Google looks at more than just the technical aspects of your website to determine its SEO ranking. While your site’s speed and design may be phenomenal, quality web content is still a major factor in how your website is indexed, and should be appropriately prioritised in your content strategy.
The case for quality web content
SEO has been through some questionable stages during its lifespan. There was a time you could get away with stuffing keywords into your content to get a better result (never mind the fact the content didn’t make any sense). And there was a time you could create as many spammy backlinks as you wanted.
Thankfully, Google isn’t so easily impressed by these cheap tactics nowadays.
Search engines have learned to look beyond the technical aspects of your web content, and search is now geared more towards things like user experience and user intent. This means that search engines like Google are more actively guiding users towards valuable, high quality content that comprehensively answers their questions.
Because this means you can focus more simply and solely on what your user wants to know, it’s much easier to write genuine, original content. By using long-tail keywords (for example, ‘why is content good for SEO?’ as opposed to ‘content for SEO’), you can focus more easily on what the reader is there to learn. It also means that the people who do visit your site are there for the right reasons, so they’ll probably hang around for longer – a nice factor which is also favourable in Google’s eyes.
What makes your web copy ‘quality’?
We’ve mentioned a few things like keyword stuffing and spammy backlinks which do not make for quality web content, and you should avoid at all cost. But what else can you do to ensure you’re creating quality content to help your SEO?
Firstly, Google pretty explicitly states that you should be writing for your users, not for search engines. With this in mind, you should be creating content based on what your audience wants to know. You might get ideas from frequently asked questions to your call centre, looking at what Google ‘auto completes’ when you start typing keywords in, or by taking a look at what some of your competitors are writing about. You can boost your chances of having your content featured as a rich snippet (an excerpt of text which, may include pictures or videos, that displays above search results) by providing a complete and comprehensive answer to a question.
It should also go without saying that your content should be well written, without spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links.
Don’t forget: pictures are content too!
While written content is vital for SEO, don’t forget that the images on your website are also important for SEO. By selecting images that appropriately relate to the written content, you’ll be making it more engaging for audiences and improving their experience of your web content.
As digital marketing experts, we know what you need to create a strong digital strategy – and this includes quality web content. We can work with your content team to provide guidelines and digital tips to make your content more effective. Reach out to us for help in refining your online strategy.