How To Write Brand-Friendly SEO Content
On the web there are three words that every digital marketer knows: “content is king.” First written in an online essay by Bill Gates, these words have become entrenched in the mind of anyone who does serious digital marketing today. Whether you’re writing social media adverts, website pages or Google adverts: content is still king. In this blog, I will outline how you can create brand-friendly content that also works well for SEO in Manchester!
Unique Content
The first thing to remember when writing content is to be unique. There’s nothing wrong with referencing other peoples information or opinions, as long as you source them. Passing off other peoples work as your own is a no-go, both from a brand perspective as well as SEO. People don’t like copy-cats and search engines don’t like duplicate content.
This includes rewording or spinning other people’s articles or blogs. If your brand can’t bring unique information to customers, what value does it have? If your content can’t add value to the reader, why would search engines promote it? Always write new and unique content!
Well-Written
This one may be a bit obvious but some brands, for some reason, fail to consistently live up to the tip. Search engines want well-written content. This means content without typos, content that flows well and is readable. Content with vague or incorrect information, filled with misspellings and bad grammar is not going to rank well. Additionally, your content represents your brand – bad grammar and misspellings will give an impression on unprofessionalism. Would you buy an iPhone from a company that can’t spell iPhone? Probably not!
Contextual Relevance
Back in the day you could spam a single exact keyword in your content and rank well. Today, you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot if you try this tactic. It’s all about contextual relevance when it comes to modern SEO. Let’s take our iPhone example again: if you’re trying to rank a page about the iPhone X you can’t just spam [iPhone X] on the page repeatedly, instead you should aim to include related phrases and keywords that provide contextual relevance to the iPhone X. This can include things such as Apple, battery, chargers, screen resolution, LCDs, phone camera etc. These are not phrases you’re trying to rank for, but they provide contextual relevance to the iPhone X.
Branded
The content you write should be consistent with a brand voice. As I mentioned earlier, content is apart of your brand image: your readers will judge you based not only on the content itself but also how the content is presented. If you stick with a brand voice then your readers will have a better time understanding and digesting your content, providing a level of familiarity with your brand from the content.
Avoid Pronouns
By avoiding pronouns, your content can appear more descriptive and will allow both users as well as search engines have a better understanding of what you’re talking about. From a user perspective, it avoids any confusion about what you’re talking about. From an SEO perspective, it ensures the search engine has the best possible understanding and description of what you are discussing.
Examples:
- Don’t: “Its blue and gold selection represents our company.”
- Do: “The logo’s blue and gold colour selection represents Blue Whale Media.”
Check The Rankings
If you’re planning on overhauling the content for a page, make sure to research what keywords the page is optimised for and what keywords it is already ranking for. If your new content fails to properly target the keywords your page could actually end up losing rankings and therefore traffic, which is probably something you don’t want to happen! Always perform proper keyword research before (re)writing content.