First things first – for those of you who may not know, SEO stands for search engine optimization. This simply means “optimizing” a website, so people can find it on Google.
When you’re creating content (whether it’s on a page on your website, on your blog or posts or ads for your social media platforms) you’ll likely want to ensure that it will help your SEO.
Understanding these three basic rules will help you create content that helps boost your SEO efforts – bringing more traffic back to you online.
Rule #1: Write for people, not for Google:
If SEO is your primary focus, it probably won’t work. Thanks to a massive amount of content online, the days of creating content designed to appeal to bots are over. If you provide “thin” content that is over-saturated with keywords, Google will actually penalize you and be less likely to show anything of yours to your audience.
Your content needs to be readable, and it should be sharable for best SEO practices.
Plus, you’ll want to identify your desired outcome. Are you trying to sell a product online? Get more video views? Have people fill out a form and send it to you?
The type of content you produce should be developed accordingly in support of your end-goal.
Rule #2: Know your audience and where they’ll find your content:
Understanding your audience is key to ensuring that the content you create for them resonates and provides value.
For example, the kind of content you will create for mortgage brokers (informative blogs, infographics, PDFs, short-form videos and social media posts) might be very different than what you’d develop for your clients (an emphasis on DIY videos, high-visual, targeted to a younger demographic).
Furthermore, understand where your audience lives online. Do they hang out on Instagram and Snapchat? Or Facebook and LinkedIn? Make sure your content is on the right platforms where your target market is.
Rule #3: Understand SEO writing basics:
This is a hefty rule – there’s simply too much to cover here, so stay posted for another guide on this topic.
However, I will let you know that you’ll want to get acquainted with a few terms, so here are the basics. Familiarize yourself with keyword research and optimization. You’ll want to look into keywords that people are already searching for information about. In order to optimize the keywords you’ve found, you’ll need to understand where and how to use them in your writing so they get picked up. You’ll want to ensure your content is mobile-friendly and organized by relevancy and in a logical manner with links pertaining to the topic. Once you’re done, you need to understand how to promote your content and leverage it on social media or with paid Google ads, bringing traffic back to your content in faster, more cost-efficient streams.
One thing the SEO pros never tell you… When you’re writing content for SEO, it really helps if you’re passionate about what you do and what you’re writing about. Why is that?
If you’re genuinely into a topic, you’re more likely to understand and research a breadth of information pertaining to it – and are more naturally apt to cover a wider range of related topics (keywords) that your audience will be searching for.
For example, if you’ve built your career selling real estate and it’s something you actually like, chances are that your interest may have expanded into other related topics – such as interior design, staging to sell a home, sustainable home design, urban architecture or city planning. You can imagine that writing about these would come easily to you – and would also be things your customers are searching for too. Not to mention, when you like writing about something, you’re more likely to do it consistently, which is big for SEO.
It always comes back to the basic rule of writing: write about what you know.
Elle Campbell is a Canadian entrepreneur, writer and founder of Elle Connects; helping Realtors across North America market themselves on social media and through blogging. An advocate of “staying on the move” to keep inspired, you’ll find her in a yoga class, running or checking out different cities. Send her an email or call (250) 816-0714.
