When reading great SEO blogs, the same message comes back at me time and time again when focusing on content. Write for your users and the SEO benefit will come. So why do we still use news feed companies? Why do we stuff keywords into h1’s and count the number of times our ‘hollywood’ keyword terms appear in a web page?
When you create new content for your users, you should do it with the peace of mind that if they find it relevant then so will Google. This quick article my top 3 tips about how you can write in an appealing way so that you do not alieniate your users with text overload.
1) Online grammar
Keep your readers eyes on your info.
People say to me ‘will people read an article that is 2000 words long’? If you provide multiple annotations of desk research, provide thought provoking hypotheses and break up your article with relevant photographs/videos then sure they would read a long article.
The ‘breaking up’ part is the bit to remember.
See, I just did it then to see if you are awake!
So, ignore what you learnt in English with regards to paragraphing and break up your sentencing to allow for the scanning eyes of the internet browser.
2) Give background information from as many angles
Build trust with well researched data.
As you would with a dissertation, your users will listen to you if you cite 3rd party view points and data. For example, if you sell TVs online, then by summarising home entertainment magazine reviews and mentioning their views you will give validity as well as demonstrate a depth to your content writing that goes well past mentioning ‘TVs/televisions/LCD tv’s’ in a spammy way!
3) Link to great information providers
Don’t be greedy. (Larry/Sergey eat your heart out!)
Webmasters can obsess about trapping both the user and page rank. This doesn’t demonstrate a sharing nature, and whilst you may have a nofollow policy to external links, it doesn’t mean that your user would (a) know/care what this means and (b) wouldn’t revisit or go back to the original page that they were on as a result of sharing this information.
If you link to suppliers or manufacturers in a small number of instances alongside rich content, there is every chance that you will be enhancing the quality of the page from an SEO point of view.