Content Development: A Simple SEO Technique Cheat Sheet
First of all, this cheat sheet is a general guideline and does not cover everything you need to consider for a content strategy. In fact, the SEO techniques applied to content development are not as important as other elements.
Since SEO can almost be considered optional or unimportant compared to the power of an effective contend strategy we’ll start with those non-SEO elements first.
Quality Content > SEO Content
Yes, there is a difference between quality content and SEO content.
When you ask for quality SEO content– you may get search engine optimized content with no spelling or grammar errors, but that isn’t really quality content. Quality content is something worth reading.
So get your priorities straight and plan your content strategy around:
- Gaining new subscribers.
- Going viral.
- Giving visitors a reason to return to your website.
- Igniting conversations in the comments section.
- Making readers love you.
- Conversions.
If those goals take precedence over placing in search engine results—brace yourself—you’ll end up showing up in search engine results with more stability.
Why? Because Google is about providing a valuable service to end users. You should be too. In putting people first, you’ll become a valuable option worthy of that front page placement.
Quality First. Then you can check go through the SEO Content Checklist:
You might be surprised to find that quality content is already optimized for search engines without even trying. Yet you can still go through this checklist to make sure everything is in place as it should be.
- Check for keyword placement. It doesn’t hurt to include target search phrases (naturally) in the page URL, Title, Meta Title, Meta Description, once in the first paragraph, in sub headers, and anchor links.
- Check for keyword density.This is the number of times each keyword or phrase is used, compared to the overall word count of the article. Do not attempt to increase the density of any keywords. (This will affect the quality of an article negatively.) However, if it is too high you may want to reduce the density. Primary keywords shouldn’t exceed 3% and secondary or long tail keywords should be kept under 2%.
- If you need to lower keyword density, look for LSI keywords. In other words, use natural synonyms or alternative phrases that fit the context.
- Then you can go through the back-end details like Meta Title & Description, image alt tags, etc.
- Be sure to have social sharing buttons available, comments open, and a user friendly subscribe options (not an in-your-face pop up!!!)
