In practical terms, SEO is the ability to make changes to the design and content of your website, making it more attractive to search engines such as Google. Optimizations are carried out to achieve better positions in search page results in a non-paid, ie organic, way.
And how does this happen? Every day, search engines have robots that scan billions of pages every day. This scanning is done to provide users with the best results that match searches that are performed on key words or phrases.
It is during these scans that search engines can find your page. If diagnosed with good navigability and good content, your site is rewarded and displayed in the first results of Google and other engines.
That is, when applying the set of SEO techniques, there are many benefits for your website. In addition to increasing your visibility, these techniques make your text more readable and can attract more readers and customers.
So now that you know what SEO is, it’s time to check out a real SEO checklist to get search engine perfect content.
Set the theme of your content
The first step in finding perfect content for search engines is to be clear about what you should write about. For example, if you have a website focused on confectionery, you can invest in content on topics related to your area, such as:
- What utensils are used in the bakery?
- How to make the perfect cake
- How to prevent the cake from getting sole
- How to prepare creamy brigadeiro
- Types of filling ideal for party cake
These are some of the infinite subjects that can be addressed in a confectionery content portal. And this rule applies to all content portals. You need to stop and think about what your audience needs to know about your service.
And you can offer this content to the reader in a variety of ways, including:
- blog posts
- Social media content
- e-books
- Guides and Tutorials
- videos
- Online courses
And remember, this content must be relevant and attractive to your readers and customers.
Keyword
Once you know what the ideal content is and what its format will be, it’s time to rock your keyword choice. The focus keyword or keyword phrase is essential, as it will determine all the other actions that are part of the construction of your content.
For example, on a website that has a dedicated page to sell confectionery items, it is essential that these two words form part of the keyword or phrase. So, when your target audience looks for confectionery utensils, there are more chances for your website to be displayed and conquer new customers.
In addition, it is also important to be aware of these issues when using the keyword in your content:
- The keyword must appear throughout the content in a balanced way. If used excessively, the content can cause distrust in search engines.
- The keyword should also appear in the page title, in titles throughout the content, in the meta description, in the alt attribute of images, and in the URL.
page title
Once you’ve chosen your content and keyword, it’s time to choose an impactful headline! The title is the first contact your user will have with your content or page. And let’s face it, the first impression is the one that stays, right?
In addition to being attractive, your title needs to follow some techniques to comply with SEO rules:
- Have up to 60 characters;
- Cite the keyword;
- Keyword positioned on the left side;
- Be formatted in H1 tag.
Pay attention to the title hierarchy
As you can see earlier, the title of a page must always be formatted with the H1 tag. For content to be well organized, it needs the support of headings tags, which in Portuguese means heading tags.
In addition to organizing your content, they allow search engines to more easily understand the topic being addressed in your content.
The headings tags range from H1 to H6. The H1 always represents the title of your page. The H2 tag is used to include subtitles. Tags H3 through H6 should also only be used in subheadings.
Did you understand? How about an example to help better understand this process?
As an example, we can use this article, where the initial title and heading tag H1 is: SEO checklist for perfect content for search engines.
Other subheadings such as: define your content theme, keyword and page title are subheadings and therefore should be set to H2.
In this article we also have an H3: pay attention to the title hierarchy. In this case, H3 was used because the title hierarchy theme is related to the H2 title theme, which is page title. Very easy, isn’t it?
Now that you know how to organize your titles, it’s time to learn how to write a good meta description.
Meta description
When a user searches for a keyword in a search engine, the browser displays a series of contents that are formed by a title and a description. The description that brings a brief summary of what will be mentioned on the page if he decides to click on the link is the so famous meta description.
For the meta description to be able to win over your reader, you need to be aware of these details:
- It must not be longer than 160 characters or it will not be displayed in full in search engines.
- It needs to be concise and attractive. Remember that the purpose of the meta description is to entice the reader to click on the site.
- The meta description must contain the keyword.
Transition words
You know that book or text that you read and didn’t even realize that, in fact, it was a very long text? Transition words can make your text lighter, allowing your users to understand the text more easily. They are the ones that give meaning to a sentence, sentence or paragraph.
To help you better understand what the famous transition words are, here are some examples: in addition, however, however, thus, in agreement, likewise, as well as.
Invest in images
With the content ready, it’s time to invest in images. They will make your text even more attractive and easy to read. And for images to comply with SEO techniques, it is important that they are optimized.
Optimization allows images not to get in the way of your WordPress site loading. After all, no one deserves to perform a search for a particular subject on Google and other search engines and the chosen site takes a long time to load, doesn’t it?
And you can do this in several ways: through image optimization plugins or manually reducing the size of your images using online platforms or applications, such as the TinyJPG website .
Alt attribute
In addition to being the ideal size, it is necessary to rename correctly when saving each image, see the example: recipe-of-chicken-with-okra That’s right, all lowercase letters, without accents and spaces and with hyphens between words.
After renaming and inserting it into your content, it’s time to assign an alt text or alt text to your image. This text is read by Google, helps index your content and also works as a description of the content of an image. In this field, it is essential that you try to include the keyword in a light and intuitive way.
Internal links and external links
The work involved in creating content is really full of details. But calm down, we are almost at the end of this adventure towards perfect content for Google and search engines.
One of the fundamental items for your reader or user to remain browsing your site for longer is the use of internal and external links.
Internal links increase the time the user spends browsing your WordPress, which helps to improve ranking and also reduce the bounce rate.
External links, on the other hand, show your reader that you have used trusted sites to produce your content. In addition, it helps search engines to understand in a practical way what is being cited in your content.
Friendly url
The last item on this SEO checklist , but no less important is: invest in friendly URLs. If you already use WordPress, you can rest assured that the tool already has this feature.
But we still have two more tips to make your URL even more friendly and attractive:
- Use the keyword to increase your chances of having your content appear on the first page of Google.
- Remember that the URL must not exceed 75 characters and must contain only lowercase letters separated by hyphens.
