How to Designing SEO Content
The fundamental criteria of an SEO content strategy, it's time to move on to content design and writing techniques.
We will tackle this phase in 5 steps:
- Identify the keywords
- Select and rank keywords
- Write optimized content
- Track performance
- Optimize existing content
Please note that most of the tips we will explore apply equally to article-type content as well as product pages, category pages, and more.
Step 1: Identifying keyword ideas
Keywords play a very important role in optimizing content for SEO.
The goal is to have ONE main keyword per page or blog post. It should correspond to a specific query (e.g., "how to learn a language quickly").
Therefore, avoid discussing multiple topics on a single page. From an SEO perspective, this would be a real missed opportunity.
Short-tail keywords vs. Long-tail keywords
Remember—a keyword does not necessarily mean a single word. It can very well be a sequence of several words. For example: "cheap car rental".
The longer the keyword, the less likely it is to be searched. But it will also have less competition.
A short-tail keyword has 1-3 words (car rental), while a long-tail keyword has 3+ words (automatic car rental New York).
It’s often more advantageous to start with long-tail keywords. The search intent is more evident, and the competition is generally less intense.
To identify keyword ideas, start with the theme you wish to develop (e.g., "learning a language").
Next, do not make the mistake of being convinced that you know what internet users are looking for. Take the time and try these different methods.
Method 1: Use SEO tools
Solutions like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, Semrush, Answer The Public, or even ChatGPT are very effective in identifying which queries are recurring and interesting for you.
Method 2: Analyze the results pages
The results pages are full of valuable information. It's free and you can easily:
- Explore how your competitors are working on their SEO.
- Understand the concise answer that Google expects with the so-called "Position 0" box.
- Identify the "Related Questions" to the quer
Method 3: Talk with your customers and prospects
You must fully understand their needs and the keywords they use on search engines. This approach is even more relevant if you are targeting the end of the purchase journey.
These 3 methods should allow you to extract a list of main keywords, but also an associated semantic field.
Wait, you lost me with this “semantic field” stuff!
Apologies, we’re entering into some very SEO-specific jargon.
The semantic field refers simply to all the words you’re going to use to enrich your content.
Because while it's great to have a main keyword, you're not going to use it repeatedly. This would be overbearing, and search engines would see it as an artificial optimization of your content.
So you need to use a relevant semantic field around the main keyword. Let's take our example of the main keyword: “learn a language quickly.”
Based on the SEO tools mentioned above and my analysis of the current results page, I can include the following elements in the semantic field of my future article:
- “tips to learn a language quickly”
- “how to learn a language by yourself?”
- “is it possible to learn a language in 3 months?”
- “plan to learn a language”
Step 2: Choose and rank the keywords
Now that you understand how to find main keywords and their associated semantic field, you’ll be able to outline your content plan in a table.
Let's take a new example. Imagine that you market an emailing solution like Mailchimp.
You’ll start by searching for keyword ideas related to the general term "emailing solution". Tools like Ahrefs, Answer The Public, or even ChatGPT will then list the following keyword ideas based on internet user queries:
- best emailing solution
- what is email marketing
- when to send an email
- when to send a B2B email
- why emails go to spam
- free email software
- free email solution
- free email marketing software
Just with these keyword ideas, you have enough material to write 5 blog posts:
- The 10 Best Emailing Software of 2024
- The Best 100% Australian Emailing Software
- 5 Free Emailing Solutions for Beginners
- When to Send Your Emails: The Complete Guide
- The Guide to Email Marketing in 2024
However, your approach is not very structured by acting in this way.
Most importantly, how do you know which article to prioritize, and therefore, which keywords to focus on first?
Beyond the purchase journey that we have already discussed, here are two criteria to consider when making your choice.
Criterion No. 1: SEO difficulty
You can gauge the difficulty of ranking for a keyword with tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Ubersuggest. The principle is straightforward: the higher the score out of 100, the more challenging it will be to compete. In the beginning, you should prioritize less competitive keywords, thereby potentially focusing on "long-tail" ones.
The keyword "emailing solution" has a score of 89. It is saturated by heavyweights like Mailchimp or Brevo.
Don't waste your time on it and instead focus on, for instance, "emailing solution for SMEs" or "emailing tool for bloggers".
These long-tail keywords have less competition and could also match your targets.
Criterion No. 2: The potential click volume
You need to ensure that the selected keyword has enough search volume to bring you significant traffic.
Many tools allow you to obtain this information. In addition to the essentials (Ahrefs, Semrush, etc.), you can use Google Keyword Planner, which is free but requires a Google Ads account.
With Ahrefs, you discover that "emailing solutions for e-commerce" has a high search volume. By creating optimized content for this keyword, you could channel a good portion of this volume to your site.
By keeping these elements in mind, you can select effective keywords for your content and maximize your chances of success in terms of visibility and conversion.
In our example, we could have selected this list of keywords and imagined the following content.
| Keyword | Difficulty | Volume | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| what is email marketing | 30/100 | 300/month | What is Email Marketing: Definition and Best Practices |
| best emailing solution | 17/100 | 100/month | How to Choose Your Emailing Software: 7 Criteria Under the Microscope |
| how to choose an email software | 43/100 | 900/month | The Benefits of an Emailing Solution for SMEs |
| small business emailing solution | 12/100 | 50/month | The 10 Best Emailing Software of 2024 |
| australian email marketing software | 23/100 | 400/month | Emailto - Emailing Software 100% Australia |
Step 3: Writing optimized content
Once we’ve identified a main keyword, the content angle, and the associated semantic field, we’ll begin by defining the structure of the article before writing anything at all.
The structure of an article or a page will most of the time look like this:
Title
Introduction paragraph
Table of contents (optional)
Part 1:
Title
Ideas to develop
Part 2:
Title
Ideas to develop
Part 3:
Title
Ideas to develop
Conclusion paragraph
For titles, use the semantic field elements that you have identified. Grégoire d’Aboville, a Growth Marketer and SEO specialist, suggests using the "Related Questions" displayed by Google for section titles. "These questions are a mega holy grail. Google is doing the job for us!"
We are now ready to write.
First of all, remember the concept of 10x Content, especially if the targeted search query is competitive.
The word count will also come into play. Between identical content that is 500 words and another that is 1500 words, with an equal number of backlinks and authority, the 1500-word article stands a better chance of winning the day.
Step 4: Track performance
Now that our content is starting to be indexed on the results pages, we need to measure how effective it is. Are we hitting our goals?
To measure the effectiveness of your strategy, identify areas for improvement, and make the necessary adjustments, you can use the following tools.
Tool 1: Google Search Console
This free tool will allow you to track the SEO performance of your site in terms of positioning, clicks, impressions, and click-through rates (CTR). You will be able to filter based on queries, viewed pages, countries, and so on.
Tool 2: Google Analytics
Google Analytics lets you track traffic acquisition from search engines and identify which pages are most effective. It also helps you to understand your audience’s behaviors through bounce rate data, session duration, page views, and more.
Bonus keyword tracking tools
There are lots of other tools that allow you to track the performance of your target keywords in terms of positioning, search volume, difficulty, and more.
You can use tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz. The most well-known solutions are paid, but they’re truly worth it if you're seriously getting into SEO.
You will notice that certain tools are used multiple times for different purposes.
Generally, a good SEO stack to start with would be to use a paid all-in-one tool such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz, coupled with Google Search Console and Google Analytics. It’s even better to add a text analysis tool like YourTextGuru or Surfer SEO to this.
Should I constantly monitor my SEO efforts?
A good rhythm is to monitor SEO figures at least once a month if you're not in a phase of intensive optimization. Otherwise, you’ll need to monitor your efforts much more frequently with these tools.
Step 5: Optimize existing content
Tracking your performance should provide you with a wealth of information to improve your content and correct what's not working.
Your goal will be to continually strive for better rankings in search results and therefore drive more organic traffic to your website.
According to a study by Semrush in 2024, moving from position 2 to position 1 will bring an average increase of 50% in organic traffic.
And even for lower positions, the benefits can still be considerable.
For instance, simply moving from position 7 to position 6 can give you an average traffic increase of 20%.
Conclusion of the study: Start by optimizing the pages of your website that are already on the first page of Google.
More specifically, here are four content optimization tips to keep in mind.
Tip 1: Update your content
Why? Because there’s always a chance that your best content might be downgraded if your competitors develop an aggressive SEO strategy. In such a case, revisit the optimizations mentioned earlier, especially the concept of 10x content, and ensure that your content is always at the top.
Another reason is that indexing robots appreciate when things have evolved when they return to your site. This is because search engines want to provide the most up-to-date answers possible. Thus, be sure that your content always provides the best current answer.
An effective tip regarding this is to update the "ranking" or "complete guide" articles each year. For example, "The SEO guide for restaurants in [20XX]" could be an article written in 2023, and updated for the year 2024 with a few adjustments.
Tip 2: Encourage interaction on your content
Add a customer comments or reviews feature on your pages. As well as providing social proof, this additional content will strengthen the semantic field of the page and keep things fresh—which is always appreciated by search bots.
Tip 3: Aim for position 0 (or the related questions)
Position 0, also called a featured snippet, is a box that appears at the top of the Google search results page.
This is a snippet of relevant content for the user's query, presented in the form of text, table, list, or other.
Note that position 0 is often associated with questions, as Google frequently displays snippet answers to directly respond to the questions asked by the users.
These displays are highly sought after as they directly attract the attention of internet users, thus generating significant traffic towards the site being presented.
To achieve position 0, in addition to being perfectly optimized, your content must respond very accurately to the query using the most suitable format: text, table, list, and so on.
It goes without saying that well-referenced pages with traffic are more likely to move up to position 0 or related questions.
However, note that depending on your objectives, position 0 is not always advisable. These snippets often give users the answers they need without them having to visit the page. Therefore, they may not engage with your content as you might have hoped.
Tip 4: Recycle your content
The real goal of SEO is to dominate the search results.
In this guide, we have primarily viewed SEO from a "traditional" standpoint for a website.
But be aware that there are many other types of results besides the organic links of your site:
- YouTube videos
- The business listings on the right and on Google Maps (My Business)
- Enriched results such as recipes (which we will see with pillar No. 2: Technique)
In fact, Google tries to avoid displaying multiple pages from the same site for the same query as much as possible.
So, if your content is suitable to be transformed into YouTube videos (tutorials, interviews, etc.), you could potentially double your chances of being visible in search results.
Example with PhantomBuster
If you type "how to scrape linkedin," you should see two results from PhantomBuster.
- A product page named "LinkedIn Profile Scraper".
- And further below, there’s a YouTube video on the same topic.
Be aware that the video is also present on the product page of the website. In addition to improving the user experience, doing this helps to increase the number of video views. Consequently, the video gets better rankings both on YouTube and in the search results.
To create your content, hire SEO writers...
If writing is a field that repels you or you do not have time to devote to it, you can hire SEO writers. Rates range between 200 € and 400 € per article, depending on whether it is necessary to do research and/ or conduct interviews.
...Or use AI like ChatGPT
The advent of generative AI in 2023 has democratized content creation through tools like ChatGPT.
A word of advice nonetheless: use AI only to generate drafts of content that you will then work on.
Beyond the fact that Google can detect these pieces of content and penalize you, the main issue is that they will generally be of low added value for users.
To find my SEO-adapted ChatGPT prompts, head to the end of the book or directly to my site at nailetitah.