Content Optimisation

In order to gain presence online, your site must include content that proves you are a prominent authority in your field. But, it must also not fall into the trap or simply writing content for the sake of writing content.

Content has been particularly important to the performance of websites in search rankings since the launch of Google’s Panda algorithm way back in 2011. Panda focused on analysing content quality. Put simply, websites with thin or poorly written content, duplicate content and non differentiated content don’t stand much of a chance of performing well in search. In the dawn of Google’s E-E-A-T update, YMYL update (and, as such, Medic Update), and in particular with the proliferation of generative AI created content, understanding the do’s and don’ts of good content for SEO has never been more important.

So what makes good content? In a nutshell, have let’s explore!

Well written content

In today’s digital age, creating exceptional content is crucial for standing out from the crowd. This is even more so when it comes to getting that content ranking well in search. Put simply, Google rewards well written content and tries its best to disregard poorly written content.

• Understand Your Target Audience

The first step in crafting engaging content is understanding your target audience. Take the time to research and analyse their demographics, interests, and pain points. By knowing your readers, you can tailor your content to their specific needs and preferences, ensuring it resonates with them on a deeper level.

• Develop a Compelling Headline

A compelling headline is the gateway to your content. It should be concise, attention-grabbing, and convey the main benefit or value your content provides. Use power words, pose questions, or evoke curiosity to entice users to click and explore further.

• Create a Captivating Introduction

Once you have drawn users in with a powerful headline, your introduction needs to maintain their interest. Begin with a captivating anecdote, a surprising fact, or a thought-provoking statement. This will hook your readers and motivate them to continue reading.

• Offer Unique Insights and Perspectives

To make your content stand out from the rest, provide unique insights and perspectives on the topic at hand. Conduct thorough research, explore different angles, and share your personal experiences or expertise. Aim to provide value that readers won’t find elsewhere, making your content indispensable to them.

• Make It Scannable and Digestible

In our fast-paced digital world, users often skim through content rather than reading it word-for-word. To cater to this behaviour, make your content scannable and easily digestible. Use headings, subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to break up the text. Incorporate relevant images, infographics, or videos to enhance comprehension and engagement.

• Use Storytelling Techniques

Humans are wired to respond to stories. Incorporate storytelling techniques into your content to make it relatable and memorable. Weave narratives, use examples, and share real-life stories to illustrate your points. This approach helps readers connect emotionally and fosters a deeper engagement with your content.

• Incorporate Multimedia Elements

To make your content more engaging, consider incorporating multimedia elements. Visuals such as images, videos, and infographics can enhance the reader’s experience, break up the text, and deliver information in a more engaging way. Choose high-quality and relevant media that aligns with your content’s purpose.

• Include Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

A well-crafted call-to-action encourages user interaction and further engagement. Whether it’s asking readers to leave comments, share your content on social media, or subscribe to your newsletter, CTAs guide users toward taking desired actions. Use compelling language and make CTAs visible to motivate readers to act.

• Encourage User Interaction and Feedback

Lastly, actively encourage user interaction and feedback to create a sense of community around your content. Respond to comments and questions promptly, ask for feedback, and engage in discussions with your audience. This not only builds a loyal readership but also provides valuable insights for future content creation.

• Avoid keyword cannibalisation

Have you written very similar facts or content on other pages of your site? Keyword cannibalisation is a bit no-no in SEO. If so, then don’t write them again in a new page. Instead, go back to the original content and see what you can do to expand on it (without waffling!) and make it more up to date and all round better!

• Consider E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness)

Consider the following bullet points on how to incorporate Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines when writing SEO-focused content:

Experience:

– Focus on user experience by ensuring your content is engaging, informative, and relevant.

– Understand your audience’s needs and tailor your content accordingly.

– Incorporate real-life examples, case studies, and personal anecdotes to enhance the user’s experience.

Expertise:

– Establish yourself as an expert in your field by providing accurate, well-researched information.

– Showcase your credentials, qualifications, and industry experience.

– Include author bios and highlight the expertise of your content creators.

Authority:

– Build credibility by linking to reputable sources and citing reliable references.

– Seek backlinks from authoritative websites in your niche.

– Encourage positive reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers.

Trustworthiness:

– Prioritise transparency and provide complete and reliable information.

– Demonstrate trustworthiness through clear and well-sourced content.

• Maintain a professional and user-friendly website design.

Google have good guides that delver further into their E-E-A-T updates.

• Consider the Google Medic and YMYL updates

If your website sits within the financial services or medical field, you’ll want to pay particular attention to ensuring compliance with the Your Money or Your Life and Medic Updates.

Should I write a blog post or a guide?

Before publishing content it’s important to ask yourself whether it’s really relevant. People won’t link to a site or read content that is effectively “old news”. A good SEO agency will work with you to ensure your content strategy presents your brand and business as a leader in your industry, while remaining directed at your user personas and optimised for conversions.

But not all content will be written around a time-sensitive event. Some of best performing articles are guides and other resources that remain relevant for years. This is known as evergreen content. It may not go viral but it can occupy valuable search positions for years to come.

This is one of the reasons why we’re not huge fans of blogs at Go Up. Don’t mistake us, there’s definitely a time and a place for blog content, and often very good cause to put content in a blog. But, long term rankings is not one of them. Google automatically time stamps a blog post, so when it appears in the search results pages, a blog post will have the date that it was posted stamped next to it. Google doesn’t want to give loads of prominence to blog posts written years ago, as it doesn’t want to be seen to be pushing promoting outdated content. So, it will always favour blog posts that were written recently over blog posts that have a years old time stamp. This means that, if you have the best piece of content anywhere on the internet about any given, but that content is on a blog and was posted three years ago, it probably won’t rank that well in Google search. However, content placed as a guide, but not a blog post, will not have a time stamp next to them. As such, if you write the internet’s most authoritative guide on any given subject, so long as it stays up to date and remains factually accurate, that guide stands the chance of ranking well for years to come.

Blog posts also have the habit of being a bit ill thought through. “I’ll write you x3 blog posts per month” is quite a lazy deliverable that SEO agencies like to put forward. It often results in a huge number of blog posts, accumulated over an extended period of time, many of which just repeat themselves over and over again and creating serious keyword cannibalisation issues and bounce rate issues (as they’re just plain boring!)

Keyword-relevant content (that does not compete with other pages on the site)

The basis of creating good content for a site is good keyword research. Using keyword research helps make the content genuinely useful for the user as it allows you to find, and answer, search queries based on that keyword.

However, keywords also let the search engine know what your content is about. If you want your pages to be found for particular words, you must use those words in the copy.

Good SEO agencies write content that includes those keywords without reducing the readability of the content. Stuffing too many keywords into content can be harmful from an SEO perspective. It can as end up competing with other more important pages on a site. You don’t want a blog post to rank above a service page for a certain keyword.

Well presented content

If content is deemed dull, incorrect or sloppy, it could attract penalties from Google. As important as it is to write content that is useful, it’s vital to present it in a way that will keep users reading.

Presentation is key. If content is hard to read or poorly laid out, it will decrease dwell time on the page. Search engines will note that these pages have low traffic and a high bounce rate, and could penalise the website publishing them. On the other hand, if content is presented clearly search engines will note that the pages have lots of traffic and a low bounce rate, which will be beneficial to that website.

Warning: Avoid bad link bait

The truth is that a great deal of content is ignored, and many blogs clicked on aren’t read past the first paragraph, never mind linked to. To grab attention and get links, some sites may publish intentionally controversial content with the sole intention of garnering an emotional response.

Controversy courts reaction, which can often result in a blog, article or video going viral, thus gaining hundreds of links and many mentions across social platforms. This can lead to vastly improved domain authority, rankings and traffic. But whilst it seems a tempting quick-fix, it can potentially backfire and damage the reputation of your brand.

Link bait is in essence content meant to attract links for the purposes of search engine optimisation.

All content should have value for the user, whether it is useful in a practical sense or engaging and interesting. What content shouldn’t be purposely controversial and upsetting just to gain links. It certainly is not a tactic that Go Up employ nor recommend.

Chat GPT, AI and SEO

Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, can appear attractive on face value. It lets you churn out endless amounts of content in very little time. But, beware. Studies have found that AI written content can contain a huge number of factual errors. This promotes bad content. And bad content, or inaccurate content, is the enemy of Google. The search giant looks very poorly on it and seeks it out at every opportunity. Google released an interesting statement about this. In it, they essentially say that, whereas they will allow websites to create content using artificial intelligence (a move away from their prior guidelines, which out-and-our banned it!) it will be judged in much the same way as they judge human written content. i.e. if it’s filled with mistakes, then it will work against you, not for you.

If you use AI, make sure that it follows the above guidelines. Heavily edit it, so that it’s written for your target demographic and in your brand tone of voice. Optimise it for search, the user and for conversions, check it for factual accuracy and keyword cannibalisation. And don’t over use it. It’s likely that websites that all of a sudden add hundreds of new blog posts to their site will attract unwanted attention from search engines, who may assume that they have quickly added AI content without giving it the human-pair-of-eyes quality control checks. By all means use AI for content generation, but, when it comes to SEO, use it very carefully.