Writing For Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It’s well-known that websites appearing in the top search engine results get noticed. According to the latest research, more than 75 percent of people won’t scroll past the first page in a Google search. Search engine optimization (SEO), the process of optimizing your website to gain traffic from the search engine results page, remains one of the most important activities to ensuring your website’s performance.

How can you optimize your website for search engine performance? While it seems the search engines’ algorithms change on an all-too-regular basis, one factor remains consistent. Offering meaningful content continues to rank among the chief contributors to SEO success. Websites that educate, answer questions and provide relevant content for visitors can expect a higher level of search engine optimization.

While a website’s content is important to SEO success, one factor that’s less important is the website’s appearance. In a recent Ragan Communications webinar, the speaker encouraged the audience, especially those who fear their website’s layout and design looks out of date.

While it may be very important a company’s image and branding that the website offers a user-friendly experience and a modern image, search engines aren’t as particular whether a website is on trend with the latest designs. When the budget doesn’t have room for a website overhaul, remember to focus on what you can control – your content. Keep in mind these tips for making sure your website content is optimized for search engine success.

Evergreen Content

When it comes to evergreen content, the content that’s always on the website, there are few guidelines for search engine optimization. To write for SEO with evergreen content, think of each page as unique. What problem or question are you trying to solve with each page? For content optimization, provide the best quality of content on each page.

Evergreen content should answer important questions such as:

• What is?

• Why does?

• How does?

• How to?

What are the questions you’re constantly answering as an organization? What does your audience want to or need to know? These are the questions you should answer with your evergreen content to ensure meaningful content and placement at the top of search engine results.

Blog Content

For blog content that enhances your SEO, do your research to find out what’s trending. Use tools such as Google Trends, a resource to see what people are searching, for content ideas. For example, at the time of this writing, a search of the term “concrete” reveals that the World of Concrete trade show is one of the top searches related to that keyword.

Crafting blog content that capitalizes on current search trends will help boost your website’s presence in the search engines. Pay attention to the language that’s being used in the searches, and use that language in your blog content. Finally, remember to pair the blog topic with links back to your evergreen content.

Other tips for search engine optimization:

• Length matters. Search engines favor longer content. Research shows that longer blog posts perform better, with a minimum of 600 words being the goal. The best search results favor posts reaching 1,200-1,500 words.

• Write descriptive hyperlinks. For example, “Learn more about data visualization” would perform better than “To learn more about concrete specifications, click here.”

• Use headings. Follow a tip from journalists and chunk the text. If it’s easy for you to scan, it’s easy for Google to scan.

• Use images. A rule of thumb is one image for every 75 words. But beware of load times. And be sure to write descriptions for the images when uploading – Google scans image descriptions, too.

For SEO success, focus on the variables you can control and make sure your content counts. AOE has a long history of creating compelling content for our clients. If you’d like to maximize your website’s presence with relevant content, contact the team at AOE today.