Creating the Best Content for Search Engine Optimization

“Content is king” is one of the most repeated phrases in digital marketing. And even though it’s true, not many people truly understand its meaning. Sharing information that is fresh, original, and useful is a good beginning, but it’s certainly not enough. Not if you really want to rank high on SERPs and stay there for a long time. It’s important to create content for search engine optimization; which means implementing in your writing the same effort you put in when you have a target audience in mind.

Web content by itself doesn’t necessarily bring traffic to your site. The SEO strategy you implement around it is the actual progress towards page rankings. There should be an almost perfect balance between A+ quality content and pristine optimization. And no, it’s not easy but it’s not impossible either. In this article, we will share some useful tips to reach such an ideal balance (or at least get you as close as possible).

The Right Format When Creating Content for Search Engine Optimization

There is no one formula for your web page layout at the moment of creating content for
search engine optimization. Whatever the format you decide to use, there are some basic traits that need to be present:

• Title and Subheadings
• Meta tags
• HTML tags.
• Structure of the content
• Word count (usually 300+ words)
• Tone 

Aside from the structural details, there’s one thing every writer needs to understand. And that is, content intends to communicate. So you can develop the form of the page or article around the idea of satisfying a specific search. In this very same article, we started by going straight to the point of what we’re talking about: content. You should get right to the point in the opening paragraph. 
In one of their
guidelines
, Google gives a piece of very clear advice: “Make pages for users, not search engines”. Making your statement crystal clear from the very beginning is the foundation of such an idea. There’s plenty of space in the rest of the article to develop the rest of your writing and the topic you intend to treat. All this put together in the right structure with tags, titles, the proper font, and headlines, creating a unified piece is practical guarantees you’ll be creating excellent content. And both users and search engines will notice it.

Varied, Polished Writing

Just like many other traits of your digital marketing strategy, the content will depend on your target audience and what you expect your landing pages or articles to generate on them. Keeping this in mind, it’d be good to have videos or images along with your written content. A great variety in your content for
search engine optimization will help increase the average time users spend on your pages. This is an indicator that you’re providing engaging content and a good user experience. And thus, your rankings increase.
Variety needs to go hand in hand with polished writing. “Polished” not necessarily mean intricate or fancy. Not every content has the same tone but in all cases, it can (and should) be properly written. Editing programs like Grammarly are extremely helpful but keep in mind that no app can give you a sense of humor or a brain. They should
help you, not
lead you. Depending on the content, you should add your own personal print; whether it is with humor, sarcasm, edge or charisma.

Authority vs. Originality

If you’ve been creating content for search engine optimization
in the latest years, you probably noticed the paradox between the way SEO is supposed to be performed and the actual way pages are ranked. On one hand, your content is supposed to receive extra value when you quote sources and add authoritative links. On the other hand, you’re supposed to generate original content from proper research that adds for itself. 
Citing the previous work of other experts is great. But your own content gives you the chance to exceed them. And by this we mean contribute with something new and original to the topic you’re covering. You may not invent the wheel, but you can certainly add something that makes it more useful or at least attractive to your target audience. A few creative links and compelling writing will help your content cross the line between authority and originality.