As a business owner, you have completed your research and planned your content strategy with an SEO consultant Phoenix, and now you are ready to write. As you progress, keep these six steps in mind to ensure your content appeals to search engines and receives an optimal ranking.
1. Create a Catchy Title That Utilizes a Keyword
Creating the right title is very important for content to succeed. A high-quality headline determines whether there is successful engagement or a complete miss. The title is the first thing a person sees when they conduct a search. On average, five times more people will read the headline than will read the content itself. The best approach is to place the primary keyword near the front of the title and to keep it under 600 pixels in length. The Moz Title Tag Preview tool is helpful for this as is the Yoast plugin for WordPress.
2. Write an Enticing Meta Description
Meta descriptions are used as content summaries for a web page. These descriptions are shown in snippet form by the search engines on results pages. Meta descriptions are not considered to be a major ranking factor, but they do encourage higher click-through rates from users. When incorporating primary keywords within a meta description, ask yourself if it sounds natural or spammy. Try to write the way a person would speak. Google truncates snippets, so it is important to keep the description fewer than 300 characters.
3. Write the Content Using an Outline
This step is where you write your content by utilizing all of the elements that you found through your analysis. The most efficient way to create content is to write it one time, then go back and edit as needed until it is exactly what you want. Make sure that you cover all aspects of the topic, and do not be afraid to be a little creative. You should not feel limited or boxed in when you are writing.
4. Ensure the Content Answers Common Questions
While you are writing the best content you can with proper SEO practices, you also need to consider the questions that your target audience may ask. By including the answers to these questions in your copy, you are making it as comprehensive as possible. Discovering possible questions is as simple as doing a Google search for your primary keyword and looking for a “people also ask” box on the results page. There are also numerous keyword research tools that provide a list of common queries for your primary keyword. Once you have seen all of the common questions, you can compare them to your copy and make sure they have been answered.
5. Add Semantic Keywords for Enriched Text
In search terms, “semantic” means “related to.” In this case, it presents a contextual relationship to a word. For SEO, having terms that are semantically related to the primary keyword provides a better connection to your content and helps people understand it more completely. To accomplish this, an SEO Consultant Phoenix recommends analyzing your copy against content published by the top-ranked sites that also use your primary keyword. You can use a content analysis tool like Ryte’s Content Success to see which keywords you need to emphasize, reduce or remove. This will ensure that your copy is aligned with that of your competitors, although it is not a guarantee that it will rank.
6. Conduct a Final Review
The final step in your content creation process is looking at it from a search user’s perspective and see how easy it is to read and understand. Check for spelling and grammatical errors and make sure the sentence structure is sound. In the end, the content must not only be optimized for SEO, it must also be a good fit for your target audience.
If you need assistance with content creation that ranks, the experienced staff of Internet Marketing Team is always standing by. Visit the website to explore your options or call 1-888-518-3718 and see how the team can benefit you.