Today companies know that an effective content marketing is the best way to gain visibility on the Web and reach their target audience. But how create web content that converts? How to attract visitors and turn them into customers? With high-quality content creation, of course! To climb the SERP, follow the steps and learn how to write SEO-optimized web content that is attractive and engaging.
What is quality web content?
Anyone can write for the web. But creating quality content requires a bit of expertise…
First of all, a brief definition is needed before understanding the importance of good SEO content.
When we talk about Web content, we mean all types of content you can create on a website, as well as across social media:
- Blog article
- Web page content
- Landing page
- White paper
- Newsletter
- Infographic
- Video
- Image
- Social media post
The purpose of this content creation is to convey information to your future customers, and this is where the notion of quality comes in. Because, yes, this quality reflects your company. It is an integral part of your brand image.
By definition, quality content is:
- Unique, original content.
- Well-written content free of spelling, grammar, and syntax errors.
- Relevant, informative content that provides answers to a customer's problem.
- Content that meets the Google's SEO optimization criteria.
Why create web content?
Beyond informing your prospects and customers about your products or services, creating SEO content will also enable you to rank well on search engines. Your search engine optimization (SEO) is simply the only option to be visible to your target audience.
However, all marketers and business owners now create content and internet users find themselves overwhelmed by all this information. The only way for you to stand out from your competitors and capture your targets' attention is to create quality content to obtain qualified traffic. In other words: start an inbound marketing approach.Inbound marketing !
Create quality web content in 7 steps
Inbound marketing is an extremely effective marketing strategy that will not only boost your organic traffic but also improve your brand awareness. The strategy is based on four key elements:
- Research on your buyer personas.
- Create quality content.
- Have an optimized website.
- Use marketing automation to publish your content at the right time to the right person.
Define the goal of your web content
There's no point in starting content creation without having defined your objectives beforehand. Ask yourself the right questions!
Is the goal of your marketing content to:
- Improve your SEO ranking in search results?
- Promote a new product or a new service?
- Build your online reputation?
- Generate new leads ?
Once you have identified your business objectives, you will be able to build your overall marketing strategy. Start with studying your targets!
Identify your ideal customer
The second step is, of course, to identify your ideal customer (or buyer persona) in order to create the most relevant content possible.
To build a profile of your ideal customer, define:
- Its sociodemographic characteristics: age, gender, family situation, industry, location…
- Its interests and influences: what are their hobbies and where do they find their information (magazines, forums, social networks, blogs…)?
- Its goals: what is their aim? What is your ideal customer looking for?
- Its barriers and challenges: what levers can be used to convert them? How can you get them to take action? What solution can you offer to help them overcome their challenges or solve their problem?
This study of your persona will help you find the best way to communicate with your audience and therefore the right content topics!
Find relevant keywords
Keyword research is the foundation of your content marketing strategy. A poor keyword choice and your entire SEO strategy is affected!
What is a good keyword? It's simply the keyword or key phrase that matches your target customer's queries — that is, their search intent!
Here are some tools that will help you find the right keywords, whatever your field of activity:
- Google Keyword Planner.
- SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
- Ahrefs Keywords Explorer
To choose the best primary keyword, assess its relevance based on search volume, difficulty score, and your marketing goals.
Then select a few secondary keywords to strengthen your SEO and list all long-tail keywords from the semantic field of your primary keyword. Google Suggest, Google related searches, or tools like 1.fr will help you expand your lexical field.
Find the right content topics
Now that you have found the right keywords, you need to write the best topic around that main idea. In inbound marketing, the best topic corresponds to the stage your customer is at in their buying journey.
In marketing, this is called the conversion funnel and it is divided into three parts:
- TOFU corresponds to the top of the funnel where your content creation will aim to attract visitors to your website by addressing their needs and questions.
- MOFU, the middle stage where your content converts visitors into leads by presenting various possible solutions.
- BOFU, the bottom stage where your web content turns leads into customers by positioning you as THE solution and prompting them to buy.
Choose the most suitable format
Now let's see which type of format corresponds to each stage of the conversion funnel:
Create general, educational content that addresses the customer's problem in the TOFU stage:
- A blog post
- A white paper
- A guide or a tutorial
- An infographic
In the MOFU stage, offer more specific content:
- A video demonstration
- An FAQ
- Testimonials
- Expert interviews
- A case study
Finally, write content that will earn your future customers' trust and build loyalty at the BOFU stage:
- Free ebooks
- A free trial
- Discounts
Use web writing best practices
You have finally reached the writing stage! You are ready to write using the right keywords, on the right topic, and addressing the right person!
But to provide the best possible user experience, follow these digital writing guidelines:
- Write a relevant, attractive title that reflects the content of your text.
- Write an engaging introduction.
- Space out content with short paragraphs and bulleted lists.
- Illustrate your points with high-quality visuals and examples.
- Write clear, concise sentences.
- Adopt a tone suited to your audience.
- Use varied vocabulary and avoid repetition.
- Choose the active voice to energize your text.
- Demonstrate your expertise and cite your sources.
Optimize your content
Thought you were done writing? Not at all — don't forget Google's ROI!
To hope to appear among the top search results, here are the SEO optimizations to apply to your marketing content:
- Your title should include your main keyword, be unique and catchy, and not exceed 60 characters.
- Your meta description should also include your main keyword and at least one secondary keyword, be unique, capture users' attention, and not exceed 160 characters.
- Your page URL should be optimized with your keyword, without accents.
- Your titles and subtitles should be structured with H1, H2, H3 tags, with your keyword in H1 and at least once in H2, and your secondary keywords in the other H2s.
- Your image tags (Alt attribute) should contain your keyword for the featured image and your secondary keywords for other visuals.
- Insert your keyword naturally into your content (no more than 3%) to avoid over-optimizing.
- Optimize your content with relevant internal linking based on a thematic silo hierarchy.
Our tip for creating web content
You now have the keys to create high-performing web content! Remember to proofread your content before publishing and use marketing automation software to manage your inbound marketing campaigns. If your online content is effective, it should soon appear in top Google positions and boost your conversion rate! Yes, it's long and rigorous work, but know that you also have an entire web writing team at your disposal on Redacteur.com !
