How to Write SEO-friendly Website Content
Online Writing Tips to Improve SEO & Website Usability
Oct 30, 2009
Writing for the web requires a balanced approach between meeting the needs of the reader, and meeting the requirements of successful search engine optimization (SEO) so that a site receives organic traffic from search engines. Following are some tips for improving SEO and website usability, in a way that honours both sets of requirements without making sacrifices in content quality.
Write Web Content for Readers, Not Search Engines
Google and other search engines place a high importance on quality of content, and are regularly updating their algorithms to better align with the goal of providing the best ranking to sites that are shown to be authoritative resources.
Google looks unfavourably at websites that attempt to game the system through keyword stuffing, purchasing links, or engaging in other such artificial means of improving a site's ranking. As search engines get better at identifying quality sources, copy that is written merely for search engines will become easier to spot, and prove to be less valuable overall.
So while it is important to keep an eye on improving SEO, it never pays to place so much importance on search engines that a website ceases to make sense to its readers. For this reason, writing web content for the human audience should always be a priority for any web writers.
Writing Web Content that Improves SEO and Website Usability
There are many things a webmaster can do to create content that improves SEO and website usability at the same time. Following are some ideas to consider:
- Pay attention to content length – Write articles that are between 400-800 words in length. This is a good length for engaging and keeping the attention span of readers, and is long enough to be picked up by search engine crawlers who tend to ignore pages with less than 200 words.
- Use good internal linking strategies – Internal linking of content with contextual links, user-friendly navigation systems and sitemaps can help to guide readers and web crawlers to relevant content.
- Regularly update content – Updating content on a regular basis can attract a greater number of visitors in human and search engine form. Consider scheduling blog content to help maintain a smooth editorial schedule for new content.
- Write focused content – Write pages that focus on 1-2 competitive keyword phrases to increase keyword density and provide tight pieces of writing that stay on-topic for readers.
- Link to authoritative outside sources – Linking to outside sources that provide authoritative content can help to provide useful information to readers. Linking to sites that rank well in search engines can also be good SEO as search engines pay attention to both incoming and outgoing links when ranking the quality of a website.
Writing web content with a focus on improving SEO and enhancing website usability for readers can go a long way toward creating a valuable online resource that ranks well with search engines and visitors.
Sources:
Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
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