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By Victoria Putnam
Last week, we touched on a few of the things you can DIY to improve your SEO strategy. One of those things was writing unique, keyword-rich content, so, this week, we’re going to focus on how you can accomplish that.
What’s Your Word Count?
The first thing you should know is that every page on your site should have a substantial amount of content. By content, we mean writing—descriptions, information, introductions. And by substantial, we mean anywhere from 150 to 500 words. That’s a big range, right? So how do you know when enough is enough? A good rule of thumb is to include the most content on your home page and less content on your product pages and other subpages.
The goal here is twofold.
1. Provide your site visitors with enough information about yourself and what you do to give them the confidence to get in touch with you.
2. Show Google that your site is the perfect place to send potential customers searching for terms related to your small business.
Depending on how many pages your website has, this can be a big task or a really big task. The average site with a home page, three product or service pages, an about page and a contact page will easily top out at over 1,000 words. Luckily, if you’re not in the mood to crank out the equivalent of a research paper, our in-house content writers and editors can knock it out for you.
SEO Keywords Are Important. Like, Really Important.
You build Google’s confidence in your site the same way you build your potential customers’ confidence in your site. Every page has unique content that hasn’t already been used somewhere else or copied and pasted from another website. You’re also going to use a lot of the keywords your potential customers are likely searching for.
There are plenty of tools that can help you figure out what these keywords are, such as Google Analytics and other online applications. Our SEO analysts are pros at looking at your location and industry to determine which keywords are going to benefit you most, but you can hazard a few guesses that are likely to help you with writing your content.
For example, definitely include your city and state. If you’re based in Charlotte, NC like we are, throw a few mentions into your writing. Not every sentence or even every paragraph, but enough to make it clear what your service area is. If you’re a lawyer, throw that in, too, along with your preferred areas of practice. If you’re a plumber or an accountant? Same idea. Just ask yourself, “What are my target customers most likely to type into Google when they need services like mine?” Write down a few of the keywords that come to mind and start fleshing out your pages from there.
Spelling and Grammar Can Make or Break You.
Besides word count and keywords, spelling and grammar should be your two other main concerns. At the very least, write your page content in Word or another word processing program with spellcheck functionality.
If you want to go the extra mile (and you totally should), copy and paste your writing into an online analysis tool such as Grammarly (their free platform is nearly as good as their premium option, by the way). You want your website to look professional, and you want your content to read the same way, so doing this extra step is in your best interest. Nothing throws off readers like a missing word or obvious misspelling.
Too Busy? Use Our In-House Content Writers.
Even if you partner with us to build your website, you’re free to provide your own content. But if you’d rather our team of in-house content writers handle it for you, we’re good with that, too. In fact, it’s included in all of our website packages, and we encourage our clients to take advantage of it.
All of our writers follow a set of rigorous guidelines to ensure the copy on your site meets our SEO standards. It also goes through a strict editing process and a final QA before going live. That means you can be confident that the content on your site not only meets word count requirements, but also includes accurate SEO keywords, has correct grammar and spelling and accurately describes your industry and services.
About the Author | Victoria Putnam
Victoria is one of the few Charlotte natives who’s still here. She attended Wofford College and graduated with a BA in English, creative writing and philosophy. After joining Townsquare Interactive as a junior copywriter in early 2016, she transitioned to the content editor role and then moved on up to the marketing team.
She believes the things you love should be set free, which is why you won’t find any Oxford commas on this blog. When she’s not writing and editing copy at work, she’s writing and editing fiction at home, getting into shenanigans with her husband and two fur-children, pretending to be a concert pianist or playing video games.