Let’s start off with the basics; firstly, what the heck exactly is SEO? When you type a search query into a search engine and hit “enter”, you get a list of results that are relevant to your search term. Those pages that appear are a result of search engine optimization (SEO). Google determines the relevance of your page by analyzing its content based on several factors, including where and how often you use certain words in that piece of content.

SEO is considered a “new age” marketing technique and is critical to a brand’s web presence. With an ever-increasing rivalry between sites, implementing quality SEO on your website is highly beneficial to your brand and its marketing efforts. In order to enhance the effectiveness of your SEO content, you must understand the following:

• Who your target audience is
• What kind of information they need
• Why they need that information
• Which keywords they are using to find it

“SEO is Considered a “New Age” Marketing Technique”

This isn’t actually as daunting as it looks. All you need to understand is that people come first, before search algorithms. You just need to break it down into a few tasks.

• Audience research: Identify the type of audience you believe needs/wants what you’re offering. Then, go find where it is that they congregate online. Interact with them. You need to figure out their habits, preferences, demographics and statistics.
• Find keywords that are relevant and relate to your expertise, your services, and
  your audience’s search intent.
• Make time for topic research. Come up with content topics based on the targeted
  keywords you discovered and what your audience wants to learn/know.

In a digital world that is being continuously technologized, your content must write to the right people in order to climb higher. Your SEO content will not reach the correct people if you fail to optimize it with targeted keywords. One of the biggest obstacles that bloggers and content marketers face is writing content that’s optimized for search engines yet will also appeal to your audience. There are only a few tags tailored for your brand that are essential to doing SEO correctly.

Step 1 – Assemble all the keywords that a page is targeting.

Step 2 – You list what the searchers are actually trying to accomplish when they search those queries.

Step 3 – Create a visual layout.

Step 4 – Write first and then go add keywords and the crucial, related terms, phrases, top concepts, topics that you want into the page.

Step 5 – Craft the hook, a hook that will make influential people and publications in this space more likely to amplify and repost your content.

Quality has become the number 1 ranking factor in Google, and quality SEO writing is a salesmanship. If you want to write the best content that will rank well in Google, you have to target keyword phrases. The Google Panda 4.1 update was designed to penalize shallow content and keep low quality content from ranking highly in Google. A typical blog post or article should be at minimum 1000 words (this blog sits at 1687 words in total). However, it’s not all about length. Every piece of content you write needs to have a compelling introduction. You can immediately tell if the following body content is going to be of good quality from the whether or not the introduction is captivating and encourages the reader to continue on.

How do you create deeper content?

– Write longer blog posts – think 2,000 words or more.
– Explore topics that have many different facets and angles.
– Write ultimate guidelines.
– Go further than surface-level research.

And who drives a user to take action? A copywriter does. An SEO writer must understand how Google feels about certain words and phrases, especially long tail phrases. Your job as the writer is to provide useful content that is interesting, persuasive and well optimized for search engines – and you have to do this consistently to be able to survive in this changing world of SEO.

Many brands and businesses are still using outdated SEO practices that were effective years ago, but have absolutely no value in today’s market. If this relates to you, you need to rethink your SEO strategies. If you still think the more keywords you shove into your content marketing is important and will enhance your web traffic – cut it out. I mean that literally and figuratively. Stop stuffing keywords into your content and cut them out. You could trigger the aforementioned Panda algorithm and take a big ranking hit if Google decides your content sounds like spam. Focus on contextually relevant and genuinely useful content. The best SEO practices evolve and adapt with the times and you need to keep up with Google and other search engines changing their algorithms and ranking methods.

Readers are far more likely to click on a title that has the keyword they’re looking for and less inclined to click if they don’t see it – even if it’s in your body content. Your headline cannot be mediocre, your click-through rate will be low if this is the case, even if you content body is quality. Your title should catch people’s attention, retain it, and then encourage them to click and read further. Additionally, the Meta description is not used for rankings, but searchers read it. When they see a description that includes the words and phrases they’re looking for, they are more likely to think this be a relevant result. The more clicks, as long as the engagement is high, generally means better rankings. Keep the Meta description to approximately 150 characters.

Another important aspect is the user experience. The writing and content matter significantly due to engagement metrics. Google can see when people who click on a result are less likely to click the back button and choose a different result or more likely to stay on that page or site and engage further with that content and solve their whole task. I’m going to reiterate the importance of deeper content – the more you write about your content and the deeper it goes, the more likely you are to gain higher rankings. Google is focusing on quality content. This has been a big trend for SEO writing in 2019 – creating content that goes farther into a topic. One of your primary focuses should be SEO writing that solves the searcher’s query and if you do this, you are more likely to have that reader revisit your page in the future – and that’s the aim of the game right?

You can forget all about your SEO content if your page speed is slow. Ensure your pages and content fully load and display fast, because the slower your page speed, the more frustrated you’ll make your visitors. No one wants to sit around waiting for a website to load. 40% of people will abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 seconds to fully load. 47% of end users expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less. Seriously, improve your page speed.

SEO is quantifiable. You can measure basically anything with proper tracking and analytics. Brands and businesses want to understand their statistics – where they were, where they are now, and where they have the potential to go in regard to digital performance. SEO is important for this and provides valuable insights into your reader’s habits. Any good SEO writer is going to be aiming to improve those statistics and connecting the dots of where your brand is prospering or where it’s flailing should not be a challenge.

More and more people are using mobile devices for searching, in fact, 57% of all searches are performed from tablets and smartphones, and at least 50% of those are have local intent. For example, if you owned one of the local breweries in Calgary, then local SEO would guarantee that when people were searching for the best brewery in Calgary, they’d come across your page. Along with using local targeted keywords, other good practices include creating location-specific pages for your site, claiming directory listings and creating pages for your business on Google My Business, Google Maps and Google+. Don’t look past the importance of local traffic.

This is a relatively new concept in SEO, but it’s gaining significance to search engines because it’s becoming significant to web users. SEO always comes back to the user. Basically, what authority means is that your website is of high quality, trustworthy, relevant and has something to offer. The higher your authority is, the higher your ranking will be, your traffic will increased and come to trust it.

That sounds harsh, but it’s true. If you’re not on page 1, then you’re not winning the click. Organic search is most often the primary source of website traffic. You have to remember that most people are impatient, especially when we’ve become so accustomed to fast Internet speeds and finding the information we’re seeking within minutes. With that in mind, how likely do you think it is that people are going to go searching through pages and pages of Google results, when 30% of all results on page 1 and 2 don’t even get clicked on at all?

SEO can initially be complex and a bit tricky to understand, but once you get the hang of the different techniques, tactics and practices, it provides consistent value to your brand.