Content is crucial for multiple reasons. It is what Google uses to index and understand your site. Content is what brings people to your website and gives them a reason to stay there. And content is what will allow you to build loyal fans who stick with you.
We know that the end goal is to have repeat traffic over and above any other form of traffic, as we have previously discussed.
Another reason why great content and repeat traffic are essential is that they have a snowball effect, also known as a pinwheel in business. When you start your blog and write your first blog post, you might only receive about ten views, which can be depressing and tempting to give up. (Don't worry; when your site performs well, you will automatically get more viewers to that page, and you can always re-share old content later.)
The point is that of those ten people, three will come back. The next time, ten more people will discover your next post, which means you will have 13. Maybe one of those people will share your content on their Facebook page, and you will get 20 views. Next time you might get 30 views, which will increase to 40. Meanwhile, SEO will start working its magic (only if your content is excellent and keeps people on your page), and that means you will have multiple "gateways" to your site where people come in.
Over time, your site will build momentum until it becomes unstoppable. This is what is meant by the pinwheel effect. Great content is not only fantastic because it gives people a way to discover your site, but it should also keep people on your site. It should build trust (so they are more likely to buy), and it should be shareable, which means that the content will bring in exponentially more visitors.
If you’re setting out to write a stunning SEO article, then you may already have your wires somewhat crossed. More specifically, setting out to write an ‘SEO article’ means you’re probably setting out with entirely the wrong objective. Writing an SEO article suggests that you are writing for Google first and for the visitor second. It probably means you’re going to try to lace your article with keyphrases and that you’re going to come up with a ‘clickbait’ title for Facebook.
But if you read Google’s guidelines carefully (and paid attention over the last few chapters), that’s exactly what you’re not meant to do. Google’s advice is to write for the reader first and to forget about SEO entirely. Why? Because Google’s aim is to try to show its users the very highest quality content possible that is highly relevant to the topics they’re looking for. So if your content is high quality and focused on a popular subject, then your goals will be aligned with Google’s, and that means any future algorithm updates will benefit you rather than hinder you.
So that’s it? Forget SEO is the best advice when it comes to writing great SEO articles?
Not quite. For starters, Google’s algorithm isn’t perfect. That means your content needs to look good in the right way so that Google will appraise it as such. And it also means that you can still get ahead by using your keyphrase in the right way.
One thing that will help you write the perfect SEO article is to make sure your article is the right length. Ideally, it should be about 1,400-1,800 words. This is what a lot of research shows to be Google’s preferred length, and it’s long enough that you can deliver some real high-quality content to your reader. Less than that, and you’ll be offering a truncated message rather than an in-depth overview of a subject matter. Google loves the latter, and those types of articles perform very well.
Moreover, a 1,800-word article will allow you to include your keyphrase a few times without it looking obvious. If your article is 1,800 words, you can repeat your keyphrase five times and still be well under 1% density.
Another tip regarding your keywords is to write around the subject. Google isn’t just looking for a keyword ‘match’ anymore – it now understands what those words mean, and it wants to see you using other related language in your posts. That makes LSI optimization (latent semantic indexing) and long-tail keywords more important than ever. Write naturally around the subject, use a good vocabulary, and you should find that this happens naturally.
Finally, remember that Google doesn’t care about you. All it cares about is your readers and whether it thinks they’ll enjoy your content. Moreover, Google is now using human signals more and more to decide this. Of particular importance is how long people spend on your page and whether they click on your internal links. Are they reading your content and engaging with it?
Make sure that you aren’t driving your visitors away by keeping ads to a minimum, spacing out your content, and using engaging language that will draw them in! The aim is to reduce your bounce rates, which represent the number of people who leave your site almost immediately after visiting.
The most important way to reduce this metric is to make sure your content is engaging and interesting. That means it should have an emotional hook. If it is informational, it should provide information in a direct and engaging manner to really bring people in. If the content is entertaining, then it needs to be new, shocking, or hilarious.
The worst kind of content you can create is content with these types of titles: