According to published research, SEO techniques are cheaper and more effective than pay-per-click advertising.
At the same time, 91 percent of websites experience no traffic from Google, and after studying two million newly published pages, Ahrefs also uncovered that in one year, a mere 5.7 percent of these managed to rank in Google's top ten results for one search term.
So how can one avoid this ineffective scenario and keep one's website from becoming a statistic?
One of the ways is to learn how to write content for a website that falls into the category of blog formats that have been shown to be best for SEO.
Read on to find out what these categories and types of articles are.
Evergreen content is good content that ages well. For example, an in-depth guide on how to cook steak will probably still be relevant in 10 years. In contrast, a blog post on how to make a trending new unicorn drink will start to receive less traffic as soon as the unicorn food trend starts to slow down.
To create evergreen content, the general rule is to stay away from trends, technology, news, and current events. Some examples of evergreen content are:
All of these categories will be at different levels of evergreen. For example, an article on the history of something could be more evergreen than an influencer list. However, depending on the demand for information, the influencer list might prove to be a better source of traffic than the historical post.
If you want to publish slightly less evergreen forms of content, such as influencer lists or tool lists, you can increase their staying power by updating posts after a certain period.
For example, in the case of a tool list, you can add in new tools that are being used, and remove any that are no longer working or are proving less effective in comparison to others.
Speaking of blog posts that get updated, this is a form of content that Google favors over stale pages that haven't been updated for years.
The reason for this is simple: Most people would prefer to use content that's fresh and current, even if it covers an evergreen topic.
If you do a Google search, you'll probably see that some of the top results have been published fairly recently. Older articles often also come up, as they have had time to rank well.
However, if you have a well-ranking article already, giving it an update will show Google that not only has your content proven useful, but it has also been refreshed and is up-to-date. These two factors together can thereby increase your chances of climbing in the rankings.
At the very least, updating your content will guard against it falling out of the search engine results because Google thinks it's not relevant anymore.
Some ways you can update your content are:
This last point has a particular advantage, which we'll look at below.
Multiple studies have found that long-form content often performs better than short-form. It's thought that Google displays a higher ratio of long-form content in top search results because, generally, long-form content provides more value than 200-word excuses for blog posts.
Additionally, long-form posts receive an average of 77.2 percent more backlinks than short-form content. Because backlinks are an important ranking factor, this makes a strong case for long-form content.
If you're wondering how long is long enough, according to the data from Backlinko, the best returns lie in 1,000-2,000 word blogposts.
As it happens, one of the biggest SEO trends this year is a maxim of quality over quantity in good content creation. Long-form pieces tie in perfectly to this strategy.
Last year, Google launched what it calls "featured snippets." This is the snippet of info that often appears when one inputs a question into Google. This information is gathered from a top-ranking webpage that has the applicable information in a format that will display well in the snippet segment.
Some website owners dislike this feature, as people can simply read the info off of Google without visiting and bringing traffic to an actual page.
However, a Stone Temple study revealed that about 16 percent of featured snippets encourage readers to click through to the source by ending with an ellipse to indicate the reader must open the page to find out more.
At the same time, even if Google doesn't do this with a featured snippet from your content, it might still prove beneficial to rank for featured snippets. According to the director of product growth at Glassdoor, the company has benefited more from being in direct answers than ranking No. 1 in regular search results, underneath a featured snippet from someone else's site.
This could have to do with prominence, as the snippet segment is highlighted and can make for great exposure. At the same time, being selected for a featured snippet is a noteworthy endorsement from Google — something that's always good for SEO!
To aim for a place in snippet features, tailor your content to answer direct questions. Placing the actual questions in your content can be beneficial.
If you were itching to learn how to write content for a website that's tailored to have great SEO, you came to the right place. Creating high-performing types of blog posts is a solid strategy for increasing the quality of SEO on your site.
If you're looking for any SEO related services, such as content creation, backlinks or keyword ranking, check out these money-back-guaranteed SEO services on our market place.
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