The Final Web Content Checklist for SEO
how to develop content which ticks all of the boxes for reader experience, SEO-friendliness, as well as content quality.you can a handy checklist of ...
Topics for The Final Web Content Checklist for SEO
- Steps of Writing User-Friendly Web Content
- The Page Title Must Explain What to Expect in the Content
- The Page Title Must Be Click-Worthy
- Structure Your Headings for Telling a Story
- If Your User Likes Short Paragraphs, Attempt to Write Short Paragraphs
- Add Links to Related Pieces of Content on Your Website
- Add to the Story Through Imagery and Graphics
- Writing a User-Friendly Checklist
- Steps to Writing SEO Web
- Try to Define Primary and Secondary Keywords
- Involve the Keyword in the First 100 Words
- Adding the Keyword to Your Titles
- Adding Keywords to Your Anchor Text
- Avoid Forgetting About Long Tail Keywords
- Avoid Duplicating Page Titles and Keyword Overlap
- Optimizing Your Short but Sweet URL
- Summarizing the Content in the Meta Description
- Avoid Optimizing Your Content Just Based on a Plugin
- Writing SEO Checklist
- Tips on Writing Quality Web Content
- Takeaway
Find the tips about reader experience, SEO-friendliness and content quality, with pre-publishing checklists for the best SEO content writing.
You might want to write a new content just for fun.
You have a cause that you are taking the time to develop a new content. Normally, this is about enhancing your rankings, creating engagement, or providing consumer education.
No matter what the reason is, there are special steps to pursue while it comes to web content writing to keep everybody happy, whether humans and search engines.
In this study, you will learn how to develop content which ticks all of the boxes for reader experience, SEO-friendliness, as well as content quality.
At the end of each section, you can a handy checklist of questions for asking yourself before you press publish.
Steps of Writing User-Friendly Web Content
The Page Title Must Explain What to Expect in the Content
The title of your page is one of the most significant ranking signals on the page. It is the link that users can see in search results and in the tab of the browser window while they see the page.
It is why you aim to put your most competitive, high-volume keywords at the beginning of the title, and also ensure not to overstuff with keywords.
In addition, you do not need to involve the company/site name within the page title. It will not help the post rank higher but takes up the valuable character real estate.
Google can select whether to indicate the website name in search results.
Rather, concentrate on incorporating variations of the keyword which clearly define what to expect with this content.
Ensure that you deliver on the expectations or you will consider a high number of clicks which are mixed with a lot of visitors visiting the page when they see the content.
The Page Title Must Be Click-Worthy
If you are struggling to deal with a creative page title which reads well, explains the goal of the content, is not stuffed, go to Google and type in the main keyword.
Observe what is ranking right now, the words which are used and if any of the titles have that additional wow factor.
Structure Your Headings for Telling a Story
How you structure your content and tell the story can be one of the most significant reasons why users are not remaining on the page for a very long time.
Great web content writing is making a perfect story and appropriately organizing the information to your visitors.
Just as you would not skip steps while baking a cake, you do not want readers to feel that you are missing steps from one heading to another.
Take this example of delicious potato bake heading:
• H1: Recipe of Cheesy Potato Baking
• H2: Best Way of Baking a Cheesy Potato
• H2: What Can You Serve with a Potato Bake?
• H2: How to Make Meat with Potatoes?
• H3: Ingredients
• H3: Instructions
• H3: Comments
When you realize how to bake a cheesy potato, you must serve it and know what type of meat goes best with potatoes generally. This type of structure not only tells a story but also can support addressing everything to know more about the content. It provides the reader with an appropriate understanding of serving cheesy potatoes.
If Your User Likes Short Paragraphs, Attempt to Write Short Paragraphs
There is no perfect word count and also there is no perfect paragraph length.
Only about every content marketer can tell you that shorter paragraphs, use of bullets, and avoiding run-on sentences can be favorable by readers.
However, it is not always the case for every kind of reader, nor for every kind of content. Some contents should be as black and white without any fluff and all of the technical information or without any regard to formatting.
Some users prefer to digest content like that.
Most of the users do not, while as I will share in more details below, concentrate on writing content your persona can love and put less effort into attempting to hit specific word counts.
Add Links to Related Pieces of Content on Your Website
An easy approach to keep a visitor traveling in your site and not navigating back to Google is adding internal links in the content.
The longer we keep a visitor exploring the website the more the chances of them becoming a fan of the brand.
In addition, when you link to other contents which relate to the title on your website, it can indicate search engines that you have an authority on this title as you have many related pages of the published content.
Just link to the contents which really align with the topic.
I have observed several posts which attempt to stretch the relevance and add internal links on financial freedom rather than related banking topics.
A piece on financial freedom might risk contradicting the original title on which bank to sign up with. It is not a cohesive user experience.
Add to the Story Through Imagery and Graphics
Visuals can add so much value to a content, helping to higher show a point, explain a step, or add entertainment.
While adding images to your content, there is no magic number on how many images you must involve or if they must be filtered, grayscale, or avoid involving humans.
It all heavily depends on the context of the article and your reader. You must know before writing any post, knowing about what kind of images they like, and what shows your brand to connect all of the elements together.
For every image you must do the following steps:
Optimizing the ALT Tag
With the lack of stuffing with keywords, explain what the image looks like to somebody who might not be able to see the image.
If it is an image of a plate full of cheesy potatoes and a glass of milk, thus the ALT tag must be, “plate of cheesy potatoes along with a glass of milk.”
Compressing the File Size
There is no perfect file size which makes sense for compressing any image, thus it is best to keep your images files small without distorting the image quality.
Checking the Image on Mobile and Desktop
Ensure that the image or graphic is not stretched across the page on mobile and shows equally well on every machine.
See 11 Significant Image SEO Tips to learn more.
Telling the Reader What to Do After That
Every content requires a call to action. It should obviously tell the reader what they must do then.
Sometimes it looks like signing up for an email newsletter in order to get much more content. Other times, it is like clicking on internal links to digest more related content.
Whatever your goals are, if merely attempting to enhance rankings for a keyword or creating your email list, the user must know what to do next rather exiting out of the content and going back to the search results.
Writing a User-Friendly Checklist
• Does the content give what the page title says?
o Is the page title interesting enough to click on?
• Do the titles support the story?
• Do you have run-on sentences or big paragraphs?
o Does your reader like such sentences and big paragraphs?
• Did you add internal links to the related content on your site?
o Did you try to link to any external pages?
• Did you apply keywords in your image file names?
o Is every image file small?
o Did you check out how the content looks in all devices?
• Is the call to action obviously defined?
Steps to Writing SEO Web
Try to Define Primary and Secondary Keywords
If you are beginning from scratch and have not already found which keywords you must develop content around, I recommend performing a content gap analysis to set what keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not.
Such keywords, the ones with medium to high search volume, can show the next round of your content titles and the primary and secondary keywords.
Semrush has a Content Gap tool which can rapidly identify such keywords for you
Furthermore, you can go to Google’s free Keyword Planner and begin researching what keywords have a competitive advantage and make a perfect content.
Search volume, competition, as well as some other factors can guide how many times you should involve the keyword in the content. Here are some recommendations on where to involve the keywords.
Involve the Keyword in the First 100 Words
The topic of your new content is normally dictated by the keyword you attempt to rank for.
Involving the keyword in the first 100 words can further explain what the piece is about and add the focus required for both the user and search engine.
Adding the Keyword to Your Titles
There is a fine line between over-optimization and appropriately optimizing your content.
The keyword fails to be in every single heading. Just in those where it makes sense and flows normally.
Adding Keywords to Your Anchor Text
Anchor text is like this. It is the linked words in a post which take a reader to another page, whether on the same website or to an external site.
In other words, if you add a keyword to your anchor text, do it. It should be conducted normally as I did within the first sentence of this paragraph.
What you should not do is adding lots of keywords in the piece of content and link them all to internal and external pages.
Avoid Forgetting About Long Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords will take up so much real estate while it comes to optimizing titles, headings, URLs, as well as image descriptions.
However, if you’re the search query of target user has more than three words, you will aim to optimize the content for that whole long-tail keyword.
It is particularly true while you are developing content on specific topics.
For instance, say you are developing an infographic on the most well-known L-shaped couches which seat six or more people. Everyone who is looking for that information is informed that they require an L-shaped couch which is big enough to comfortably seat at least six people.
It is your chance to tell that user that your infographic involves the best L-shaped couches which particularly seat six people.
Avoid Duplicating Page Titles and Keyword Overlap
I spoke on page titles in the user-friendly portion of writing web content. As I mentioned, page titles are as significant for SEO as they are for users.
In order to avoid over-optimizing the new piece of content, avoid duplicate page titles.
Furthermore, you must avoid having too much overlap in similar phrases or keywords in titles.
You do not aim to compete in focus with your previously published content,
particularly at the beginning of the page title.
If a number of three page titles begin with “Blog Post Optimization,” it will be more difficult for Google to realize the difference between these posts than if the page title was to begin with a keyword which was unique.
Optimizing Your Short but Sweet URL
When the content is written and you are prepared to publish, ensure that the URL still can match the title and involves the primary keyword, through a few words.
In some cases, you can find that when you begin writing, you intended to include 22 causes why evergreen plants are better than other annuals. However, you have found yourself getting stuck with more causes than 12.
However, it can be that you should update a blog post on the best holiday recipes for 2020 to show the best holiday recipes in 2021.
In order to avoid having to update the URL every time you should change the title, avoid adding numbers to the URL.
It saves you from setting up redirects or updating the URL every time you update the post or select to go in a completely various direction.
Such an exception is where the number is special to the primary keyword.
Concentrate on making the URL short and sweet, including the point of the topic, and involving the keyword.
Summarizing the Content in the Meta Description
A perfect meta description applies as few words as possible to summarize what to expect on the page and involves one or two keywords.
There is a chance that Google may ignore your crafted meta description and rewrite their own description. Unless you have a crystal ball which tells you each time Google selects to rewrite your meta description, I suggest putting your best meta description forward.
Avoid Optimizing Your Content Just Based on a Plugin
Avoid getting me wrong, plugins such as Yoast can be highly helpful while developing and optimizing content. However, you must balance between optimizing your content for bots and real human users at the end of the day.
Concentrate on developing a piece of content which your personas require – the content which prepares detailed information, suggests a solution, prepares entertainment, and/or evaluates a specific problem.
After that, optimize the content through this whole checklist.
You might realize that the one sentence you are receiving a red light for reading perfectly for a human and adding values to the paragraph.
Writing SEO Checklist
• How many times did you cite your primary keyword?
o How many times did you cite the secondary keyword?
o Do competitors cite the keyword more or less than your content?
Are they ranking high for such keywords with that content?
• Did you involve any long-tail keywords?
o Did you involve any in your headings?
• Do you have other similar page titles for published content?
o Can you potentially compete against yourself for this keyword?
• Is the URL short and sweet with keywords?
• Does the meta description obviously identify what the content is on?
o Is the meta description of 138-148 characters?
o Did you involve the most significant information within the first 100 characters of the meta description?
• Are you only chasing after a green light or optimizing for both the user and bots?
Tips on Writing Quality Web Content
Provide Something Different with Your Content
From all online readers, we demand you avoid writing another blog post which covers the top X solutions to do ABC and involves the same tips from only about every other published blog post speaking on ABC.
It is rare that such days to realize content on a well-known topic which offers something unique and includes all of the information on a title.
You can often find some similarities between websites recommending the same tips, advice, or information from website to website.
Address Everything Which Should Know About the Title
Here, you can make your break and stand out! For this purpose, you should address everything there is to know about the title.
If you are not sure of what information you must write about, head over to Semrush’s Topic Research instrument or Answer the Public.
Enter the topic or keyword and find the who, what, when, why, and how questions people are really searching for online.
Then, you can turn such questions into headings and/or FAQs, add corresponding paragraphs to include every angle on the title.
The questions which fail to make it as titles can still give you extra ideas on including when crafting your paragraphs.
Research to Prepare Accurate Information
Make sure to research the answers to such questions in-depth if you fail to know the answer.
Your name is behind this content, so you aim to make sure you are preparing real information and appropriately sourcing any information which you researched.
Applying this type of strategy to research what you must be writing about can help you avoid publishing the same 10 facts which every other brand has published.
In addition, you recommend the reader extensive value by placing all of the information on the title in your content, and avoid leaving your website to go anywhere else for extra information.
Visit the Visitor’s Expectations
If you are writing a recipe post, did you involve images for each stage for such visual readers?
If you are writing a blog post on a new travel destination, did you cite everything to do in that destination and everything you must know before arriving for such must-know-it-all readers?
Every brand has various personas they are attempting to connect with, which means you should write for all of those personas.
If 80% of your audience responds properly to more visual content, you must produce the content which meets all of your brand’s personas.
Before you beginning to create your content, try to define who the content is intended for, what format it can be best received in, and what distribution channels for promoting it on.
Writing Quality Content Checklist
• Did you include the title in detail, recommending a unique perspective or adding information which is not found on similarly published content?
• Does the content prepare original information which you personally researched?
• Is the information which you provide really correct?
o Are your sources appropriately linked to the original source of information?
• Is this the type of content you feel proud of if it was shared by another brand?
• Does the content involve the elements which would meet each persona?
o Have you defined which persona kind you are attempting to target with this content?
o What format would serve both the persona and topic in the best way: video, blog, graphic, use of heavy image, heavy text use, etc.?
Takeaway
Every content you publish must be something you are proud of. Make it something you want to see being shared by visitors, other brands, and influencers.
Ensure that your content will exceed each visitor’s expectations through preparing interesting information, having an obvious content structure, and contributing value to the title.
Run through such checklist items before putting it into the world in order to ensure you have done in the best way!