What is SEO Friendly Content? 4 Simple Tips for Getting Noticed by Search Engines

“Make sure that your site ranks on Google.”

If you’re a marketer, a business, or simply a website owner, it’s a phrase that you have probably heard daily. But, what exactly does it mean to create SEO friendly content? With search algorithms and rules constantly changing, how are you supposed to keep up?

In today’s blog, let’s determine what it means to be SEO friendly. And then, let’s take a look at 4 simple, time-tested tips that you can use right now to help get your business or website noticed by search engines and keep it under their spotlight.

Okay, so what is SEO friendly content?

Search engines can be fickle pieces of artificial intelligence, changing and evolving rapidly on an almost daily basis. It’s important to remember that the search engine’s role is to provide users with the most informative results based on their search. As search engines continuously grow in intelligence, they are continually crawling and evaluating websites to find the best match for search queries.

So, if we’re defining SEO-friendly website content, it would be content written, placed, and designed that best serves the user’s purpose, enlightening and informing the searcher. 

However, this is sometimes easier said than done. There’s a thin line between informative and “salesy” content, and Google is training hard to define that line and place websites on either side of it. 

It’s easy to believe that stuffing content full of primary and semantic keywords is the best way to get the attention of search engines, and while that may have been true for a time, it certainly isn’t anymore. Search engines have become savvy, quickly identifying which sites are SEO optimized with quality content and sites that just appear to be.

Let’s take a look at 4 simple tips for making your content and website SEO friendly without resorting to misleading or even spammy SEO practices. 

4 Tips to Strengthen Your Site’s SEO Rankings

Perform Keyword Research Through A Simple Google or Bing Search

There’s a surprising amount of quality research that can be done simply by performing a few Google or Bing searches. First, ask yourself a few questions about your website’s goals, services, or products:

• What does my site provide or offer?
• Who benefits from my services or products?
• What problems or questions are potential customers or clients seeking solutions for?

Taking the time to ask yourself these questions and perform searches based on these questions is one of the most significant yet straightforward ways to conduct search engine and keyword research. It can also help you research your competitors, especially if they rank high in search engine result pages (SERPs).

There are also various tools to aid with keyword research, such as SEMRush and Google Trends. We recommend poking around these tools and investigating more keyword research tools to aid you in discovering what your potential users are searching for.

Use Internal Linking

Be sure to utilize strategic internal links throughout your content. Have a sentence or paragraph that relates to another blog or landing page on your site? Link to it! This will help search engines crawl your site more effectively. 

We call this technique, sharing link juice, meaning the well-trafficked areas of your website can help bring activity to other areas of your site that may be underperforming, sharing the juice, provided that you have internal links from successful pages. But be sure to take care that you link to relevant content and use your best judgment. Are you over-linking? Do the links intuitively help users navigate your site based on their goals? 

Aside from aiding search engine crawlers, internal linking can also help bring traffic to important pages on your site that aren’t seeing as much activity as you would like. Utilizing strategically placed internal links can persuade users and crawlers to visit these sections of the site, increasing overall SEO optimization and website success.

Content Seeding

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach where content creators and website owners sprinkle quality content strategically across the internet, increasing your website’s reach and authority. 

This technique is conducted by utilizing various channels such as social media platforms, forums like Reddit, email, and guest blogging. Sprinkling your content across these platforms provides readers more access to your creative and informative blogs, articles, landing pages, and posts that they may find valuable. It also encourages sharing, reaching new audiences that may have been previously closed off to your content. 

Building a powerful network of fellow bloggers, local businesses, influencers, and social communities increases your outlets for content seeding, spreading your content and messages further and further, as well as becoming an authoritative source (which Google loves!). 

Create Quality Content

It’s important to note that none of the above techniques work if you do not create quality content in the first place. Consider content to be the foundation of your website, without it, nothing else can fall into place. You must take the time to research and craft informative landing pages and blog posts to capture the reader’s attention, keep them on your site, and keep them informed. 

The more time that you spend researching and writing carefully crafted content, the easier that all other SEO tactics will become, from keyword research to content seeding to link building. Remember, content that enlightens and informs that user is the primary key to success.

What is SEO Friendly? Time & Patience

Unfortunately, there’s no magic button, one-size-fits-all solutions for SEO optimization, and while there are many Black Hat SEO tactics out there on the internet that may seem tempting, we highly recommend that you avoid them at all costs. Using shady, not-so-ethical tactics to try and trick search engines may work in the short-term, but will end up costing steep penalties from search engines like Google in the long run that may be detrimental to your website. 

The only sure way to get your website noticed by search engines through time, hard work, patience, and creating consistent quality content. Remember, Google places priority upon the searcher, not the website owner, so put yourself in the searcher’s shoes and create content that speaks directly to them.