What is SEO Content?

SEO Content is becoming a buzzword, but it’s also one of the original digital marketing strategies and is at the core of organic marketing. SEO content is content that’s optimized for the search engines so that it gets more organic traffic. 

What goes into SEO Content

When I teach my students to write SEO Content, I teach them to start with their SEO keyword research as the base for their content writing. You want to ensure you’re writing content that will have an audience when it’s ready. If people aren’t interested in what you’re writing about, they will not search for it, find your content, or visit your website, and you will have wasted your time and effort. 

You also want to make sure you're creating content that's high quality, provides value, and addresses your Ideal Customer's needs and wants. Thin content (pages that don't tell much or offer value) don't do well with Google today. Google wants to ensure the content it's sending traffic to will help them, provide value, and give them the necessary answers. 

Your SEO content should also be a mix of content targeting keywords to drive traffic to your site, along with content designed to nurture your new audience, and a small percentage of it should be designed to sell. Too much promotional or sales content will push people away from your website. Always remember to answer: What's in it for me for your Ideal Customer? They don't care about you; they care about how you can help them. 

The foundation of SEO Content

The first step to an SEO content strategy is determining the content topic area and the keyword you will use in your optimization. You want to select a keyword closely tied to your content topic with a good ranking potential. There’s no point in creating content you can’t rank for because you won’t get traffic from that piece if you don't rank well.

You want to think about your Ideal Customer; what questions do they have? What information do they need to decide if your solution is right for them? 

When creating your SEO Content strategy think of the following items

• Who are you helping?
• What information do they want? 
• What information do they need?

Staying focused on your Ideal Customer and providing value for them will benefit you in the long run. 

Your SEO Content is designed to do several things to help your business grow. 

SEO brings targeted, relevant traffic to your website (the know factor in Like, Know, Trust). Content marketing builds your Like and Trust factor by being a resource they can trust and having the content they need. 

SEO brings you the lead; content nurtures the lead.

Writing your SEO Content

Once you’ve searched for an idea that your Ideal Customer is interested in and verified, there’s a keyword that your website can rank high for you’re ready to get started.

You will want to create a blog post or website page that’s helpful to your Ideal Customer. Don’t worry about your keyword count, word count, or anything like that at this point. It’s more important that you create great content that anticipates your readers’ questions and provides value for them. 

If you're unsure what to include in your content piece, start with an outline and include 3-5 bullet points to expand upon. Most times, you'll find a valuable piece of content has more depth and provides a bit more information.

I personally find my highest-ranking content pieces are over 1,000 words. While I don't teach my students or clients to write to a word count, I do believe it's important to anticipate the questions your audience will have and answer them, and that's why creating an outline with 3-5 sub-sections can help. 

Optimizing your SEO Content

The last step of SEO Content writing is to optimize your content piece for the search engine, so you hopefully rank higher and get more organic traffic. You must use the original keyword you selected during the foundation step and follow SEO best practices for your optimization.

How do you optimize your content?

Write a Title Tag that’s less than 60 characters and includes the keyword.

Write a Meta Description that’s less than 160 characters and uses the same keyword.

Use the keyword in the title of your page or blog post.

Include the keyword in the first paragraph of your copy.

Use the keyword in your image file names.

Use the keyword in your header tags (those are the big pink tags in this blog post).

Google looks at your SEO elements to understand your content piece, and then it looks at your content to determine if it's helpful to a reader. You need to have both content that's optimized, so Google understands it and shows it to people who are searching for it, and great, relevant content that's designed to help your audience. 

Get a copy of my free SEO Content Quick Start Guide to learn more about how to do this. Don’t worry about how many words you’re writing or how many times you’ve used your keyword. Write for your audience, provide value, and then ensure you optimize for the search engine to get traffic to your SEO Content piece.

Final Thoughts on SEO Content 

Don't create content with the thought of doing SEO on it later. When you create content that's not optimized, it doesn't rank well, and you don't get traffic. 

If you've been blogging for a while and don't get much traffic to your posts, it's probably because you need to add SEO to your content. Take the time to learn how the two work together and create SEO Content and watch your business grow. 

If you're interested in learning more about SEO Content, get started with my masterclass on using SEO to Supercharge your content today, and then join me in SimpleSEO Content, my signature course, which will teach you exactly how to do this to grow your business.