Writing SEO Optimized Content For Real People With Real Problems

Content for the web has many facets, of which SEO optimization is only one. It seems appropriate to talk about this given the many preconceptions surrounding content creation, context, language, brand voice and findability.

Let's keep in mind the audience: the people the content is designed to help. Your audience varies from strangers to current customers. They have issues. Business issues that manifest as problems, stages, bumps, tactical retreats, competitive action and reaction, negative cashflow (a favourite), margins, exposure, the board, risk, denial, failure.

What it means is there are a ton of things coming at these individuals all day long, every day. And you want them to read your blog post. You want them to get involved with your traffic campaign; to follow all your carefully planned steps until they take that final leap and fill in the form for that magical download. Then gazingable - you've succeeded in converting them into a lead: a real person with a name and email (presumably neither is false).

Congratulations. Now all you have to do is get them to read the download, act upon the information, click through links in the scheduled emails being delivered over the next 42 days, visit the website 7 times, find the pricing page and spend more than 4.5 minutes on it before clicking through to the about us page and list of senior executives - and finally rack up a lead score that justifies sending their contact information over to Sales for them to close the sale. Right?

Is your content actually that inspiring?

A common problem with content creation comes from the stages most content goes through before a writer ever gets involved. There's a business objective being addressed by a marketing pipeline goal which has been broken out as content marketing tactics which have guidelines for presentation, language, info architecture and a bunch of other stuff.

The content process is not going to go away. Just make it work for you not against you. Meta tags and taxonomies are essential for making your content findable. And so are keyword phrases. Absolutely essential.

I suggest you have a content element checklist and follow it when you're creating content: posts, webpages, videos, podcasts. The first item on your checklist should be the purpose of the item you're creating; the second should be the target keywords and keyword phrases your audience and segment of that audience are likely to be using to find the information you're presenting. Third, fourth and fifth must be: Title; Description; Url.

I have a theory I'd like to share: search results are the new television commercials. Search results have more power than TV. Search results are either clicked or not. Search results set the tone for the experience after the click through.

Hopefully you understand the power of being in the search results. Do you understand the power of having the most attractive and interesting title and description on that page? In my opinion it's more powerful than TV was in the 50s and 60s. And TV is responsible for trillions upon trillions in sales.

Your audience's problem is the beginning of their search. They enter a term in search, and start looking for answers. Give back to them exactly what they've searched for: the keyword phrase. Use it in the title of the content element. Keep your full title to 55 characters if you can. Longer titles are truncated (cut off) by the search engines. It's important to consider your title as a headline. If it was you searching, and you had entered that term or phrase - what would you be expecting to find? Or, what do you think they're trying to solve? Why is the information necessary? Think about the searcher's expectations. How can you over deliver on those expectations with your content. Hint: do the search yourself and see what's on the first page results (SERPs).

The results page items include the title, url and description. This is the same as a TV commercial, a billboard, a storefront sign, and packaging all rolled into one entry on a page. Which is why the keyword phrase needs to be in the title, and the description needs to support the title but also sell the content and attract interest and in some way - match the searcher's expectations. And the keyword phrase should be in the url. Every instance of the keyword phrase will be shown in bold in your listing.

Try this: do a search on anything: what catches your eye? The listings with bold words get your attention because we all presume there'll be a match between the search we just did and the page referenced in the results. Yet we still read the title and description snippet because we've all been fooled before.

I would say these are the most critical elements for SEO care and attention.

Collecting Backlinks

Search engines appear to value backlinks as indicators of the authority and veracity of your content, making them a vital component of your SEO efforts.

When you create valuable, informative content that is helpful to your audience and solves problems or makes their lives better in some way; when you've done that it's much easier to collect backlinks. Quality content, well written is what webmasters and bloggers and tweeters and writers want to link to. They want to help their audience be or do more. Help them do that and they'll reward you with a link.