Five Essential Tips on How to Create Search Engine Friendly Content

A search engine friendly content refers to a content that has been optimized for achieving higher visibility on search engine ranking. Despite the rise of ChatGPT, even today over 90% of online traffic continues to be channelized through search engines like Google. According to analytics platforms like StarCounter and Similarweb, Google is the number one website in the world, handling over 8.5 billion searches per day. This sums up the importance of creating a content that carries immense promise to dominate Google.

One of the primary advantages of search engine friendly content is that it ensures sustained traffic for months and even years, making it more cost effective than online paid ads. The main drawback of the latter being that it can only get traffic for as long as ads are running.

This blog post sheds light on simple and basic tips for creating content that not only tops the search ranking but can hold the podium position for longer period.

How to create SEO Content with 5 Easy Steps

Creating content with great SEO potential is not a hard nut to crack. All it takes is following 5 simple steps, widely recognized as among the best SEO practices. Although not rocket science at all, perseverance and patience remain key to achieving success.

1) Conduct keyword research

The first major step in the long-drawn process of creating search engine friendly content is to conduct a keyword research. A thorough keyword research essentially reveals keywords that the target customers are repeatedly searching on search engines. Inserting these keywords at strategic locations within the content helps in getting noticed by Google, which is a major prerequisite for securing consistent online traffic.

An important benefit of keyword research is that it brings to the table invaluable data and information that ultimately helps in selecting the most accurate keywords for the content. The most primary data being monthly search volumes and keyword difficulty score, where the latter discloses whether or not a website can potentially rank for certain keywords. This is especially critical as it prevents from targeting wrong keywords or keywords that a website can’t realistically rank for.

SEMrush, Ahrefs and UberSuggest are some of the popular and industry recognized tools for conducting keyword research.

Keyword research, overall, plays an indispensable role in creating search engine friendly content. It greatly minimizes the imminent risk of content getting blind sighted by Google.

2) Focus on search intent:

Search intent is an important keyword metric that reveals about the intention and the purpose that ultimately drives the online search query. Most people and customers flock to Google with clear and definite intention. Identifying this intention and satisfying it innately enhances the possibilities of any online content’s higher search ranking chances.

Since search intent is an important keyword metric, almost all SEO and keyword research tools incorporate search intent feature in them. Every time any keyword research tool furnishes a list of potential keywords, it also tells about the search intent that the each keyword is associated with.

A keyword is usually associated with one of the four categories, which are as follows:

Informational (people are looking for information).
Commercial (people want to research a product or service).
Navigational (people are searching for a particular website).
Transactional (people are searching for a website for buying product or service).

3) Create Top Notch Content:

The search engine landscape is a highly competitive landscape where only high quality content stand the chance of succeeding. But here is a sweet irony, a high quality content doesn’t seek to satisfy search engine at all. Rather it puts the human readers in central focus. The rule of the game is pretty simple: content getting positive and maximum engagement from human readers always tend to rank higher on Google.

Below are some of the important traits of high-quality content:

Write 100% original content.
Cover unique points and angles that none of the competitors have covered.
The article/content must be concise and condense; no unnecessary fat or information.
Making sure that the content has natural and seamless flow.
Include stats and numbers cited from reliable sources.
Add media like infographics, images and videos wherever necessary.
Ensuring that the content is supported with good grammar and vocabulary.

To sum it up, only high quality content have the fair chance of cracking the SEO game.

4) Prioritize On-Page SEO:

Not prioritizing On-Page SEO while writing any piece of online content is like committing ultimate self-goal. It plays a foundational role in helping any content or webpage in maximizing its online visibility across search engines. This is exactly why On-page SEO is called one of the important pillars of the SEO.

At the heart of it, it constitutes of wide-range of optimization practices that among other things help the search engine in better understanding the content.

Here are some of the important On-Page optimization practices

Strategically placing the keywords in the content.
Proper structuring of headlines or using header tags (H1, H2, H3, or H4).
Optimizing URL.
Adding external and internal links in the content.
Optimizing images.
Creating mobile friendly and responsive website.
Increasing the download speed of the web page.

5) Emphasize Readability:

Often considered to be part of the on-page SEO practice, readability has a considerable bearing on whether or not content can rank well in the SERP. This is the sole reason dedicating separate section to readability was important.

Readability is all about making the content more accessible and comprehensible for human readers as well as search engines. It does this by not only organizing and providing the proper structure but also conveying the meaning and context of the content in simplest way possible.

Mentioned below are some of the tips for readability:

Use short paragraphs and sentences; paragraph should not have more than 4-5 sentences
Avoid using passive voice.
Divide the content in subheading.
Use bullet points and subheading wherever necessary.
Choose simple vocabulary; avoid using tough vocabulary and complex jargon unless necessary.

Conclusion:

To summarize it, following these five essential tips will go a long in creating search engine friendly content with higher chances of delivering the results. At the core, search engine friendly content is all about maintaining the fine balance, where the innate needs of the human readers gets primary importance but not without overlooking the algorithmic requirements of the search engine.

While other critical factors like ‘backlinks’ has a huge role play in realizing the content’s SEO potential, creating a search engine friendly content is the first major step in that direction. And getting the first step right invariably helps in doubling down the chances of success, not only in SEO but also otherwise.