Writing SEO-friendly content is one of the best ways to get instant and sustainable growth for your business. But it can be challenging to create content that is both readable and search engine optimized.
A crucial part of SEO copywriting is understanding the intent behind searches. This will help you write articles that solve problems for readers.
Optimize Your Title Tags
Regarding SEO, a page’s title tag is one of the most essential elements. This is because it defines what search engines and users see when they look at a SERP.
A decent title tag that is clear and correct is one of the finest strategies for SEO content since it accurately portrays the page’s content. It also includes keywords when they make sense. For example, this recipe article from BBC is optimized using “home cooks” in the title. This helps Google understand the page’s content and narrows the audience to people seeking help.
Avoid overstuffing keywords in your title tags, as this can be viewed as spammy and could impact your rankings. Also, avoid repetitive and boilerplate titles, like those often appearing on huge database-driven e-commerce sites. They can seem robotic and can also be misleading for searchers. For example, if you write an SEO title that promises to deliver something and then fails to do so, it will cause searchers to bounce from your site, hurting your rankings.
Optimize Your Meta Descriptions
SEO-friendly content is only complete with properly optimizing your meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are the brief paragraphs beneath the website link in search results pages. They should summarize the content well and encourage searchers to click on your listing. Google often truncates these, so they must be short enough (between 120 and 156 characters) while providing value.
Ensure each meta description is unique and accurately describes the page or post. It is also essential that the report include a call to action (CTA), so searchers can quickly see how they will benefit from your article or web page. Avoid using ad copy in your descriptions, and avoid cliches like “awesome” or “showstopping.” These terms can distract or detract from the user experience. Finally, only try to target one keyword in one meta description. This is considered spammy and could hurt your rankings. Instead, optimize each meta description for a specific keyword and write a compelling call to action that will help drive searchers to your website.
Optimize Your URLs
URLs are among the most important ranking factors, along with the title tag, meta description, and link anchor text. SEO-friendly URLs are shorter and contain keywords that help search engines understand what the page or post is about.
A website should use a keyword in each URL when possible. However, using too many keywords can result in a spammy-looking URL that hurts performance. Instead, include a relevant keyword to the page or post’s content. Ideally, the keyword should be close to the beginning of the URL so that it is easy for search engines to decipher.
In addition, it is best to avoid using unnecessary and stop words in your URLs. This will make them more accessible for search engines and users to read and understand. Using hyphens instead of underscores is also a good idea because they are more intelligible for human readers. This aligns with Google’s advice and is considered an SEO best practice.
Optimize Your Images
Image optimization is a critical component of SEO. It is necessary to ensure your product images appear in Google’s image search results and reduce page load times, which can negatively impact user experience and conversion rates.
Optimizing your images involves resizing and compressing them to decrease their file size without compromising the quality of the original image. This helps your site load faster and improves the user experience, especially for visitors on slow connections.
It also involves naming your image files correctly to tell Google what they are. This can be done using descriptive names and adding relevant keywords to the file name. Lastly, it includes using alt attributes to describe the contents of your images for web accessibility. By optimizing your photos, you can improve your website’s SEO and create a better shopping experience for your customers. To learn more about how to optimize your images, check out this helpful guide from Moz.
Optimize Your Links
The anchor text displayed as blue, underlined text in a hyperlink is a vital SEO element because it gives search engines and users contextual information about the page they’re linking to. Anchor text irrelevant to the destination page can send confusing signals or make a page less valuable, so you should use descriptive and concise links.
Organizing your content into categories and ensuring that your URLs are easy to read and understand can also help your pages rank well. For example, if you have a lot of pages on your site that relate to one topic, use the skyscraper method to identify and improve the ranking page by making it more in-depth and comprehensive.
No matter how well you write your SEO-friendly content, you will only see the results you want if your site is technically healthy. Partner with a technical SEO expert to monitor your website’s health and fix errors that can impact crawlability. This will allow you to maximize the value of your great content and boost organic search visibility.
