If you, like me, have been in the world of website content writing services for a while, you remember a not-so-distant time when online writing was all about keyword inclusion.
Namely, how many keywords could you cram into a given web content page, and would Google notice?
While many marketers are still relying on tactics like these, Google and other search engines have changed drastically. It’s gotten to the point where marketers who have not evolved their content strategies are being left behind.
While Google used to rely on keyword inclusion as a reputable quality metric, today’s search engine algorithms are much more sophisticated. Today, Google looks at things like social signals, site quality, SEO, link strategies, image inclusion, content layout and length, besides just keywords.
While keywords still have an important place in the world of online content, focusing too much on keywords can come at the expense of your other content.
In light of this, it’s time to toss keyword reliance to the wind and to focus, instead, on all of the other things that make the world of web content writing go around.
Improve Your Content Writing on the Web By Focusing Less On Keywords Only
In the days of old, a page needed few things to rank well.
For one, it needed a high keyword saturation that helped Google interpret what the page was about. In addition to that, it needed a link strategy and some on-page content. That was about it.
Today, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Google has gotten amazingly advanced in the last several years, and sites that are to rank well in today’s version of Google need to have dozens of different high-quality ranking metrics, including good SEO, high-quality visuals, a solid social strategy, following, and base of shares, and a relevant, long-tail keyword strategy.
Unfortunately, marketers who are too busy focusing on things like keyword saturation and density often miss these nuanced things.
The Modern Face of SEO Web Content
Today, SEO is virtually unrecognizable to professionals who worked in the old SEO styling. Today, anything that’s considered to be solid in terms of SEO web content writing must optimize for two things: people and search engines.
If this sounds like a tall order – you’re right!
Modern SEO as a whole is complicated, and it requires a set of guidelines and a skilled team to execute it properly.
Here’s a list of some of the basic foundations of modern SEO content mapping, to help you get a feel for how it works today:
- Modern SEO utilizes long-tail keyword phrases in natural ways
- It optimizes for people first and search engines second
- It seeks to provide value and solve problems rather than to sell directly
- It gains its success from click-throughs, conversions, and shares
- It is more conversational and less technical
- It adapts frequently to changing consumer desires and needs
How to Improve Your SEO Web Writing Right Now: 5 Tips
When it comes to content writing for websites in the modern world, improving SEO generally means making the web content writing more functional and valuable.
While there are dozens of great ways to improve on-page content and ensure you’re making the most of common SEO standards and practices, the following steps are an excellent way to get started improving your SEO:
1. Get social with your web content writing
Social media is a key element in great SEO, and it’s one of the most important things for both humans and search engines of today. While social media is often written off as a waste of time or a platform that’s more suited to leisure than it is to marketing, the fact of the matter is that great SEO often starts on social media.
By using social platforms to distribute high-quality content, interact with followers, and build a base of devoted fans, it’s easy to improve your social following across the board and enjoy a boost in Google rankings, as a result.
2. Create a two-way dialogue in your online copy
Want to encourage customers to keep coming back to your web content? Show them that you appreciate their existing interaction!
While many companies brush over comments, likes, and shares, the trick to creating a successful online presence is to reach out and encourage engagement with your customers.
Have a new Instagram comment?
Take a moment to thank that person or company for taking the time to comment.
Have a new Facebook question or mention? Respond to it!
While this may not be directly an SEO writing tactic, it’s a simple step that can go a long way toward improving your overall visibility on the web and ensuring that your customers can find you, wherever they happen to be online.
3. Shoot for long-tail web content keywords
Right now, long-tail keywords make up 70% of all search volume.
Because of this, they’re a critical thing for marketers concerned about good SEO web content to target. While the whole point of this article is that it’s wise for marketers to avoid focusing on keywords too much, long-tail keywords are a wonderful thing to include in your overall content strategy.
Since long-tail keywords are highly specific, including them in your copy is a wonderful way to target it to your customers and boost your SEO by ensuring that the people who visit your site are qualified leads who are there because they’re ready to purchase or convert.
4. Beef up your linking strategy in your website content
Linking has been a fraught topic in the world of SEO for years.
Before SEO advanced to the point it’s at now, so-called black-hat SEOs used to stuff content full of spammy links to trick Google into ranking it well.
Since then, Google has cracked down on these exploitative practices. Today, links can benefit your copy, but they have to be executed correctly.
This means plenty of high-quality internal and outgoing links that point to other, valuable content and (in the case of outgoing links) sites with a high DA score.
This helps communicate to Google that your copy is reputable and that you’re tied into other legitimate sites on the web.
5. Create evergreen web content
Before we dive into the concept of evergreen content, let me just say that your best SEO strategy in the modern day is simply to create content – lots of it.
Every time you write a new blog, post a new web page, or develop a new article, you’re giving Google one more page to index.
This, in turn, helps boost your site’s relevance, ensure that your best content is appearing to your users, and allow you to feature more prominently in Google’s SERPs.
So, there you have it. Creating content, in general, is important, but creating evergreen content is critical.
Evergreen content is content with an incredibly long shelf life. Designed to provide value to readers for months or years after its original publishing date, evergreen content is the cornerstone of any good SEO or blogging strategy.
By creating plenty of evergreen content, you do two essential things: first, you give Google pages to index, which helps you pop up in the SERPs.
Second, you create in-depth, long-form pieces of content that can help your readers solve some of their most pressing and most common issues.
This, in turn, incentivizes them to come back to your site and continue interacting with your content, both today and in the future.
In these ways, evergreen content can help boost your SEO, improve your overall content strategy, and help you hop off of the keyword train for something better and more functional.
Web Content Writing Tip: Keywords Might Be Dead – And That’s Okay
Don’t get me wrong – a great long-tail web content focused keyword can still go a long way toward improving your content. But today, we’re thinking of it as more of a tool than a foundation.
In the web content writing world of the past, keywords were the end and the beginning.
Today, they’re just a strategy to improve writing, rather than one to create it.
Content writing on the web has evolved hugely, and, mostly, it’s been for the better. Today, search engines are smarter, readers are more interactive, and useful content is designed to cater to people first and computers second.
All of these things combine to ensure that content writing for a website reads more like a story than it does a dry, crunchy piece of “marketing material.”
As website content writing services have changed, though, some marketers have stayed stuck in the past – clinging desperately to all the things that used to work – including keywords.
Luckily, we don’t need to do this anymore.
Gone are the days of strained, density-focused keyword inclusion and marketers everywhere can do well to bid them a fond goodbye.
Today, great web content writing is all about value, relevance, interest, and – yes – beauty.
And it’s only by releasing our death grip on the outdated notion of keyword density that we’ll be able to grab all of those things.
Does your website content writing need a high quality copywriter? Get your web pages custom written at Express Writers today!