These days, it’s not enough to just have a website and offer excellent products. While those elements are necessary, they’re not going to help you build an audience quickly and reliably.
Instead, content marketing is the key to success, as it will drive traffic to your site and establish your brand as an authority within your industry.
However, if you want your content to stand out from the competition, it has to be both high-quality and optimized for search engines.
But, creating SEO content is easier said than done. To merge both marketing methods, you have to have a creative mind and understand the fundamentals of SEO.
With that in mind, let’s dive in and see some SEO content examples so you can flourish with your new marketing strategy.
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What is SEO Content?
SEO content is material created with keyword optimization in mind so that it will rank higher in search results.
However, we’ll go a step further and say that, for our purposes, SEO content must be engaging and valuable.
For example, optimizing your “about us” page is technically producing SEO content, but we’re talking about elements like blog posts or video content instead.
For a piece to be considered “optimized” for search engines, it must contain the following elements:
- Target Keywords – Realistically, you can produce new content based on high-volume keywords with lots of search traffic. In most cases, the primary keyword will be the title, with secondary and semantic keywords filling in the rest of the outline and writing itself.
- Optimized Tags – SEO content requires optimization on all levels, not just paragraphs and headings. You must also incorporate keywords into the page URL, meta title, meta description, and more. Additionally, you should also provide alt text for images with secondary keywords, so Google and other search engines know all the material on the page is related.
- Value to the Reader – Google’s true north is still providing value and relevance for search results. Overall, SEO content is produced with the target reader in mind, then filling out the optimization details afterward. The more valuable your piece, the more people will read and engage with it, and the more that Google’s algorithm will view it as high-ranking.
- Links – Link building is an essential part of the SEO process, and you need a mix of internal and external links for it to work. All SEO content should have both kinds of links present, so web crawlers can index the network correctly and rank the page accordingly. While you can’t account for all the backlinks to your content, you should pay attention to those too.
What Kind of Content is Best for SEO?
If the goal of SEO content is to drive traffic to your website, then the best type of content to produce is a blog post.
Writing high-quality blogs brings people to your site and keeps them engaged as they search for other, similar material.
Blog writing is ideal for SEO because it only lives on your site, nowhere else. For example, video content usually gets more traffic and has more engagement, but if you post a video to a third-party platform (i.e., YouTube), a visitor may not go to your site afterward.
If you want to utilize video content, you should incorporate it into blog posts or landing pages.
How Do You Write SEO Content?
Developing SEO-friendly content is much easier said than done, particularly because you can only do so much to optimize a piece before publishing it. Overall, what matters is how the content is received – if it gets a lot of engagement and hits, it will rank higher in search results. But if it languishes in the darkest corners of the internet, it will never reach the heights you want it to.
Nonetheless, there are some steps to take when writing SEO content, such as:
- Use Keywords Sparingly – These days, Google actively punishes sites that engage in “keyword stuffing.” While you may include a specific keyword many times within a piece, you want to limit the number of “primary” keywords you use in your content.
- Use Semantic Keywords – Google is getting better at recognizing that keywords don’t necessarily reflect human speech patterns. For example, people don’t ask for the “best Italian food restaurant LA.” Instead, if they were talking to a person, they would ask for the best place for Italian food or something similar. So, you need to make sure your keywords sound organic and fit into the piece naturally. Otherwise, it can be disorienting and turn off your readers.
- Break Up the Piece – Giant walls of text are a huge turn-off for most readers, so you should avoid them at all costs. Instead, you should use smaller paragraphs, shorter sentences, headers, and bullet points. These elements make the content scannable, meaning people will spend more time on the page, making the piece more valuable in Google’s eyes.
- Utilize Multimedia Elements – A great blog post is more than just words on a screen. Use images, videos, and other graphics to help break up paragraphs and keep the reader engaged. Also, these pieces can be utilized for better optimization because now you can incorporate other keyword-friendly elements like title tags and video URLs.
5 SEO Content Examples You Can Produce
Now that you know the basics of SEO content, let’s look at five examples of the types of content you can produce and how well they can fit into your overall SEO marketing strategy.
Blog Posts
As we mentioned, blog posts are actually the best kind of SEO content you can create because it offers unique advantages, such as:
- Improved Site Traffic – Your posts will live on your site, meaning that individuals have to visit your pages to read the content. You can also produce guest posts on other sites to build a stronger network of backlinks.
- Multimedia Approach – Blog posts don’t just have to use text. Instead, they can utilize images, graphics, video clips, and more. So, you can let your creativity run wild.
- Easily Shareable – A link to a blog post can be shared on any platform at any time. So it’s easy for your audience to spread your content around quickly and efficiently.
Overall, your content marketing strategy should focus on blog posts as your primary source of new traffic. However, as we’ll see next, there are pros and cons to all types of SEO content, so don’t assume that a blog will be enough to get ahead.
Video Content
As a rule, video content is the most valuable because it’s the most engaging and will generate the most buzz. However, as we mentioned, you can host videos on third-party platforms, meaning they don’t necessarily drive traffic to your website.
That said, video content requires search engine optimization, so it ranks highly in search results. Even better, a high-quality video may rank on a regular results page instead of the “videos” tab of Google. In that case, you can get a lot of viewers in a short period, depending on the overall search volume for the primary keyword.
Optimizing video content is also a bit trickier, but here are some tips on getting it right:
- Submit a Transcript – Most people tend to watch video clips on silent, so having closed captioning helps viewers understand what’s going on without having to hold the speaker to their ear. This transcript can include target keywords to help web crawlers index the video correctly.
- Choose a Primary Hosting Platform – While you can publish a video on multiple channels, it’s often better to focus on one channel and then just link to it on other platforms. For example, you may create a YouTube page and link to individual videos on social media or in blog posts. This way, you don’t dilute the traffic going toward the video, and it’s easier for Google to rank it higher.
- Optimize Each Digital Element – Everything from the title of the video to the filename should incorporate the same keyword(s) if possible. This way, the piece is easier to index, and viewers will know what to expect. You should also create a captivating caption that provides both a synopsis of the content and a call to action (i.e., a link to a landing page).
- Don’t Make it Too Short – Platforms like YouTube want visitors to stay engaged for as long as possible (so they can see more ads). So, if you’re producing super short video content, your pieces will get pushed further down the ranks. While there is no “correct” timeframe for a video, don’t feel constrained by assuming it has to be short. Overall, aim for about 10 minutes and scale up or down as necessary. But never add filler just to reach a specific length. Remember, the video has to be valuable and engaging first, and keyword-optimized second.
E-Books
E-books are an excellent type of SEO content because they’re an easy way to add value to a specific transaction. For example, if you’re trying to get someone to submit their contact information, you can offer a free e-book download to sweeten the deal.
E-books are not quite as valuable as blog posts because they don’t live on your website. While you can host an online version of the book, you’ll typically send it as a digital file (i.e., a PDF). So, e-books aren’t necessarily going to drive traffic to your site directly.
That said, high-value e-books can work well as an incentive, so they can indirectly boost your brand recognition and reputation. If people want access to the book, they’ll come to your site to get it, meaning your landing pages can rank higher.
Infographics
If you’re trying to become an authority within your industry and share complex data, an infographic is an excellent way to make engaging content. Infographics are fun and entertaining while being thought-provoking and detail-oriented. Also, these graphics work well as standalone pieces or they can accompany blog posts and other types of content.
The primary challenge with optimizing an infographic is that it’s a digital file, not a text-based one. So, the words you use in the graphic won’t necessarily get indexed by a web crawler. That said, you can optimize everything else about the infographic, such as:
- Meta Title and Description – If the graphic lives on a particular landing page, you can incorporate keywords into that page’s meta title and description.
- Alt Text – Alt text describes an image. While you can’t fit all the details of an infographic into an alt text box, you can incorporate the primary keywords.
- Filename – Google web crawlers pay attention to filenames, so don’t save your graphic as something like IMG_8976. Instead, give it a keyword-optimized name that provides insight into what the graphic discusses.
As with an e-book, the value of an infographic can also help with SEO marketing indirectly. If users spend more time on the page reading the graphic, Google will pay attention and rank it higher in search results. As with everything, value comes before everything else.
Podcasts
Not all businesses can benefit from a podcast, but those that do can generate a lot more traffic. With about a third of Americans listening to podcasts regularly, there is a lot of potential for this medium. Plus, as a business, you don’t have to worry about monetizing your podcast because it works as a form of marketing.
Building a podcast audience is much different than other types of SEO content. However, you can follow these tips to get started:
- Focus on a Niche – Your podcast has to provide value for the listener instead of sounding like an extended infomercial for your products or your brand. So you have to find a niche that fits within your industry so you can provide insight. For example, if you sell software, you can discuss the latest software trends and technology news.
- Leverage Guest Interviews – Hosting a guest on a podcast is an easy way to expand your audience and boost your link network. However, you need to invite high-quality guests that will add value to the content – don’t just pick people with a massive following.
- Submit Transcripts – As with video content, you don’t want to rely on web crawlers to pick out keywords from the content itself. A transcript is much easier to index, and it can include target keywords throughout.
- Stay on Topic – Podcast lengths can vary from one episode to the next, but it’s imperative to stay on topic and not veer off onto different tangents. This way, listeners will stay engaged, and it’s easier to optimize the content.
- Write Companion Posts – In addition to producing a podcast, you can write blog posts breaking down each episode with quotes and highlights from it. This way, your audience can get valuable information without listening, and you can build an internal link network.
Get Better SEO Content From WriterAccess!
As you can see, there is so much potential for producing SEO-friendly content for your website.
However, you’re likely busy and not able to write every single piece from scratch. Fortunately, with a two-week free trial to WriterAccess, you can leverage the power of AI to find the perfect writer immediately.
From there, you can get optimized pieces that will rank higher and elevate your website in the process. WriterAccess today to find out more.
