5 Helpful Ways To Create SEO-Friendly Content
Your search engine ranking is affected by hundreds of different things, but relevancy is the most important.
But what does it actually mean to be relevant? How could you measure it? Here are 5 factors that I find helpful to create more SEO friendly content:
1. Article title/keywords
2. Word count
3. Internal links
4. Reading length
5. Bounce rate
1. Using keywords and titles to rank higher on Google
Think of keywords as what you’d type into Google. And even though they are called keywords, Google users search for phrases for the most part.
Once you have found your topic, research how people search for that in Google. Use these phrases in your title, making sure it’s grammatical and interesting. You’ll see this strategy in post titles around the web.
The WA training is perfect to learn everything about keywords!
2. How long should your blog posts be?
Longer is better (usually). A 2,000-word article has a better chance at rank highly, more so than a 500-word article.
But it is crucial that you don't bloat out your post with fluff. (Flutt hurts your reading duration and bounce rate, two important factors you'll learn about later down in this article.)
A basic structure that will help add length to your post without being fluffy is:
- Fulfil the promise of the article right at the beginning
- Explain what led you to the answer
- Expand on the answer; give details
- Justify your answer
- Answer any follow up questions people might have
Not only will this make your article longer, it will be better and more informative.
3. Use internal links
Link between different posts on your blog. If you touch on something you’ve previously written about link your readers to that page.
Identify your favourite or best posts. Link to them constantly. This tells Google to pay attention to these more.
4. Reading duration is important
If people stay on your post longer it says to Google this is a good answer to their search.
When you post an article, monitor the traffic and see if the reading duration makes sense for the post length.
If the average reading duration is too low, edit your article, improve it, and monitor again to see if it increases.
5. Bounce rates
Bounce rate measures how many people left your site without going to a new page on it. If reading length shows how interesting a single post is, bounce rate measures it for your whole site.
High bounce rates might be down to posts not delivering on their promise or no other relevant posts on your site.
Fix the keywords and title if you’ve got a high bounce rate because of the first. For the second, see what related topics are being searched for and write a post. Like with reading length, measure bounce rate and tinker.
Side Note: Loading speed
How fast your site loads is an important search rank factor. I use this Google tool to measure loading speed and identify issues to fix it.
If you have a low score, most likely it is because you have too many large images. If without any images you still have slow loading speed, remove the sidebar. If after that it's still slow, maybe try a different WP theme.
However, even if you have the fastest loading page... If the actual content isn't relevant, nor helpful, nor interesting, then people will leave again. (Fast loading speed without the content only allows your readers to leave again even faster :P)
Did you find this helpful? Let me know in a comment below! :)
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Hi, James.
Excellent tips and information to have! Thanks for sharing!
Shelly
Hey Shelly thanks for your comment! Happy to hear it was valuable info :)