Welcome to Day 11 of the the How To Drive SEO Traffic To Your Website Challenge!
A very important aspect of your blog posts, website content, and any online content is how it is formatted. Proper formatting doesn’t just help visually, it also helps behind the scenes with search engine optimization. Let’s look at a few tips to help you use formatting to boost your SEO scores.
Know the Point of Your Message
It’s hard to write one word if you don’t know in advance what the message is. What do you want the reader to take away from reading the content? That’s the message and the point.
Know Who the Message Is For
When you choose the words to create the message it’s important to know the audience who will be receiving the message so that you use the right words. Each type of audience likes a different way to hear the message, so you need to know who they are so that you can word everything correctly.
Know the Keywords You Want to Use
Before you write one word you should already have completed the keyword research that informed you about the topic that you wanted to communicate to your audience.
Develop an Optimized Title
Using the keyword information, plus the idea behind the message, craft an optimized title before you write anything. This title will help inform what you need to write about so that you complete the message promise of the title.
Create an Outline for Your Post
Now that you have a title, know what you want to tell your audience, and the keywords you want to rank for in this piece of content now you should create an outline. An outline should consist of some bulleted points that consist of keywords. Each point becomes a subheading for the content.
Use Paragraphs, Bolding, Italics
As you work through the content write about each bullet point in paragraphs using heading tags, bolding, italics, and other ways to emphasize the important points of the article. Plus, this style of writing makes it easier to read.
Create Structure with Headings
Remember to use H1, H2, and so forth tags to signify the start of a new paragraph that goes with the title of the content. Creating chunky content will be easier on the eyes but also easier for the search engines to find the keywords and rank your content.
Create Subheadings & Bullet Points
When you’re developing the structure of the post, you will want to also create subheadings (h2, h3, h4) tags as well as use bullet points and other features that make the content stand out, look good, and be easy to scan.
Link to Your Other Relevant Content
A great way to increase the SEO value of any content on your site is to include a link to your other content that the reader of this content might find interesting too. This also informs the search engine that you are an authority on that subject.
Link to Resources
Search engines value scholarly and authoritative information more than they do random information from just anyone. You can boost the authority of your information simply by linking to scholarly sources that prove your point.
Remember that anything in a list, headings, bolding, italics and so forth make everything easier to read. When it’s easier for your audience to read it’s also easier for the search engines to categorize it due to your use of keywords, bullet points, headings, subheadings and so forth. SEO isn’t only for search engines, it’s also for your audience.
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