4 Tips on Writing SEO Content That Ranks in SERPs

First: The why. Specifically, why do you need to rank in search engine results pages?

The answer: A Sistrix study on mobile users’ click behavior revealed that 28.5% of Google clicks land on the first organic search result. The second search result gets only a little over half of that, while the tenth placer gets only 2.5% of all clicks, less than one-tenth of the clicks the first placer gets.

In other words, if you don’t appear on the first page of SERPs, you’re unlikely to get any organic traffic. In our work as an SEO company in Dubai, we understand how organic traffic is so crucial to your bottom line. You’ll need professional help to break through on the first page of SERPs.

For a start, though, you can write search-engine-optimized content for your website. Use it to rank for the SERPs of your target keywords. Follow these tips to give your content a higher chance of ranking on SERPs.

Write content that matches your target keyword’s search intent.
Do you want your content to rank for the “buy running shoes” SERP? Then write content that matches the purpose inherent in that keyword.

“Buy running shoes” is a commercial intent or transactional keyword. Build your content around that intent by creating a running shoes category page that lists all the running shoes you’re selling on your e-commerce store.

Every keyword can have one of the following search intents.

Informational: Someone wants information on a keyword (e.g., studying in the United Kingdom).
Comparative: Used when someone wants content that compares two or more terms (e.g., ethereum versus cardano).
Navigational: Someone types this in to navigate to a brand’s website (e.g., Gucci).
Transactional: A person uses transactional keywords to satisfy a commercial intent (e.g., buy Dell XPS laptop).

Perform search-intent analysis on your keywords so you can write content that matches your target audience’s expectations when they search those keywords on Google.

Writing content that corresponds to search intent has two benefits. One, it tells Google your content is relevant to the keyword you wish to rank for. Two, it helps induce actual clicks, which is not only good for conversions but also for SEO and your SERP rankings.

Write content that’s longer, more thorough, more up-to-date, and more visually appealing.Use the skyscraper technique. It’s writing content that builds on whatever is already out there.

Your objective is to create content that people will find more valuable because it is better than the alternatives. This should get more clicks on SERPs, and Google should take that as a signal that your page provides relevant content.

Of course, Google should also rate your content highly upon analyzing your content. Since your content is long, it gives you more opportunities to use keywords and semantically related terms.

An example of the skyscraper technique in action is creating a list of 250 Google ranking factors when the top result for the term “Google ranking factors” lists 200 ranking factors.

If you’re trying to rank for the keyphrase “UK college scholarships,” search for this keyword, look at the top SERP results, and write content that trumps all of them in terms of length, depth, breadth, relevance, and visual appeal.

Use a search-engine-optimized URL.

You know the string of characters on your browser bar when you are on a webpage (e.g., https://example.com/writing-seo-content-for-serp-rankings)? That’s called a web page’s uniform resource locator or URL.

For SEO (and thus SERP ranking purposes), use your content’s primary keyword in the web page URL. You must also put the keyword at the beginning of the page slug. In the example URL above, the page slug is “writing-seo-content-for-serp-rankings.” If the target keyword is “writing SEO content,” the above URL is an excellent example of optimizing a URL for SEO.

Additionally, use hyphens, not underscores, to separate words in your URL. Thus, between https://example.com/best-running-shoes-under-100 and https://example.com/best_running_shoes_under_100, the first one is better for SEO than the latter.

Google treats hyphens as separators, so Google reads and “understands” the character string the way you intend it to: “best running shoes under 100.” Meanwhile, the second URL is parsed as “bestrunningshoesunder100,” which is not equivalent to your target keyword of “best running shoes.”

Can you leave the words in your page slug unseparated by a hyphen?

Spaces are not recommended as internet standards consider them unsafe. Thus, if your URL is “https://example.com/best running shoes under 100,” your browser will convert that string to “https://example.com/best%20running%20shoes%20under%20100.” This is less than ideal because all those %20s make your URL unintelligible (or at least very hard to read for humans). That can be enough to discourage people from clicking on your search snippet on SERPs.

Finally, keep your URLs as short as possible. Ideally, the entire URL string should be around 50 to 60 characters long. Remove prepositions, conjunctions, and other stop words if you must to keep the URL short. If it’s not possible to keep your URL at 60 characters long, at least try to keep it below 100.

Give your content a title people will want to click on SERPs.
The title tag (enclosed in <title> </title> tags) is the hypertext markup language element that gives a web page its title. If you’re reading this writeup on a browser, look at the browser tab. The title of the web page you’re reading this article on is written there.

This title tag or page title also serves as your content’s clickable hyperlink on SERPs. Therefore, it directly affects your search result’s click-through rates. The more attractive your title is, the more likely your target audience will click it when they see it on =SERPs.

What makes a title tag “attractive”?

First, it should contain your keyword, preferably at the beginning. The keyword, aside from signaling Google about the content of your page, should also attract your target audience’s attention because they have the words they’re looking for.

Second, your page title must not be cut off. Thus, keep your title tag between 50 to 55 characters long. Anything longer and Google may cut it off on your SERP search snippet.

Third, use parentheses, brackets, and numbers if it makes sense to do so. For instance, your page title for the example above can be <title>Best Running Shoes (Under 100)</title>. That can differentiate your title enough to catch your target audience’s attention.

Fourth, for SEO, incorporate long-tail variations if possible. In the above example, you can convert the title to <title>Best Running Shoes for Women (Top 20 Shoes Under 100)</title>.

Content That Ranks High in SERPs
If you want organic traffic, write search-engine-optimized content that will rank high on SERPs. Implementing the steps above is a step in the right direction. However, these are not all you can do to optimize your content.

Consult an SEO service provider for a comprehensive search engine optimization strategy that will get you consistent high rankings on SERPs.

AUTHOR BIO
Jinky Elizan is a content writer for SEO Sherpa. She has more than 15 years of experience in producing content for SEO, inbound marketing and link building as well as in creating copy for web pages and social media. She also develops WordPress websites.