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SEO is something that frequently changes. New updates are released by search engines, especially Google, on a regular basis, and the way that sites are ranked on the SERPs is changed.
However, there are some things that stay the same. There are some techniques and some strategies that you should apply the same way when writing content.
We want to make this article evergreen and timeless, which is why we want to focus on the facets of SEO-optimized content that you can keep in mind all the time.
Let’s get started.
A Comprehensive Guide for Crafting SEO Content
1. Find the right keywords to adjust in your content
Keywords are an important element in SEO content writing. You have to mention the keywords in your content to show the search engine what the content is actually about.
Basically, KWs are the terms that people search on the Internet. When you enter KWs in your content, you raise the chances of your content showing up in response to that particular query in the search results.
For example, “content writing services” is a KW that people search for on the Internet. If you use this keyword in your content, then the search engine will understand that your content is related to it. As a result, when someone searches for the keyword, your content will be shown to them.
This is the basic logic behind using keywords in a piece of content.
However, considering the number of websites on the Internet and the competition that exists between them, choosing and using the right keywords is not very easy.
The best way to understand keywords is to learn about short-tail and long-tail keywords, KW difficulty, and search volume. In the table below, we have described these factors:
| Type of Keyword | Definition | Volume | Difficulty |
| Short-tail keywords | These are the types of keywords that consist of one or two words at max. For example, “email marketing” is a short-tail keyword. | Volume is basically the average number of times that a keyword is searched on the Internet. Short-tail keywords usually have a high volume. | The keyword difficulty is essentially a measure of the effort that it would require to rank on a particular KW. The difficulty for short-tail keywords is usually high. |
| Long tail keywords | These are the types of keywords that consist of more than three words. For example, the KW “how to learn content writing” is a long-tail keyword. | The volume for long-tail keywords is usually low. | The ranking difficulty for long-tail keywords is usually low. |
2. Focus on providing valuable information to your audience
Search engines, especially Google, judge the quality of your content based on how helpful and valuable it is to your readers. When it comes to Google, the search engine has a criterion that is reflected in the EEAT guidelines. EEAT stands for:
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
In other words, the content that contains these traits is taken by the search engine to be rank-worthy.
You have to focus on making your content have all these qualities. To do that, you can follow these tips:
- To demonstrate experience and expertise in the content, you have to provide information as well as your own opinions/advice. By doing this, you can show our expertise through the info and your experience through the advice.
- On the other hand, to demonstrate authoritativeness and trustworthiness, you should add reliable facts and figures to the content. You should also quote and cite reliable sources.
If your content is information-rich and contains actionable tips/advice that your readers can follow, you will be able to make your site rank higher in the search engines.
3. Make sure your metadata is proper
Metadata basically contains the meta description of your content as well as its meta title. These are important bits of information that you should focus on writing properly because they help the search engine in understanding your webpage’s relevance and intent.
- When it comes to the meta title, the length that you should adhere to is 55 to 60 characters. Remember, these are not words but characters. The title should be descriptive of the information that the webpage includes. It should contain the main focus keyword.
Here is a good example of a meta title that contains the focus keyword and is brief.
- Moving on, let’s talk about the meta description. The meta description has to be written in a length of less than 160 characters. It also has to be concise and descriptive, and it should contain the main focus keyword as well.
Here is an example of a good meta description that is concise and also features the main focus keyword:
One problem that a lot of people can face, especially beginners in SEO, is keeping the meta description short. Since you have to describe the contents of a whole webpage in just 160 characters, it can be a bit difficult to maintain brevity.
A good solution to this problem is to utilize an online tool to help you shrink the size of your text. You can, for example, write a good description that you think captures all the main points, and then you can use an AI summary generator to shorten it.
4. Ensure that your content does not contain plagiarism
No matter what other things change in SEO, one thing remains the same across almost every search engine: no plagiarism allowed.
Plagiarism is defined as the process of taking and using someone else’s content and making use of it for yourself without giving kudos to the original author. It is, of course, an unethical thing to do, but in SEO, it can cause your website’s ranking to plummet.
You should make sure that you don’t deliberately plagiarize anything, and on top of that, you should also ensure that you don’t accidentally plagiarize anything.
The latter is the sneakier of the two problems, which is why it has to be more specifically addressed.
Once you are done writing your content, you should use an online tool to check for plagiarism in it. That way, you will be able to determine whether or not you’ve accidentally plagiarized anything.
If there is no plagiarism or a negligible amount, you can finalize your content without any worries. On the other hand, if there is a lot of it, you should remove that particular text to make your content unique.
Conclusion and closing remarks
Writing SEO content requires you to follow a lot more steps than the ones that we’ve mentioned here in this post. However, the ones that we have mentioned are some of the important and essential ones, and you should keep them in mind at all times.
You should take care to use the right keywords in your content and to provide valuable information to the readers. Other than that, you should also ensure that your metadata is properly written and that your content is free from plagiarism.
With all of these things checked, your content will have a higher chance of getting a good position in the SERPs.
