The good referencing of your site on search engines will depend to a large extent on the choice and use you make of your keywords and key expressions.
Google and its competitors are no longer satisfied with simply filling pages with keywords without giving real structured information. The days when it was enough to put them on the fly and stuff keywords (keyword stuffing) are over.
Today, content writers must respect the rules of syntax, provide quality and useful information and ensure that their texts contain a sufficient number of words, which, as we will see below, varies according to the purpose of the text.
Search engine intelligence is improving
A few years ago, it was enough to choose your keywords carefully and place them regularly in your text. You were then almost certain to be well positioned in search engines. The teenager Google was at the time has grown up well. It has adapted to its users and is now able to recognize and promote quality content that meets the expectations of Internet users.
As it has become more demanding, it is clearly in the interest of readers who are looking for useful writings, concise texts and a good sentence and paragraph architecture. In other words, to get better positioning in search engine results and therefore have better traffic.
Text writers must ensure that:
- Meeting the expectations of Internet users
- Be informative and didactic
- Provide one or more answers
- Use quality keywords to satisfy Google
Ask yourself who you’re writing for?
What is the common point between:
- A teenager who wants to switch to a different connected speaker and a senior who wants to take a cruise?
- A mechanic who wants to know about future pollution standards?
- An underwater diver who needs to renew his equipment?
They all want Google to quickly answer their question!
The articles they consult first will probably be among the best placed in the results of the engine, provided, however, that they identify themselves in the titles and meta description that accompany these links.
If your article is on the first page of Google’s results, well done! (the first 5 results drain more than 60% of clicks and the first page more than 90%). You will certainly generate a lot of traffic on your site, and that’s a good thing.
But will this traffic be of quality, will it correspond to the target audience you are targeting?
To reach a specific target group and make them aware of your offer, you must determine even before the first word is written:
- The form to use: text structure, tone used, quality of layout
- The substance of the article: usefulness of the information, level of expertise of the editor, originality of the article
- Subject treatment density: Beginner, experienced or sports divers will not need the same information or depth of treatment for the same subject.
Advice:
To choose your keywords precisely, use Keyword Planner, a planning tool offered by google that allows you to choose effective keywords based on the targets you want to reach.
Quality takes time
If you want to be on the podium and be well placed on search engines, all you have to do is produce quality content. This means that for visitors to stay on your site and be interested in your offer, you must take into account what users want and produce quality content, both in content and form.
For this, there is nothing like some good practices:
- Organize your text and prioritize it
- Pay particular attention to spelling and grammar
- Do not publish duplicate content
- Eliminate unnecessary keywords in titles (the, one) while keeping them meaningful
- Analyze google analytics statistics to modify the content of the least visited pages and know the words on which you are well placed
- Never copy a text or article from another site (duplicate content)
- Use tools like Text Optimizer to analyze the SEO relevance of your texts
All this takes time, but it is the price to pay for a quality text that will captivate the reader and give you credit in his eyes.
Write unique content and use relevant keywords
Duplicate content has no place on the Internet. Even if your content is rich in well-chosen keywords, it will be banned by Google if it is only a pale copy of another site. This does not mean that you cannot write a text on an existing subject. On the contrary, Google likes different points of view, but your text must be written from a new angle.
An interesting and easy way to check the uniqueness of your content is to look at what the competition is doing. If you have written on the same subject, but with a point of view that is yours, you are certain that your text is original.
Be sure you know the subject you are writing about. A user will stay on your article if he realizes that the treated material has no secrets for you.
When you use keywords in your content, you must ensure that they are perfectly in line with the subject of your article. You must remain precise otherwise you may well see Google get lost and give no importance to your text.
Quality must be in form and content
Quality content is a text that has rich grammar and impeccable spelling. To ensure this excellence, it is necessary:
- Build your text with clear and short sentences
- Structure the whole with titles, headings
- Write a precise sitemap
- Insert your keywords with discernment and without excess
- Use good quality links: these are sites that are references in the same field as yours, but that do not compete with you
- And finally, optimize your URL by using nouns and verbs and avoiding “empty” words (to, the, you…)
The correct use of keywords
It is important to clearly define the keyword or expression on which you want to position yourself when you write a blog article or the text of a web page. For more efficiency it will be better to adopt the sniper’s attitude than that of the machine gunner.
Advice n°1
Let’s start with a concrete example, you must write a web page text for a Garage automobile in Luxembourg that sells used luxury vehicles and provides them with maintenance and mechanical revisions.
What not to do: want to optimize all the key words/expressions; “Car garage”, “luxury vehicles”, used vehicles”, “car maintenance”, “mechanical revisions” in one and the same text.
What to do: Create a text for the “About” page of the garage site where these different professions will be mentioned, but focusing only on key words such as “Automobile Luxembourg” or “garage Luxembourg” and create other pages in the site menu, each of which will detail one of the services offered: “luxury vehicles”, “used vehicles”, “car maintenance”, “mechanical revisions”.
Advice n°2
Your selected keyword or keyword phrase must appear:
- In the title of your article
- In paragraph titles, between the tags < h1 > or < h2 >
- In the content of the article, in bold, italic, or underlined with a total density between 1% and 5% of the total words in the article
- In the Url of the article
- In the alt attribute of your images
Blog article, tag, web page…. how many words do you need?
And how many words are needed to meet this need? As much as it takes for it to be satisfied, and in this game, we quickly realize that the length of a content depends above all on the expressed need and the quality of the response provided.
The right length is therefore the one that makes it possible to achieve its objective: to provide useful information to the reader, however, some minimum quantities of characters can be advanced:
Title tag :
60 – 65 characters, including space
The tag <title> corresponds to the title of your web page and it is essential not to neglect its writing. It is one of the most important criteria for search engines as part of a good SEO strategy.
Meta description tag :
Approximately 230 characters including spaces
Meta description tags officially have no direct impact on your Google ranking but as they influence the click rate of your pages they have an indirect effect on your ranking. Don’t neglect the quality of their writing because with a good description, you encourage the user to click on your page link and therefore you increase your traffic.
Blog article :
500 words minimum
Blogs are the articles where you will show your professionalism, detail your skills and present your offer and news. You must show that you have mastered your subject and that this is your area of expertise. A study by the Medium agency already recommended in 2013 an optimum of 1600 words for 7 minutes of reading.
It is obvious that many Internet users do not read the entire articles. So, to keep their attention as focused as possible, air your text with clear and attractive paragraph headings so that everyone can pick out the parts of the article that interest them.
Web page :
300 words minimum
Once again, the right length is the one that allows you to achieve your goal. The priority question is therefore not whether the article on your web page should be 350 or 2,000 words long, but to offer the information and use the tone that will show your professionalism and enhance your services in the eyes of the reader.
Product sheet
(for e-commerce site) 300 words minimum
Inspire yourself with product descriptions from sites such as Amazon, Fnac or sites close to yours to find inspiration. Product description texts are more likely to be more filled with keywords than blog or web page texts and the keywords can be very sharp.
White Paper :
5’000 words minimum
5’000, 10’000 or 20’000 words – there too is no rule set in stone, once again common sense is required: it is necessary to make the reader want to read the whole document and provide him with the information that will be useful whether it takes 5’000 or 30’000 words.
To conclude
Your texts and keywords must be of high quality both in content and form and remember that even if google rules impose certain constraints you write primarily for human beings, not for google.
Tip: At the end of your blog posts, suggest that readers discover other articles on your site and/or suggest a call to action to invite them to take advantage of your services or contact you. If the quality of your item has seduced the reader, he will be more than willing to accept it.
