A Guide to write quality Content to reach your Readers by having SEO standards and factors in mind.
This blog post is about improving your content writing to rank in first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing by following set of SEO standards and factors. This post can help you reach your content to all your readers who search for similar information. Always write content for Readers first, not for bot's alone. Have the keywords in your content as reader friendly then search engine friendly. Read this post so that you "Don't give a chance for your readers to miss your Content".
This post helps you to know how to improve content writing by formatting the content with HTML & SEO standards that can be easily understood by search engine bots about the importance of the content subject along with researched keywords. If you do not format properly, even quality content will not reach your readers. Make Google[1], Yahoo[2] and Bing[3] search engines, easily crawl able. Have your content to follow the SEO standards like Title, SEF page URL, Mata tag, H1, H2, H3, H4 tags, Image ALT, Anchor text, feed, formatted external CSS, JS and body content in Div code. Don't miss the chance and get to know how to use these standards.
Improve Content write-up to reach your readers with SEO Factors
Normally only few content writers thinks about SEO for Content, that is writing content and optimizing for search engine to make it easily spiderable[4]. One must follow SEO factors to reach readers local and global. Now a day’s SEO for Content is very much essential even for quality content to win search engine results and to reach readers who look for your quality information.
(a) SEO copy writing - Two Ways
You need to start a ground work of picking relevant keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6] for your content and you may start writing your contents with those single, two word key phrases and long tail key phrases. Do not make the content odd by stuffing those keywords. You can think of the keyword and write the content and if the information is clear and beneficial for it's users then you win the game. If content is written with related images and examples, if any, then you will get even better responses.
Another way is that you can first prepare your content drafts and based on the subject you can look for keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6]. Then related to the content you can add keywords and make the copy more meaningful and as well make sure that you don't add too many keywords[7]. Do follow Keyword Strategies that can help your to determine the best practice.
(b) Four Keyword Strategies
Here is a much enhanced keyword strategies that can make big difference in your new content write-up and as well to improve your existing content. The strategies are keyword density, frequency, prominence, and proximity.
(i) Keyword Density
To make your content win in search results you need to add top search keywords that your readers use in search engine. Your content may have those key phrases but make sure those are used in your content in correct format that meets keyword density.
Keyword Density % = Amount of keywords used / Total amount of words in the content.
Keyword density in percentage terms is calculated based on the amount of keywords you have used and the total amount of words you use in the content. This strategy is used to avoid the chance of keyword stuffing[7]. Keyword density can be between 2% to 8% and not more than that.
(ii) Keyword Prominence
How prominently your keywords are placed in your content depends on how much top priority for the keyword is given in your starting content, Title, H tags and Meta tags.
(iii) Keyword Frequency
The number of times a particular keyword has been repeated. Referring to the example you can see how many times "Photograph Editing Software" Keyword appears on a page content. Some may think that more the times Keyword found in a page, then the page ranks better for that Keyword. It is not so. Stuffing Keywords in a page will result in penalizing since it looks like spam[7]. Here you need to follow Keyword Density.
(iv) Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity refers to how close two or more keywords are to each other. You will achieve higher rankings if you place your keywords close together.
It depends on how you frame your two or more words to each other. If you are able to have words in your keywords close then you have chances to rank much higher. Here are two types of examples of how keyword "Photograph Editing Software" is focused.
Example 1: Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop.
Example 2: Best Software for Photograph Editing is Adobe photoshop.
Example 1 will work better when compared to Example 2 since in example one "Photograph Editing Software" is used as one single Keyword were as example 2 uses "Software for Photograph Editing". Words are not close and in order.
In detail, In Example 1, "Photograph Editing Software" 3 words are in same order as searched by users, whereas in Example 2, "Software for Photograph Editing" are not in order as you can see "Software" word is used in front of "for Photograph Editing" rather than after "Photograph Editing" as you can see from the actual keyword "Photograph Editing Software".
All the Four Keyword Strategies can be applicable in below tags and these are very much useful:
* Title.
* Meta Description.
* H1, H2, H3, H4 Tags.
* ALT attribute.
* Page name.
* Anchor Text.
* The body of the text.
(c) Maintaining the position.
It is not only about winning the game on holding the position in #1 page. It is all about maintaining the position in #1 page. I see some get into the position and then drop down soon. This is due to the lack of updates on the topic. Don't give any chances. This may also happen sometimes when you don't follow keyword strategies in your content and when you don't follow SEO standards.
Plan of Action to Rank in First Page
1. Improve your content writing for readers and DO SEO[10].
2. Make sure you have fresh and informative content in your content[8].
3. Avoid thoughts of using content only for marketing.
4. Make your content unique so it stands out from the rest.
5. Work on your content regularly.
6. Do add relevant key phrases to your content and avoid stuffing.
7. Do apply HTML standards and SEO factors to your content for effective search engine listings.
8. Always set right balance for users and Search Engines.
Example on SEO Copy Writing
Here is an
example based on optimizing the content. Suppose you plan to have a write-up on "Photograph Editing Software" as below. Here are the steps to show how to use Google Keywords tool to pick relevant keywords and optimize content for those keywords.
Step1: Now to start with optimization you can look for "Photography Editing Software" keyword search count and related keywords using Google Keyword tool.
Click
Google Keyword selector tool and paste the keyword "Photography Editing Software" in the "Enter one keyword or phrase per line" text area box, next enter captcha security characters and press Get Keywords ideas button as seen in
Figure 1.1
Figure 1.1
Step 2: Now you gets two types of results. One is "Keywords related to term(s) entered" and the other is "Additional keywords to consider". If you feel Additional keywords are useful you can very well use them.
Below keywords shown in Figure 2.1 are from "Keywords related to term(s) entered" section:
Figure 2.1
Step 3: Now we have 5 keywords to optimize and the write-up is about Adobe photoshop and we all know Adobe is not free so we can eliminate 5th keyword. (Refer
Figure 2.1)
Now we have 4 keywords to consider to optimize the content. Here is an
example how we add those keywords to the content.
"Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop. One of the Best photography editing software for Digital and Professional editing."
SEO Standards - Content formatting and practices
The content formatting and presentation is very much important.
(1) Title Tag
This is the main tag for search engines to know all about the page content. Keep your title tag Keyword rich and catchy since many search engine uses Title tag for search listing.
(2) Page name:
Page name can be same as Title tag (keywords). So again have the title name catchy, meaningful and keyword rich.
(3) H 1, H 2, H 3, H 4, H 5, H 6:
Have your Heading H1 and sub headings in H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. Make sure they are meaningful to the content.
(4) Image ALT Attribute:
ALT attribute for an image can be about the information on the image and related content. It also helps visitors with text-only browsers. ALT attribute text pops up when the mouse cursor is moved to the image.
ALT attribute plays important role in SEO factors and Googlebot and other spiders like to take up the information and ALT with relevant keywords helps keyword frequency to get better ranking.
[IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your alternative Text Here"] (Not compatible for FireFox)
[IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your alternative Text Here" Title="Insert your alternative Text Here"]
(Compatible for all Browsers. FireFox browser support IMG Title instead of ALT)
Make sure ALT attribute is useful and not written only for search engine bots[9].
(5) Meta Description:
This is an important tag for ranking your page. So make sure the description has most important meaningful researched keywords. Meta description content is been used as a Search Engine snippet for your page search users queries.
(6) Anchor text:
Anchor text helps the readers to know the information about the text to which the link point. Anchor text tag looks like,
Many writers use additional words to link a word string like, Google allows you to share your knowledge and add your name. To know more, click here
A much proper way of Anchor text in few words is, Google allows you to share your knowledge and add your name in Google Knol
This Anchor text code helps with linking benefits for readers as well as for search engine rankings.
(7) Activity Feed & Link Distribution:
Start populating your content and profile activity feeds through blog posts and feed submission sites. These ways will help to increase content popularity and increase the chances of referral hits and external link popularity.
Link Distribution can be done through content page link submission to external resources, tutorials and articles directories to help increase popularity and as well you can inter link your and other authors site related to your content. Make sure that the link distribution serves readers and they are natural[10], and not exclusive for search engine bots[11].
(8) Google Analytics:
Configure Google analytics for your content pages to track visitors and source of visit. You can also find user searched keywords for your content in Google analytics[12]. Pick those keywords and find the page position in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Update your content with those keywords till it meets keywords density and if the content already meets Keywords density then you might need to improve your content for users and increase page link popularity rather than adding keywords again that leads to Keyword stuffing.Be sure that the content should be meaningful and should meet users queries in search engine. And by following plan of action you can see extreme progress in site traffic.
Conclusion:
Congratulations on reading the post, as this covers all the practices that helps to improve your quality content to rank in First page. To summarize, now you have learned the importance of Content SEO with example of using Google Keyword tool for getting related keywords and optimizing quality content, implementing four types of Keyword strategies, applying HTML standards that supports SEO with content formatting and practices. By adding these content improvement standards and SEO factors to your quality content, you can see extreme difference in your page traffic and the analyses mentioned in this post help you to reach your content to all your readers.
