Having unique content is more important than ever now that Google has released more updates, like Panda. The days of copying content from one website to another, and not being caught are over. Google knows when you are taking someone else’s content and not only is it plagiarism, it is going to decrease your rankings.
You need to bring a balance between keywords and readability. You want to be sure that your content makes sense, but that it has your keyword in it.
Keyword Selection
First you need to decide what keyword you want to rank for. It all depends on your market, the clients you are trying to reach, the competition out there, and man other factors. Your keyword selection is one if not the most vital part of this whole process. You want to be sure that whatever keyword you choose has a descent amount of search traffic, and that it actually is relevant to what your business is about. A tool that I have always used to find relevant keywords is Google’s Keyword Tool. This is what paid searchers use to find keywords for their ad campaigns, but this is also a great tool for organic search as well. It will give you a rough estimate of how many searchers are searching for a specific term. This can be a good indicator on how popular the term is and if its worth trying to rank for.
Keyword Placement
Once you have your keyword chosen, you need to be sure that you place your keywords in the right places. Building it into the Meta Title and Description is vital, as is putting it in Meta Tags and image descriptions, but putting it into your content is your number 1 priority. You’re not going to rank for a keyword if it isn’t even in the content. Don’t overdo it and fill it your content with the keyword in every other sentence, make sure that it is legible and actually makes sense.
Become an Expert
You want to be an expert in what you are writing about. Find things that are interesting in your industry and write about them. Know what you are talking about. People can tell if you have experience and knowledge. It does make a difference. It always is wiser to write for people and not to write for a search engine. Choose your audience and write to them. You will see a much bigger impact on your rankings this way than trying to “beat the system” by using shady practices that will get you quick results, but not valuable ones.
Use Free SEO Tools
There are great tools out there that you can use to help you a lot in learning what to write about. Google Analytics is probably the best tool, and I would suggest you put it on your website. This free tool will be invaluable to you once you learn how to use it. You can create and build reports, keep track of where your visitors are from, and most important of all, you can see how they found you, what keywords they used and which ones are the most popular. All of these things are important to know and will make your job that much easier in knowing how to reach customers.
Make It Readable
I mentioned this earlier but it needs to be mentioned again. Make sure that the content you are writing is readable. You want it to make sense, be entertaining, as well as informative. That can be a daunting task depending on the subject, but you want to make sure that your audience will pay attention and want to read more. Then they will come back, and once you have built that trust, they will start coming to you for the information that they need.
This is something that is rather important for all of our clients to work on. Relevant and readable content is a very key factor in gaining better trust as well as better rankings on Google and other search engines. Not only will your website flow better when clients visit it, it will in turn increase the value and profitability of your business. If you have any questions or insights please comment below.
