SEO – How To – Write Onsite Content

Purpose of this How To Guide: This guide aims to highlight how you go about writing relevant, unique onsite content that reinforces keywords, helps rankings, and creates clear signals for Google in terms of what the page is focusing on.

Applicable to: Account Managers and Leads

Customers: All

Timescale: This should take approximately 1 hour to complete per page.

Introduction

Because content is a big part of the online user experience, it’s a very important SEO factor for ranking. For that matter, it’s important that any page content added or written reinforces the keywords the page has been optimised for and not only gives relevant information, but it’s also of unique value. Anything less will be penalised by Google.

Content should be added to a page when you are optimising that page or to increase its optimisation after it has been optimised. It should always proceed a keyword plan and come alongside or after a keyword plan implementation.

Checking What the Page Is Optimised For

It’s important that the content on any webpage reinforces what the page was originally optimised for or is being optimised for. A quick way to check what the page has been optimised for is to check what keywords appear on the:

URL
Title Tag
Meta Description
h1

These should all have a consistent keyword appearing throughout, but if they don’t, please refer to the keyword plan for the customer in the Attachment section of Accelo.

Chances are, you are increasing content on a page to help it rank better. If the keyword appears to be inconsistent in between all the places listed above and the page is NOT ranking well, discuss with the account manager the possibility of making changes to the URL, Title Tag, Meta Description, h1 and content so that all of these highlight the relevant keyword. Making such changes will have an effect on the rankings, so it’s important the account manager is involved in the decision to change them.

If the page is currently ranking well, discuss with the account manager the potential negative effect writing content could have, and whether or not it should indeed be written.

Writing Content

High quality SEO content in general needs to be at least 350 words long, must be written well with proper spelling and grammar, provide information about the product/company and offer the user anything else they might find interesting, such as reviews, awards or accreditations the company may have been awarded.

Use the target keywords as naturally as possible throughout the content. Try to write for the target audience, not Google.
Mention the keyword within the first 100 words of your content or first paragraph, as this is an indication of relevance to search engines.
Use semantic alternatives (similar or connected phrases) that a user may search for, as this allows the content to be seen as highly relevant. For example, if your keyword was “dog grooming”, Google would expect you to talk about dog bath, dog cleaning, hair cut, clipping nails etc, which are all part of dog grooming. Mention everything that fits naturally.
Do not mention the keywords too much or in a way that sounds unnatural as Google will see that as “keyword stuffing”, a black-hat SEO technique which is frowned upon.
Use sub-headings (h2). This not only breaks the content from a user experience point of view which ensures the reader doesn’t get hit with a wall of text, but it also gives you the opportunity to further highlight the keyword(s) or semantically similar words. Check SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool and Answer the Public for questions that might be worth using as your sub-headings and answering in your content. Search for the keyword and both of these tools will retrieve popular questions asked about it. You can also ask the client what the most common questions are that their customers ask about the product/service covered on the page you are writing content for.
Add a call-to-action. At the end of your webpage content, always make sure you prompt the reader to contact the company, find out more about the product or request more information. The page should always encourage readers to continue their purchase journey by taking action.

Adding Value

Unless you are talking about product specification, the content of all pages must not be a copy of another page. Pages with copied content are considered to be ‘duplicate content’ and this is penalised by Google. So, the content to every page must be unique.

SEO content has moved on from being a sales pitch loaded with keywords; it needs to provide the user with information that is valuable and relevant to what they are searching for. Information that can be considered valuable can be any of the following depending on the page and company:

Awards and accreditations
Client testimonials
Delivery information
Information about the product (e.g. material, flavour, style etc.)

By including this sort of information and ensuring that site content is written to a high standard, Google and other search engines will view the pages of the specific site to be relevant to users and you will therefore see the benefits of this in organic keyword positions.

After the Content is Written

After the content is written, make sure it’s proofread and quality controlled following the relevant procedure. Never send content to the client / upload content that has not been proofread.

Helpful Links

Smart Insights – Online Copywriting Course – https://www.smartinsights.com/guides/online-copywriting-course

Smart Insights – On-page SEO and Copywriting Template – https://www.smartinsights.com/guides/copywriting-seo-template

Search Engine Land – “Content & Search Engine Success Factors” – http://searchengineland.com/guide/seo/content-search-engine-ranking

Yoast – “SEO Copywriting: The Ultimate Guide” – https://yoast.com/complete-guide-seo-copywriting/