Hi, and welcome back to the simple SEO content podcast. Today. We're going to talk about five. SEO content, best practices to follow, to get more organic traffic to your website. So if you're trying to figure out how to get more traffic to your website, without having to invest in ads. This is the podcast episode for you. My friend today, we're going to go right in and talk about these five things that you should be doing. To make your content. Work better for both the user and the search engine. So we're going to start number one. Is to use the right keyword. Now the right keyword can have a couple of different meanings. And so we're going to touch on each of those. The right keyword is the keyword that your ideal customer is using when they are searching for something related to your product or service. So if you find yourself. Feeling like you need to educate your client, that they are using the wrong keyword. You need to pay attention. They're not using the wrong keyword. My friend, you are, you need to use the term that they're using. And I've dealt with this numerous times over the course of my career. Um, I had a client many years ago, a large outdoor retailer. They sold day packs. They didn't sell backpacks. They sold day packs for camping and hiking and outdoor adventure and children carry backpacks to school. And they were adamant they did not sell backpacks. They did not want to rank for backpacks. They wanted to sell day packs. The challenge is consumers. Don't really search for day packs. They searched for backpacks. Whether they want them for a child to carry to school or to use for camping and hiking. Ultimately that client did change to backpacks because the consumer vernacular was such that they were using the term backpack, not day pack. I had another client that was a UK based client. Who wanted to compete in the American market, but was struggling to determine if they wanted to compete. As a British brand in America, or if they wanted to truly compete in the American market, because they still wanted to stay true to their British heritage, which is great. Except that a lot of the terminology is not the same. In the U S as it is in the UK. So they sold, Plimsouls not sneakers or tennis shoes. And there were super cute. I remember looking at them and wanting to order a pair. But no one here. Very few people here would ever know what the word plum soul was. They're not searching for it. They're searching for sneakers or tennis shoes. They also. Sold jumpers, not sweaters. Which is fine, except nobody's going to search the word jumper, looking for a sweater in the U S they're going to search for sweaters. And that particular client wasn't going to show up because they weren't using the word sweater. They were optimizing for the word jumper. So we had to have a conversation with them and say, you have, you just have a decision to make. Are you a British brand? Staying true to your British heritage, or are you adapting to the American consumer? Because if you want to compete against American brands and you want to compete in America, you need to use the terms that our consumers use, not your consumers in Europe. So once they had that understanding, they realized that they saw the difference in the search demand. They made that transition. I also had it come up very recently, one with a student and one in a group that I was teaching. And in the group training, it was with a group of doulas and most people are familiar with the term doula. Somebody who helps you. You know, give birth. They're your support system as you're going through that process or there's a postpartum doula. Who helps to care for the mother after she's had the new baby. But some of the people in the group were using the term birth worker. Most expectant mothers, who would be the ideal customer for a doula are not searching for a birth worker. They're searching for a doula. They're searching for a very specific term. So you need to make sure you're using the term that your consumer is using. That's first and foremost. Next, you need to make sure that that keyword, that you're choosing. Is one that your website can rank for, because if you choose a keyword that you can't rank for it, even if you do everything that I teach you the right way, you won't get results because you will not show up in the search results. Your ideal customer will not find you. They will find somebody else who ranks for that keyword. And they will go to that website instead of yours. It's just the way it works, my friend. So we've got to make sure that we're using keywords that are tied to our business, that we can rank for, if you're not sure how to find the right keyword, make sure you listen to the podcast. Everything you know about keywords is wrong. A link it in the notes because it's going to help you understand. Y where you're making mistakes with your keyword research and how to choose one. That's going to work better for you. Now number two, our second best practice. Is to make sure you're writing for your consumer. You're writing for people don't have, or go into this writing for Google or another search engine. You're not going to create the quality of content that you need to get results and to get found by the right people and to get organic traffic. Always always, always right. For your customer. Keep them in mind. Think about the questions that they're going to have an answer them and provide value and be helpful. And guide them through the process. They're searching for something very specific. And there is a reason that they're sitting in front of their computer or they've got their phone in their hand and they're searching for information because they need an answer. You need to make sure that your content is easy to read and it provides value and has that answer. And when we try to create content. For the search engine. Rather than for our ideal customer, that's where we get content that either has a couple issues. It's really flat, like really flat unengaging doesn't have any anecdotes, no storytelling elements. It's pretty much boring. Or it's so overly optimized. It is what we call keyword stuffed, where you've tried to use your keyword. Every single possible place that you can. And you've just shoved it in there to the point that it is awkward. And it sounds like no person could have possibly written it. It sounds like it's coming straight out of straight out of AI. With no edits. Because some of the AI content kind of sounds like that if you're not sure, you know, if you should, or shouldn't be using AI content, a link to another. Um, episode for you, that'll help you with whether or not you should be doing it. Uh, spoiler alert. No, but you can use it and I teach you how to use it to make it a better tool for you. So you want to write for the person you also don't want to write with a specific word count. There is no ideal word count. As far as Google is concerned, the perfect word count for your blog posts or your website page is however long it takes to provide the value, to anticipate the questions, to answer them and to give the customer what information they need. And to be helpful. There is no perfect word count. Now we do see that often longer blog posts do perform better and rank higher. But it's not a guarantee. And I don't want you to ever write to it and be like, I have to write 1500 words on this. Or it's not going to rank because that's how we get for really fluffy, stupid content that doesn't really help anybody. And I know we see this with a lot of recipe blogs and I tease about it. But does anybody care where she bought the bowl that she's making the recipe in? No. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about the backstory on your bowl. Don't bore your customer with something that they really don't care about just to try to create longer form content, because Google is going to know that they're not reading it all. They're going to leave the site. They're not going to spend time on it. Google is aware of that because we all use Google analytics. So Google knows what's going on and how people are engaging with it. Just write the amount of content that you need to tell a great story. And you'll notice my podcast episodes are short and sweet. Most of them are under 15 minutes because I don't need to sit here and babble for an hour. And tell you everything going on in my life. I want to keep this short, sweet to the point and helpful for you so that you look forward to it each week, rather than thinking. Oh, my gosh, I don't want to have to listen to that one. Just, I don't want to listen to an hour to get four things out of it. So you're welcome. I did that on purpose because I can't stand that either. So make sure you're writing for people, not Google. Make your content scannable, make it easy to read. White space is your friend use headers. Those are the big font that kind of separates out the parts of your blood post. Use pictures, put a picture anywhere every hundred and 50 to 300 words to help break it up. Use the big header fonts, make up a bright color. You have fun with your branding. Make them something that stands out. If you've been on my website recently, you know that at the moment. My headers are my hot pink accent color because you know what. They stand out and they're fun. Have fun with it. Make sure that it's easy to read. Use bullet points, use lists. Don't do big, long, huge blocks of text because you know what. Nobody wants to read that. Look at your blog post and determine is it truly easy to read? If you can break it up and add in more white space, shorter paragraphs, more space, even double space between the paragraphs. Just make it easier for people to scan because the reality is most people are not going to read everything on your blog post. They're going to read the headers, the big sections. They're going to read the bold. They might look at the bullet point list and they're going to look at the pictures, make it easy to scan, to get the gist of it. If the gist of it is engaging enough. They may go through and actually read the entire blog post, but make sure it first scan in 20 seconds, 10 seconds. They can see what it's about. Use your keywords in there. We'll talk about that, you know, to put your keywords in your header tags. And we'll talk more about that in a few minutes, but make it really easy to scan. And the next thing you can do, that's really going to help your content from an SEO perspective and to help your ideal customer and to help Google. This is win-win win. Anytime we can help our ideal customer and we can help ourselves when it comes to Google or help Google, this is excellent. Is to link internally and externally. So Google wants to know that you are an expert. You have experience, you have expertise. You have authority and you're trustworthy E. T is the new thing that they're using to really rank our websites and to understand where we. How we rank, um, compared to our competition and compared to other websites within our niche and across the web. So IE. Stands for experience expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Google wants to know. That the sites that they're ranking high are really great user experiences, which means Google wants to make sure. That they're written by people who are experts in their field and you, my friend are an expert at what you do. More so than the person down the street, who has no background in it, who just wants to write a blog post to make a lot of money. So sometimes we'll see. Previously we've seen where like a home improvement blog could rank really high for a recipe. On lasagna. Well, Google doesn't want a home improvement blog that is not about cooking to rank high, just because they have a high domain authority. They want a website that's about cooking to rank high for cooking because. The person writing the cooking blog. It's probably more of an expert than the person writing the home improvement blog the same way. They don't want the cooking blog to rank high for how to replace an electrical outlet. Because can you imagine if you're taking your advice on how to replace an electrical outlet from a chef who is generally giving you advice on like how to make the best lasagna? Maybe not the person you want to get your electrical advice from. You might prefer to get your. Advice on how to change electricity from an electrician or from a general contractor, from someone who has that experience. That's what Google's looking for. So the way that you can help this is to link internally and externally. So if you have other blog posts that relate to the content that you're talking about, or if you're on, you're doing a podcast or you're doing a YouTube video, you can link. Those other episodes or those other blog posts or those other podcasts within your content? Because it helps the reader. It helps the reader to get more depth and more information on that subject. If they are not familiar, they're curious. They want to learn more. They have an automatic way to go and learn more. It also helps the search engine because of the way that Google works, Google crawls websites, and goes from link to link, to link, to link indexing, meaning. Crawling and reading and understanding and filing away for next time, indexing the information on the website. So the more links you have that are applicable, the better it can be for both your consumer and for Google. Now don't go crazy. Don't go link 25 posts in every post. Nobody wants that. I generally try to keep it to three to five at the very most, um, just because I want them to be super applicable and I want them, I want to be. Cautious of your time investment, because like me, you're busy, you're running your business, you're doing this, you're raising your family, you're doing all these different things. And I understand that. So I try to err on the side of being more cautious. Just because I want to protect your time. I, I value the fact that you come to the blog, you listened to the podcast, you watch the YouTube channel, and I want to protect your time and give you as much value as I can in that timeframe. It's a link internally. Now link externally. If you're talking about something and you learned about it from another site, or you learned about it from an association you're in, or there's this great example of it? Link to it. It's okay. To link out to other sites. Consumers are going to come back. If you're curious, what you can do, if you're really concerned about it, link and set it up. So it opens a new window or a new tab. You don't necessarily want them to click that link and go to a new website altogether because they may not find their way back to you as easily. But just ask it when you. Set the link you can choose. Have it open a new tab and then that link that they want to go read. Opens up in the new tab, but they're still on your website so they can finish reading what they wanted to read. And they can go over there or they can go over there and then they can come back and they're right where, right where they were when they clicked on that link. So they're not losing their place with you. And the last thing I want you to do from an SEO. Perspective best practices for your content. Is to optimize for Google. And if you're not sure exactly what this entails, I want you to get my SEO content quick start guide right now, the link is in the show notes, or you can DM me the word SEO on Instagram at etched marketing academy. And the little helper bot will send it to you right away. But this is going to walk you through exactly what you need to do for SEO. While you're over there, sign up for the website, traffic booster class. I teach it once a month. It's a freebie. It helps you learn what else to do to get more traffic to your website. And then you can join me in simple SEO content when you're ready. Love to have you in there. So optimize for Google. And you are going to use that keyword that you chose, and you're going to put it in all the places that Google is looking for it. So that means you're going to put it in your title, tag, your meta description, your image file, name, your image alt text, your header tags. Like we talked about those big separators. You're going to put it in your copy. You're going to put it in your URL. If it's a blog post, or it's a website page where it makes sense to have it in your URL. You're going to do that and you're going to help Google understand. What your content is about. All right. That's it for? Today's SEO content. SEO best practices to get more traffic to your content. If you have any questions, you know how to find me. I'll see you back here next week.