SEO – Writing good content
I am pleased to welcome guest blogger Grant Price III. Grant is a WordPress Tutor and Consultant in the Washington DC area. He has been training individuals and corporations about the web and WordPress since 2012. For WordPress tutoring and training, visit WPtutoring.com.
Today Grant is sharing some tips about Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. My clients often ask how to rank higher in Google and other search engine searches … and I always tell them it is complicated! Here Grant shares some basic, not complicated tops to get you started.
In SEO your content should be fresh
Fresh content is exactly what Google is looking for and if you’re not providing it, you definitely will not rank in any significant way. Fresh content means providing information on a subject in which you have some expertise, or providing a new point of view. Another way to make content fresh is to see how time or technology has changed a particular topic of interest.
SEO Content should be relevant
Relevant content is content that speaks to the topic of your website. You would not want to put a car article on a beautician’s website and vice versa. Sometimes you can be too broad in your content choices and make Google confused as to what your overall site is about. Take the time to truly think about what your audience needs and what the overall theme of your website is. It’s ok to cover items that are loosely related to your main focus, but even that should be kept to a minimum.
Content should be often
I can’t recall how many times I’ve been to websites that hadn’t refreshed their content in a number of months and unfortunately in some cases even years. Google doesn’t reward sites that are stale and have nothing new to offer to users. Even if your content is well written, on topic, and relevant, sometimes competitors can outrank you with fresher content. Take the time to create fresh content often or at least freshen up the content that you already have and republish. “Often” differs from site to site, but should be on a consistent basis.
Go deep to get better Search Optimization
If you can go deeply into a topic, that will also help you with Google. A long article that is relevant will almost always beat a series of short articles that are shallow. Don’t just create something that is meant to bring eyeballs and nothing else. Remember part of Google’s ranking algorithms is “bounce rate.” Bounce rate is whether or not searchers actually engage with your content for a meaningful period of time. If your site is full of shallow content, searchers will not stay on your site and your bounce rate will increase. Increasing bounce rate translates into lower Google ranking.
Tips for writing (not just for Google SEO either)
“How can I more easily create this fresh updated content?” One of the best ways I found to create new content is to use dictation software versus attempting to sit down and type out each and every thought. Special dictation software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking will translate your voice into text in many popular word processing applications, even web based ones like my favorite – WordPress. This makes things a lot easier and faster because many people speak more fluently and engagingly than when they type. Additionally, there are third-party services such as Rev.com that will actually transcribe your speech for you as long as you send them an audio or video recording. This will allow you to reuse video content or audio content as fresh content for your blog.
WordPress can help you
If you are fortunate enough to have a WordPress website there is a scheduling option you can use to schedule when your content is actually posted. So if you’re someone who writes in “blocks,” you can actually write multiple blog articles and schedule them for the right day and time. If you need help with that, check out step 5 here.
Make sure to take these tips and create good content fresh content deep content and relevant content for your site.