Every big or small online business organization has its own blog that it thinks presents the most compelling content within their market or niche. Well, we all know how many times the self-driven content writing ninjas have failed to impress the readers. They are not the only ones suffering at the hands of the search engines changing gears every now and then to keep pace with changing user experience expectations.
The Old SEO Game Just Changed
The old times, may be five years ago or more, people used to find relevant keywords, include them in content and viola, they had the magic traffic promised. Now, this does not work that way anymore. The keywords are just one of the dozens of other factors that count in creating compelling content. You need to do so much more to make sure that the users, who are coming to your website, stay on it for a while and read before whisking away to your competitor’s blog or website. Let us discuss the elements that we need to rethink for writing compelling content to make sure that search engines keep sending us droves of traffic to our content.
The Snake Oil Salesmen Are Out of Business
The snake oil business salesman adage is as old as anything else that comes to mind. The sell, sell and sell strategy works no more. You cannot just start writing how greater your company’s product is and get away with it. Consider the backlash that you may have to deal with on your social media accounts. Provide something that would help the readers instead of telling them great stories about your brand. You need to change the mentality from selling first to helping first.
Value of Information
Readers have so little time at their hands they would not care about a lousily written piece of content. There is so much competition out there that you need to think on your feet to come up with something of intrinsic value to the readers. Research well and read other blogs or articles that have already been written on the topic that you are about to undertake. Try to write with some added value so the users are able to appreciate your effort instead of wasting your effort and getting lost in the crowded online content space.
Content Layout
Easy on eye navigation, conveniently placed information and the overall content layout plays an important role in getting your content that attention you seek. Do not try to overburden your users with poorly organized content. Use headings wherever appropriate and break large text blocks into smaller paragraphs. This will help the audience find the relevant content instead of having the need to go through the entire text to reach where they want to.
Picture worth A Thousand Words
The idea of including relevant images is always good. Make sure that you cover SEO aspects of inserting your image into your website which include writing its description, caption, and alt text. Do not leave it for search engines to figure out what your image is all about. When you have used an image from some other website, always give credit to that so search engines appreciate your effort instead of dropping you from results.
No Loose Ends (Spelling & Grammar)
Poorly written language never goes well with the readers. Do not assume that all your readers would just be ignorant of the fact that you misspelled a word or dropped a period conveniently at some other place. Make sure that when you are writing content, it is understandable by everyone but expect it to be audited by some of the most prolific readers who clearly understand the language syntax. If you are not sure about the content that you just scribbled, try using word processing software to avoid the most obvious mistakes.
Do Use Keywords
When it was mentioned in the first paragraph that SEO has changed, this does not mean that you cannot use the keywords within your content. You need to intelligently select the keywords that will be included in the content. However, there are few things that you need to keep in mind when using keywords. Now, Google does not mind you using variants of a keyword. Therefore, you do not need to insert exact keywords if they distort the reading experience of a reader. The idea is to make sure that the keywords inserted look natural and not words that are placed out of context. Try to use your keyword at different places within the content. Try to use it at the beginning, somewhere in the middle and at the end. The ideal keyword density is still disputable but most agree on maintaining a keyword density of 1% to 1.5%.
Call To Action
Businesses often shy away from using call to action text or buttons or links at the end. When you have written good quality content that tries to solve a customer’s problem, you can insert a call to action item within the content. This call to action item should be pleasant to look at and easy to use. An obscure or invisible link on text or a button hidden behind an image, aren’t the best examples of a clear to understand call to action button.
