How to write quality content that’s fully SEO’d – Part 1

Just like the title denotes, in this and the next few blog posts, I’m going to show you how to get your content onto the search engine, and by ‘search engine’, I am mainly talking about Google, although other search engines will list your content too.
So then, to begin, you’ll need the following tools:

• Either Microsoft Word, Google Docs, iWork – if you’re a Mac user, or another word-processing piece of software
• Google Trends
• Your wits
• A warm beverage. Coffee will suffice

Right, now that we’ve got those four content tools at our disposal, let’s get cracking on with creating our first SEO’d piece of content.

Quality SEO Content

Before we get started, I want to let you in on a secret. There is no magic wand that can turn your content into quality, SEO’d content. The trick is simple. Write what you would read.
There you go, end of the blog post. Have a nice day ?.
Oh if only it were that simple. The truth is that I have now given you the best bit of information you’re going to find in this blog post. You see, if you write content that you yourself would read, you’re already 85% of the way there. There is still 15% more you need to do, and we’ll get to that.

Google’s Anti-SEO Stance

Let me tell you about the hummingbirds and the bees. In fact, let me just tell you about Hummingbird, Google’s largest search-related algorithm update. And no, you don’t need to be a geek to understand this next part.
In August 2013, Google started to roll out its new animal-related update, Hummingbird. This update was a game-changer as Google seemed to remove the importance of keywords altogether!

The Four Hummingbird Commandments!

Hummingbird brought four new commandments that all marketers, webmasters and SEOs should adhere to. The first is that we should be making webpages for users, and not for search engines. The second is that we shouldn’t be trying deceive our users. The third is that we should avoid tricks that are intended to improve search engine rankings. And the fourth is that we should be thinking about what makes our website unique, valuable, and/ or engaging. If we can make our websites stand out from the other sites in our respective fields, we’re onto a winner.
Okay, so what did you learn from that? Well before we get to Google Trends, I want us to look at the first of the four commandments.

Make your webpages for your users 

Make your webpages for your users – or in other words, write what you would read. For instance, you want to find an article that shows you how to use Google AdWords from scratch and the first item you click on in Google’s search is titled ‘Google AdWords for Beginners’. The page then loads, and unfortunately it looks like every other word is ‘Google AdWords’. This would bore you, and bore you fast.
The beauty is that Google’s Hummingbird search update has slowly but surely eradicated all webpages that spam keywords. Hummingbird now looks at how users interact with your webpage. So if your users are staying on the page for a good few minutes and not bouncing off at an alarming rate, you’re doing well.
But that’s not it. The most important factor is sharing your content. You see, Google couldn’t resist the charm of the social media platforms any longer. So instead of trying to fight them, Google embraced them. If your content is shared, it will be bumped up in the search engine.
In part two, we’re going to look at how you can get your content shared. We’ll then move onto review the other three commandments as well as how Google Trends can really help you find what people are indeed searching for.

See you shortly!