5 Tips for Creating User and SEO-Friendly Content

It is possible to create content that is SEO-friendly and also serves your users’ requirements. Many marketers approach this as though they are two conflicting goals. After all, ensuring that your users’ needs are satisfied will give you the best chance at good ratings and more backlinks, which will improve your organic ratings and hence visibility. There’s more to creating good content than just filling up keywords in the content. This article from your search marketing agency in Brisbane provides some of these tips.

1. Think!

It seems obvious, but think about what message you want to pass across and what question you’re trying to answer. Write down these questions and answers, then create an outline of the best way to approach the subject in order to give your audience an exhaustive answer without giving too much information.

The structure should include a flow of ideas, with a catchy introduction and conclusion. This should give you a summary that you can work with.

2. Use paragraphs

Be sure that your paragraphs communicate independent ideas and that these ideas make sense. Don’t move to the next paragraph just because you think it’s time, although it’s good to have shorter paragraphs. For longer ideas, try to find ways to split ideas so that you don’t have overly long paragraphs. Your outline can help you to condense main ideas and sub-ideas, which will essentially be the subject of your paragraphs.

3. Headings and subheadings

Headings can help to break down your content so that users can skim through and understand what you’re talking about. This is also important for SEO as Google skims headings to quickly grasp what your content talks about. They are also excellent for helping users to navigate to portions of the article that answer the questions they have. Where possible, fit your target keywords in your headings and subheadings. They should fit in naturally so that you don’t look like you’re keyword spamming.

4. Signal words

Signal words are like ‘First’, ‘Secondly’ and ‘Finally’ and they are good for helping people easily scan your article to get main ideas. They also include words like ‘certainly’, ‘however’ and others, which also contribute to improving the flow of your thought. A reader knows what to expect following a signal word. For instance, they expect a conclusion after the word ‘finally’. Signal words are excellent for breaking up long ideas to give many short paragraphs instead of building long paragraphs.

5. Sharing

Before you publish your post, invite another person to read the post. Find out whether they understand your post, including main ideas, flow, and conclusions. Ask them if they feel there are sections that veer off from the main subject so that you can rectify or remove them. In addition, a new pair of eyes can catch typos and contextual errors (where you’ve used the wrong word, but that word exists so will not be highlighted by spell-check e.g. ‘four’ instead of ‘for’).

Conclusion

Writing SEO-friendly articles isn’t difficult provided you remember that you’re first writing for your readers and not the search engines. You can include signals for search engines, but these must be done while considering the needs of your users if you’re going to capture and keep your audience’s attention with your content.

SEO audit by TemplateMonster Service Center

Do you need your website be visible to your target audience in search engines and you don't know where to start? SEO audit is the first step to creating an online marketing strategy that really works. You will get the analysis and guidelines on how to implement the given recommendations within your website.

P.S. Don't forget to check out our seo services templates.