7 Ways To Write Highly Search-Engine-Optimized Content

Despite writing so many articles, very few rank on the first page of Google?

Do you think that's the case for you?

Now let's get to the good stuff!

This article will give you some new facts and strategies about SEO Optimized Writing, along with some basics you might already know.

In today's article, you'll learn how to combine all these things properly in order to get the best results from your SEO efforts.

So without further ado, let's get started

01. Catchy Title & Optimized Meta Description :

Your title and meta description will be the first thing users see when they search for your article online. Readers will decide whether to read the rest of your content based on the impact of your title & meta description.

It's unfortunate that most writers ignore the importance of titles and meta descriptions. In order to make them more appealing and impactful, they don't invest much time and effort. Their perception is that it will not make much of a difference. In reality, the opposite is true.

Your title should always be short, simple, attractive, and eye-catching so that it can easily be noticed by the reader while browsing through the search results and convey the message quickly and easily.

Once your title has caught the reader's attention, your meta description takes over. The meta-description should inform the reader what value they will receive from the rest of your article. If your meta description is appealing enough, your visitor should be convinced just by reading it to click on your post to see what's inside.

A good title & meta description can help you convert more impressions into readers & boost your CTR (Click-Through-Rate).

In this case, CTR refers to the number of people clicking on your article out of those who saw the title in search results.

Increasing your CTR will directly impact your website's traffic and SEO, which will ultimately lead to higher rankings in search engines.

Creating a keyword-friendly meta description is easy if you follow these steps

Adding your main keyword to the meta description should be natural, but it should be placed at the start. The embedding should not be forced. In your meta description, try to address the reader's biggest pain and hint at the solution you will provide. As you write a meta description, your primary goal should be to create a sense of curiosity or fear in the reader.

02. Define Your Target Audience :

Defining your audience is extremely important since you cannot truly understand the pain of your reader until you know them. You won't be able to provide your readers with the real solution if you don't understand their real pain.

As a result, the reader will not be engaged with the content and will leave the page. As a result, your website's bounce rate will increase.

(Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who arrived on your website, but left without clicking on any links or visiting any other pages on your website.)

If you have a high bounce rate on your website, Google receives some bad signals about your website's user experience, which can directly affect its ranking.

So always define your audience and be clear with the purpose of your content before you even think of the first word. By doing so, you'll be able to connect with your reader more effectively and engage them from beginning to end.

03. Research :

Once you've introduced yourself to your target audience, it's time for one of the most important elements of content.

You've read the subtitle, it says "Research."

Due to laziness or tight deadlines, many writers avoid doing research for their articles, even if they lack sufficient knowledge or expertise in the subject matter. They try to make content engaging by playing with words without adding any real content. But that content does not work in the long run, either for readers or for the SEO.

Yaaa!

Using research and play of words together can make a great difference to the quality of your content, as well as its Search Engine Optimization. By adding stories, examples, facts, quotes, statements, statistics, etc., to back up your statements, you'll increase the impact, authenticity, and inspiration of your content.

And when your content will be adding that much value to your readers, it'll push them to take certain actions on your page like spending more time reading the content, sharing it, commenting on it, and more

These actions by your readers will help Google to detect the level of helpfulness & authenticity in your content. Google also gives high priority to content pieces that its users feel are helpful.

04. Keywords:

For most search engines, keywords used to be the most important ranking factor. The content was ranked according to its keyword usage. It used to be that the more keywords were used, the higher its ranking in search results.

But now, Stuffing Keywords in content is no more the king factor to rank your page higher in the search engines.

The main mission of any search engine is to offer its user the most relevant & helpful information for their queries and the same it expects from you.

But that does not mean keywords are no longer important for SEO. Yes, it's still there! But now it's used differently. Instead of using it to rank your page higher, you should use it to make your content feel relevant to the people's search intent.

You should understand your customers' search intent to tailor your keywords and content accordingly if you want your content to appear in the top results.

In simple terms, search intent can be described as "Purpose behind Search" (What the user wants to find out from the search).

It is possible to have multiple types of search intent, but we'll discuss four of them most commonly.

4 common types: Informational, Commercial, Navigational, and Transactional.

Navigational: When the user wants to navigate to a particular website or webpage. e.g. facebook.com

Informational: When the user is looking for some sort of information about anything. e.g. How to write SEO Content?, What is Search Intent?

Transactional: When the user is in the final stage to purchase a product and performing searches to check its features, best deals, etc. e.g. iPhone 14 Price, iPhone 14 Features, etc.

Commercial: When the user is not ready to buy the product but trying to gather information on it. e.g. Samsung A12 vs Samsung 12 Pro, Which phone is better iPhone 13 Pro or iPhone 14?

In order to provide the most relevant search results to its users, Google continuously updates its search & ranking algorithm. Because of this, Google gives high priority to search results that satisfy or are highly relevant to the user's search intent.

And that's the reason, why Search Intent should be the base for your keyword research & content planning to get the best results for your SEO efforts.

In order to get better SEO results, you should follow the following best keyword practices:

1. Your Meta Descriptions & Titles should begin with your main keyword or keep it in the first few words.Adding your keyword to your URL will let Google know that the content is relevant to what people are looking for.

2. Adding your keyword to your URL will let Google know that the content is relevant to what people are looking for.

3. While writing content, try to keep the keyword in the first few lines of your article, a helpful SEO tactic.

4. A good hidden SEO technique is to include your keyword in the file name of images, videos, or other files on your page. Rename your images, videos, or files (that you are using on your page) to your keyword.

05. Stich words in the right flow:

With a well-structured content that flows smoothly, you can undoubtedly win your reader's heart. However, it is a little more difficult in practice than it seems. Don't worry, it won't be difficult for you anymore!

Here's the formula:

HEC Formula - Hook -> Engage -> Call to Action

Hook at the Start

Engage at Middle

Give a Call to Action at the End

If executed properly, that simple formula is derived from the basic principles of sales, marketing, and content writing.

To apply, follow these steps:

During the introduction, try to engage the reader by creating an exciting, suspenseful, or energetic opening.

Remember that you only have 5 Secs. to engage the reader.

There are hundreds of ways to grab the attention of your reader like you can use questions addressing the reader's pain so that he can relate to it well and get ready to read the rest, you can add a surprising fact that'll excite the reader to move forward in the article, or you can make the reader feel connected by telling stories or by establishing an emotional connection with him.

As soon as you've grabbed the attention of your reader, now you have to keep him engaged until the end of your article.

There are two parts to this middle section of engagement.

n the first part, you need to try to generate the interest of the reader in your article and try to add the main content of the article there. The reader should feel that this article is the exact answer to what they were looking for.

Whenever we write content, we aim to create awareness, sell products, or otherwise create value.

In the second part, you should focus on your content's goal.

Here, you should try to plant a desire in the reader's mind, so that the reader will take the action that you desire. If your goal is to sell something, you can put the link to the product or send them to your landing page.

If you are writing to provide the readers with some informative material or to create awareness about something in them, either leave a question for them to answer or do any other activity to engage them in the comments.

As a result, you will be sending Google a positive signal about readers' engagement and will have a better chance of ranking it higher.

06. URL Optimization:

URL optimization is considered an insignificant step by many online content publishers. Any customization we are allowed to make on a website or page helps us improve its SEO, be it the URL, Meta Tags, Title, or Meta Description.

The basic idea behind all SEO procedures & techniques is to make things as easy as possible for Search Engines & Users.

Therefore, URL Optimization is important to improve the SEO of your website or page.

Let's discuss the few important factors to keep in mind when optimizing a URL!

(1) Include Keywords in your URL: Make sure that your primary keyword appears in your URL, as well as in your title and meta description. Alternatively, you can add some descriptive words that do not contain keywords, but help the search engine & the user understand what content the page contains. By doing so, the search engine will be able to easily place your page with relevant searches.

Keep it Short & Simple: Avoid using unnecessary keywords, parameters, or session IDs that make your URL lengthier and more complex. There is no doubt that keywords can be helpful in SEO, but they can also have negative effects if excessively used. Keeping your URL short, simple, and clear is always a good idea.

(2) Easy URL Structure: Make sure your website's URLs are organized by category and location. Whenever your users are on your site, they should be able to find where they are easily, and your URLs should not contain unnecessary elements.

It's also a good idea to keep the directory & category names simple & highly relevant to the content they contain.

(3) Keep the URL in Lowercase: It is always preferred to use LowerCase Characters in your URL. And the major reason behind this is Case Sensitivity! What do we mean by that?

Let's Understand!

There are multiple types of servers like Windows, Linux, or Unix that you can use for your website. Depending on the type of server you use, this case sensitivity problem may occur. In the Windows Server, URLs with uppercase, mixed-case, or lowercase are treated as the same, they just recognize them with spellings, so there is no issue at all if your website is linked to a Windows Server. As a result, Windows servers are considered "Case Insensitive" servers.

However, Linux or Unix servers are not the same. Both of these fall under the category of "Case Sensitive" servers.

Here's the reason why

In Linux or Unix Servers, URLs with different capitalization are considered as two different URLs which is highly confusing for the search engines and can cause your site to experience duplicate content issues that can have a major impact on your site's SEO.

(4) Use Hyphens instead of Underscores: It is always recommended to use hyphens in your URLs for differentiating words in it. But some people make use of Underscores to do the same job which is considered to be a bad SEO practice. Because underscores are invisible when formatted in a published link, it causes inconvenience to the users to clearly see what the URL is.

Also, it is convenient for Search Engines to crawl URLs with hyphens.

07. Write Unique & People-First Content:

If you can write Unique Content that is helpful for your target audience, then nothing can stop you from achieving success in the online world!

Every person or organization that has achieved tremendous growth in the online world has something unique to offer in products, services, or content.

When we speak of Unique Content, it doesn't always mean that it's New Content. There is a common misconception that Unique Content is the same as New Content.

It is obvious that New Content is always Unique, but Unique Content is not necessarily New.

Let's Understand it this way!

Imagine that you are writing a smartphone review for your website. In that, what will you write?

It's obvious that you'll write about the features of smartphones, right?

Since all writers write about the same smartphone features in their articles, how can you stand out?

So here...

Creating a unique style of presentation will help you stand out from the crowd and make your content unique.

Your personal views about that product and your unique style of presenting will help the users find value in your content. Google also knows that you can't change the actual facts but you can help people understand the same things in a better way. You can't change the features of the phone, but you can provide the users with extra information about the company, phone, or its technology, and help them learn about those same features in an engaging & interesting way!

In its search results, Google makes frequent updates to ensure that unoriginal & low-quality content is given the least priority.

This means that pages or sites with unique & people-focused content will be ranked higher and given a high preference.

Well, before we reach the end, here's a surprise for you!

Yes! Bonus Tip!

Moreover, there are two Bonus Tips for you that will help you improve the performance of your content over time.

So the first bonus tip is that,

08. Always Check Your Performance Analytics:

The digital world gives us the ability to check in-depth analytics and insights about everything we are running, including blogs, ads, websites, campaigns, etc. With this information, we can see how the audience has performed, including its reach, engagement, and audience behavior.

You'll be able to identify exactly what your viewers want from you when you keep an eye on all these analytics & insights!

It'll help you find out what content of yours is being helpful to your customers and what's not!

As a result, you will be able to focus your efforts on delivering content that actually meets the needs of your customers. Once your customers start getting value from your content, Google will automatically come on board.

Obey the Latest Updates From Google or other search engines.

In the article, we mentioned that Google keeps changing its search algorithm and ranking in order to offer viewers a better & more convenient experience. So you should always stay updated with the new guidelines or policies by Google or other search engines to produce highly Search Engine Optimized Content.

09. Conclusion:

In the end, if we put SEO Content in a few words, then it is nothing more than putting the emphasis on helping your reader in the best possible way while writing, while also understanding the algorithm of Google or another search engine to make the task easier.