Writing SEO Friendly Content

Content is just information. And whatever you want to write about, possibilities are, you’re not the first. Demand for content is surging. And with information accessible literally at the tip of our fingers or spoken word (Hey Siri-Alexa), there’s an excess amount of searches and if you want to get your content noticed what do you need to do?
If you’re a blogger, a freelance writer, or do any type of content writing, keep reading because I’m going to walk you through a step-by-step guide by reading below to help you rank and get your content noticed by Google and other search engines.

The Reason To Write SEO Friendly Content

Whether you’re writing for your own site or for a consumer, you should have two objectives for your content.
# 1. The content should drive more traffic to your website.
# 2. The material should be designed to create engagement so that people will turn into patrons or be pushed along in your sales funnel. With those two objectives in mind, let’s go through a simple 4-step process to achieve both of these goals.

Steps To Writing SEO Friendly Content

The first step is to write about topics that are actually being searched for. Keyword tools like Google Keywords Everywhere or Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest can help you identify these keywords. When I was looking for ideas for this blog I used Google Keywords Everywhere and then I validated my idea by seeing how many searches were done on YouTube. To find topics worth creating content on, you’ll need a keyword research tool to identify search demand and to understand the traffic potential of the topic, which is the amount of monthly search traffic you could get if you were to rank high for a search term.
Most people like to write about topics that excite them or that they have knowledge about and I am no different. And while that’s all well and good, these posts often have a short shelf life because more content is being created by others that may be optimizing their content even more than what I did. For example, several months ago I wrote an article on GroovePages Lifetime offer.
Until recently I was on page one for ‘Groovepages” and it was great. I estimate that post brought me about $12,000 in sales. Nothing about that content has changed but recently we have had our rankings pushed down by newer content coming online. This was even with a really good backlinking campaign being done. Our top-ranking content just was not as fresh anymore and newer posts improved on our optimization.
And while that post wasn’t created with search traffic in mind, we knew that it would create a foundation for us to work off of to have additional keywords ranked for and to bring us additional traffic, which it has done. Some of the other content that we updated has actually replaced it. When you create content around topics that people are searching for, then you get free, organic, and steady traffic that usually grows over time.

Caveat Emptor

One area I haven’t touched on is ranking difficulty but this blog is on content writing, so instead of expanding on keyword and topic research. Remember, our goal is to rank at the top of the search engines so that you can get website traffic. And this leads us into the second step, which is to assess the “type” of content the search engines want you to create.

Types of Content

A search engine’s job is to deliver the most relevant results for any given search query. And they do a pretty good job at this. So naturally, if you want to rank for your target topic, then you need to know the type of content the search engines will rank for that query. This is called search intent, which tells us about what searchers are looking for when they key in a query.
The easiest way to do this is to just search for the query you want to rank for and look at the top-ranking results. And the three things you’re looking for are; Content type, which can be other blog posts, landing pages, or product descriptions. The content format can be how-to guides, reviews, step-by-step tutorials, or competitor comparisons.
So, looking at the top 5 organic search results for our query “GroovePages” you’ll see that the top 5 search results are all blogs that are a review of GroovePages with a lot of YouTube Video Reviews mixed in. So that would be the type of content we need to be using if we want to move back to the top 5.
From my experience, matching content type and format are critical to rank at the top of the search engines. The search engines like Google are telling you what types of content they want to rank to solve that search query. Content is like a jigsaw puzzle. There are a lot of different pieces and it’s tough to assemble without some kind of framework.

And now this is where the SEO perspective comes in. By analyzing the top-ranked content you can easily discover what the average content length is as well as their use of header tags, images and videos usage and then you can begin forming the framework on what your content needs to look like.
This rough outline is like the corner and edge pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They will help to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. They also help make sure you’re including all critical points worth communicating on the topic by looking at the keywords used in the headers. From an SEO perspective, it can help you meet the search engine’s algorithms. The way search engines determine posts or page ranking in the search results is based on their own internal algorithmic that is analyzing content.
Their technology is able to understand words and phrases and the subject that they are about. The more you make it easy for them to know what your content is about the better your chances of ranking. Don’t worry about stuffing keywords in your post, but if you see something that could act as a subheading, it might be worth adding.
I normally do this with a Frequently Asked Question Section if it is appropriate and works well with the post. Content length may be a ranking factor but answering the query is even more important. This will humanize the post and help you to focus on what matters most: helping your readers.
The next step is to create a click-worthy headline. A headline is important because it’s what stands between you and a guest. Its main activity is to convince people to actually click on your post or page because they think they will get the answer they are seeking because of how the headline addresses their search. Then it’s up to your content after they click on the post.
Here are a few simple ones you can use. I’ll use Groovepages as my subject again but you can swap out your main keyword with it.
“GroovePages Review” “GroovePages vs ClickFunnels” “GroovePages Review 2021” “Groovepages-GrooveFunnels Free Funnel Builder”
Now, it’s important to note that while clickbait headlines might cause more clicks, if your content can’t deliver on the headline’s promise, then it won’t help you or your readers and will end up doing more harm than good.

AIDA Content Writing Formula

Alright, the next step is to write a killer first paragraph intro using the AIDA formula. The opening paragraph is arguably the most important part of your content. If it doesn’t work the user won’t go past it. The first paragraph’s job is to hook your reader and convince them to keep reading. Fortunately, there’s a tried and tested formula you can use called AIDA, which stands for attention, interest, desire, and action.
Let’s write a sample intro for a post on GroovePages. The first paragraph should be dedicated to grabbing your audience’s courtesy. So something like … “When it comes to generating leads and making sales online, is Groovepages the right tool for the job?” This makes them curious if GroovePages can help them make sales online and generate leads.
The next part is to raise their interest. You can do this with stories, facts, or anything else that might help connect with your audience in a personal way. In our example, we could follow up with “What is Groovepages, and is it worth the money? Well, that is the question we want to help answer today. Did you know that Groovepages is a powerful sales funnel, website, and landing page builder?”
The desire part could be as simple as asking a question such as “Do you want to make more online sales?” It is a way of trying to make the reader aware of their pain points.
Now finally the action part. “Keep reading to hear our opinion on GroovePages.”

The #1 Tip For Writing Content

Our best tip to make your content readable is to keep your thoughts as succinct as possible. For example, if we are writing about Groovepages we might say something like… “The choice of a website landing page builder is up to you. However, there are 5 things you need to consider depending on what your goals are.” Then add a list of 5 bullet points. Compare that to something like… “A landing page is a powerful thing. It can affect your business so choosing the landing page design is a critical step.” This doesn’t really help the reader solve their problem. It just sounds like you’re trying to convince them to use a landing page.
As for readability, you can do things like… Use headings and subheadings, avoid huge amounts of text by writing in short sentences and short paragraphs, add images or graphs if it helps clarify or visualize a point, and use transitional sentences like “as you know,” “however”, and “also,” which can help improve the user experience.
This is something we do at Digital Papercuts for every single piece of content we publish whether that be a blog post, a landing page, or for a product sales description. It helps us to always put our best foot forward and deliver no-fluff content that we hope will help those reading our content. If you can’t get your content right, then you probably aren’t going to rank high for any meaningful keywords. Also, there are times when you’ll nail your content, but you still can’t rank. This often comes down to the level of competition, which usually is affected by the quality and quantity of backlinks. I won’t go into assessing the ranking difficulty of a topic or how to build backlinks to your pages because we have quite a few blog posts that go deeper into these topics.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of optimizing your website and online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.

How Do You Write SEO Content

Understand (and match) keyword query intent
Get to the point
Refrain from keyword stuffing
Write good headlines
Optimize your meta tags

Why Is Content Important in SEO?

Content Allows You to use Keywords that the search engines have identified that can help answer a search query. Writing quality content is the only way to make sure that you can strategically use your keywords