Optimizing your organic search ranking involves creating content. However, to write SEO-friendly articles and pages, you should follow a few basic SEO rules…
To save time and increase efficiency, consider hiring a SEO copywriter who will know how to write relevant content for your prospects AND search engines.
Keyword selection, tags and structured data, technical SEO, HTML improvement, duplicate content… discover 15 SEO rules to optimize your web writing!
SEO rule No. 1: 1 keyword = 1 page
The first SEO rule concerns keyword strategy. For Google’s bots to fully understand your content, remember this good practice: each page or blog post should be built around a single keyword!
Using tools like Ubersuggest or Google Keyword Planner, find a phrase with high search volume and limited competition.
Once you’ve found the perfect term, use it in the main parts of your page: title, introduction, one or two subheadings, conclusion and meta description. Also place it within the body text, and be sure to include variants and synonyms to enrich the writing and improve your ranking.
The clearer the context is for search engine bots, the more your content will rank for relevant queries.
SEO rule No. 2: Choose your keywords carefully
Choosing keywords is a crucial step in the success of your organic SEO. How do you select them appropriately?
- Put yourself in your target audience's shoes to list words or phrases they can use to search for your services or products.
- Use this list as a starting point to get additional ideas.
- Select the main keywords you want to rank for: those that are directly related to your business.
- Create a list of secondary keywords on topics related to your main activity or referring to complementary services.
- Don't hesitate to research and select long-tail keywords: They can in particular be worked on through blog posts or guides.
- Evaluate the potential traffic and competition for each keyword: Select those with a low search volume / competition ratio.
All that remains is to write content for each listed keyword.
SEO rule No. 3: Create content regularly
Google likes websites that are constantly updated! Consider publishing articles, white papers, infographics and other content regularly on your blog. Besides attracting search engine bots to your pages more often, you'll increase your traffic.
To keep up the pace, outsource the production of your blog posts to a professional web copywriter.
SEO rule No. 4: Take care of your pages' H1 and H2
When write your contentwriting, remember to optimize the title and subheadings. A page's structure is important for Google, which scans H1, H2, H3 first… and for users too! Often they review a content's outline before reading it in full.
Use subheadings to provide a logical, smooth and pleasant reading experience. As for your main keyword, try to include it in the H1 and in at least one H2.
SEO rule No. 5: Write the meta description
In addition to improving SEO, the meta description helps increase the click-through rate.
After a Google search, users get several results. They often read the title and meta description to choose which page to visit… Your content needs to stand out and encourage them to click your link.
Here are the rules to follow for an effective meta description:
- Include your primary keyword.
- Do not exceed 240 characters, otherwise it will be truncated and lose its impact.
- Use an action verb: discover, click, visit, enjoy...
SEO rule No. 6: Ban duplicate content
Among the essential SEO rules for creating quality content, let's talk about Duplicate Content! This means copying and pasting text from one page to another, or even from one website to another. Google doesn’t like this practice (nor do your users) and you risk heavy penalties. Your site can even disappear from the search results.
However, it can happen that you produce duplicate content unintentionally: product pages are a common example. Unfortunately, even if you create several pages for the same item (because it’s available in different sizes, colors or materials, for example), you must write unique text every time.
Also, if you want to quote an author or another source, you can use the "blockquote" tag. This tells Google that you are quoting existing content…
SEO rule No. 7: Vary your content
Even though blog posts form the backbone of your SEO strategy, remember to vary your content. White papers, buying guides, infographics, videos, animations, webinars… These formats help you build authority and expertise, factors that Google recognizes for ranking. They also provide opportunities to target your main keywords.
You can also link these pieces of content to your articles and pages to strengthen your internal linking (see rule no. 10).
SEO rule No. 8: Enrich your product pages
Optimizing your e-commerce for SEO involves enriching your product pages. Don’t just write a description; also provide tips and tricks for using your item.
Also, include high-quality images that show the product in context. This will help users envision themselves with your brand.
Visuals also play a role in SEO! Properly fill in titles, alt tags, alternative text and captions for each photo to improve your ranking on Google (notably in the "Images" section).
SEO rule No. 9: Optimize HTML for SEO
When Google’s crawlers browse your site, they analyze the HTML code. If it contains errors or is hard to read, they won’t be able to index it correctly.
For this reason, it’s essential to include and optimize the main SEO tags, namely:
- The title tag: It indicates the content's title to Google and appears in the search results pages.
- The Hn tags: Mentioned in rule 4, they structure your page.
- The meta description: See rule 5.
- The meta viewport tag: It allows you to adapt your site to different screens. Since mobile usability is a key Google ranking factor, this tag is essential.
- The alt attribute of an image: it helps search engine crawlers understand the content of an image.
Another tip for SEO-friendly HTML: minify the code to make it easier to read, reduce page weight and improve loading speed!
SEO rule No. 10: Work on internal linking
Internal linking consists of creating links between your content. The idea is to connect articles or pages that cover the same topic, in order to keep users on your website.
This internal linking also facilitates crawling and indexing of your pages, since Google’s bots will have a "path" to explore your site and analyze its main theme.
To implement this SEO rule easily, use the topic cluster strategy. It involves writing multiple pieces of content building content around a central topic, then creating internal links between each article in the cluster.
SEO rule No. 11: Check technical SEO
Like internal links, technical optimization improves how search engine bots crawl your site. Make sure the sitemap and the robots.txt file are complete and properly configured:
- The sitemap defines the layout and structure of your website to help search engines understand which pages are most important.
- The robots.txt file tells crawlers which pages to index and which should remain private (such as admin pages, image libraries, etc.).
SEO rule No. 12: Use 301 redirects
Are some pages obsolete or products out of stock? Use a 301 redirect to preserve the authority of those old pages and point them to new pages / new products.
These permanent redirects optimize your organic search while avoiding user frustration! By offering another product or updated content, you keep visitors on your website.
SEO rule No. 13: Increase site speed
A key ranking factor, page load time influences your position in the results. When writing and formatting content, keep this in mind and avoid adding large media files.
Rather, follow these rules:
- Embed videos from an external platform rather than uploading them directly to your site.
- Prefer .jpg or .webp formats for your images.
- Use a 72px resolution, which is more than sufficient for the web.
- Load content progressively as users navigate, prioritizing elements above the fold.
SEO Rule No. 14: Add structured data
A code snippet that classifies the content of a page, structured data provides essential information to search engines, notably about the content format.
They are based on the vocabulary schema.org and improve your chances of appearing in rich snippets.
There are around thirty types of rich data to optimize your SEO, including:
- subscription,
- carousel,
- reviews,
- job offer,
- podcast,
- recipe,
- video,
- product page,
- blog post,
- etc.
SEO Rule No. 15: Audit your site regularly
The last SEO rule is to regularly analyze your SEO strategy. Using tools like Google Analytics or Search Console, you can evaluate:
- the ranking of your content
- traffic
- incoming keywords to your pages
- your most popular content (and least viewed)
- any link errors or broken links
- page load time
- bounce rate
- click-through rate
All these metrics help you continuously optimize technical SEO, editorial direction, and your backlinks to improve your ranking!
Our tip for correctly applying SEO rules
Provide quality content Your visitors should remain your priority. Naturally, if you write articles with readers in mind, you will also tick all the right SEO boxes!
However, to be sure you deliver impactful content—both for your prospects and clients and for search engines—do not hesitate to get support from a professional copywriter. Order your texts now on our content writing platform, Redacteur.com.
The article 15 SEO rules to apply when creating content first appeared on Redactor.com.
