Content writing can be the most sustainable way to search engine optimizations because it organically improves your search engine rankings rather than artificially pushing them upward just to plummet due to smallest ranking algorithm changes.
The primary purpose of all mainstream search engines is to find the best content for their users and in order to achieve that they are constantly improving their indexing and ranking criteria. Take for example the recent Google Penguin update. The primary purpose of this update was to weed out websites that publish lots of junk content thinking that it will improve their keyword density. Of course the other target was those websites that obtained scores of back links from suspicious websites.
A good example of increasing search engine rankings by constantly publishing highly useful content is Steve’s website TripInsuranceStore.com. I have been working with him since 2002 and ironically, I don’t write content for him – I manage the back-end of the website.
When most of the websites were reeling under the impact of the Google Penguin update Steve was feeling quite smug. The update hadn’t just left him unscathed, it had benefited him. What does he do?
I have observed that instead of focusing on keywords, he focuses on the questions that his prospective customers may have. He represents various travel insurance companies so most of the questions concern travel insurance. His website and his blog are literally the treasure troves of travel insurance related information. This is what Google and other search engines love. They love information. They rank high webpages and blog posts containing useful and relevant information.
Organically improving search engine rankings with quality content writing
Through your content writing you must provide solutions to your visitors rather than simply creating junk content. Whether they purchase from you or not is another issue but when they come to your website they shouldn’t feel as if they have wasted their time. There must be something valuable that they take back. This is the sort of content that gets higher rankings on Google and other search engines. And these rankings are not fickle. You don’t lose these rankings when their algorithms change because they change their algorithms in order to find more quality content and if you have quality content, you are going to benefit rather than get into trouble.
Here are a few things you can do to improve your search engine rankings organically with content writing
- Focus on your readers: This is not a holistic thought, it actually benefits you. When you focus on your readers you create content that is useful to them. Help them, instead of pushing your offers and forcing them to buy your products or services. Provide them useful information convincingly and then let them decide. Of course you should use call to action phrases and words but they should be used as extra promptings.
- Focus on the language your readers use: This can also be covered in the above point. Use the language that is used by your readers and this way you will use the keywords people actually use rather than the ones you think they are using. This not only increases your search engine rankings for the actual, working keywords, it also improves your conversion rate.
- Make your content problem-centric rather than keyword centric: This is what Steve does on his website. He creates articles and blog posts that provide answers to people’s concerns. He uses queries left by his visitors as well as his own common sense to create questions and then create webpages and blog posts in order to answer them. This automatically takes care of the phrases his prospective customers use in order to find such information.
- Focus more on quality and less on SEO: The search engine optimizations problem begins to manifest when people get bogged down by too much SEO-oriented activities. Just focus on creating quality content and the rest of the pieces fall in place on their own.
This is not to say that content writing is the panacea for all your search engine optimization concerns. Your rankings depend on lots of internal as well as external factors and that’s why such engine marketing and optimization services charge a premium. But valuable content is the most essential part of a viable SEO strategy.
