The 6 most important elements to focus on when writing SEO

None of us have time.

And it gets even worse:

“There are 200 known and unknown factors that determine whether your content will rank well.”

It’s hard to find the right focus, isn’t it?

In general, when it comes to SEO copywriting , you can never be 100% sure.

SEO is always speculation.

Nonetheless, the “general norms” are good guidelines to work with.

Therefore I would like to give you the most important elements along the way, according to the 80/20 principle, so that you get the best possible results with the least effort.

Focus on these elements … and good rankings will follow.

1. Keyword

SEO always starts with good ol ‘keyword research .

Here you first have to understand that it is not the individual, generic keyword that is decisive, but the language.

Because the real job of keyword research is to learn the language of your target audience. What words do they use when they search for your topic?

But that doesn’t just make sense from an SEO perspective.

In copywriting it is the language that decides. If you speak the language of your customer, then they like you, they read your actual text more easily … and you can convince them more easily.

“In addition, you should only ever focus on one keyword.”

In theory, you can use multiple focus keywords. But I believe in simplicity. SEO is complex enough as it is. That’s why I recommend that you optimize every piece of content for just one keyword.

When doing your research, make sure that there are as many search queries as possible and of course as little competition as possible.

For your content, I recommend that you focus on little competition. In your content landing pages, you can use the keywords where the competition is higher.

Why?

Because content landing pages are forever. And that takes time until you rank for a highly competitive keyword.

The searches aren’t that important here either. As long as 10 people are looking for it a month, it makes sense to create content for it. But of course only if there are the 10 right visitors.

In short, choose a focus keyword that you want to rank for.

2. Title Tag & H1 heading

The focus keyword should appear in your title tag and in your H1 headline. Best as close to the beginning as possible.

This gives you another advantage: Often others link you with the complete headline or with the complete title tag. These anchor texts are an important factor for the search engine, which determine the relevance and the ranking.

But don’t drive yourself crazy here.

Don’t just write for the search engine, write for people. So it makes sense if the keyword appears anywhere at all.

Because when people are looking for something, they want to see the language or keyword in the search results. If not, they are less likely to click.

Often the title tag and the H1 heading are identical. Depending on the industry, people like longer headlines better. Here you simply have more space to get attention and convince him to consume your content.

It can also be beneficial if you include your brand name in the title tag. Google is giving brands more and more weight in search results .

Let’s look at an example.

“How to write enticing headlines that are clicked, read and shared” sounds exciting to people. From the point of view of the search engine, however, “Headings: This is how you write headlines that are clicked” would be better.

This is generally a nice tip for the title tag, just put the keyword in front with a separator (such as a colon).

Basically, you just have to be careful that your title cannot be infinitely long – the search engine does not allow that. Therefore, make sure that you do not exceed 72 characters.

In short: Write a tempting H1 heading and make sure that your title tag is no longer than 72 characters.

3. URL

URLs only have one function: they describe your content for the visitor and the search engine.

It is therefore important that it meets the following criteria:

  • Your url must be short.
  • Your url needs to be descriptive.
  • Your URL must include your focus keyword.

Similar to the title tag, keywords in the URL bring a relevance signal for the search engine. In addition, the URL is often copied and pasted and works accordingly as anchor text.

Otherwise your URL cannot be longer than 190 characters in total. There are correlations that show that URLs that are too long have a negative impact on the ranking.

As I just said, simplicity is very important to me. And your URL has to be simple too. Ideally, this should only consist of your domain and your focus keyword.

Make sure your URL is short and crisp. If your customer can quickly and easily determine the content based on the URL, then you have a good URL.

In short , make sure your URL is short and descriptive … and includes your focus keyword.

4. Meta description

The meta description is a small excerpt from the search results pages, which shows the searcher what to expect. It’s kind of a preview before he clicks.

First of all, you should remember that this is not a ranking factor . But it affects whether you get the click you want.
Or not.

This is where your focus keyword stands out and thus ensures better click rates. And that indirectly ensures better rankings because you get more clicks and longer dwell times.

‘‘Modern SEO copywriting isn’t just about how well you rank, it’s also about what your search results look like and how tempting they are.’’

In addition to the keyword, you should summarize your content perfectly. You can think of the meta description as a kind of ad that sells the searcher to read.

In general, it makes sense for you if you always write the meta description by hand. As I said earlier, you should use a keyword for a piece of content . Accordingly, it only makes sense to tailor the meta description for this search query. Otherwise, the Googlebot sometimes does pretty weird things with it!

In order for the search engine to display the meta description correctly, always try to stay below 160 characters.

In short: summarize your content. Make sure that the focus keyword occurs and that you don’t exceed 160 characters.

5. Content

Content is always the largest, most complicated and spongiest lump. So let’s break it down into seven components:

  • Create high quality content – We preach here in the monkey blog until we vomit. You have to create content with at least 1,000 words that solves a problem for your target audience and thereby creates added value. The shares are a good indicator for this. If you don’t have any shares, then your content is unfortunately not of sufficient quality.
  • Post Content Regularly – Search engines like unique and relevant content that is regularly published and updated.
  • Focus on a core topic – this is not only something for the search engine, but also for your customer. You only have to limit yourself to one core topic for which you want to rank with the desired keyword.
  • Create long pieces of content – As a rule, shorter pieces of content rank worse than longer pieces. Many now recommend at least 300 words. Maybe that’s okay for a content landing page. But I would never go under 1,000 words on a blog article. Otherwise you simply have no room to go into depth. Only in this way do you generate the real added value that your customer wants … and even requires today.
  • Integrate your focus keyword – make sure that your keyword appears approx. 2-3 in the actual text, including variations. It is also good if the keyword is as close to the beginning as possible. The first 500 characters are a rough guide. But don’t do anything under duress here. Always write for people. He’s the one with the credit card!
  • Format strategically – From an SEO point of view, it can also be beneficial if you mark the keyword in bold or italic and put it in bullet points, numbered lists and subheadings. But as I said, just write naturally, this is more important than excessive optimization.
  • Ignore Keyword Density – I’m often asked how important keyword density is. This is the percentage ratio of the keyword to the rest of the words on the page. The keyword frequency is much more important here. This simply says how often the keyword appears on the page. As I said, with a 1,000-word article it is sufficient for the keyword to appear around twice.

But let me give you another graphic example to top it off.

Imagine a nice food blog competing against large and strong domains in the niche. How does he manage to stand out from the crowd now?

With short and boring blog articles? Or rather through long, in-depth blog articles that tell stories, are emotional and have tons of pictures of the food?

Also, never forget that the Googlebot is intelligent. He recognizes your language level and your grammar. It also recognizes related words such as “cat” and “meow”.

That’s why you never have to over-optimize your text and don’t just squeeze a keyword into it somewhere. If it fits, then it fits. If not, then not.

When in doubt, always for people.

In short, create really high quality content for your target audience. With everything included.

6. Left

Links are the basis of the web. That’s why they still make up the majority of the ranking. This is also proven by this study and this survey of top SEOs.

Therefore it is important that you focus on it according to the Pareto principle and give links the attention they deserve.

‘‘First of all, search engines want to know who linked you.’’

But they also want to know who you are left-wing neighbors with. So it makes sense to worry about who you’re linking to.

Rand Fishkin mentioned here also that Google and Marshall Simmonds, Chief Strategist of the New York Times, show that more external links provide better rankings.

Maybe that’s not a direct ranking factor. But you benefit indirectly from it because at the end of the day it creates more added value for your customers.

In addition, you integrate external, relevant and useful links into the ecosystem. And according to the law of reciprocity, you will get a lot back in the long term.

So your link neighborhood is important.

The only question is, are your neighbors decent people? Or greasy used car dealers with corpses in the basement?

In short: Link internally and externally to relevant, authoritarian and trustworthy sources.

Conclusions

Even if none of us has time and over 200 ranking factors make life difficult for us, you should limit yourself to these six elements according to the 80/20 principle.

Otherwise I just have to say:

‘‘Always focus on your customer. Make him happy. And then optimize a little for the search engine.’’

Here in the blog we use tempting headlines, exciting stories and everything else we can find in our marketing tool box to get attention.

Go this route as well and SEO will be a lot easier.