Small Business SEO Guide New Zealand
You’ve probably heard it before: “Content is king.” Bill Gates made this prediction in 1996, and it’s as true as ever today.
Why?
Because a Google user is happy when they find the result that serves their needs in the best way.
When you Google “how to make a KFC at home,” Google puts all its energy into delivering to you what Google believes is the best recipe for homemade KFC (that takes little time and uses few ingredients) on the entire web.
It doesn’t look for just the quickest recipe, just the easiest recipe, or throw out a bunch of online shops for frozen dinners. It tries to give you exactly what you asked for. Google always tries to provide the best experience possible by directing you to the greatest content it can find.
This means your number one job to do well with SEO is to produce great content.
That’s a bummer, right? You still have to put in a ton of work. SEO is no different than any other skill: great results come from big effort. Just like the best marketing in the world won’t help you sell a bad product, super advanced SEO is useless if you don’t have quality content.
What Is SEO Writing?
Writing for SEO means that your content focuses on providing users with valuable information that answers their queries. Additionally, it means optimizing for keywords and key phrases that help search engines understand your content.
By writing well-optimized content for your users, search engines can show your article for relevant queries in the top results. By building an SEO strategy into your writing, you can aim to increase traffic to your site and grow your audience.
Over time (or even rather quickly), it can be cheaper, more consistent, and sometimes more effective than paid advertising.
Strong SEO Writing Needs Good Keyword Research
Writing for SEO means that your content focuses on providing users with valuable information that answers their queries. Additionally, it means optimising for keywords and key phrases that help search engines understand your content.
By writing well-optimized content for your users, search engines can show your article for relevant queries in the top results. By building an SEO strategy into your writing, you can aim to increase traffic to your site and grow your audience.
Over time (or even rather quickly), it can be cheaper, more consistent, and sometimes more effective than paid advertising.
In SEO, writing great content is the key. To write great content, you need to know two things:
- Who your audience is. (Our guide on finding your target audience can help)
- To know what topics matter to them. If you’ve already defined your audience, you need to start planning to answer questions they have and provide them with solutions.
Do you need content ideas?
SEMrush has a great Topic Research Tool to help you get started. The tool helps to find your audience’s interests and shows a wide range of related topics, popular article titles, and questions people ask for your primary keyword. This is where you can start crafting your blog…
Create a Well-Optimized Meta Title
Your article’s headline is not necessarily the title shown in search results. Consider that your article has two headings: the H1 tag displayed on the page and the meta title tag shown in the search results snippet.
They can be closely related or similar, but they don’t necessarily have to be identical. The most important thing when writing for SEO is that each tag must contain your target keyword.
Although the H1 tag is one of the signals showing search engines how the page is structured, the meta title is more important for SEO purposes.
The meta title introduces your content to the audience. That's why it's often the primary piece of information a user uses to decide which result to tap on, especially when searching on mobile.
To make your title attractive for both search engines and searchers, follow the basic rules:
- Write a unique title for each page. If you use the same title on different web pages, Google can show an alternative title instead of yours.
- Consider the user intent. Choose a title that indicates what problem users will solve or the benefit they will get from reading your content. Include the clue words to catch users’ attention and entice them to click.
- Keep the title between 15 to 40 characters long. The maximum length is approximately 60 characters - any text beyond that can be truncated automatically.
- Include your target keyword in titles. Search engines use titles to understand whether the content is relevant to the query. However, don't over-optimize.
Create a Meta Title that will help visibility
Your article’s headline is not necessarily the title shown in search results. Consider that your article has two headings: the H1 tag displayed on the page and the meta title tag shown in the search results snippet.
They can be closely related or similar, but they don’t necessarily have to be identical. The most important thing when writing for SEO is that each tag must contain your target keyword.
Although the H1 tag is one of the signals showing search engines how the page is structured, the meta title is more important for SEO purposes.
The meta title introduces your content to the audience. That's why it's often the primary piece of information a user uses to decide which result to tap on, especially when searching on mobile.
To make your title attractive for both search engines and searchers, follow the basic rules:
- Write a unique title for each page. If you use the same title on different web pages, Google can show an alternative title instead of yours.
- Consider the user intent. Choose a title that indicates what problem users will solve or the benefit they will get from reading your content. Include the clue words to catch users’ attention and entice them to click.
- Keep the title between 15 to 40 characters long. The maximum length is approximately 60 characters - any text beyond that can be truncated automatically.
- Include your target keyword in titles. Search engines use titles to understand whether the content is relevant to the query. However, don't over-optimize.
Create a Catchy H1
If you need to add more creativity to your article, there’s a little more room in the H1 tag than in the title tag.
Here’s what you need to consider when writing your H1 heading:
- Create a unique H1. This will help prevent visitors from getting lost between similar pages on your site.
- Use words like 'how', 'why', 'what', and 'where'. This way, you help people understand what they will find on the page below — guides and how-to articles also drive 2x more traffic than other types.
- Use numbers like 'top 10', '5 best', 'N things…', etc. Articles with list headlines get 2x more traffic and 2x more social shares than other types.
- Describe what is discussed in the text body. The H1 of the page should describe the content; otherwise, Google regards the discrepancy as low content quality.
Topic Research can help you quickly find the most resonating headlines. After entering a topic, you’ll instantly see popular headlines that have the highest amount of backlinks and social engagement.
