SEO Content: The Main Rules for Writing Optimised Content

Well-optimised content has the power to place your pages among the top-ranking results (SERP) and boost the visibility of your website, company, and/or brand. When all the conditions are met, SEO content may even reach Position Zero and appear at the very top of the results, as a featured snippet. That’s practically the Holy Grail of SEO!

Better SERP visibility equals more traffic. Internet users mainly tend to click the links closest to the top. The first result page monopolises 88% of all clicks, keeping in mind that over half of these (55%) are focused on the first three organic links (Search Engine Journal). If you wish to generate traffic to your website, it is therefore crucial to rank as high as possible in the SERPs.

Generating traffic to your website is good. But converting it is even better. To this end, SEO content plays a part in attracting better targeted – and therefore better qualified – traffic. The users are bound to be interested in the topic being covered, since they performed a specific search and chose to click on a link that seemed likely to meet their expectations. This is how content optimisation has the potential to improve the quality of the traffic being generated.

Never forget that Google is watching you. Any content that doesn’t comply with SEO writing guidelines not only runs the risk of going completely unnoticed, but may also be penalised (Panda when it comes to content quality, Penguin for fraudulent SEO practices, etc.). This could result in the website falling down the rankings. Writing SEO content is a way to make sure you observe Google’s guidelines.

Google favours content with strong added value. It should provide Internet users with useful, relevant, and lasting information, answering the questions they ask. That’s why SEO content should aim to be informational above all else, though it may also have a promotional dimension, so long as it doesn’t impact the quality and relevance of the page (service pages, product pages, etc.).

SEO content should be designed with Internet users in mind. It’s important to note that their attention span is limited and that they tend to scan, picking out individual sentences and words instead of reading a page from beginning to end. To accommodate this behaviour, texts should be based on an inverted pyramid structure (with the most important information at the top). Devote a great deal of attention to the heading and tagline, and make sure the subheadings are carefully crafted to provide a clear overview of the content.

Un contenu SEO doit être conçu pour des internautes dont l’attention est limitée, et qui ont tendance à scanner une page plutôt que de la lire dans son intégralité. Pour s’adapter à ce comportement, il faut adopter une structure en pyramide inversée (les informations principales en premier), accorder beaucoup d’importance au titre et à l’accroche, et travailler avec soin les sous-titres pour qu’ils donnent une vision claire du contenu.

In SEO, keywords are at the very heart of optimisation. They identify the queries as users type them into the search bar, and, when integrated strategically into SEO content, they can make it go up in the search results. Ideally, every piece of content should target a specific query. Given how important this point is, we’ve dedicated part 3 of this guide to it.

Keywords aren’t everything. Writing good content also means working on the semantic field surrounding the main topic. This semantic optimisation consists in fleshing out the page by including additional terms known as “co-occurrences” (synonyms, contextual words, etc.) which gravitate around the keyword. This is an effective way to provide the bots with further information through rich, diverse content all while keeping the users’ main query in mind.

SEO content should contain a few links. These can point to other pages on the same website (this is referred to as “internal linking”) to keep the users there for longer and to bring traffic to various pages. The links can also point to external resources selected for their quality (institutional pages, renowned information websites, Wikipedia pages, etc.). This has a positive impact on the bots.

Google clearly states in its SEO writing guidelines that content should be created with the users in mind above all else. This implies that you should write well-structured SEO content, favouring airy, diversified text (including images, bullet points, diagrams, etc.). Keep it educational by focusing on short sentences and accessible language, etc. The benefits? When writing for the users, you’re also writing for the bots!

Images are an integral part of SEO content… and they play a role in its optimisation. There are two main factors to consider. The first is size and weight (the images should be light enough to allow the page to load quickly). The second is the “Alt” attribute (which should contain the main keyword, allowing the image to be “read” by the bots).