Even people who have no familiarity with the ins and outs of search engine optimisation will be familiar with what bad SEO content looks like. We’ve all come across it. You click through to what seems like a decently-designed site, and find that its pages are filled with content that looks like it’s been written by a five-year-old. All too often, the pressure to place keywords in content leads site owners to mess up.
Writing with SEO in mind can be daunting at first. Although most people have had to write to a particular subject at one time or another, very few people have had to write pieces including specific words. It’s a skill. This is one of the reasons many businesses source their content from professionals, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about this.
1. Everyday keywords. It’s astounding that people have so much trouble with their main keywords. If your keywords are one or two words long, there really is no excuse for content that reads awkwardly.
Usually, the problem comes from writers who are trying to fit keywords into the content instead of trying to write content that will fit the keywords. If your keyword is ‘dog kennels’, then it’s going to be difficult to fit that keyword into an article about pets in general.
Content needs to be written with keywords in mind. This is actually the reason keywords exist in the first place. The search engines look for keywords because, after long study, they realised that these words are the indicators that the whole page is relevant to the search. If you’ve run out of ideas for that particular keyword, it might be time to source some content from a professional.
2. Long-tail keywords. These are a little more difficult, particularly if you’re trying to get them in a piece a couple of times. Again, it’s important to form the content around the keyword. The important thing is to keep them sounding natural, and to do this it’s best to keep the instances as far apart as you can. Having ’super cheap dog kennels in Melbourne’ twice in one paragraph gives the game away.
3. Extended keywords. Along with your general keyword list, it’s very likely that you’re going to have a side-order of extended keywords. These are the sort of keywords that include local terms or modifiers, for example ‘dog kennels Melbourne’ or ‘wooden dog kennels.’ These keywords, which are a little stilted by themselves, can be very tricky to squeeze into content, even for an experienced writer.
You still have a couple of options when it comes to these more difficult keywords. For example, ‘dog kennels Melbourne’ is always going to read badly if just stuck in place of the keyword ‘dog kennels.’ However, you can talk about ‘dog kennels in Melbourne’ without messing up the keyword, or, to be super tricky, separate it with something like ‘when it comes to dog kennels, Melbourne is a great place to shop.’
