One of the biggest decisions that SEO copywriters face is whether to write content for a website’s visitors or for search engines. Unfortunately, many copywriters focus too much on following precise SEO guidelines to please Google, and ignore writing about what their audience will enjoy reading. What many digital marketing professionals miss is that creating good content your audience will enjoy reading is exactly what Google wants you to do. Therefore, if you publish high-quality content that focuses on your audience, you will improve your website’s organic search engine rankings as well.
- Define Your Audience
The first step in creating SEO-friendly content for your audience is knowing who you are writing for. That means defining a target audience for your content. One good way to define your target audience is to think about who could benefit from the products or services that you offer. You should also take a look at an unmet market need and see where your brand could fill that need.
- Thoroughly Research Your Audience
Google ranks websites on many factors. However, one of the most important factors is how well a website’s content meets the needs of its target audience. After defining your audience, you will need to learn about them. Learning about your audience is key to connecting and building trust with them through SEO-friendly content. Therefore, if you want traffic from Google your content must demonstrate that you know your target audience better than your competitors. If you don’t have a lot of consumer data on your audience, hire a market research firm to analyze them for you.
- Write Good Content for Your Audience
Now that you have an audience and know them, you can start writing for them. The content you publish online should be original (no plagiarism), well-written, and free of spelling and grammar mistakes. A good SEO rule of thumb is to write at an eighth grade reading level or lower so your brand’s message is effectively received by your entire audience. Hire an SEO copywriter if you need help writing content on your website.
- Create Valuable Content
Search engines will send a visitor to your website if you can effectively answer the visitor’s given search query. That means your content should provide good, thorough answers to what your visitors are searching for online. Your content should contain keywords that include common search phrases your target audience uses when searching for answers to their questions on Google.
- Add Authority to Your Content
Lastly, Google likes content owners to prove their expertise on the subject matter of their content by adding authority to it. Google likes website owners to show their name on their site so that visitors know who created it. You should also include a bio of yourself on your website that lists your relevant experience and any qualifications that make you an authority on the subject matter of your content. If you have a blog, include a byline at the bottom of each post.
In short, when it comes to creating good SEO content for your website, your audience is who matters. Search engines are just there to bring traffic to your site. That means you must define who your audience is and understand their needs. Good SEO content is engaging and informative. Your audience should enjoy reading it. Your content should answer your audience’s questions. However, you must demonstrate that your are an authority on your content’s subject matter to build credibility with your site’s visitors and search engines.
