Small Business Websites

Writing Quality SEO Content, Part 2

Written by Jay Shapiro for Gaebler Ventures

Writing good SEO content can be tricky especially if your keywords strings seem clumsy in context. But you need to include them to make a piece SEO, however it's not just the robots you should be writing for, first and foremost it's the human reader. Here's how to write stylish keyword rich content. This is part two of a two part article.

How can you write to please the reader, and the search engine robots?

Preposterous though it may seem we will use the fictional Mr Random as our template for a challenging situation. His company manufactures and sells a remedial preparation that claims to combat warts, calluses, verrucas, corns and hard skin. It's organic and he's proud of it and as his name is a fairly well-known brand he wants it, in full, to be featured as part of the obligatory keyword that the writer must use.

Mr. Random, like you, wants results from his SEO content. The fact that his name, Bartholomew A. B. Random is a mouthful is by the by, he insists it must be included. It may seem logical to suggest to Mr. R that his keyword string is a little long. It may seem rational to remind him that calluses and hard skin and corns are often seen as the same thing.

And anyway, how long should a piece of keyword string be? Surely his string could do with cutting. Why say callus when corn will do? But no, Mr Random is not open to suggestion. He simply won't have it. He's been hard-nosed at the hard edge of hard skin for years, and although a relative newcomer to the wily ways of the Internet and its dark mysterious magic, he's aware that different people searching for the same thing will use different terms to do so. And he wants to keep them all in his keyword string, because he aims to corner (or cornplaster) the market in all such things.

He doesn't want to risk losing out on the possibilities of search engine results and the ultimate conversion from visit to sale that a good ranking can generate. Understandable but it's a tall order when he comes to write his SEO web content. So how can he or she create text that incorporates all the key words? Here's how:

First off let's look at that daunting grouping of keywords we want to win on:

Bartholomew A. B. Random's organic wart, callus, verruca, corn and hard skin remedy

Now although it's not the catchiest of titles for an article it is worth using the string as a means to name the piece. And doing so means that the first target has been hit. All key words have been featured once, and the title of an article carries a little extra SEO weight. So far, so good.

But we will also want to use the keywords in the body of the article.

Where possible it's always ideal to feature the keyword string as it appears, but sometimes that just isn't feasible and in this case it wouldn't make for an easy read. Perhaps try breaking up the string so that it reads something like this:

If you're troubled by warts, calluses, verrucas, corns or hard skin try Random's organic remedy. Bartholomew A. B. Random's name has been synonymous with foot problems for 50 years.

Note that all the keywords have been included, but the clumsiness has been removed.

Ok, so that's another check in the box. All keywords are featured, and Mr Random's ego will have been well and truly massaged. He's managed to get his last name to appear twice in the first two sentences.

But he really needs to feature those keywords more than a handful of times to keep the SEO robots happy. Bullet pointing the keywords can help to break things up a bit and make the text more accessible. List formats are bit more friendly to the human eye and ear.

For example this sort of arrangement works well:

Again, all the keywords are present, but the text is made much more palatable than that awkward keyword string.

When you're writing your SEO content you need to think inventively. Include them without over stuffing the piece and try to section them off to avoid giving your site visitor's a boring read.

Jay Shapiro is a freelance writer based in the UK. Jay has a particular interest in the emotive aspects of the entrepreneur's character. "Alongside the nuts and bolts of business, the character of the person is often the ingredient responsible for success."

Share this article

Additional Resources for Entrepreneurs

Lists of Venture Capital and Private Equity Firms

Franchise Opportunities

Contributors

Business Glossary