SEO content is a must for businesses who want to reach the audience organically. Search engine audiences are incredibly relevant because they have already shown interest in what you’re offering. You just need to find the right formula to actually get them to stick around.
This is where issues arise. As a content creator for your business, you need to find the perfect balance between SEO-friendly content (in terms of keyword and optimization) and something audiences will genuinely like to read.
In this guide, we are bringing you the most important tips on combining keywords and SEO aspects with texts which are meant to be read by real, human readers:
1. Start with the Optimization
When you’re packing a text or a piece of content with keywords you want to rank for, it’s kind of hard to put them in a context of a piece that is personal or captivating for readers. However, it doesn’t have to be like this if you start with these aspects.
The difficulties usually arise when you have already produced a text, and then it’s time to insert SEO-friendly tricks. This is usually done in a very clumsy way.
Start by putting relevant keywords in your headings and subheadings – this way they are prominently placed in the text, but you have enough creative freedom to work on the body of the text on your own.
2. Make the Content Scannable
Scannable content is a must in recent years. The attention span of readers has drastically reduced in the digital age. Articles need to be easy to scan, read through, and digested.
They should also be as visual as possible.
Maya Geller, a writer and editor at GrabMyEssay, says, “The best thing about scannable content is that it’s a darling of both search engines and readers. Search engine crawlers will figure out what your site’s about more easily, while readers will have a better experience reading and looking at your content”.
3. Make Title and Headings Relevant
There is only a limited amount of resources search engines have to determine whether your page is a good fit for a particular search query.
Their algorithms are getting more sophisticated each day. Still, their main goal is to show their users content which is actually relevant to what they are looking for.
Of course, this is not only important for search engines, but for real readers as well. If you, for example, want to rank with an article about “SEO writing” and then you continue writing about business writing in academia, readers will quickly walk away from your site and likely never come back.
What this results in is a high bounce rate. As you can assume, search engines frown upon pages where most users enter, stick around for a few seconds, and then leave. After a couple of hundreds of these occurrences, a search engine will stop showing the page generally.
4. Don’t Just Optimize Blog Posts
Remember, your blog section is not the only part of your site that should be optimized. After all, it is not the only part of the site your readers pay attention to.
What’s even more important for them are the product pages. Here, it is especially important to find the balance between SEO and reader-friendly content.
For example, many product descriptions have specs and features listed in bullet points. This is great because it’s SEO-friendly and scannable (which we previously talked about), but it will not differentiate you from your competition. The same goes for specs and details presented as a table.
You will need to go a little further and incorporate storytelling if you really want your product pages to convert well.
The best way to combine these two approaches is to offer both: craft a beautiful product story that will resonate with your audience and place it next to your images and videos.
Then, add the bullet-point and table specs below. If you look at most major eCommerce sites, you will see this pattern in action.
5. Experiment with Different Content Types
If you like reading blogs and articles (like most Internet users), you probably noticed the trends and way people write changes year after year.
A long time ago, we had keyword-stuffed articles, then long-form content and listicles (like this one). It’s all based on the same goal: creating content people will love to read, and search engines will love to rank.
In this sense, it’s advisable to experiment a bit with forms of content not so frequently seen online. For example, try interviewing someone who’s an expert on the topic you’re writing about.
An interview piece is a great way to subtly add some keywords and SEO aspects and remain completely natural.
Conclusion
Due to high competition in the blogging and content realm, it can seem impossible to stay unique, original, and fresh and still rank high for competitive keywords.
That’s why you should focus on some new, unique aspects of looking at the way you create and publish content. The first thing to start with would be how to make the experience better for your readers. Ultimately, if readers and users love spending time on your website, you will soon be in the search engines’ spotlight too.
