Spend any length of time reading about SEO and you’re bound to come across articles extolling the benefits of “well optimised” content – and encouraging you rush to replace your current web copy with “SEO friendly” verbiage that’s optimised to rank in search.
Once upon a time, this was a relatively straightforward exercise. Search engines used fairly static and simplistic criteria to evaluate web content, and rising to the top of a given SERP just meant writing x amount of words, ensuring that y% of those words were an exact match for your target keyword, and, to round off, mentioning your target keyword at the beginning of every heading.
Sadly, the clever people at Google quickly realised that such prescriptive and gameable rules were encouraging the proliferation of properly awful web content that irritated users and impacted their ability to deliver a good user experience, so they changed the rules: Overhauling their algorithm so that it prioritised content based on more nebulous metrics, hand-picked to ensure page one content was consistently authoritative, reliable and helpful.
This took some time. But after the rollout of several comprehensive algorithm updates, we find ourselves in a place where the definition of “SEO friendly” content has changed so radically that most of the freely-available guides are dangerously out of date
The times they are a-changin'
Some guides make the mistake of harking back to those prescriptive rules about keyword density and header optimisation that we referenced above, while others become so woolly and vague that you can distil their advice down to a single phrase: “Write good”, which is about as much help as the proverbial chocolate teapot.
To provide some much-needed clarity, we’re detailing our own methodology here – based on approx. 80 years of combined experience. It’s not perfect. It’s certainly not bulletproof. But it is in-line with current best practices and if you follow it through, it will help you and your team to produce content that stands a decent shot of ranking on page one for a given search phrase
Note that this isn’t a guide to keyword research. We’ve already covered keyword selection here, and it’s counterproductive to clutter a writing guide with fluff about SEMRush and Google Keyword Planner.
We’ve steered away from offering general writing advice too. You’ll see frequent reference to the idea that content ought to be generally helpful, authoritative and easy to consume here and in Google’s own guidelines, but we couldn’t hope to match the common sense web writing advice provided by groups like the University of Bath or the University of London.
No, the value we add is in explaining exactly how to think about and improve the rankability of your content – using a simple and repeatable methodology that’s detailed below.
SEO is a competitive sport
Let’s start by laying out what we’re trying to achieve.
Google ranks pages for a given search based on how well-suited it thinks they are for the searcher’s intent and requirements. The overall authority and credibility of your site is a factor, but ultimately, search engine crawl bots evaluate on a per-page and per-search basis.
This means we have to try and produce content that’s more helpful, informative and authoritative than the copy that’s currently ranking in positions one, two or three of a given search engine results page (SERP).
And this is even more important if the people ranking in those positions have the benefit of a stronger and more authoritative domain, which will automatically improve their chances of ranking well.
Let’s pretend we’re marketing a forex company and we want to rank for ‘forex fundamental analysis’. This is a high-traffic phrase and the intent doesn’t seem commercial, but we’re fairly confident that it’s used by people who’re dipping their feet in the markets. If we Google the phrase, we see that the top three ranking pages are”
- Babypip’s “What Is Fundemental Analysis”
- FOREX.com’s “Introduction To Fundamental Analysis”
- OANDA’s “How To Use Fundamental Analysis In Training”
These are all competitor guides, which is good – the fact other people are putting effort into ranking means we can be reasonably confident that the keyword drives the right kind of traffic. We can also see that the pages ranking are informational: All three are detailed user guides, which a strong focus on educational content and a well-structured breakdown of the topic.
The focus and intent of your content matters
If all three pages had been product or sales pages, we’d need to reconsider our own approach because Google spends a lot of time working out what people want to see on a given SERP and the general focus of ranking content is a good indicator of both audience expectations, and Google’s preferences.
If we’re selling and everyone else is educating, we’re unlikely to get a lot of traction.
But as it stands we’ll be aping our competitors and producing our own long-form guide. Digging a little deeper, using free tools like WordCounter, we can see that two of the pages are approx. 1,700 words long, while the OANDA guide clocks in at a whopping 2,900 words.
Now, length isn’t everything, but if we go back to our intent, we’re trying to produce content that Google sees as more valuable/authoritative than the content currently sitting in position one. Chances are, we’ll have to meet or exceed our best competitor’s word count.
Doubly so if they have a better DA or domain authority than our website. Again, we’ll stress that DA is a third party metric and that Google claims not to care about it but let’s be very clear about the fight we’re in here: Google is analysing and comparing every page that could rank for a given domain. In the example given here, the people we’re trying to beat have well-established websites that are linked to on a frequent basis.
This is reflected in their high DA’s (60+ in some cases).
If we want Google to look seriously at our content, and we don’t have that sort of trust/authority, we have to make sure that we win out on helpfulness, and one of the key ways to do that is to be more comprehensive than the competition.
Now, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that some SERPs actually prefer short and punch content, videos or even podcasts which is why we’re repeatedly stressing that this is a case-by-case exercise. To rank content, you have to start by making sure that you’re building the right type of page – and setting yourself up to exceed the competition.
What does SEO-friendly content need to contain?
Once we know what we’re trying to produce, we can start to think about what it needs to contain. Before we dive in here, it’s worth stressing that we always write for people, not search engines.
Google’s aim is to rank content that demonstrates expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness (sometimes referred to as E-E-A-T), and while it can be tempting to try and make sure you’ve mimicked every single one of your competitor’s sub-headings and sections, there’s really no point in doing this if it occludes or muddy's efforts to produce something that’s genuinely useful.
Our approach is to start out by asking what our target audience need to know. If we’re trying to reach new or burgeoning forex traders looking to learn about a specific method of analysis, we don’t want to waste anyone’s time by defining forex or extolling the virtues of foreign currency trading, but we probably do need to explain the wider context behind this model: How it compares to other methods of analysis and where it fits into the trader’s toolkit.
Regardless of your market, spending some time thinking about your ideal customer’s needs and pain points will help you to start drafting a good framework. And yes, you can use your competitor’s content for inspiration, but don’t fall into the trap of imitating out of laziness. Always ask yourself if you could be providing more or better information about a given subject; going deeper, or making things easier to understand.
Does SEO-friendly content need to have a specific structure?
Structure does matter, but not in the way that many guides suggest. Google uses <h> or heading tags to understand the structure and general contents of an article - and there is some indication that the main heading or <h1> tag in your article is a ranking factor - but the idea that every other <h2> or <h3> tag helps you rank is a bit of a myth. (Source: Search Engine Journal).
As such, there’s no real need to structure your content around keyword-optimised headings. Instead, focus on making sure that information is broken up into sensible chunks, with clear headings that are easy to parse at a glance.
This is important because numerous studies show that people skim read content on the web. Even content they’re interested in and intend to pore over later. (Source: Nielsen Norman Group). We now know that Google sees user engagement as a critical ranking factor (source: Search Engine Journal), so we want to make sure that our skim-reading users see plenty of eye-catching headlines that snag their attention.
The same is also true for eye-catching graphics, bullet lists, callouts and soundbites, videos or any other structural elements that keep people on the page and looking around. Ultimately, the game here isn’t just to rank, but to create something that people want to read, and this page is a good example of the ideal approach.
Our designers spend quite a lot of time finessing the layout and format of our ranking content, and while ‘good’ is subjective, it’s definitely worth investing some time in the same if you want to rank well in the long-term.
Again, this advice isn’t prescriptive but we have to ask why Google should rank us above competitor articles – if there isn’t a clear differentiator, we’re unlikely to get any penetration.
Does Readability Matter?
Readability affects SEO directly and indirectly: Directly in the sense that Google does generally prefer to rank simple, grammatically correct content that’s easy to read, and indirectly in the sense that readable content generally does a better job of engaging people.
Some people get very tied up trying to achieve a set readability score, using Flesch-Kincaid calculators to work out whether they’re pitching content at the right level but we’re not sure this is a hugely useful exercise.
In topic areas where language is naturally complex, Google has no problem ranking very dense content and attempts to dumb things down unnecessarily can irritate or vex readers who feel that you’re being condescending. (Source: University of Dundee).
However, there is a very good argument for making sure that content is easy to read from an end-user perspective, which is to say that it’s always best to write in plain English, avoid acronyms and ‘insider’ speak, stick to short paragraphs and ensure that you mix in a good blend of visual elements.
This will have the dual effect of naturally increasing the variety of semantically-linked keywords you mention, and of keeping the reader engaged; boosting time on page, and ensuring that you are providing the best possible experience for potential customers.
What is latent semantic indexing?
Earlier, we said that you should probably ignore any appeals to hit a specific keyword density. This is true and generally good advice, but it is worth thinking about the range or spread of keywords that you use.
Simply put, Google replaced keyword density with metrics that look at the use of keywords commonly found next to - or in close proximity to - a given search term in natural and user-first web content.
As an example, you might expect an article about online shopping to contain words like “basket”, “convenience” “discount” “clicked” and “account” and Google does too. In fact, articles that contain the right LSI or latent semantic indexing keywords generally see a bit of a ranking boost because they’re easier for Google to understand, and more obviously relevant to the search term they’re targeting.
We’ve explored the concept of LSI keywords (and guidance on how to locate them) in more detail here. But in simple terms, it’s important to help Google contextualise your content by writing about it naturally, and mentioning the topics that you’d expect to appear in an article focusing on your target keyword.
What about titles, meta descriptions and <h1> tags?
Of course these need to be covered off too: Much as we like to pretend that Google has become a hyper-sophisticated arbiter of content focus and quality, the truth is that your title and your h1 tag are probably the most important ranking factors on a page.
They’re the first thing Google will see, the first data point it has to start contextualising your page and, per numerous studies, the thing it will pay most attention to when it first arrives on a given URL. (Source: Positional). Best practice dictates that they include your target keyword in a natural way.
Meta descriptions are less important as a ranking factor. In fact, they’re completely devalued. (Source: Search Engine Journal). But they do influence click through rates in search so it’s worth spending 10 minutes at the end of an article, making sure they provide an accurate and enticing summary that’s likely to drive interaction.
Don’t forget your links
Links matter a lot. At its core, Google is still a link-based algorithm and the more inbound links you can point at a page, the better it will do. These don’t have to be links from other domains either: Even something as simple as making sure that you link to your new article or sales pages from 5-10 relevant pages of your own website will help.
In fact, post writing, the creation of good internal links is top of our list because we want to communicate the importance of our new page to Google, and make sure that search engine crawl bots understand the way it’s linked to the rest of our content.
Other features
So far we’ve focused on written words, but it’s worth noting that all three of the competing pages identified at the beginning of this exercise make good use of interactive elements like videos. They also link out to a lot of supporting content – including relevant whitepapers, articles and resources elsewhere on their respective domains.
This is all good practice, and again, we’re competing to prove that we’re more helpful and authoritative so we don’t want to miss the opportunity to do the same (where possible) and showcase some of the content that demonstrates our expertise in this area.
It’s not strictly an SEO benefit, but it’s also worth thinking about how we can weave in some trust signals: quotes from industry leaders, user generated content, videos or even logo carousels all help to sell the story and keep people engaged with the claims we’re making on a page.
And ultimately, our content has to rank and persuade, so try to think about what will land with visitors and show Google that you’re deadly serious about providing the definitive article on a given subject.
Conclusion
This isn’t a step by step checklist, but it does provide a repeatable methodology that should help you rank content on competitive SERPs. There’s always more that could be said on a subject, but if you follow the guidelines provided here, you should find that you start to see results in a matter of weeks. If you’re confused, want more guidance or find that you’re stuck trying to rank for a particularly tricky keyword, get in touch.
We’re primarily focused on helping B2B tech and engineering businesses to win new business, but we’re always happy to talk shop with marketing people in any sector.
