SEO

Content Maketing, General SEO

WHAT IS SEO CONTENT?
 HOW TO WRITE CONTENT THAT RANKS
by Joshua Hardwick
June 23, 2020

In the past 12 months, we’ve published 79 pieces of “SEO content” on the

Ahrefs Blog. 96% of them rank in Google and get organic traffic month
after month.
One post even ranks for 10,000 keywords and gets over 57,000 monthly
organic visits:

How did we do this? By taking an SEO-driven approach to our content.

In this guide, we’ll run through the 8-step process we use to write content
that ranks.
But first, the basics…

What is SEO content?
SEO content is, quite simply, content that’s designed to rank in search
engines like Google.
You might think that all content is SEO content, but that’s not the case.
For example, we have a lot of studies on our blog, and most of them get
little or no organic traffic.

Does this mean those posts failed?

Not at all. We published these posts to bring new insights to
the SEO community—not to rank in Google.
It’s also important to note that any kind of content can be “SEO content”:
product pages, landing pages, interactive tools, and even videos. But when
most people talk about “SEO content,” they’re talking about blog posts.
For that reason, that’s what we’ll focus on in this guide.
But before we talk about how to write posts that rank, let’s make sure we
understand why this type of SEO content matters.

Why is SEO content important?

No matter what your business does, you can only get so much organic traffic
to your “money pages.”
For example, we have five landing pages—one for each of our main SEO tools:

In total, these pages get around 25,000 monthly visits from organic search,
and we rank in the top five for all of our main keywords:

But, these pages account for less than 4% of search traffic to our site:

How? Because we’ve also written hundreds of pieces of SEO content for

our blog.
In total, these posts get over 300,000 monthly visits from organic search
alone:
If we didn’t do this, we’d be leaving a lot of money on the table because
potential customers aren’t always searching for our products directly.
Many are just looking for a solution to a problem that our tools happen
to solve.
For example, we have a competitive research tool called Site Explorer. One
of the things it does is show who’s linking to any website or web page.
But, potential customers might not know we offer this product and instead
search for something like “who links to my website.”
So we decided to write a blog post about that:

Writing “SEO content” like this is important because it brings more

potential customers to our site.
Make sense?
Good. Now let’s talk about how to actually write this stuff

How to write SEO content
Not all blog posts are SEO content, and pouring your heart and soul into
your content doesn’t guarantee rankings and traffic.
Just look at the stats for one of my favorite blog posts:
It’s 7,600 words long, has been shared over 50,000 times, has fantastic
illustrations, and is super well-written. It’s a masterpiece.
But look again at how much traffic it gets from search engines:
34. Measly. Visits. A. Month.
So, if you want your post to get organic traffic, you need to write it
around a proven SEO framework.
What is that framework? It looks something like this:
1. Find a proven topic
2. Analyze search intent
3. Write an outline
4. Write a draft
5. Edit your draft
6. Make your content visually appealing
7. Write a compelling title and description
8. Upload your post
Let’s go through each of those steps in more detail.

1. Find a proven topic

Before you even think about putting pen to paper, you need to find a
relevant topic with “traffic potential.”
To do this, think about broad topics that your potential customers might be
searching for.
If you sell baking supplies online, then this might be recipes for baked
goods, cookware reviews, or other things related to baking.
From there, search for those broad topics in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, and
then check the “Phrase match” report to see keyword ideas:
Because this gives us a lot of keyword ideas (almost seven million in this
case!), let’s filter out super-competitive competitive keywords and those
with little or no search volume.

Right away, we see some good topic ideas like banana bread recipe, apple
pie recipe, and pizza dough recipe, each with tons of monthly searches.

But here’s the thing with search volume: it can be misleading.

For example, take a look at the search volumes for these two keywords:

Because “butter cake recipe” has almost five times more searches than
“chocolate chip cookie cake recipe,” you’d expect this topic to have the
most traffic potential.
However, if we look at the top-ranking page, we see that it gets an
estimated 2,383 US visits a month from organic search….

… whereas the top-ranking page for “chocolate chip cookie cake recipe”
gets more:

This happens because the top-ranking page ranks for—and gets traffic from—
more queries.
So, before you settle on a topic, always look at the estimated traffic to
the top-ranking page to get a better sense of true traffic potential.

2. Analyze search intent

Search engines like Google have invested billions of dollars into
understanding the true intent behind searches.
This is how they’re able to return relevant results—even for vague queries.
If you’re writing SEO content, this is important, because if it doesn’t
align with search intent, your chances of ranking are slim to none.
But, how can you figure out search intent?
The answer is to take clues from the top-ranking results by analyzing what
we call the three C’s of search intent.
These are:

Content type
Are the top-ranking pages blog posts, product pages, category pages,
landing pages, or something else?
If they’re not mostly blog posts, then go back to step one and choose a
different topic

Content format
What type of posts rank? Are they how-to’s, list-style posts, opinion
pieces, news articles, something else?
For “best baking pans,” they’re all lists:

Content angle
Look at the page titles to understand more about the type of person
searching for this. Are they a beginner or an expert? What do they value?
Are they looking for a quick solution or something more in-depth?
For example, many of the pages ranking for “french bread recipe” pitch how
easy the recipe is:
For flat dough bread recipe, speed seems to be what appeals to searchers:

Recommended reading: Search Intent: The Overlooked ‘Ranking Factor’ You

Should Be Optimizing for in  2019
3. Write a data-driven outline
The average top-ranking page ranks for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords
in the top 10.

For that reason, it pays to know which other keywords the top-ranking pages
also rank for when creating your outline—so you can rank for them too.
How can you find them?
Paste the URL of the top-ranking page into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, then go
to the Organic keywords report. To weed out irrelevant keywords, filter for
keywords where the page ranks in position ten or higher.
You’ll probably notice that many of these are synonyms or less popular ways
to search for much the same thing, but some should give you insight into
what searchers want to see from this page.
For example, we see that the top-ranking page for “flatbread dough recipe”
also ranks for things like “no yeast flatbread,” “quick flatbread pizza
recipe,” “homemade flatbread”:

Note that you shouldn’t stuff these words and phrases into your post, but
instead use them to iron out the angle of your content and create a rough
outline.
For example, if we were writing a flatbread dough recipe, we’d probably
want to mention speed in the intro, and we might want to have separate
sections on making the flatbread with and without yeast.

If you don’t use Ahrefs, then you can do the same thing by looking at the
top-ranking pages and using some common sense.

4. Write a draft
Good news: It’s finally time to put pen to paper and draft your post.
Because this doesn’t have much to do with SEO, we won’t dwell on this
process too much. Just remember that the aim here isn’t to write a perfect
draft right off the bat, but rather to turn your thoughts into something
tangible to work with.
Here are a couple of tips for doing this as quickly as possible:

Write as you speak
Most of the best blog posts are written in an informal, conversational
tone, so there’s no need to agonize over every word. Just write as
you speak.
Don’t worry if it sounds silly; you can correct this in the next step.

Use the Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is simple: you set a 25-minute timer, and a goal you
want to achieve in that time.
For drafting blog posts, a good goal is a certain number of words.
Most people type at around 40 words per minute, so that’s 1,000 words in 25
minutes. However, drafting a blog post is more mentally taxing than just
typing, so let’s assume 30–40% efficiency, or 300–400 words every 25
minutes.
Take a short break after 25 minutes, then repeat.
Continue this process until you have a complete draft.
SIDENOTE.
 Test your typing speed here. That way, you can set a more custom goal. 

5. Edit your draft
Pulling readers into the flow of your content is important if you want them
to stick around—which you do.
Not only is this good for conversions (which is ultimately the point of
ranking), but it also has a positive impact on user engagement metrics like
time on page, dwell time, and bounce rate, which some SEOs believe may
indirectly influence rankings.
Here are three things to focus on:

Correct spelling and grammatical errors

Most word processors and writing apps have spell check built-in, so you
don’t have to be a genius to get things right. Just right-click and choose
the right spelling.

For grammar, run your draft through a tool called Grammarly. This will tell
you about misplaced commas and sentences that don’t make sense.
Make sure it flows
If your content sounds unnatural or robotic, now is the time to rephrase.

Keep it simple
Most Americans read below an eighth-grade reading level. If you’re using
complex sentences and words, that’s going to confuse readers, and they
won’t hesitate to hit the back button.
Solve this by running your draft through Hemingway.
This is a free browser-based tool that helps you simplify your content
using more straightforward sentences, paragraphs, and words.

Get feedback
Sure, it’s soul-crushing to hear that your content isn’t quite up to
scratch. But the truth is that the opinion of others can help improve
things exponentially.
Send your draft to a friend, tell them to be honest, iron out any creases.
6. Make your content visually appealing
Nobody likes reading a wall of text. If you’ve written more than a few
sentences, then you should work to break up the copy.
The most obvious way to do this is with images.
They don’t have to be anything special. You’ll notice that a lot of our
posts on the Ahrefs Blog include annotated screenshots like this one:
Not only does this make things easier to skim, but it also helps to
demonstrate what we’re trying to explain.
You can also use videos to do this:
Many studies show that visuals help people understand and comprehend
content, so including useful images and videos can improve user
satisfaction—which we know is important to Google.
Including images and videos can also help your content rank in Google’s
image and video tabs.
Don’t overlook this. We’ve had over 5,500 visits from Google Images in the
past three months…
… and 32,000 from video results:

But images and videos don’t always make sense. So another thing you can do
is break lengthy chunks of text into subsections using H2-H6 headers.

7. Write a compelling meta title and description

Search engines see more than just the text on the page. They look at
metadata in the page’s code to learn more about your content.
The two more important pieces of metadata are your meta title and
description. Both of these show up in Google’s search results, and they’re
effectively your sales pitch to searchers. Use them to explain why they
should click and read your post.
SIDENOTE.
 Google sometimes rewrites these two things, so what you set isn’t always
what shows up in the SERP. But it’s still best to set them. 
This is another place it’s useful to match search intent.
Whatever searchers value, pitch it in your title tag. Just make sure it’s
still an accurate description of your content. Do the same with your meta
description.
This will entice more clicks on your page in the search results, which
leads to more traffic.
Some SEOs believe that clickthrough rate also impacts rankings, but Google
says this isn’t the case because the metric is too noisy.
Either way. SEO is not just about rankings, but also getting clicks from
searchers.

8. Upload your post
Nothing to do with SEO, but here’s a tip to save you some serious time if
you use WordPress: Write your content in Google Docs and upload it
with Wordable.
It takes just one click to send your content—complete with images—to
WordPress. It’s ready for publishing in seconds.

This is what we use to upload every post to the Ahrefs Blog.

Is “content” enough to rank?

Google tells us that the two most important ranking factors are content
and links.
https://youtu.be/l8VnZCcl9J4
So, while creating perfectly optimized content is often enough to rank for
less competitive topics, links are still important for those harder topics
that a lot of brands want to rank for.
But here’s the thing: content and links are somewhat intertwined.
In other words, nobody wants to link to poor or mediocre content; they link
to content that’s valuable for their visitors.
While link building is a separate—and complex—topic of its own, there are
ways to use your content to improve your ability to win links.

1. Make it the go-to resource on a topic

Pull this off, and people are more likely to link to your guide over
others.
We did this with our guide to Google search operators, which has attracted
backlinks from over 560 websites:

2. Include unique data

Having unique data means people have to cite you as the source when quoting
that data.
This is why our studies usually get tons of links:
3. Make it as accessible as possible
People aren’t going to link to something they find confusing or difficult
to read. (This is another reason why step #6 is so important).

Final thoughts
Following a proven SEO framework to write content makes sense, and it
certainly improves your chances of ranking. But it’s important to remember
that things don’t always work out, even if you do everything “right.”
Just look at traffic to our post on influencer marketing:

It’s a proven topic, the post aligns with search intent, and it covers the
topic comprehensively… yet it doesn’t even rank in the top 100.
If this happens, it’s not the end of the world. Just rewrite and republish
the content and try again.
We did this with our guide to driving more traffic to your website, and
traffic and rankings went through the roof:

You can also rewrite content when traffic starts to drop.

This is what we did with our list of top Google searches:

Did we miss anything important in this guide? Give me a shout on Twitter.

 HOW TO CREATE SEO FRIENDLY CONTENT
by Alina Petrova
October 20, 2020
What is the key metric to measure content success?
76% of our respondents stated it is organic traffic. The difficulty,
however, is that creating content that attracts organic traffic is the top
challenge for 52% of marketers surveyed.

When you know which steps to take, adding the SEO stage before creating any
piece of content will not overly complicate your content production
process. And the benefits are worth it — optimization can impact your
performance positively in the long run.

By optimizing your text right away, you:

 Save time for your future self – you can get long-term results when
traffic comes to your site every month without investing much in that
content's promo. 
 Create truly valuable content – you answer questions your audience
really asks. 
 Attract new audiences – people who have found the answer to their
question in your article can become a loyal audience and even ambassadors
of your brand.
"Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation
with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality
content," says Google.

In this article, I’ll walk you through nine simple steps to creating SEO-
friendly content and bringing more value to your audience.
 1. Start with Keyword Research
 2. Determine Search Intent and Identify the Right Format
 3. Create a Well-Optimized Meta Title 
 4. Create a Catchy H1 
 5. Optimize the Meta Description
 6. Structure Your Content and Make it Readable
 7. Add Visual Content
 8. Make Your URL Readable
 9. Adjust Interlinking

What Is SEO-Friendly Content?

SEO-friendly content is content written in such a way that it helps search
engines understand what it is about, what user queries it is responding to,
and what people will learn from your article. 

In return, search engines can show your article for relevant user queries
in the top results. Search optimization brings undeniable benefits to a
site, like traffic and audience growth, and can be cheaper, more enduring
and sometimes more effective than paid advertising.
How to Write SEO-Friendly Content
 1. Start with Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of successful organic content
distribution. Keywords are the terms that people enter into search engines
to find information on a topic. 
Contrary to popular belief, keywords are not just about SEO, they also help
you to find answers to the following questions.

 What is your audience looking for? This will help you to uncover your
audience’s interests and choose a topic to write about.

 What do they ask online? You’ll learn specific questions on this

topic to answer in your content.
You need to start your research with the right keyword.
Google recommends that you "think about the words that a user might search
for to find a piece of your content." For one article, you’d need to select
one primary keyword and up to 5-10 additional keywords.

How to pick a primary keyword

When writing an article, it’s tempting to take as many keywords as possible
and optimize the text for all of them. However, this may lead to blurring
the focus of attention and providing less comprehensive content. 

So, pick one primary keyword and then dig deeper. Your primary keyword
should be the main focus of the entire article. 
I chose 'music festival' as a keyword to start my research with, and used
the SEMrush Keyword Magic tool to find the volume, related keywords, and a
lot more. 
People in the US search the sample keyword I mentioned more than 22,000
times per month. High-volume keywords are popular, but they are also
difficult to start ranking for in the short term. 
If you use SEMrush, then be guided by the Keyword Difficulty metric – let
it be lower than 70-80, if possible, but still focus on a sufficiently high
volume (each industry has its own standards for what is considered high
volume and what is not, so we can’t really give the numbers). I
chose ‘country music festivals 2020’ as the primary keyword for the
article.

How to pick additional keywords

Additional keywords should be closely related to your primary keyword so
that inserting them doesn’t change the focus of the article, but rather
reinforces the main keyword’s focus.

You can pick them from the topic clusters to the left, or 'Related' and
'Questions' tabs on top in the Keyword Magic tool.
Another great tool for expanding your list of keywords and users’ questions
is Topic Research. The tool helps to find your audience’s interests and
shows a wide range of related topics, popular article titles, and questions
people ask for your primary keyword. 
In the next steps, you will add the primary keyword to the title and H1 and
additional ones to the subheadings and body text. This will tell both
search engines and users scrolling the search results what the article is
about.
2. Determine Search Intent and Identify the Right Format
 Search intent is what users are trying to accomplish, and what they expect
to see when typing or voicing a query. Google devotes a lot of attention to
teaching algorithms to evaluate user intent correctly, and encourages
content creators to answer the requests with relevant material.

The content format you choose, the message you convey and the call to
action you leave should depend on the search intent for a keyword. Search
intent can be broken down into four distinct types:
 Informational – the searcher is looking for specific information on a
topic. 
 Navigational – the searcher is looking for a specific web page or
site.
 Commercial – the searcher is considering a purchase and wants to
investigate their options. 
 Transactional – the searcher wants to purchase something. 

How do you determine what types of keywords you’re looking at or how to

find them? It’s very simple – there are clue words:
 Informational: ‘guide’, ‘tutorial’, question words, such as ‘what’,
‘how’, or lists with ‘top’, ‘best’, ‘checklist’ in the title (e.g. ‘best
music festivals 2021’). 
 Navigational: the name of a brand, product, or service (e.g. ‘ultra
music festival’). 
 Commercial: product modifiers like ‘cheapest’, ‘review’, ‘comparison’
(e.g. ‘ultra music festival reviews’). 
 Transactional: ‘buy’, ‘price’, ‘coupon’, etc. (e.g. ‘ultra music
festival tickets’). 
The clue words will help you determine the type of search intent. If you
are searching for keywords, for example, in the Keyword Magic tool, use
filtering by a word to get a list of words that fit.
 Also, I use Topic Research to quickly find out what people on the Internet
really ask about the topic I'm interested in. These are mostly
informational intent focused in my case.

The Mind Map within the tool presents a ready list of potential topics to
cover. You can choose any of them to see the exact questions people ask.

You may also want to type your keyword into the Google search bar to check
for any SERP features that can help with identifying the keyword type:
 Featured snippets may indicate informational intent;
 People Also Ask may also indicate informational intent;
 Site links may indicate navigational intent;
 Google Ads may indicate commercial or transactional intent; and
 Google Shopping ads may indicate commercial or transactional intent.
Taking the search intent and keyword type into consideration, you can now
identify the best format for your article. 

This is where manual search can help you – look at competitors’ pages that
are already ranking in the top 10 for your keywords. Are they step-by-step
guides, or maybe a list of different options? What do the articles call
for? What are their titles, i.e. how do they describe their article for
search results?
To name a few, how-to guides are more successful for informational queries,
while comparison posts may work for commercial queries, product pages for
transactional ones, and category pages can rank for navigational keywords.
If you use SEMrush Content Marketing Platform, manual competitor analysis
can be automated with the SEO Content Template. The tool analyzes the top
10 search engine results, and gives you key recommendations based on them:
semantically related words to include in the text, text length, and the
readability score to aim for. And the tool shows what you need in a single
 tab – titles of the top articles and the context for your target keyword
mentioned in an article.

Need more topics for your content plan? Learn how to research topic
ideas in our in-depth step-by-step guide.

3. Create a Well-Optimized Meta Title 

Your article’s headline is not necessarily the title that will be shown in
search results. Consider that your article has two headings: the H1 tag
shown on the page itself, and the meta title tag shown in the search
results snippet. 

They can be closely related or similar, but they don’t necessarily have to
be identical. The most important thing is that each tag must contain your
target keyword.
Although the H1 tag is one of the signals showing search engines how the
page is structured, the meta title is more important for SEO purposes.
The meta title introduces your content to the audience. That's why it's
often the primary piece of information they use to decide which result to
tap on, especially when searching on mobile. 
To make your title attractive for both search engines and searchers, follow
the basic rules:
 Write a unique title for each page. If you use the same title on
different pages of a website, Google can show an alternative title instead
of yours.
 Consider the users’ intent we identified previously. Choose a title
that clearly indicates what problem users will solve or the benefit they
will get from reading your content. Include the clue words to catch users’
attention and entice them to click.
 Keep the title between 15 and 40 characters long. Pages with a title
tag length of between 15 and 40 characters have an 8.6% higher CTR than
those that are outside of that range. The maximum length is approx. 60
characters - any text beyond that can be truncated automatically.
 Include your target keyword in titles. URLs that contain a keyword
have a 45% higher click through rate than URLs that don’t contain a
keyword. Search engines use titles to understand whether the content is
relevant to the query. However, don't over-optimize.
"In general, we try to recognize when a title tag is stuffed with keywords
because that's also a bad user experience for users in the search results.
If they're looking to understand what these pages are about and they just
see a jumble of keywords, then that doesn't really help." (John Mueller,
Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, 2016) 
 Consider asking a question. Title tags that contain a question have
a 14.1% higher CTR than pages that don’t have a question in their title.
 Motivate users to go to the website. According to Backlinko research,
while power words (like ‘secret’, ‘powerful’, ‘ultimate’, ‘perfect’,
‘best’, ‘insane’, ‘amazing’) decrease CTR, emotional titles can increase
it. Emotional titles may have either a positive or a negative sentiment –
they tend to work equally well. 

4. Create a Catchy H1 

If you need to add more creativity to your article, there’s a little more
room in the H1 tag than in the title tag. 

Here’s what you need to consider when writing your H1 heading: 

 Create a unique H1. This will help prevent visitors getting lost
between similar pages on your site.
 Use words like 'how', 'why', 'what', and 'where'. This way, you help
people understand what they will find on the page below – guides and how-to
articles also drive 2x more traffic compared to other types.
 Use numbers like 'top 10', '5 best', 'N things…', etc. Articles with
list headlines get 2x more traffic and 2x more social shares than other
types.
 Describe what is discussed in the text body. The H1 of the page
should describe the content, otherwise Google regards the discrepancy
as low content quality.
Topic Research can help you quickly find the most resonating headlines.
After entering a topic, you’ll instantly see popular headlines that have
the highest amount of backlinks and social engagement. 

5. Optimize the Meta Description

The meta description is what users see under the page title in Google
results. It can be the perfect way to encourage a user to click on your
link over your competitors’ if you write it carefully.
Here’s how Gary Illyes, Google Search Team specialist, describes the most
common problems with meta descriptions:
"Because meta descriptions are usually visible only to search engines and
other software, webmasters sometimes forget about them, leaving them
completely empty. It's also common, for the same reason, that the same meta
description is used across multiple (and sometimes many) pages. On the flip
side, it's also relatively common that the description is completely off-
 topic, low quality, or outright spammy. These issues tarnish our users'
search experience, so we prefer to ignore such meta descriptions."

To properly optimize the meta description, there are 5 basic rules:

 Make sure that every page on your site has a meta description and
create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. 
 Include a relevant keyword in the meta description.
 Keep them about 1-2 sentences (140-160 characters) long. Even though
there’s no limit on how long a meta description can be, search result
snippets are truncated typically to fit the device width. 
 Meta descriptions don't just have to be in sentence format, it's also
a great place to include the key information scattered throughout a page.
For example, product pages might have price, age, manufacturer in their
description. These descriptions become even more attractive for both search
engines and users. 
 Target an emotion and add a call-to-action if it’s relevant.

The meta description is one of the best ways to grab the attention of new
visitors, so give this optimization step enough attention.

6. Structure Your Content and Make it Readable

Imagine you open one of the Google results and there’s one continuous piece
of text. How likely would you be to continue reading? You’ll probably try
to use the Ctrl+F shortcut, or just leave to find a better-structured
article. If you leave, the site’s dwell time will decrease and the bounce
rate will increase, and this is no good for your website ranking.
Good structure is an essential element of high-quality content. Subheadings
make your content scannable and therefore easier to read. According to our
study, 36% of articles with H2+H3 tags have higher performance in terms of
traffic, shares, and backlinks. 
In Google’s words: "Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to
follow. Avoid dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page
without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation". 

Here are some recommendations on how to make content readable: 

 Make your text long if it’s necessary. Longreads of 3000+ words
get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than articles
of average length (901-1200 words). But this doesn’t mean that a short
article is bound to rank poorly – it depends on what users need. It is more
likely that longer articles provide more information on a topic, and thus
perform better.
 Consider adding a table of contents. If the article is long, add a
table of contents at the beginning of the article to let visitors quickly
go to the desired section.
 Use H2 + H3. Well-structured articles with both H2 and H3 tags
are more likely to be high performing. Structure the article to make it
easier for the user to understand the content, but don’t overdo it by
making the structure too complex with multiple subheadings.
 One paragraph = one idea. Divide the content into logical, digestible
segments to keep readers engaged. 
 Answer user questions. Attract users' attention by including in
subheadings their questions that you’ve found out in the Stage 1. 
 Highlight important ideas. You can use bold font or change the font
size. This helps to place emphasis, makes the text easier to follow, and
helps cement the main ideas in users’ minds.
 Divide long sentences. Just like breaking your content up into
paragraphs, divide long sentences into shorter ones. 
 Use bullets and numbered lists. Using them, you can convey large
amounts of information in a concise form. Bullet points also increase your
chances of getting a Featured Snippet. 
Keeping so much information in mind when creating content may seem
overwhelming. Thankfully, you can rely on smart tools that can help you
with optimizing your content before publishing, like SEMrush SEO Writing
Assistant. You will get all the necessary recommendations in real time and
can assess your text right in Google Docs or WordPress: 
 Check your overall optimization status — ensure your text is
perfectly structured for a target keyword and written in an SEO-friendly
style.
 Adjust your text length and optimize reading time — check if your
text matches the average word count for your top 10 competitors.
 Add recommended keywords — the tool will suggest adding some related
keywords to your text to increase the article’s SEO potential.
 Make your tone of voice consistent — make sure your content piece
complies with your overall brand voice — casual, neutral, or formal — and
detect sentences that stand out.
 Ensure your text is unique — avoid plagiarism by finding out the
total percentage of copied words in your text and seeing the original
sources of content from across the internet. 
7. Add Visual Content
People remember only 10% of the information they hear, however, if they see
the information in a visual, that figure is already 65% – this is how our
brain works. Using visuals in your content, you can convey an idea so that
visitors remember it and can share it.
Different visuals across a page will not only help to better convey
information to the user, but also help you circulate your content better.
According to Twitter, tweets with photos receive an average 35% boost in
retweets. Visuals aren't just nice – they’re an essential core component of
a successful blog post. 

Also, use infographics, checklists, templates, and other types of visual

content to deliver value to your audience faster and in a more catchy way.
The more useful, interesting, and relevant content is, the more backlinks
you are likely to get. Backlinks from authoritative websites make your
content trustworthy for Google. Thus, the search engine ranks it higher.

The other benefit of pictures and videos to any blog post or copy is that
they can be ranked in the Images and Video sections of Google and even get
into Featured Snippets and attract additional traffic.
 Be sure to optimize your visual content - below you’ll find the main things
you should do. 

1. Reduce the file size. 

Images are often the largest contributor to overall page size, and can make
pages slow and expensive to load. If you resize images to their maximum
display dimensions, you'll almost always find that your site loads faster,
bringing improved SEO benefits and better user experience. 
Find image optimization tools in this article and analyze your site speed
with PageSpeed Insights.

2. Create descriptive image names. 

Using 'music-festival-people.jpg’ is a much clearer way to tell what an
image shows than ‘IMG00353.JPG.' Change a generic filename to a descriptive
name to give Google clues about the subject matter of the image.

3. Add alt tags. 

Alt tags provide a text alternative to an image for search engines and
those using screen readers to access a web page.

There are best-practice rules that you should follow when optimizing your
image's alt texts:
 Describe the contents of an image in as much detail as possible. This
will help it rank on Google Image Search and give context as to how it
relates to your page's content.
 Make Alt tags absolutely relevant to the topic of the page that it is
on.
 Be sure to write unique alt texts that describe the specific contents
of the image rather than repeating the page's main target keyword or other
images’ alt tags.

A good tag describes the image for search engines and screen readers while
including keywords. For example, how would you describe the image below? 
 To increase the image visibility, I would describe it as 'People raising
hands and performing heart hand gestures at a music festival.' 
Find more tips to help you optimize images in our guide. 

8. Make Your URL Readable

Although keywords in URLs is a tiny ranking factor, writing a quality URL
that clearly describes the page's content will help your readers to
understand what’s inside. 

URLs get copied and pasted regularly, and sometimes when a link has no
anchor text, the URL itself serves as the anchor text. In other cases,
users can hover on the text to see the link in the lower left corner of the
browser window. A readable URL explains what is inside.
Which of the links would you trust more:
‘https://www.example.com/discover/top-festivals-usa/’ or
‘http://www.example.com/index.php?
id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1’? 

A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Remember that based

on only these few words, users’ brains decide whether this content is
useful for them or not. 

Here is what Google recommends to keep a URL readable:

 Use punctuation in your URLs, and use hyphens (-) instead of
underscores (_) between words.
 Make your URL descriptive and match the page's primary keyword.
 Use lowercase, rather than mixing in capital letters.
 Make it as short as possible, while still describing the contents of
the page.
If you need to quickly know how your competitors for a target keyword
compose their URLs and texts, this is where SEO Content Template comes into
play: type in a keyword, check your top 10 Google results and gather the
best from them.

9. Adjust Interlinking
Internal links are those that point from one page to another on your
website, while external links are those that point from a site to any site
other than the domain the link exists on.
"Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Other
pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new
page," says Google. 
 Internal linking helps search engines.

To add your site pages to its massive database of discovered URLs, Google
sends robots to investigate your site. Robots start out by fetching a few
web pages, and then follow the links to find new URLs. So, for search
engines, interlinking is one of ways to regularly discover contextually
relevant content on your site. 
Besides showing your site's structure and offering relevant content,
internal links pass authority between pages and ultimately may improve
rankings. If a page, for instance, has authoritative external links
pointing to it, it will have built up a PageRank score. This authority can
then be passed to another page of your site by way of internal links.
 Internal linking helps people.

For users, interlinking is also a major element in helping to navigate and

find more useful information on your website.
According to our recent research, encouraging prospects to move through the
funnel was considered one of the most challenging tasks when building a
funnel by 50% of our respondents. Also, we found out that 67% of them try
to solve this problem by improving internal links and making the content
easier to find. 56% of respondents suggest related content to answer more
specific queries.
Internal linking is not something that should be done once, but something
that needs to be monitored constantly. Here are our suggestions on how to
create internal linking.

1. Conduct an audit. 
An audit of existing content will help you understand which topics your
content covers and which ones it doesn’t, which articles are relevant and
worth referring to, and which ones are worth updating, etc.
The SEMrush Site Audit tool has a Thematic Report checking your site’s
internal linking, showing:
 How reachable your articles are – how many clicks are required to get
them from the main page.
 The pages that have a weak Internal LinkRank and those passing most
Internal LinkRank. This can help you identify the less and more
authoritative pages on your site.
 Internal link issues – errors, warnings or notices relating to
internal links.
2. Optimize internal linking.
Find relevant content on the site and add links pointing to new articles.
This can help to improve your website’s organization, and decrease your
bounce rate. 
You can also optimize your internal linking according to the buyer’s
journey to make them move to the next stage. Awareness content should link
to Consideration articles, and Consideration articles should link to
Decision content, not the other way around.
To make readers interested in other content and make moving through the
funnel easier, add related articles at the end of each post.

3. Build your internal linking strategy.

Make a list of the hub pages that will help you build out topic
clusters for a better understanding of your site architecture. These pages
are often the ones that drive the most valuable traffic to your site and
typically target your main keywords with the best content.
Create topic clusters using internal links. This means that you associate
the main hub page for a particular topic with a group of supporting pages
to add depth to the topic. You can create a spreadsheet for each topic
cluster first, and then add links. 
Create the right anchor texts. Make them relevant to the article you’re
linking to, place them naturally and consider using the longer-tail
variants of your keywords. They could help to boost the rankings for that
specific term for your target page, so long as it’s written in a way in
which people genuinely search.

Checklist: How to Create SEO-Friendly Content

Following our own recommendations, we’ve created a PDF that contains an
'9 steps to creating SEO-friendly content' checklist. Only the most
important information you need to remember when creating your article -
save it for yourself or share with your colleagues!

Simplify your content creation and optimization with the SEMrush Content
Marketing Platform. Learn how to use SEMrush for content marketing step by
step to craft a perfect content marketing strategy.

TIPS TO OPTIMAZE, CREATE ENGAGING &

THE SEO-FEIENDLY CONTENT
.by Ron Lieback
July 26, 2018

Some can create engaging content, others SEO-friendly content. Most can't
do both. Use this step-by-step roadmap to create more successful content.
Some can create engaging content. Others can create SEO-friendly content.
Few can do both.
For true digital success, all content – from service pages to blog posts to
guests pieces on third-party publications – must engage and appeal to
search engines.
When engagement and SEO are aligned, both build upon each other’s mission.
That’s the simple secret of digital marketing.
For this alignment to flourish, technical SEO is crucial. But the most
energy is absorbed by the copywriters. Sadly, most companies hire the
cheapest copywriters possible to save a dollar here or there.
This is wrong in every way; a content writer carries more clout than most
in the endless world of digital marketing.

I continually stress the importance of hiring strong copywriters to my

agency’s clients – even if that client has already been with me for years.
One successful route that makes sense to those who don’t understand the
importance of engaging and SEO-friendly content is my explanation of what I
call the “online engagement ladder.”
Searchers begin at the lower rung and work their way up (read ascending
from 1-4):
4. Content engages audience.
3. Title attracts an interest; meta description builds upon this interest.
2. Content ranks high for search query and keywords through strong SEO.
1. A search query is entered into a search engine with various keywords.
The end result of a business that follows the simple online engagement
ladder?
Searchers quickly transform from prospects to customers/clients/readers
(based on the proverbial Holy Grail of online industries:
products/services/news).
Once these customers/clients/readers are exposed to engaging content on a
consistent basis, they will soon become loyal to your brand. Without
getting too deep, loyalty allows easy up-selling, and by nature this
equates to higher ROI.
After more than two decades of creating content for both traditional and
digital platforms, I’ve learned a few things about designing content
strategies that feed the engagement/SEO-friendly machine.
Following are 17 essential tactics that I use when training my agency’s
writers.
These are chronologically ordered for maximum impact. Notice the added
energy that’s needed toward the revision stages of creating engaging and
SEO-friendly content.

1. Keyword Research
For digital marketers, these four syllables are cliche. But for some reason
loads of content is continually created without proper keyword research and
a clear keyword strategy that includes optimizing each page or post for
target keyword(s).
Search Engine Journal has dozens of articles on keyword research if you
don’t know this foundation for content marketing success.
With proper research, you’ll know what type of keyword volume and trends
are out there, and you can optimize your post or page to capitalize on that
research.
Main service/product/category pages – especially “parent” ones – can chase
the higher volume keywords. All other lower “child” pages and, especially
blogs/education articles, can chase the long-tail, lower-volume keywords
that are typically endless in any industry.
Note: Optimized website hierarchy and keyword mapping are paramount for
success. If your agency refuses to mention this before creating content,
run.
2. Related Keyword List
During your keyword research you’ll also discover related keywords – ones
that when properly implemented will show relevancy to the post/page’s
target keyword(s) and theme.
Spend time creating this list of related keywords. It will be vital to your
overall strategy – especially after some other things are done that cater
more to the writing side versus the SEO side.
 3. Engaging & Optimized Title Tags (Headlines) Supersede Everything
You can have the best piece of content in the world, but if the title
tag/headline is not engaging, not many people will notice. Genius
copywriters like Ray Edwards say that you have a mere two seconds to garner
attention with your headline.
First, for SEO purposes, you must use the target keyword(s) –  as close to
the front as possible. And keep that title around 60 characters.
Next, the title must do one or all of the following:

 Explain how to do something.

 Establish credibility.
 Create curiosity.
 Command a benefit of a product/service/news headline.
 Engage the conversation within the reader’s head.
 Explain the idea of the “WHY” of your brand (read Simon Sinek).
Also, two things that are statistically said to attract attention from a
psychological stance are:

 Brackets or parentheses
 Odd numbers
Put the effort into creating title tags/headlines that drive clicks. Also,
A/B testing of a few title tags will result in much higher results.

4. Now Forget About the Keyword Research

Now that the keyword research is complete, and you’ve created your
headline, it’s time to focus on creating the content.
Put SEO out of your mind. Focus on creating the content itself.
Mentally make a note of the related keywords, and most importantly the
theme of your title, but clear your mind of any thoughts of SEO. Just focus
on the writing for now.

5. Enhance the Mindset

For some it takes music. For others pressure from deadlines. For others,
booze or whatever other type of thing settles the soul, whether a run, a
talk to a psych, or a simple hike with the dog into the woods.
Regardless of what it is, do it, and get focused on creative writing vs.
SEO.

6. Now Write
Began writing the first draft with one mission: explain the topic to your
readers in simplest form. The quickest way to achieve simplicity and
organization (which is explained below) is to begin with a simple outline.
Draft the most important thoughts and create your subheads (if using
numbers, don’t insert them yet – #6 above was once #9). All thoughts will
 likely change, but for now just get the main ideas down that support the
overall title.
The ideas may start slow, but once the mood sets in – which occurs quicker
when you practice this technique often – words will flow.
Don’t worry about sloppiness or correcting facts; let the mind go, and
brainstorm on the screen or by handwriting with a non-stop flow (I’d say
stream of consciousness, but that’s also cliche for literature types. Plus,
we want short paragraphs that will help us in the revising phases).
Handwriting may sound like some archaic process, but for some, this process
just works. It works for me with certain articles like this, which was
outlined in a tub while taking a break from client work.
Remember – even in the first-draft phase — don’t write thick paragraphs.
This will help save time in future revisions, and with practice will help
press the ideas of short paragraphs and white space between words. (Again –
we’re writing for a smooth transition of ideas to the reader. The easier we
make it, the faster these transitions will happen.)

7. Writer’s Block is B.S.

Many may stop and wonder what to do if “writer’s block” happens. Well, I
once suffered from this, but soon realized it’s just B.S. – an excuse to
not write.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with delaying the entire process of
writing. I sometimes wait until moments before the deadline to begin a
project.
But it isn’t writer’s block; rather, it’s a personal process to force
creativity. This happens for only certain writings. But when I sit down to
write every day for multiple clients, I never suffer from writer’s block.
If ideas won’t begin, simply start by writing words. Just the physical
process of writing can get the mind flowing.
A few tips to start the act of writing are:

 Rewrite the title in paragraph form.

 Write a few URL structures.
 Retype your related keyword list.
 Brainstorm bullet points of what you want to say to someone as if you
were talking to them.
The latter is my favorite. I imagine talking to the reader, and explaining
all the main themes of my article, saying the words out in my head as I
type or write each bullet point.
Sometimes I compose 100 bullets; other times 10. Regardless, they get the
mind in unison with the fingers to write.

8. Time for Organization

Now, even if you have 1,000 words or 100 bullet points or 10 subheads,
it’s time to organize your writing. Organized writing equates to organized
thoughts, and this organization appeals to a reader’s emotions (equates to
quicker sales).
Always organize with an end in mind:
 What do you want to achieve here?
 What is your overall mission?
 Why would you waste time writing if there was no ending in mind
(remember, we’re talking digital content that’s set to quickly engage…not
fiction!)?
As for the actual writing process, some focus on creating the beginning and
ending before the middle, and others the vice versa. Find what works for
you. Experiment with both back-to-back, and find your way.

9. Drafting Begins
This is where the real work begins – drafting.
I use the 80/20 rule for all business practices, making sure 20 percent of
my efforts achieve 80 percent of the results. This principle quickly comes
into play when you begin drafting.
Your first draft may have 80 percent of its efforts in 20 percent of the
ideas that need to be explained. Cut useless ideas and words aggressively.
Don’t be afraid – it’s only your first draft. Think about your first
moments at anything – driving a car, starting an agency or business, love,
music, whatever. Most would likely never repeat what happened first. The
same thought process goes for your first round of edits:

 Write.
 Think 80/20.
 Rewrite.
 Repeat process
I’ll sometimes begin with 2,500 words for a “simple” blog item, cut it to
800 words, rebuild, and cut again. Rebuild until it achieves everything you
want to say.

10. Now Walk Away

Regardless of how much writers think they can control all at once,
fogginess will set in.
You can continue writing the first draft until your head explodes because
that’s what that process is all about. But when drafting begins, fogginess
will set in. Embrace it, but realize you must refresh the mind.
This is when it’s time to walk away.
Contingent on the size of the content, this period away may take a few
hours, days, weeks, months, or years.
In regards to the latter, I’ve been away from the final draft of my debut
fiction novel for nearly six years. Between I drafted another three, but
I’m simply not ready to finish that first one.
But then again, that novel is for my relaxation – not client work that
needs finishing under tight deadlines.
 11. Repeat Steps 9 and 10, then Return to SEO Thinking
Repeat steps 9 and 10 for as long as it takes. Once satisfied, it’s time to
return to the SEO thought process.
Start by revisiting your keyword research, and reread your related
keywords.
Now that the tough writing is done, and thoughts/themes are explored, some
related keywords will make more sense than others.
Again, think like the reader. Place as many of these related keywords into
your article in a natural flow.

12. Organize. Again.

Now that you’re satisfied with the implementation of the related keywords,
it’s time again get into the reader’s mindset and out of your own.
First walk away, then come back and read the latest draft out loud, making
sure not to skip the subheads.
A trick I use is having my Facetime app open on my Mac so I can see myself
while reading. I guess this replaces reading in the mirror, which never
worked for me.
When seeing yourself as most see you in the digital world, you quickly
realize how dumb you sound – and look – when your content is unclear.
Clean up the draft once again before returning to SEO.

13. Meta Descriptions Need as Much Energy as Revisions

Once you have your best possible draft (don’t be married to it just yet; if
you are not the final editor, things are bound to change), it’s time to
write the meta description.
Though Google says it has zero ranking factor, it can have a significant
impact on who clicks through to your website.
The title tag is the main driver of openings in search results, but the
meta description can help strengthen that title tag, or weaken it.
Don’t spend all the time writing and revising just to let a meta
description pass by.
Also, use target and top-volume related keywords in it when possible. If in
a search query, these keywords are bold in the meta description, which
naturally attracts the eye, enhancing openings and user experience (UX).
Once your meta description is complete, the layout warrants it, write a
“deck head,” which is basically the original subheading that supports the
main title. The deck (as it is known in traditional journalism) is used to
create curiosity around the title tag.

14. Optimize, Thinking from the Top Page & Down

Think from the top of the page down, and make sure you have optimized the
following with keywords in mind:

 URL structure.
 Title (you centered your writing around it, but sometimes that title
changes).
 Sub-heading/header tags (make sure you not only optimize for
keywords, but make them H2, H3, etc. tags).
 Image alt text/captions/titles (fit as many keywords as possible
here).

15. Optimize Linking

We could have simply made this a bullet point above, but many forget the
importance of optimizing your internal/external linking for the actual
post/page content that you create (read: not footers, menus, sidebars).
What happens within your text or images can do much for UX – or destroy a
reader’s focus.

 Optimize internal linking. Find the most optimal keyword or keyword

phrase, and hyperlink it to an internal page of significance. One look
through this article and you’ll quickly understand how much effort goes
into internal linking.
 Optimize for external links. Especially if you’re in a news-related
industry where content depends on exposure of possible advertisers. A
simple followed link in the text can create a strong relationship with that
prospective advertiser.
 Just make sure all internal/external links flow with the theme of
your article.
 Many readers will stall if they click on a link about content
creation like this one, and that link brings them to a page about the
importance of collagen and fingernail growth. Yeah, it sounds
disgusting and will kill your audience’s intent – the thing search
engines prioritize for top results.

16. Before Publishing, Revise Yet Again

Can I stress revising enough?
Many of these latter SEO elements will occur when a story is uploaded –
especially the internal linking, and most on-site SEO elements such as
making headline tags actual headline tags, and optimizing the meta
descritpions and URL structures.
But once all is done, it’s time for one more revision. And this happens
within a live screen. A great CMS like WordPress will allow you to preview
your post before publishing.
This is once again psychological, and you will point out mistakes in a
preview that even the best editor couldn’t find on your Word document. It’s
just part of the process. Stick to it.
Also, it’ll show you how the article flows (is there enough white space?)
and allows you to review/check all internal SEO elements, such as optimized
header tags and internal/external links (you don’t want any 404s ever!).
 17. Final Step: Get Social Early & Often
Socialize it through every online means you have, with a focus on Twitter
and Facebook.
Social networks like these two have more than proven their worth regardless
of pressure from the financial analysis and luddites that ironically cover
the streams of social feeds today.
It doesn’t matter; the conversation needs amplification, and social is the
truest means there.
Embrace social. Grow social.
Amplify your brand across every social channel that makes sense.

Summary
Don’t overthink the most basic elements of content creation:

 Searchers must find the content.

 The content must engage.
For long-term success, one element can’t go on without the other. When
correctly implemented, both combine to create the strongest digital content
possible – the optimal solution for ROI.
And this ROI compounds because strong organic content gets stronger with
each free click, whereas even the best PPC ad needs continuous investment
for success.
The step-by-step tactics above are the proverbial roadmap for creating
successful content in any business, regardless if it’s product or service
based, or a news organization that thrives on quality traffic for
advertising dollars.
Engaging and SEO-friendly content is proven; don’t skimp on it.