Why SEO and Content Marketing are Entrepreneur’s Best Friends

It’s been a long time since eCommerce entrepreneurs have stopped disputing what is more important – content marketing or SEO. Both strategies are crucial for online business success as they go hand in hand. Working together, SEO and content marketing will bring you to the top of search engine ranking.

If content is king, then SEO is the head of the government. The texts on your site should be not only informative, useful and relevant – they should be optimized for search engines as well. Maybe you’ve written a brilliant article answering the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything… but what’s the use if Google doesn’t show it to users? Our case study will tell you how to write SEO friendly articles to be noticed by search engines.

A couple of weeks ago, we strongly recommended that you add a blog to your website and spend a significant amount of your energy on developing it.

But simply creating a blog is not enough.

Even the regular blog posting is not enough either.

You need to blog so as to kill three birds with one stone:

Answer the user’s request (better than competitors do)
Get into Google’s top by means of SEO
Bring convertible traffic to your site

Today we will tell you how we create SEO content that gets into Google’s top 10 in two weeks and at the same time remains readable for people by the example of this article.

Brainstorming and internet surfing are the most popular ways to find the ideas for our articles.

Here we can work in two directions:

We can start with a specific keyword and come up with a theme for it
We can take some idea and select the SEO keyword for it

In our SEO content marketing strategy, we use both methods. Most importantly, do not put the carriage before the horse and do not write an article before the keyword is selected for it. There is nothing worse than trying to stuff the key into the already written article, especially if it does not fit there much.

Primary keywords research for website content

When we bought an account in SEMrush, the process of keywords research has become much easier.

We usually enter some idea and study the shown search volume. We also explore the Phrase Match and Related Keywords sections.

It’s a great idea to insert a link to an article from the similar thematic blog in SEMrush and look through the list of keywords on which it is ranked.

Looking through all the possible formulations of one query, we select long-tail keywords (3-4 words) with frequency in the US from at least 100-200 requests per month and up to 700-800.

If you take the lower frequency, the traffic will be too small. If the frequency is too high, the competition will be very intense, and it will require our additional efforts in terms of external SEO (buying links, sharing in social networks, etc.).

Be sure to look at the Competition graph. We prefer to take keywords with the Competition level not more than 0.70 (ideally up to 0.50).

Besides, when you take a keyword consisting of more than 3 words, it already includes more competitive keywords of 1-2 words (seed keywords) that can rise over time if the article becomes successful. This happened to our article about Instagram shoutouts, although we initially did not expect to get into Google’s top on such a competitive request.

Example:

For our article we started with a search query “online store without inventory” (only 10 queries) and came to the keyword “how to start an online store without inventory” (110 queries), which itself is a topic for the article.

Right after posting we took the fifth position with this keyword.

In a week we were already on the fourth position.

Another helpful service that can be used for these purposes is Ubersuggest.

Alternative keywords

We study SEMrush Phrase Match and Related Keywords sections to find synonyms and additional formulations of the keyword. We use them to avoid overoptimization, i.e. keyword stuffing, including using keywords in heading tags H2.

There you can also get some ideas for sections of the article.

Example:

In our article, we used the following word combinations:

Starting online store without inventory
Open online store without inventory
What to sell online without inventory
How to run online store without inventory
Selling products online without inventory

Another must-have in the preparation is the competitor analysis of the primary keyword in the top 10. We must understand:

What they write about
How long are their articles
What titles and subtitles they use, how many points are there in their lists (if they have 10 points, then we will make 11)
What sources they refer to
What statistics they give
What pictures they add
How many paid ads are there in the SERP (if the ads take more than half of the top, you’d better choose another keyword)

On the basis of this analysis, we make statement of work, plan for the article and generate SEO title. Competitor analysis also helps to determine the optimal blog post length for SEO.

How we write search engine optimized content

Blog posts headlines: H1 and SEO title

We generate one or two headlines for each article. They can be equal, but we prefer make them diverse as they are designed for different audiences.

SEO title tag is what will be shown in the Google SERP. We make it as laconic as possible (not longer than 72 or even 60 characters). The keyword should be in the beginning of the sentence.
Heading tag H1 is what your blog readers will see. H1 can be more creative than title; anyway, it also should contain the keyword.

Example:

H1 – How To Start Online Store Without Inventory: Let’s Compare The Options!

Title – How to Start Online Store Without Inventory: 5 Options to Compare

This is not a very good example as the keyword is very long and takes the biggest part of the headline. If the keyword is shorter, title and H1 can differ more.

SEO Meta description

The next important step is writing meta description. Meta description is what users will see in the SERP under the title. Description length is about 150 characters, but sometimes it can be longer.

Usually, we include the keyword in the description, though it is optional. Check how your competitors handle it. In a couple of sentences, this description should explain what the article is about, what problem it solves, and why the users need to read it.

The length of meta tags is easy to control with Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.

Sometimes Google can ignore your description and show some part of the text with keywords instead. In this case, we recommend to rewrite the description to make it more relevant for the search engine.

Example:

We have written the following description: “Want to become an eCommerce entrepreneur and wonder how to start online store without inventory? Check out 5 different ways to run an online business without stock.”

But in the SERP we see this:

So, we have rewritten the description, and we hope that it will be changed in the SERP after indexing.

Keyword Frequency

The main point is to use the keyword in the first paragraph of the article. There are no universal rules for the remaining part of the text.

You might have noticed that we slightly oversaturated the subtitles with the keywords in the mentioned article, but we did it intentionally. This strategy still works, and we sometimes use it. There is a risk that Google will penalize for such overoptimization, and it looks like this trend is coming, but so far it is allowed in informative longreads (and judging by the top 10, it is even recommended).

See what your competitors do, add the keys if the article does not get into the top after 2-3 weeks.

Links to authoritative sources

One of the indicators of your article’s value is the confirmation of your words by links to authoritative sources (analytical companies, Wikipedia, news resources). This is good for your readers, as they do not need to take it for granted. And it is good for the search engines as well, since it means that you did a great job preparing this content.

Optimal blog post length for SEO

To choose the optimal length for your blog post, go back to the Competitor analysis. There is no universal answer, everything depends on the keyword. Some queries require a serious analysis, and even a thousand words can’t be enough. And for some keywords, it’s ok to give a short answer which can appear in Google’s featured snippet block.

That’s why before writing SEO friendly articles for your blog, you should study your competitors and look at their text. But the main thing is not how many words you write. The matter is how you cover the subject of the request. You must answer all the additional questions that may arise while reading so that the user does not return to Google to search for answers on other sites. Besides, Google will take into account that readers spend a lot of time on your site; it means you have interesting content which can be raised in the SERP.

11 SEO and content marketing tips

Illustrate your ideas: add pictures, graphs, charts, videos.
Write Alt texts for pictures, name them like “this-is-keyword-foto.jpg.”
Divide the text into subtitled sections.
Include keywords into heading tags H2, H3 for subtitles.
Highlight the main ideas in bold or italics.
Use interesting text formatting in your blog (for example, in our blog, we use blocks for quotes).
Insert links to other blog articles to keep the readers on your site as long as possible
Motivate your readers to comment – the more comments you have, the better, especially if they include keywords. Answer the comments and encourage the discussion.
Collect users’ emails and set mailing lists.
Give the link to your products, add an advertising banner to your blog. Do not forget that the main purpose why you attract the traffic is SALES.
Make the article’s URL short and insert keyword there.

We hope that our experience will be helpful for all eCommerce entrepreneurs who decided to add SEO content to their dropshipping stores. Optimize your blog posts for search engine, write relevant useful articles, and you won’t go unnoticed both by customers and by Google!