How to create website content for SEO

As you should already have read, onsite optimisation is a critical part of any search engine optimisation plan. Google loves good content and is putting more and more emphasis on this every time they tweak their search algorithm. But writing good content that will help your website rank and convert well isn't just a matter of deciding on a topic and writing away. It also isn't a matter of stuffing some content with keywords you've decided on.

What is good website content?

Before we look at the process we use for developing good website content, we first need to understand what Google considers good content (or quality content as Google refers to it). Now we could get into all technical speak here and put a long list of do's and don'ts, but let's just keep it simple.

Quality content is knowing what your website visitors are wanting to know and giving them the answer in a clear, well laid out way. It is written for the website visitor and not search engines.

If you do want to get into all the technical stuff, feel free to have a read of Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

Website content creation process

Below is the process we use at Probity Web Marketing to ensure we write content that not only answers the website visitors' query, but will also index and rank well with Google.

1. Research and identify keywords potential website visitors use to search for your products or services

From the beginning of SEO, we have been doing keyword research. We need to know what people are searching for before we can start developing content. For example, you could write a brilliant article on "what makes a good red widget"; but if no-one is searching for it, then they don't really care and you'll get no visitors to your page. Now don't get us wrong, there still may be value in having that page, but it isn't to attract visitors to your website (SEO).

Once you have all your keywords, you need to group together the keywords with similar search intent. By search intent, we mean what you believe the searcher was wanting to find on your website. If we use a Plumber as an example, the different search intents could be "find a plumber", "fix a blocked drain", "fix a leaking tap", "backflow testing" etc. You need to write a separate web page for each search intent. If you try and write one page for all different search intents, you'll end up with a page that Google has to index in too many places and they will rank it accordingly. In other words, your page will be a "jack of all trades and master of none".

2. Identify topics related to the page's search intent

Google is moving away from "keyword search" to "semantic search". To put it simply, in the past Google took the keyword that someone used to search with and looked for pages that had that keyword in it. Whereas, now Google decides what the intent of your search is and looks for pages with topics that will answer your intent.

So this means we have to work out what topics Google sees as important for each search intent, and therefore page.

We do this by looking at the top ten pages ranked in Google for the search intent we are working on. We work out what topics each of them cover and which ones are included on the majority of pages.

3. Write your website content by covering the identified topics

A term that you'll see used in content creation is 10x. This basically means writing your content so it is 10 times better than the competition. You've worked out what topics the competition covers, so your goal is to cover these topics as well, but in a more compelling and thorough way.

Make sure your page is structured properly, with each topic in its own section with a heading. Consider using dot points and images if suitable.

Is that all there is to it?

If you are only going to do one thing for SEO, we believe this is it. We have an old web design client that looks after his own website. He is a prolific writer and is continually writing articles to put onto his website. This is all he does. As a result, his website dominates the rankings for most of his main keywords. Now he doesn't use this process exactly, but if he did, he'd be ranking better for more keywords.

The Google search algorithm uses 1000s of different signals to decide on where to rank a web page. So whilst just writing good content will get you ranking well, the more of these signals you can tick off, the better your website will rank overall.