How to Create Quality Content for Your Website

Imagine a potential customer of your business searching for your products and services on Google.

Do you know what happens when your website appears after those of your competitors?

If one of your competitors is positioned first in the natural results (excluding ads), it is more than 30% of potential customers in the middle of the purchasing process that your website will fail to attract. We let you imagine the number of lost income opportunities that this represents after one, two or three years.

But fortunately, several natural referencing techniques can help you get as close as possible to this coveted first place. One of the most effective is to create quality web content. 

In this article, we will present the main steps to follow to create quality content and attract more qualified Internet users to your website. You will also find a detailed guide for each step.

What is quality web content?

Creating quality content is all about finding the right balance between content that is useful to your audience and content that is optimized to meet search engine ranking (SEO) criteria.

Quality web content is content that:

  • Clearly addresses the needs expressed by your target customers on the web
  • Moves up in search engine results
  • Increase traffic from potential customers to your website
  • Sustainably generates leads and conversions (making contact, requesting a quote, etc.)

Creating web content, therefore, requires a clever mix between creating marketing content that will appeal to your empathy and your sales skills, and content optimization which will require technical and analytical skills.

Sounds more complicated than you might imagine? Do not panic, follow the guide!

How to create quality content on the web?

content marketing strategy

Step 1: Define the goals for your web content

Before you jump headlong into your keyboard, first ask yourself why you want to create content.

In order to boost your chances of success, your motivation, and allow you later to measure whether your job is successful or not, we recommend that you set clear goals for visibility, engagement and conversion.

For example, you could set yourself the following goals (remember that – although sustainable – SEO takes between 3 to 6 months to start generating the first results!):

  • Reach the top 3 out of 5 important keywords at the end of the year
  • Increase natural traffic by 30% at the end of the year
  • Generate 10% more conversions with natural traffic this year

Ideally, if you want to build a complete SEO strategy, these goals will fit into your overall SEO goals, which flow directly from your business goals:

Step 2: Identify your target customers and set the right tone

Now that you have a clearer idea of ​​why, let’s move on to for whom .

Who will your web content be for? Professionals? Young athletes? Parents? Future vacationers?

This step is to define your type reader, or persona . 

Here are the points to define:

  • Market and industry  : B2B, B2C, company size, revenue, country, etc.
  • Role / work of his persona  : Skills, position, working conditions, etc.
  • Personal background  : Age, family situation, education, etc.
  • Objectives and challenges  : personal and professional, definition of success, etc.
  • Purchasing process  : Favorite points of interaction, consumption of information, etc.

The goal of this exercise is to put yourself in the shoes of your target Internet user to define the best way to communicate your message .

What state of mind is your persona in when seeking your services? Does he mainly need to be reassured, entertained, convinced, or informed?

These first elements of answers will allow you to define the language as well as the editorial tone suitable for your web content creation.

Now that you have a clearer picture of your customer’s needs, it’s time to put some (key) words on them .

Step 3: Do a keyword study

This step that we cover in the first week of the SEO challenge acts as digital market research.

A keyword study is a process that allows you to extract all the data related to your target customers’ search engine queries, such as:

  • Expressions used to search (keywords)
  • Monthly query volume per keyword
  • Seasonality
  • The level of competition for each keyword

Here is a simplified example of the result of a keyword study as we deliver them to our clients:

This information is essential to collect to create quality web content.

Not only will the keyword study serve as the basis for creating and optimizing your content for the highest potential queries, but it will also allow you to accurately track the buying process of your customers online.

To carry out a keyword study, there are several tools such as the Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush.

Find the complete procedure in our guide to choosing and identifying SEO keywords.

Step 4: Define the right content format

Your keyword study should allow you to immediately identify several content opportunities to create based on the volumes and (especially) the relevance of your offer to queries.

Now it’s up to you to determine what type of web content will be able to meet the different needs you have identified.

There are essentially three content formats on the web:

  • Textual content
  • Visual content (images and videos)
  • Audio content (podcasts)

These different formats can be adapted in different forms, together or separately. Here are 10 examples:

You will then be able to determine the role of each content in your website. Will it be a home page, service page, or blog post?

Ask yourself where your persona is in their buying process when they perform the target query for your item.

For example, a target query like “Roof price” will necessarily be more suitable for a business service page, while a query like “how to clean your roof” will be ideal for an informative tutorial-type blog post.

Remember that, even if you choose to create mostly visual web content, writing an optimized text of at least 300 words will be almost essential to hope to rise in Google results. Indeed, the more your content is developed, the better the search engines will understand it and the more they will be willing to put it forward. We will come back to this point in the optimization part.

To complete this step, use the article dedicated to the best ideas for web content.

Step 5: Create a web content production plan

To better navigate and not miss any idea of ​​content creation, we recommend that you create a content production plan.

This will allow you to jot down each content idea and spread your efforts to create quality content consistently over time.

Here is an example of a content plan as we created for our blog:

Step 6: Create your web content by following good SEO writing practices

Finally! It’s time to create great web content. Big preparation isn’t it?

Now that you know who to talk to, in what format and in what tone, this step should go – normally – without a hitch.

If you don’t want to optimize your text as soon as you write and keep the optimization part (the best!) For the end, keep the following elements in mind when writing:

  • Provide a logical and visible structure (several subtitles)
  • Write an attractive title for Internet users (crucial!)
  • Work on the engaging aspect of your first paragraph
  • Spice up your text with short paragraphs and useful images
  • Keep your tone concise and consistent (the 3 C’s)
  • Use the richest vocabulary possible (semantic diversification)

Step 7: optimize your web content for search engines

Here is a summary of the best SEO optimization practices to include to create quality content on the web:

1) Optimize your SEO title (or meta title)  – include the main keyword at the beginning and stick to a length of 60-65 characters.

2) Optimize your meta description  – include primary and secondary keywords and be 130 to 155 characters long.

3) Optimize your page URL  – transcribe the main keyword without accents and unnecessary determinants.

4) Optimize your content (length and density) – ensure that the text is at least 300 words long and that the main keyword appears in it at an occurrence of 0.5% to 2% (example: on 500 words, use a un keyword 5 times = 1%).

5) Optimize your titles (H1) and subtitles (H2, H3, etc.) – include the main keyword in the H1 title, if possible in an H2 and use the other secondary keywords in H2.

6) Internal mesh  – include logical internal links between the different pages of your site using anchor text (semantic anchor) descriptive of the destination content, as in this article (avoid links on words like here, see, click).

7) Include external networking – cite at least one quality external source (government, reputable blog, newspaper, etc.) in a link.

8) Optimize your images – add the main keyword and secondary keywords in the alt attributes of the images, or alt text.

9) Add microdata – give additional information for Google (invisible to readers) with extensions like Rich Snippet.

10) Think about featured snippets, or optimized snippets – include questions in captions and answer them directly, use numbered lists.

You will find concrete examples for each optimization point presented in the web writing guide above.

Conclusion

Like all digital content, whether it is the web or social networks, the effectiveness of your web content will depend on a good understanding of the needs of your target. You will also have to add an important organizational part (calendars, editorial guides), because SEO requires rigor and regularity. Finally, you won’t forget the layer of optimization needed to appeal to search engines and maximize the potential of the amazing web content you are now ready to create!

And if a question remains, if you want to entrust the creation of your web content to experts or if you want to train yourself, give us a phone call! We will be happy to discuss your content projects!

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