Creating good content is harder to do than it looks. Content that strikes a balance between search engine optimization and genuine originality is immediately recognizable and is something of an art.
Many people, writers and site owners, are erroneously under the impression that the key to content is volume and keywords–to essentially overwhelm Google’s algorithm with so much “evidence” that a page is relevant, it can’t help but end up ranking well. But there is much more to it than that. Below are 7 SEO content creation tips to keep in mind for 2021.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the bedrock of content creation. This is the first step when creating well-optimized content. Without keyword research, you will most likely never make any notable progress in the search results. One important basic tip for using keywords include targeting around 80 percent evergreen keywords and 20 percent trending. What this means is spending time ascertaining what kind of content is most important to your market and will likely continue to be so well into the future while not forgetting about trending topics, products, services etc.
Another important keyword research-related tip is to avoid a disproportionate focus on high-volume keywords. If you are creating content on a regular basis using your blog, you don’t need to focus exclusively on those high-volume keywords. Your keyword strategy should also reflect the ROI of a particular product or service. Even low search volume keywords on high ROI products and services can be good investments of your time and energy. Localized keywords based on a particular geographic area are also a good way to compete on already highly keywords. “SEO Brisbane,” for example, makes it clear to search engines and to searchers that Brisbane, Australia is the target market here.
Title Tags
Your title tag continues to be one of the most valuable pieces of content on your page. This is because it is one of the most useful pieces of information for search engines that are trying to determine what a page is about. Remember that your title tags should be compelling for readers and optimized for search engines as well. The two most important best practices when it comes to title tags is to make sure the target keyword is in there and to keep it between 50 and 60 characters since Google tends to cut off titles above that.
It also helps if your headlines feature numbers. People are more likely to click on a title if it tells them the exact number of points or subheadings within an article. Some research also suggests that using parentheses also improves an article’s clickthrough rate. Crafting the perfect title tag is an art because it involves being able to work the target keyword in, and ideally a number, all while keeping in under 60 characters and conveying relevance and naturalness.
Body Content
For pure writers who love to see long, complex sentences, tailoring their style to web content can be frustrating. Web content best practices demand short and snappy sentences and ample transition words because the attention economy is fickle. People scan as they read and tend to ignore anything that doesn’t add value. This is all the more true for mobile browsing, which continues to see larger shares of total internet traffic year over year.
Body content best practices also include refraining from keyword stuffing. It is best if you use your target keyword and related keywords naturally throughout your content. You can and should go through your content to edit it and ensure you have used enough of these throughout, as well as eliminate anything that comes off unnatural. Also important are bullet points and length. Bullet points indicate to search engines and readers that the content in question is important, and for long-form content, you should be aiming for at least 1,200 words if you want to stand a chance of ranking.
Meta Descriptions
The oft-cited character limit best practices for meta descriptions usually stipulate you stick as close to the 150-character limit as possible. With mobile, however, it is a good idea to try and make them closer to 120 to 130 words. Underlying all of this should be the understanding that your meta description is essentially a free advertisement for your product.
A useful tip when it comes to writing and structuring your meta description is to use the “struggle/solution” approach. An example might be, “if you find yourself struggling with x, then using product y is a great way to help you do a, b, c quickly and effectively.”
You should also make sure to use your target keyword in your meta description. This is because if those target keywords are searched, they will appear in bold in your meta description, which provides added relevancy to the intent of the searcher.
Internal Links
Anyone who knows the basics of content best practices understands that good internal linking is part of good user experience and SEO. But people can go overboard with internal links quite easily in an effort to drive traffic to product and services pages. While there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to how many and where to place internal links, it is always a far better idea, and your readers will appreciate it more if you only use internal links in places where they will actually add value for the reader.
You can also improve your internal linking tactics by making sure your anchor text is contextual and relevant. Anchor text that exactly matches your target keywords or naked URLs are looked at suspiciously by Google and can result in a page not being ranked as highly in the SERPs.
Images
There are two content creation tips when it comes to images. Firstly, you should be using images in your content. Walls of unbroken text are unpleasant to read, so images are important from a UX perspective. Images (along with other multimedia) make content more dynamic, and visual content helps tell a story. It is also of the utmost importance if the point of an article is to convince a reader to buy a product or service since very few people are going to be willing to make a purchase off of text alone.
Images are also an important part of good SEO. With that in mind, images need to be optimized for your customers and search engines. A significant number of Google searches happen via Google images, so having the right file format, compression, original images, customized file names, and SEO-friendly alt text are all important parts of your content and overall SEO strategy.
E-A-T Content
E-A-T stands for expertise, trust and authority and this acronym is the cornerstone of your content in 2021. This is especially important for what is known as “YMYL” or your money, your life pages and sites, as well as any pages and sites offering medical and legal advice. The idea is that because this information, if acted on, could have important implications for a reader’s life, it needs to be informed by expert opinion, as well as authoritative links and data, and use trustworthy sources.
Conclusion
Content, along with links, is one of the foundational components of SEO and a good user experience. Content rules change, which means tactics change with them, but some things, such as quality and comprehensiveness, remain evergreen. The above content considerations contain some older and newer tips for writing and ranking good content, but they are all ones that search engines continue to look favourably on and which any content writer or online business owner would do well to keep in mind throughout 2021 and beyond.