How to Rank Higher on Google: 7 Tips for Writing Stronger SEO Content for Your Website

To start, it’s helpful to understand exactly what SEO is and its purpose. SEO is a process that helps search engines better crawl your website. Search engines undergo this process to verify if your content is meeting the searcher’s intent. The main objective of SEO is to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.

There are several factors that go into building a solid SEO strategy, and among the most important is serving up compelling content that answers searchers’ queries. Simply put, “creating quality, context-driven content for your readers, prospects, and clients will ultimately help you have a good search engine ranking.”

With that in mind, below are seven tips for creating stronger SEO content for your website. Note that this article will provide you with recommendations on how to rank higher on Google from a content writing perspective. There are many technical SEO elements that should also be included in your SEO content planning efforts which we explore in our blog post “5 Tips to Improve Your Website’s Technical SEO.”

1

Do Your Homework With B2B Keyword Research

Clients should always be at the heart of your operation, no matter your industry. Everything you do should be in service of adding value to them. This includes the content you create on your website.

The primary way to add value to your customers is to truly understand who they are and their needs. Research is one of the primary ways to gain this understanding. When it comes to SEO, keyword research can help you identify topics your clients are searching for and how many people are searching for each term. You want to aim for high-volume, low-competition keywords.

Today, the way people search has evolved from a one- or two-word query to longer-form phrases and questions. Incorporating long-tail keywords to better target your clients’ searches will give you better ranking potential on those words over high competition terms.

There are many free and paid tools available that can help you with this search. Among the most popular free tools available are Ahrefs Keyword Generator, Moz Keyword Explorer, SEMRush’s Keyword Overview tool, and Google Keyword Planner. While these resources can provide a good starting point for keyword discovery, the paid versions will unlock more features and data points to better inform your SEO strategy.

2

Don’t Forget the Human at the Center of the Search

An audience-centric lens should always be at the center of any business initiative. When creating strong SEO content, focus on creating valuable content that addresses your website visitors’ pain points and queries with content that will resonate.

Let’s take a look at different sets of queries visitors may ask for to end up on your firm’s website from two different industries—one from an A/E/C firm and another from a professional services firm.

To start, let’s say you are the CEO of an A/E/C firm that specializes in the commercial, healthcare, and multifamily markets and are looking to attract developers and owners’ reps. They may be looking for information on project design and feasibility, project delivery and construction, and sustainability.

In our other example, let’s say your professional services firm offers risk management solutions and wants to attract business owners with data privacy and compliance solutions. Items business owners may want information on include how to mitigate risk, when to consider outsourcing risk management to an outside consultant, and what tech stack various organizations use.

Optimizations are important in SEO content planning efforts but shouldn’t come before the human you are developing the content for. In essence, you should start from a place of creating for the searcher and not the search engine when embarking on any content marketing endeavor.

3

Create Quality Content That Fully Answers the Searcher’s Question

With an understanding of who the content is for, you can start to build out or enhance your website’s copy—creating individual pages that explain your services and provide information about what makes your firm the right organization for the job or in blog posts that present your firm as a trusted resource ready to answer searchers’ queries with helpful information.

For blogs, create comprehensive posts that provide in-depth coverage of your selected topic. Posts that are longer in length tend to perform better in Google search results so make sure you are writing helpful content with substance.

The optimal number of words on a page can vary by page type, but for blog posts a general rule of thumb is to aim for content in the 1,000-2,000 word count range.

Using our A/E/C and professional services examples above, quality blog content would provide answers to the following potential questions from a target prospect:

• A/E/C firm: What is the best approach for value engineering commercial real estate projects? How do green building certifications impact property values? When should a project use design-build over another project delivery method?
• Risk Management professional services firm: What should organizations consider when outsourcing enterprise risk management? How can healthcare organizations better manage cybersecurity risks?

When developing content, note that your audience members will be at various stages of their buying journeys. For example, while one person may be in an exploratory phase and seeking preliminary information about a topic, another person could be further down the funnel and looking to select a partner to work with. As you develop your SEO content strategy, ensure you have a mix of content types to meet them wherever they may be.

4

Refine Your Content With Backend Optimizations

Backend optimizations for your website help search engines understand how to read your content. With quality content in place, turn attention toward refining what you have with backend optimizations across several categories. It helps to have a clear and organized structure when sharing your information; below are a few suggestions.

• Titles: As the first item your audience will see in a search, make sure you select a title that is compelling and leverages best practices. For example, is what you’re writing on a guide? Consider starting your title with “How to.”
• Headers: Use an H1, H2, H3, etc. header structure to help the reader better follow the page flow. Headers can help break down dense content into more manageable sections. When writing for the web, note that historical research shows that people tend to scan web text over reading every word so ‘scannability’ is a crucial element to creating engaging content. As a bonus, make sure you incorporate relevant keywords you are hoping to rank for but be mindful of keyword stuffing, or placing too many keywords in your content—this can be a red flag for Google.
• Meta Descriptions: Draft a digestible summary of 1-2 sentences that provides your audience with an overview of what they can expect when navigating to that page on your site. Include keywords and aim to keep your description under 160 characters.

5

Reinforce the Impact of Your Content With Relevant Links and Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

When Google is evaluating a page, one of the things it looks for is whether the page has EEAT, or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. While this is not a direct ranking criterion, as SEMRush puts, it does help provide you with an idea of what a good search result will include.

At the center of the EEAT framework is trustworthiness and external linking to credible sources is one way to demonstrate this.  For the other three, linking to internal sources can help show your audience your level of expertise with a subject while also providing them value and keeping them engaged on your site for longer.

 When it comes to CTAs, you’ll want your pages to have clear takeaways of how your audience can act on the information you’ve shared. Ensure every page details how your site visitors can take that next step, using action words and phrases like “Learn More” or “Sign Up.” What terms to use will vary depending on page type, the type of action you want your readers to take, and what is authentic to your firm. Adding value should come before coming off as too ‘salesy.’

6

Apply Image Optimizations to Your Visuals

Visuals are a strong component of any content marketing strategy. Imagery helps make your written content more memorable and can also support your SEO efforts through a few key optimizations in the backend of your website. This will in turn help Google discover and index your images while also helping to improve page speed, a key element of providing a great user experience on your website.

To optimize images on your website, make sure you use the right file type, typically a JPEG, PNG, or GIF for the web. Next, you can compress images by making them smaller without compromising on the quality of the visual, using a tool that supports with image compression. For those who use the WordPress platform, Imagify is a popular option.

7

Continue to Refresh Content Over Time

Content that is helpful and relevant is what Google will serve up to its searchers. As such, ensuring you keep your content fresh is an important part of ranking higher on Google and creating strong content overall.

Start by establishing a baseline for where your content currently ranks, identify what you want to rank for, and determine alignment with your target audience.  Consider conducting a comprehensive audit to get to the root of these questions.

For this, designate an internal stakeholder to either conduct the work or collaborate with a firm that specializes in SEO and content marketing. Establish a cadence for ongoing monitoring that works well for you and your team and make updates to the keywords used, links referenced, and information included. Depending on your bandwidth, the ongoing monitoring is an area that can be outsourced as well.

Start With Value Creation, Then Optimize, and Watch Your Traffic Increase

To rank higher in Google’s search results takes intention and a focused effort. These seven steps will help set you on the path to success with practical guidance on areas to look to when creating your content. Understand your SEO content writing starting point so that as you rank higher, you can see what strategies are working well and which need to be refined over time.

Remember that your goals should start with providing valuable and helpful human-centered content that leads to increased traffic to your site and, in turn, more calls, signups, and overall engagement.