9 Steps to Creating SEO-Friendly Content

Start with keyword Determine search intent

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research and identify the right format
A piece of content should: Identify keyword search intent by clue words in SERP titles:
• Target one primary keyword
• Target 5-10 additional keywords
Informational Navigational Commercial Transactional
To identify your primary keyword, ‘guide’, ‘tutorial’, name of a brand, ‘best’, ‘cheapest’, ‘buy’, ‘price’,
ask yourself: ‘what’, ‘how’ product or service ‘top’, ‘review’ ‘coupon’
• What is my audience looking for?
Select the format:
• What questions do they ask online?
Check SERP features
Check top-10 articles
Seed keyword for potential indicators

• What are the formats out there? • Featured snippets, People Also Ask –
High search volume
Informational intent
• What are their CTAs?
• Site links – Navigational intent
Low keyword difficulty • What are their titles and descriptions?
(lower than 80) • Google Ads, Google Shopping –
Commercial or Transactional intent

Create a Well Create Optimize

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Optimized Meta Title a Catchy H1 the meta-description
H1 tag ≠ Meta Title tag, H1 is less important for SEO The meta-description encourages
but can be similar but introduces your content a user to click on the link on SERPs:
to the audience:
• Is unique
Title is important for SEO:
• Is unique
• 1–2 sentences (140–160 characters)
• Is unique
• May include “how”, “why”,
• Describes a specific page
• Corresponds to search intent “what”, etc. *
• Has target keywords
• Contains target keywords • May include numbers,
e.g. “top 10”, “5 best”, “N things” * • Doesn’t have to be a sentence (may
• Consists of 15–45 (max. 60)
include price, manufacturer, etc.)
characters • Describes what is discussed
in the text body • Targets an emotion
• Motivates users to go to the website
• Calls to action
• May include call to action * Guides and numbers drive 2x more traffic

Structure your content Add visual content

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and make it readable and optimize it
Great content is well structured and easy to scan: Visual content, such as infographics, checklists, templates,
videos and images deliver value to your audience faster and
• Use H2+H3 tags *
in a more catchy way:
• One paragraph = one idea
Visual content > Shares > Backlinks >
• Divide long sentences Trustworthiness for Google > High Ranking
• Highlight main ideas: bold, italic, change font size / style
Optimize image size: Optimize image Alt tags:
• Add bullets and numbered lists
• Make it load faster • Make them unique and descriptive
• Make content long enough to cover a topic (Longreads ) **
• Describe exactly what
* 36% of articles with H2+H3 tags have higher performance in terms
Optimize image names: an image shows
of traffic, shares, and backlinks
• Make them unique • Make it related to the content topic
** Longreads of 3000+ words get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and
3.5x more backlinks • Make them readable • Include as much detail as possible

Make your
8 9 Adjust interlinking
URL readable
URLs help users understand Before you add
what is inside: new links Create a strategy In progress

• Descriptive
Conduct an audit
• Easy to read of existing content and
answer these questions:
• Has target keywords
• Which topics does your
• Uses hyphens (-) instead
content cover and
of underscores (_) between words
which ones does it not?
• Lowercase
• Which articles are
• As short as possible relevant and worth
referring to?
• Make a list of the hub
pages.
• Think through the
topic clusters.
• Find relevant materials
on the site and add
links pointing to a new
article.
• Create relevant
anchor texts.
• Awareness content
should link to
Consideration articles,
and Consideration
articles should link
to Decision content.
• Add “Related Articles”
at the end of an article.