What is content SEO? Maybe you have heard the word SEO many times or you have been asked many times why some content is seen on the first page of the search engine. Look around you. How many people do you think are searching for answers to their questions on search engines every day, and how many people are uploading content to their website every day? What percentage of these contents are seen and read? In the meantime, how likely is your content to be seen? This is where content SEO comes in handy.
Table of Contents
What is SEO content?
Millions of textual contents are published daily on various sites, and among them some contents are seen and read more; these contents are exactly the same SEO contents.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, meaning search engine optimization or the process of optimizing a website to be seen in search engines like Google.
Content is any writing and information on the website. Now, with these definitions, SEO is content, writing and online information that is written with the aim of attracting more traffic (visitors) in search engines.
93% of people only check the result of the first page of Google, so now consider if your content appears in the first 10 results of Google, how much your content will be clicked and how much your site traffic will increase.
As we mentioned, the purpose of SEO is to increase the ranking of the site in the search results. Now what is the purpose of getting a better rank? Increasing traffic (visitors) to the site and attracting the attention of the audience. This increase in traffic gives credibility to your site and content and helps with your branding at no extra cost.
According to HubSpot, businesses that regularly publish content receive 350% more traffic than other websites.
Regardless of what your blog is about and who your target audience is, your audience will use search engines like Google by searching for the keywords they want, this is where SEO helps guide target users to your site.
How to write SEO content?
Writing an SEO-friendly and user-friendly content is both a skill and requires practice, and it does not only lead to writing a good content, but also includes all parts of the content, from the title to the time of publishing the content. For this purpose, the most important measures for content optimization are presented below:
1. Finding the right keyword (keyword research)
Keywords are words or phrases that users search in search engines to find the content they want. Keywords play the most important role in content SEO and attracting visitors, and it can be said that all your efforts in SEO and increasing your site’s traffic come back to the correct choice of this word, so you should be very careful in choosing them, but this is the same. It’s not easy!
The best keyword research tools for SEO
Choosing the right keyword and ranking in it is a very difficult task. For this reason, tools have been created to find the right keyword and help SEOs.
Google Keyword Planner
This tool is one of the most accurate and popular keyword research tools. The data of this tool is provided directly from google because it is integrated with Google ads and a part of it is freely available to the public. In Google Keyword Planner, it is possible to search for words in the form of words, phrases or website address, and also providing a prediction of the performance of keywords in the future and the ability to download the list of keywords in the form of an Excel file add to the advantages of this tool for content SEO.
SEMrush
This tool is more than just a keyword search tool and that’s why it is one of the most popular tools among SEO experts. For example, in SEMrush, by entering the name of the site, you can see all the keywords that the site has been ranked for, and you can get a list of popular and trending keywords (trending keywords are words and phrases that are in a The time period, the number of their searches in search engines increases).
This tool has a section called traffic analytics, with the help of which you can measure your position compared to your competitors. The duration of the user’s stay on the site (time on page), bounce rate, the amount of investment of competitors on keywords and several other features are among the advantages of this tool.
KWFinder
This tool has given the possibility to SEOs to search for keywords in any language and according to geographical location, and it also provides question and suggested keywords to the user. In kwfinder, we see practical predictions, including in the DA section of this tool, the type of performance of your domain is compared and predicted with the domain of other competitors, or in the CF section, the domain’s validity is estimated based on backlinks, and in the EV section, the amount is estimated Visits per month are provided to the user based on the position in the search results and several other sections. You can use this tool for free but only for 10 days.
Ahrefs
This tool will also provide you with keyword difficulty (the higher the difficulty of a keyword, the longer it will take your content to rank for that keyword), and it will also show you why your competitors are ranking higher and all websites which introduces links to your competitors. The great advantage of Ahrefs is to detect SEO problems and help to fix them, so it is very effective in accelerating the improvement of your site’s ranking. This tool also introduces the contents of interest to the audience in a particular topic.
MOZ
The MOZ tool is one of the most complete tools to help SEO professionals. This tool has free sections that you can use without paying anything. The free features of this tool include finding keywords and phrases, checking links related to your site and the number of backlinks received, measuring domain authority (DA), measuring page authority (PA) and… And as can be expected, these facilities It is available in a more advanced form in the non-free sections of this tool. One of the interesting tools of MOZ, which is not free, is the crawl diagnostic tool, which identifies the weaknesses and strengths of the page and content and provides it to us.
2. Title
The first thing we see from a content is the title of the content, so it goes without saying that the title plays an important role in content SEO and in motivating and attracting users. In the title of the content, you have the opportunity to show how much you identify the user’s need and how much you solve it. In the following, I will discuss some important points that you should observe in writing the title:
- What is the content about: In the title, you must answer the question of what information the user will get by reading this content; this is the most important principle of captioning?
- Who is your audience: The audience should feel that the content is written specifically for them.
- Keep it simple and clear: remember that users search concisely and simply.
- Pay attention to SEO: use the keyword in the title, don’t write too long, write predictable but unique titles.
3. Content structure
The standard structure of the content makes it easier to read and thus helps your audience understand the content and concept better and your visitors will increase over time.
How to write a structured content? First, think about what you are going to write about and write down keywords and headlines, then choose the best ones and start writing.
The structure of a standard content includes:
- Introduction and introduction of the content topic.
- The body of the content, which is the essence of the content that we intend to convey.
- Conclusion, which briefly explains the said content.
4. Content length
Long content has a better chance to be ranked better by search engines. When your content is long (more than 1000 words) it is easier for Google to determine what the content is written about, the author’s hand is more open to use keywords. In a longer text, you can use more titles, photos and links. Therefore, by including all these points, a long text will be of higher quality and will attract more traffic.
Another advantage of long text is more capacity in creating internal links; you can easily increase their credibility by linking to other content on your website.
5. Optimizing content images
The use of images in the right number and in the right size and volume plays an important role in SEO content and its ranking, but some points should be observed in the use of images.
Find images
It is clear that most of the time, to find suitable images, you have to refer to other sites and search engines, but not every photo on every site can be downloaded and placed on our page; For example, they may be customized for the site and other content. But in the meantime, there are also sites that provide you with high-quality photos in the form of open PSD and Ai files for free; In this case, you can easily include changes in the photo, put your logo in it and save it in the format you want. Freepik is our recommended site that has millions of photos and graphics.
Image format
There are many formats for images, but the most used formats, especially for WordPress users, are jpg, png, and webP.
Now let’s look at the difference between these three formats:
JPG is the photo format of most mobile phones and digital cameras, and is suitable for complex photos with many different colors. This format has a very high volume reduction capability, but in this volume reduction, we also see a drop in quality; Websites with this image format have good speed.
PNG is a more suitable format if you prefer high photo quality, detailed images and complex graphics, or if you intend to use a logo on the photo.
WebP makes available images with a smaller size but without quality loss, but since it does not support the iOS operating system, the use of this format is limited.
Reduce the size of images
When the speed of a site is low, users leave the site quickly, and in the same way, the rank of our site decreases. One of the most influential factors in site speed is the size of images. You can easily reduce their size by a significant percentage by uploading your desired images to compressjpeg.com and compresspng.com.
Alt tag or alternative text
This feature allows users to enter the content and site through photo search and improve the traffic and ultimately the SEO ranking of your website. The place of writing this tag is specified in WordPress.
6. Content address or URL
URL means Uniform Resource Locator is the unique address of each website that distinguishes each website from another. Each page, photo or video of the website has a separate URL. Permanent URL (evergreen URL) is an address that does not change and is always fixed. For example, campaign URLs are unstable and change or become unused after the end of the campaign. We create content on a page, give external links, and over time, many incoming links to this content will be created, and the credibility and rank of this page will increase by the search engine; this is the advantage of persistent URLs.
7. Internal linking
Internal links are links that connect from one page of a domain to another page in the same domain. Linked words or phrases (anchor text) are usually the keywords of the destination page or the landing page, which must be marked with a different color than the text color. These links make the user on your site move from one page to another and spend more time on your website, increasing the time on site and decreasing the bounce rate; therefore, it is effective on the site’s SEO.
Note: Neighbor content is content that is used in the neighborhood of keywords or linked words and phrases. The keywords of this content represent the identity and describe those phrases.
A content signature is: a sentence, a phrase or a paragraph of text that has an independent meaning from the text before and after it and is considered the author’s signature because it is specific to that author and no other person uses that phrase in the content.
8. External linking
External links are links that connect from one domain page to another domain page. Linked words or phrases are usually the keywords of the destination page or the landing page of another site, which must be highlighted and distinguished with a different color.
Giving an external link to another site creates credibility for both sites and increases the ranking of both sites in the search engine. Note that the impact of external links that others give to our site is much higher than internal links.
An external link that gives credit to another site is called a follow link, but sometimes SEO experts prevent this transfer of credit and unfollow the external link.
Note: You can easily nofollow external links by installing plugins, one of the most famous of these plugins is the Nofollow for external link plugin, which is registered in WordPress.
9. Schema
You must have come across websites on the search engine page that have working hours, location, or photos next to the website address, or questions that are displayed under the website address (FAQ) and…; All of these are schemas and are considered a type of tag, which can be implemented in some versions of WordPress and require the installation of a plugin in others. Schema is an added value for the audience, and Google notices this added value, and on the other hand, schema causes a higher click rate and ultimately improves the ranking of the website. For example, in the FAQ section, you have the chance to ask the common questions of the audience and get clicks. Schema is known in Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex search engines.
10. Meta descriptions
Meta description is the same two-line description below the title of the sites on the Google search page. By giving detailed information about the content, these descriptions provide an opportunity to promote the content and increase the click-through rate (CTR) and increase site traffic.
It should be noted that only 50-160 characters of the Meta description are displayed on the search page, in which it is better to use keywords and content advantages to attract the audience and remember when sharing the website on social networks such as Facebook. Meta description can also be seen. Without including these descriptions, the first line of your content will be displayed as a Meta description, which is not effective.
The importance of updating content
Updating the content is equal to crawl and index (index means to be seen and recorded by Google) re-content by Google. When you update your content, the search engine evaluates it again and you have the opportunity to improve your search engine ranking by providing better content. On the other hand, some contents need to be updated, and updating these contents increases the credibility of the website with the audience and increases traffic and improves its ranking in search engines.
Website SEO measurement methods
In the following, we are going to provide you with methods that you can use to see the results of your content SEO performance and to check your position compared to your competitors.
1. Website position in search engines
You can easily find the rank and position of your website or content in search engines using the search console analysis tool or manually.
2. Organic traffic
Visitors who enter your website directly through search engines are called organic visitors. Therefore, those who enter your website through advertisements or other sites are not part of organic traffic. This traffic is evaluated with the Google Analytics tool.
3. Organic lead
Those who are directly looking for the products and services of a specific website are organic leads of that website. Organic leads can also be evaluated through Google Analytics. (So only websites that have services and products to offer will have organic leads.)