Imagine this: you have a stunning website, you write content for it daily and everything is optimized, but you just aren’t getting any clicks.
If you’re putting content out there daily, it only makes sense that someone is reading it, right? Well, not quite. You need user friendly SEO content in order to succeed.
Hours and hours of keyword research don’t mean anything if you’re not writing for the right audience, and knowing who you’re writing for. This is really important for marketing advertising.
In 2022, SEO will be more competitive. It will rely more on artificial intelligence (AI) and semantic search.
So, today we will talk about the importance of both SEO and content, and see what their relationship will look like in 2022.
The importance of SEO
SEO this, SEO that. It is a term that we cannot escape. It is present in all aspects of online promotion and marketing.
We spoke of search engine optimization in many previous blogs, so we will try to summarize it here.
For your blog to get displayed on the pages of Google, it must first get ‘scanned’. For this sake, Google created several bots who crawl through your website, look at everything that is there (and we mean everything), and only afterward will your website get displayed in search results.
Since Google uses bots and not actual people for this job, because it would be impossible for people to look through and file thousands of websites per hour, there have to be sure things that your website must contain in order for the bot to deem it good.
Those things include how your website is made (if it’s easy to navigate), errors, responsiveness, the titles and descriptions of your posts, and most importantly, your content.
How does SEO actually work?
In the simplest of terms, good SEO optimizes your visibility and online presence. One of the ways it achieves this is with adequate content.
This means that the more people see your website, the more your online traffic increases, and you have better chances to provide your product or service to a greater number of people.
For example, when you do a certain online search, there are only 10 places for search results on Google’s first search page.
The chances of going to the second page are minimal because you will find the answer to what you are looking for in the first few displayed results.
If a potential client is searching for something you have to offer, you should be on the first page among your competitors.
If you are not in one of those 10 places, it means that someone else got a new client, and your company lost a potential customer.
So, SEO driven content is crucial when it comes to generating traffic and leads. It is quite important because it gives you the ability to convert potential clients into customers.
It is the most viable and cost-effective way to both understand and reach customers in key moments that matter. SEO is the best way to find out what consumers like and want.
User friendly SEO content is a must have for your business because:
- It gives you the possibility to be the answer to potential customers’ questions,
- Attracts new customers,
- Increases visibility and traffic,
- Allows you to deepen your business’s relationship with customers,
- Provides a better user experience (UX).
Google’s ever-changing algorithm is changing the SEO content strategy too!
Spam has been a thing since the creation of the internet. In the early 2000s, websites and blogs put out content that wasn’t reader-friendly and served only to generate clicks and leads.
People would write miles long articles that really had no other purpose than to be a place where they could put as many keywords and related keywords.
The success was short-lived, though. In 2011, Google issued an update called Panda that ended spamming and keyword stuffing, which forced people to focus on the quality of the content instead.
Another thing that used to be possible before this update was link schemes. You know how you always hear that it’s good that your website has many external links because they can help with clicks, build your brand and show legibility?
Well, before the Panda update, people would manipulate their ranks by buying links and using them excessively. Imagine opening a website and 80% of its content are links to other websites.
You would have to dig to find something useful, that is if you didn’t already close it because the very sight turned you off. Thankfully, Google put a stop to this, as well.
In May 2022, Google had another major algorithm update. Again, Google turned to quality content as the main generator of rankings and leads.
Now Google will pay even more attention to the relevance of the content and information it provides for users.
Aside from content quality and links, other factors affect your ranking, such as:
- Secure and Accessible Website
- Page Speed (Including Mobile Page Speed)
- Mobile Friendly page
- User Experience (UX)
- On-page optimization
Responsive websites and page speed
In recent years, responsiveness went from optional to a must-have when it comes to websites.
The reason for this is that mobile browsing is now so popular, and the majority of searches are being performed on phones.
In 2018, Google announced that they viewed responsiveness as an important part of a website, because of this very reason.
Google said that 53% of users leave websites after 3 seconds if they fail to load during that time. Similarly, 1 in 2 people expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds.
Therefore, another thing that Google’s algorithm values is page speed. If your website provides a bad user experience, Google won’t rank it very high in the search results.
Mobile-friendly web pages and UX
Nowadays, more people use mobile devices than desktops to access the web, and this is one of the reasons why a mobile-friendly page is on a list of factors that affect Google ranks search results.
If you are using a mobile phone when you search for information, Google pulls its results from mobile-optimized sites, not desktop sites. This phenomenon is known as mobile first indexing.
This means that if your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you risk being unnecessarily under-ranked.
On the other hand, user experience has an impact on SEO, because if you don’t think about user experience (UX), visitors will leave your site quickly.
Many people will stop engaging with a website if the content and layout are unattractive.
When users visit a site, don’t like it, and leave quickly, then Google will think it’s not relevant to their needs.
So, if enough people do this, this can make it harder for your site to rank higher in search results.
SEO On-page optimization
On-page optimization serves to improve the quality of the page with the help of SEO content and technical elements.
The more on-page SEO optimization you do, the more traffic you’ll get to your website and the more relevant that traffic will be.
Here are some of the many on-page SEO aspects you can control on your page:
- Add keyword phrases in page headlines
- Use header tags (h1,h2,h3… and so on)
- Create a good meta description
- Use keyword phrases in image alt tags
- Use schema markup
What will change about the content?
Quality SEO content has always been valuable, but with all recent changes, it will start to matter even more in 2022.
When we say quality content, we are talking about posts that are written with the help of experience, posts that have opinions and predictions, and posts that people will find interesting.
Users will want to read the whole textual content and not just scan through it.
Sure, posts that have solutions to problems and answer questions will never be fully irrelevant.
But, posts that people will be able to relate to and that will teach them something, not only about the internet but also about life, will be so much more important.
Just like quality content writing will start to matter more on social media platforms (because they are considering the removal of likes), the same will happen everywhere else.
What should you write about?
Starting and coming up with topics is often the hardest part.
The most important thing is to be original and not copy competitors. Research your keywords and see what’s trending right now.
Looking at the keywords your competitors are using is okay, especially if their content is gaining a lot of likes, shares, and shares.
Take those keywords and come up with a topic that includes them, but add your own twist.
Include your opinion on the topic, and if possible, make an educated prediction. Avoid generic topics. Keep in mind, readers first.
If you combine quality content writing with SEO, you will not go wrong.
Well-written articles that are structured properly, have all the relevant keywords, and are about the topics people want to read about are the key to success.
However, keep in mind that SEO is a process, and that everything that is done must be improved, changed and applied in accordance with trends and user preferences.
That is why you must constantly monitor the metrics and statistical data that are commonly used in digital marketing.
How to write good SEO content?
Now that you are familiar with the most important things about SEO, we will give you some tips on how to write great content.
In order to do this, you need to concentrate on the following things:
1. Endless research – you should find out what potential clients need when they search your targeted keywords.
2. Provide the best answer – you need to create the best possible answer to a given search query.
3. Simple information – you should present the content in a way that is easy to read and understand.
These are the three basic things you need to think about before you create any SEO content.
Final word
Google’s algorithm changes every year, but one thing is certain and isn’t changing anytime soon: users are the most important thing to them.
Therefore, their algorithm will continue to value things that make the user experience better, such as quality content, page speed, and responsiveness.
Now to answer the big question: Will SEO content matter even more in 2022?
Since users always were and continue to be Google’s primary focus, we are probably not wrong if we say yes, unique and quality content writing will be of a much bigger significance in the incoming years.
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