Digital Marketing Training Week 7 Create SEO-Friendly Site Content

Task 7: Create SEO-Friendly Site Content This week, take a few hours to create search engine friendly website content. Why i...

Task 7: Create SEO-Friendly Site Content This week, take a few hours to create search engine friendly website content.

Why is this important? Website content plays an important role not just in educating the user of your business but in helping search engines rank your site higher in search engine results. The structure of the content, the usage of anchor text, inclusion of keywords and keyword consistency plays a key role in determining your site’s SEO.

Step #1: Keyword Research Focus your website content around two to three short-tail keywords (not more than two words) and two to three long-tail keywords (from four to five words). ▪ Short-tail keywords have a lot of competition, for example wedding gowns ▪ Long-tail keywords, otherwise known as ‘money keywords,’ are the ones that lead to conversion. Anyone searching for long-tail key phrases, such as wedding gown store Los Angeles is ultimately serious about buying a wedding gown at a store in Los Angeles. We covered this topic in detail in one of our previous emails, entitled, "Choose the Best Keywords for Your Website."

Step #2: Include Keywords in Site Content Components Site content components that have an impact on SEO are the following: ▪ Title - It must contain 60-70 characters including spaces and one to two keywords. ▪ Description - It must contain 150-160 characters including spaces and one to three keywords. ▪ H1 tag - It must contain the main keyword or money keyword. ▪ Site content – This can contain all the chosen keywords. You must include a keyword in the first few lines of your content. ▪ Image alt text - The content that describes your image. It can contain one main keyword. ▪ Anchor Text - These are the hyperlinked words in the content, out of which 50 percent can be keywords and 50 percent can be brand names or generic names. We discussed this in detail in our previous email about keywords.

Step #3: Enhance Readability ▪ If your keyword is bridal collection store Los Angeles, do not feel obliged to insert it, as is, in the content. Follow grammatical rules in the key phrase while writing your content and instead, write; bridal collection store in Los Angeles. ▪ You can bold/strong your main keyword, however, it is not mandatory. ▪ Proof read your content for grammar and spelling mistakes. ▪ Break chunks of text into bulleted lists. ▪ Use short sentences and plenty of white space.

Step #4: Optimize Anchor Text Some definitive to-dos when it comes to the usage of anchor text in your site content are as follows: ▪ Internal/External link anchor text must accurately describe the content it is linked to. For example, if you are linking to an external page about increased user buying statistics of a particular online brand, you must link it to anchor text such asincreasing web popularity . ▪ Out of the total number of anchor texts in a page, not more than 50 percent must be exact anchor text matches. For example, if your keyword anchor text is amazing wedding dresses, not more than 50 percent of the links pointing to your page's content should match each other. ▪ For the rest of the 50 percent you can use branded keywords, for example, David’s Bridal Collection or simply use generic anchor texts such as click here, read more,read more about David’s Bridal Collection and so on. The idea is to make the linking look natural and not just for SEO.

A sample of website content that contains an exact match keyword and a branded keyword.

Step #5: Provide Unique Content Create original content. * If content is written by a freelancer or SEO copywriting company, paste parts of the content into the Google search bar to check if it is copied (before the content is published on the site). * Use Copyscape to check for plagiarism (after the content is published on the site). * Insert short and long-tail keywords where they are relevant to the context of the content, i.e. keywords must flow naturally and not look like they are deliberately stuffed in. * Write unique titles and descriptions for each web page. * Keywords used in the title, descriptions, h1, image alt text and content must be consistent and relevant. * Add freshness to your website by including a blog page or an article section and updating its content regularly.

Step #6: Check HTML to Text Ratio ▪ A 15 to 70 percent HTML to text ratio is good. ▪ 400 - 700 words per page of website content is ideal. Run a test on WooRank’s Website Review to check the HTML to text ratio on your site. See a sample test shown below:

WooRank Website Review for Text/HTML Ratio

Resources for further learning: ▪ Blog Article: 6 SEO Tips for Website Content ▪ Blog Article: Are Text to HTML Ratios Important ▪ Video: Writing Content for Websites