There are so many misconceptions about SEO that cause website owners or content writers to write content stuffed with keywords thinking that it will help them rank high on search engines. But the misconception lies in the assumption that we need to write for search engines, not for people. We keep forgetting that it is the visitors’ behavior, especially how crucial the time they spend reading the content on our website or the number of other pages they visit on our website during one session is for our website ranking.
Use the right keywords (but not too much)
Choosing the right keywords needs a bit of a research. Every industry has certain trending topics and keywords so a research on the most popular ones can help immensely. This research will help you understand the ever-changing trends in your industry, but you will also be able to find out how these trends are reflected through keywords, searched terms and visitors’ behavior. But remember – do not cram your content with keywords, it won’t help you either write high-quality content or rank better.
Answer your customers’ questions
If your potential customer has a question, they will search it on Google. Answering these questions will help you with your rankings and you might end up getting a new customer in the process.
Keep your website and content up to date
Given the search engines’ changing algorithms, it is strongly recommended to keep your website content fresh and regularly updated. It is pretty simple indeed, and I would say it is actually dictated by every successful business’ needs – companies learn from their customers and the more customers or years of experience a business has, the more they learn and therefore need to update content.
Sound natural
Sounding natural is very important. As mentioned before, forget about cramming your content with keywords. If your content sounds natural to the readers it will score a lot of points with search engines too.
Summary
Write for people, not for search engines or their algorithms. Writing for people (your potential customers), addressing their pain points and answering their questions will help you get more social shares and better rankings too.
Over a year ago, we advised our client (ACS Installations, a company providing water-cooled air conditioning and the leading specialists in air conditioning installations, repairs and maintenance) to follow these points when writing their website content and they followed our advice, resulting in their website being highly ranked on search engines for the relevant keywords.
