There are many factors that are considered by search engines when determining the ranking of a page as a search result for a particular search query, but some are more important than others. If you want to market your business and website correctly, these are the factors to consider when producing content, such as blog posts that provide expert advice and insights to potential clients.
Ranking as One of the Top 5 Results on the First Page of Google Search Results
One blog/article post can change for your business forever. If your content marketing article ranks with the first three results, you can expect a huge volume of new visitors who are the target market of your website. One single post can generate thousands to tens of thousands of new visitors and is likely to continue to do that for some time. Paying a professional to create this high-quality content may cost you anything between US$200-US$400 an article, but when you look at the cost per unique visitor, you will find that you will get an outstanding return on your investment.
The creators of the DollarSprout website only have 230 published articles on their website with 40 percent of the articles generating the majority of the content. The founders of the site stated very clearly that they wasted their time and money paying for low-cost articles. Their goal is to have all blog posts rank inside the top five positions of Google Search results. Engaging specialist writers to produce outstanding content at much higher rates resulted in huge traffic volumes.
“Jeff: I started off with the mindset of, “Try to get the best deal you can on a writer.” I think there’s a time and a place for that for when you’re first getting started out but then I realized, “We’re spending a lot of time editing this stuff that I’m paying 5 cents a word for. Is it really worth paying so little?” Now, I would say that most of our writers are paid between 20 cents and 35 cents a word depending on skill level and experience.”
source: https://www.nichepursuits.com/dollarsprout-seo-traffic/
1. Genuinely Original Content by Professional Writers
Everyone has heard that content is king when it comes to Google Search results. What most people don’t understand is that original content is actually king. Original content contains ideas, concepts, and insights that are new to Google’s complete indexed web. For example, passing Copyscape’s plagiarism check does not mean that the content is considered original by Google. Rephrased copy does not equal original copy. Only original high-quality articles that are written by experts in the field of a particular topic will rank on the top of search results.
2. Substantial Word Count and Helpful Content
If you want your content to rank on the first page of Google search results, you will need articles that provide substantial information. Pages that rank in the first few positions of Google Search all contain more than 2,000 words. You won’t get any benefit out of paying low-rate writers to rehash published articles into 500-word articles that pass Copyscape’s plagiarism check. To provide truly valuable search results for most queries, substantial content is required. A 500-word article cannot provide genuinely helpful information for most queries that relate to your business. Rehashed articles are very easy for people to spot immediately. They will leave your blog page immediately with a negative impression of your business. Further to that, Google Search will quickly learn that the particular post is trash and drop it from search results, dragging your whole website down with it.
3. Writing for Intent and Target Audience
When writing articles and content to provide valuable information and assistance to a particular target audience, an expert writer will naturally use the most appropriate keywords that will help Google select the article as the most appropriate search result for that audience. Again, a highly knowledgeable writer who is writing to provide information for a particular query (intent) by someone of a particular target audience, will write naturally using the most appropriate terminology. This means that it is important that you do not get over obsessed with particular keywords. The whole context of the article is important. Substantial content will come up for a wide range of queries because Google Search is smart enough to understand natural language. Remember, it is not 2012.
4. Page Layout and User Experience
As more people are accustomed to digesting fewer words and find it bothersome and/or tiring to read as much as 2,000 words, it is important to have a page layout that is comfortable on the eyes and includes images and graphics to enhance the viewing experience for readers. It's a real fact that reading on digital devices is extremely tiring for the eyes compared to text on paper because whether readers realize it or not, pixels are moving. White space, proper heading structure, easy-to-read fonts, and ample line space are all important factors to consider when laying out a page.
5. Basic On-Page HTML Tags
On-page HTML tags help all search engines to understand what is what on each page. HTML tags are used to tell search engines what text is the title, which texts are subheadings, and which texts are sub-subheadings to a particular subheading. As search engines are not very good at understanding images as well as ensuring accessibility equality, tags are used to explain the content of images. HTML tags will help to improve the ranking of a page but great content will still rank without it despite what many professionals think. Nevertheless, great content will be easier to read when tags are applied.
Providing potential clients (Google Search users) with expert advice and information is a very powerful way to market your business online. However, don’t be fooled by thinking that this doesn’t require substantial investment per page. Ironically, it is those business owners who pay for numerous low-cost articles that end up spending a whole lot more and damaging their business at the same time. If anything is already online, you don’t need to be writing about it.
