Rank Highly On Google With These Essential Content Writing Tips

OK, so you’ve started a blog for your business. 

Awesome.

You’ve got some great content written and are ready to share it with your dream audience. Content that you hope will help you rank highly in the search engines, bringing floods of traffic to your site.

The only problem is, it isn’t. 

And the main reason why it isn’t? Because it’s lacking SEO, or search engine optimisation.

In this article, we’re going to share a few essential content writing tips so you can create SEO-loving blog posts that rank higher on Google.

Help your website rank highly with these essential content writing tips

If you have a blog for your business, then you’re probably already aware of the beneficial impact it can have on your site. But If you’ve ever felt the frustration of wondering how to get your blog to rank higher on Google, then we’re here for you!

Follow these essential content writing tips and you’ll be well on your way.

Keyword Research

Keyword research doesn’t have to be super complicated, but it is super important to nail your SEO and rank highly for the keywords you want to be found for.

Using a good keyword tool is a big help when it comes to searching for your perfect keywords, or long-tail keywords for your content.

Keywords should preferably be words that you think your customers are searching for. As well as using a tool, you should do some research on Google. You can’t really optimise your content writing if you don’t know what your customers are searching for – so get into their mindset. 

By doing your own Googling and using a keyword tool, you will get a much better idea of what keywords your customers are looking for and how competitive they are.

There are a few different factors when it comes to keyword research:

• Branded keywords – keywords to do with your brand name. Maybe {your company name + reviews] or [your company name + contact]. To search for these, people already need to know about your brand.
• Unbranded keywords – the words people use to try and find your brand, products you sell, problems you answer, issues you solve, questions you answer, things people search for that your site would solve. These are words that are related to your products, services, and the wider industry, and as people don’t need to know about your brand for these, they’re a great opportunity to get found by new clients and customers

It’s great SEO practice to use both kinds of keywords.

Then, there are the different length keywords:

1. Short tail / Head – a single word
2. Medium tail – 2-4 words
3. Long-tail – 4+ words and more like a question

When you do your research, make a list of all the possible versions of keywords you can incorporate in your content writing. But never stuff keywords! This archaic form of search engine optimisation will make Google frown upon you, and instead of ranking highly, you’ll go the other way. Instead, focus on the reader first and create high-quality content that they’ll enjoy reading, with keywords included organically throughout.

Customer research

We’re not just talking about the little things such as how old they are, what they like to eat for breakfast, and what job they do. We’re talking about going deep into your research and creating a customer avatar. 

In order to do that, you need to dig. You need to hang out (online) where they hang out. Go into forums and sites like Reddit, hop over to the social media platforms they most use and eavesdrop on their discussions and comments, send out a survey or questionnaire via your email list or on your social media channel.

Your content should focus on:

• What are their goals and dreams?
• What do they want or need?
• What problems are they trying to solve? 
• What solutions are they looking for? 

You can also check out sites such as Answer The Public, which is a freemium tool to help you discover what your ideal audience is asking about right now. 

Because SEO really is all about putting the customer first. Search engine optimisation forces you to think about what your customers want and need, making it crucial for your content writing to rank highly.

On-page SEO gives a customer-centric approach to your brand, which is what you want! You can’t think about your brand first. Google hates that! Instead, think about how your brand solves problems for your ideal audience. And this is only something you can do once you’ve got your audience research nailed.

Once you understand your audience, your content writing will always please the SEO overlords.

Formatting content for optimisation

So, you’ve got your content plan, your customer research, and your keyword research done. In order for your content to rank highly, it needs to be formatted correctly.

A big part of on-page SEO is formatting your content in a way that is easy to read, skim, share, and take action with. This is important so the Google bots can scan it easily and understand where it belongs in the search pages. And it is equally important for your readers, so they can quickly and easily find the valuable content they’re searching for.

Luckily, you don’t need to be a professional coder to ace your formatting. You don’t even need to be particularly technical. 

Understanding just a few basic formatting rules are all you need to know to help your content writing rank:

1. An optmised URL. Make sure your URL is clean, simple, and contains your keywords
2. Proper use of title tags – also known as your H tags. Use your H tags in order throughout your content. H1 is the main title, H2 a subtitle, H3 a subtitle of your H2, and so on. This breaks up your content, making it easy to read and skim and catagorise. H tags are also prime real estate for your keywords, so include them if you can
3. Optimised images – if you’re using images in your blog posts then it’s important to optimise them too. Use the alt tag to add a brief description and don’t forget to include a keyword to help search engines understand them
4. Well-written meta description – we’ll get into this a little in the next point, but essentially, your meta description is a snippet of what your blog is about. It shows up under your URL in the search engine results and should be optimised with your primary keyword
5. Internal and external links – try to include a few in your content, especially to high-authority sites related to your content. They’ll show Google where you belong in your industry

Take these simple measures every time you create a piece of content and you’ll start seeing improvements in your rankings.  

Make the most of metadata

You’ve never heard of metadata? 

Professional content writers know that utilising your metadata is an essential component to helping your content rank highly on Google. 

When you look at a search result page, you’ll see that the results all look very similar in format:

• The page title/title tag (name of the page)
• The URL 
• The meta description – about 160 characters describing the content. Here you’ll probably spot a keyword or two if the content writer is doing their job well!

When it comes to where to include your keywords in your content (always remember to keep it natural and organic) there are several sweet spots. These include:

1. As early as possible in your page title (the title of your blog post)
2. The title tag
3. The URL
4. The first paragraph of your blog
5. At least one subheading in your content
6. The alt tags 

Although it might not seem it, these little changes will make a huge impact on how you rank on Google.

And a final few tips…

As well as following the above, we also recommend identifying your top competitors and performing competitor research to see what they’re doing and how you can do it better, posting quality content consistently and regularly, creating a curiosity-driven title to hook your readers, sharing your content on social media, emails, newsletters, videos, and podcasts, keeping to longer length articles (Google loves this), and updating old content to make it as optimised as possible.

Work with content writers to boost your ranking on Google

Part of being a great content writer is understanding what SEO is and how to use it to drive traffic to your site. 

But remember, SEO is not a short-term solution. It has the biggest benefit in the long term, so you can’t think of it as a magic pill. You have to take consistent action to see results. SEO helps your brand visibility increase by bringing consistent growth over time.

Need a little help creating SEO content to help your site rank highly on Google? Our team of professional content writers have all the SEO know-how to help you get there. Get in touch to have a chat about our content packages and let’s get you ranking.