italicized to make them stand out.
Organize Your Metadata
Content is more understandable if it`s organized. Through metadata, you can organize your content and make it more searchable.
You can organize metadata by
Optimizing Your Images
Apart from making content appealing, images make content easy to understand. Furthermore, they are proof of what you market in the content.
If well-optimized, images make content more searchable and enable it to appear in image searches. If one clicks on them, they get redirected to your content.
To optimize images, incorporate your keywords in the ALT description. This enables search engines to know what the image is about and if it relates to the content.
However, ensure to use clear images relevant to your content. This is because, despite being optimized, if they are bland, the audience will still ignore your content.
Note: if you use free images, ensure to attribute them to avoid lawsuits.
Creating Useful Title Tags
Title tags are essential in helping search engines understand the context of your page so they can present relevant search results.
Not to be confused with the H1 tag, a title tag describes the content of a web page. Meanwhile, the H1 tag introduces the content on the webpage.
Title tags appear in search results, while H1 tags are usually at the top of the content`s page. The title tag and the H1 tag don’t have to be alike.
To enable your page to be searchable you must format your title tags for search engines and make them understandable to humans.
Here are the components of a title tag:
Make It descriptive
The title should describe the service or product a page contains, starting with the most to the least important information.
To make your title tag perfect, begin with the product or service name, followed by its descriptions, and then end with the company name. Here is an example:
Toyota Harrier|Black|5 Seat|Luxurycars.com
So in the search results, it will appear as “5 Seat Black Harrier Toyota”.
Use Factual Words
Don`t use generic words like best, worst, surprising, mind-blowing, etc. Use words that specify a particular service or product. That`s how the reader will know what your page is about. For instance,
Instead of the above example, if you write, Toyota Harrier|Best|Lovely|Luxurycars.com, it would appear as Lovely Best Toyota Harrier.
That doesn`t explain why the reader should love it and rate it as the best.
However, as it is, (Toyota Harrier|Black|5 Seat|Luxurycars.com) it will attract somebody in need of a car with the stated specifications.
Don`t Exceed the Recommended Length
It`s much easier to convince the readers to click on your article if the title tag is wholly readable. That`s when you use the required title tag length, which is 70 characters.
Exceeding these characters results in a keyword being truncated, making readers not see the whole title tag. This can cause them to miss some important information, and discourage them from clicking on your content.
Making it fewer than the required characters, on the other hand, may hinder you from describing your page well. That may also make readers disinterested in your content. So, it`s better to fully utilize the 70 characters.
Incorporate Keywords
It`s through the keywords that search engines will relate people`s searches with your content. Therefore, ensure to add them here, too.
As in the example Toyota Harrier|Black|5 Seat|Luxurycars.com, Toyota Harrier is the main keyword, the content focus, which says what the page is about.
That means you should use keywords relevant to the page content. Creating a title tag with keywords different from the content will make you look untrustworthy, which can lower your rank.
Use Proper Punctuations
Use short and simple keywords so people can easily understand.
That entails leaving out excess words that may make your title tags look like a sentence. To achieve that, omit these words: like, if, then, or, yet, and, etc.
Instead, separate keywords with pipes (|). This helps utilize the required title tag length with only the important words.
Meta description describes title tags in the search results. It is an HTML description of a web page that comes below the title tag.
Without it, the readers cannot affirm whether your content aligns with the title.
If a meta description is poorly written, it`s easy for readers to skip your content no matter how helpful it may be.
To make your meta description appealing, use short, simple sentences to make it easy to understand.
To enable that, don’t connect sentences with conjunctions; instead, start a new sentence.
For instance, you can write: Drive luxuriously with a High-quality Toyota Harrier. It has a 2690 mm wheelbase and 55 L fuel capacity.
But don`t write: Drive luxuriously with a Toyota Harrier, which has a 2690 mm wheelbase and 55 L fuel capacity.
Also, ensure to add your focus keyword in the meta description so readers can relate it to the title tag and the content.
However, don`t overuse the keyword and make it look unnatural and spam. People will mistrust you and ignore your content.
Regarding length, the meta description should be 155 characters. Search engines cut off meta descriptions that exceed the required length; therefore, ensure to use the recommended length.
Also, do not include non-alphanumerical characters. Search engines cut off meta descriptions using such characters as well.
Non-alphanumerics include characters like ‘,. > < , etc.
Here is how Meta descriptions look in the search results:
Add Links to Your Content
It`s through links that people find content on the internet. Therefore, ensure to add internal and external links.
Enriching your content with internal links helps direct readers to your other content, which increases traffic.
Conversely, external links build authority and trust since people can follow the links to confirm your assertions.
However, link out to resources relevant to your content and ensure the anchor text you use aligns with the content linked out.
For instance, you can hyperlink the word keyword in SEO content if you want to link out to keyword research tools content. But linking Pizza cooking content to content about how to change a car tire won`t make sense.
Doing so annoys readers and lowers trust, hence reducing your chances of making sales.
Share Your Content on Social Media
The main purpose of SEO writing is to avail content to the appropriate audience. But, don`t rely only on organic searches. Distribute your content across different other platforms to attract more audiences and build awareness. Social media is one of the platforms to rely on.
Create social media pages, join various groups related to your business, and share your content. This helps redirect people to your site, and when they love your products or services, you can make sales.
When your content drives traffic from different sources, it signals search engines that you create helpful content. That helps raise your site`s rank and drive more traffic.
Set Your Website for Success with SEO Writing
Acquiring SEO skills builds a foundation for your online business success.
This entails identifying the audience`s needs and creating content that solves them.
To achieve that, use keywords relevant to their search intent.
Also, incorporate links in your content to make it navigable. Then market your content on social media, and you will draw traffic and drive conversions.
What other ways do you use to drive organic traffic to your site?
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