Do you want your website to rank well on Google? Then you need to pay attention to SEO content writing.
The written content on your website shouldn’t just be filler. A writer should strategically craft it to achieve your goals with readers and appeal to search engines. Forgetting about search engines could lead to low visibility online, even when someone searches for your business by name.
Let’s break down how and why written content can make or break you.
How Search Engines Understand Your Site
The entire search engine ranking process is too complex to go over in this blog. Still, it all starts with evaluating your written content and understanding how it fits together contextually, both on and off your website.
“Reading” Your Content
Search engines don’t read written content like a person. They use bots to “crawl” through your page’s back-end code.
For example, this is how people see this section from a blog:
This is how crawler bots see that same section:
Understanding Your Content
After crawling your content, search engines have to figure out how to understand it so they can evaluate which searches it will be relevant for.
What keywords does it contain? How does a page relate to another page on your site? How does your content fit into broader conversations about a topic? What questions does it answer? Are you a trustworthy source or authority on this topic?
The answers to all of these questions (and more) come from your content and its structure.
SEO Content Writing Factors
What goes into successfully SEO optimized copy?
Keywords
Keywords are essential for SEO, but this is an area where it’s easy to go wrong if you don’t do it properly. First, you need to choose the correct combinations of keywords. Then, you need to use them in the proper density and placement in a natural way.
Headings and Heading Structure
Headings are a good practice for helping readers visually skim content. They also help search engines understand a page’s structure and how the content within that page fits in.
Linking
Links throughout your content to other content on your site, or on other sites across the web, help search engines understand how it all relates to build context.
Crawlers look at the anchor text (the text the link is on) and the page destination to gauge how the content relates to each other. They also use links to help discover pages on your site.
Freshness
Search engines value websites that keep content up-to-date. To keep your site fresh, you should regularly update and add new content. This can involve refreshing your product or service pages or writing a blog, for example.
Readability and Grammar
Content should be easy to read and free of grammatical errors or typos to signal to search engines that it’s high-quality.
What Can Go Wrong
A lot can go wrong when writing and adding content to your website. Making these mistakes is costly for SEO because it can make your site look untrustworthy and low quality. If a search engine can’t properly understand your content or finds it low-quality, it won’t show it in search results.
Here are some common mistakes we see in website copy:
- Overuse, underuse, or otherwise incorrect use of keywords
- Lack of headings or improper heading tagging
- Outdated content
- Lack of links or too many links
- Grammatical errors
- Too little or too much copy
Why Work With a Professional SEO Copywriting Service
Professional SEO copywriting services, like those at Forge Apollo, are your best bet for optimizing your website. We write website content daily, so our team stays informed on the latest best practices. Instead of spending your own time worrying about writing your content and potentially making mistakes, trust an expert. It provides the assurance that your website is optimized and ready for search and lets you focus on doing what you do best–running your business.
Forge Apollo is a Chester County SEO and content writing agency. SEO content writing is only part of our full suite of website design and development services, so we can cover all your bases. Contact us today for a website that drives success.
