How to write SEO-friendly alt text for your images
What is alt text, and why is it important for SEO?
‘Alt text’ or ‘alternative text,’ a short text intended to describe an image or any other picture on a website to make it searchable and SEO friendly.
Every day more than 1 billion searches are done on Google Images. Today, image searches represent about 38% of all searches in search engines. That’s why optimizing your images is crucial; one step in doing so is to write SEO-friendly image alt texts.
The screenshot above shows the first search engine results page (SERP) that Google produces for the search term “best backpacks.” Notice how, in addition to the “Images” tab at the top, Google pulls in a substantial pack of clickable images to the beginning of the main results page — before any organic text results are visible.
Well-written alt text is important to your website’s accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO).
Accessibility
It’s read by screen readers in place of images, allowing your image content to be accessed by people who are blind or have a visual impairment.
It can be helpful to people with specific sensory processing and learning disabilities.
It’s displayed in place of the image in browsers if the image file hasn’t loaded or when the user has chosen not to view images.
SEO
Using alt text on your images can make for a better user experience, but it may also help earn you both explicit and implicit SEO benefits.
While search engine image recognition technology has vastly improved over the years, search crawlers still can’t “see” the images on a website page as we can, so it’s not wise to leave the interpretation solely in their hands. If they don’t understand or get it wrong, it’s possible you could either rank for unintended keywords or miss out on ranking altogether.
Image Traffic
One of the most important things image alt text can do for you is turn your images into hyperlinked search results that appear either in Google Images or as image packs. Image packs are special results displayed as a horizontal row of image links that can appear in any organic position, including the #1 spot on a SERP.
How do I write good alt text?
Describe the image as precisely as possible.
Alt text is, first and foremost, designed to provide text explanations of images for users who cannot see them.
An excellent point to note: generic doesn’t pay off when it comes to product descriptions. The devil is in the detail. You need to pay attention to the way you describe your products.
If an image truly doesn’t convey any meaning or value and is just for design purposes, it should live within the CSS, not HTML.
Keep it (relatively) short.
It’s advisable to keep alt text at around 125 characters or less. It was previously advised that popular screen readers cut alt text off after about 125 characters.
<img src="alt-text.jpg" alt="This is a very long alt text, which isn't user friendly, and will most likely be cut off by screen readers" />
While no longer a hard and fast rule, it is still a good guide for content creators and SEOs when writing alt text for complex images requiring longer descriptions.
Use your keywords.
Alt text provides you another opportunity to include your target keyword on a page and thus another opportunity to signal to search engines that your page is highly relevant to a particular search query.
While your first priority should be describing and providing context to the image if it makes sense to do so, include your keyword in the alt text of at least one image on the page.
Avoid keyword stuffing.
Google won’t dock you points for poorly written alt text, but you’ll be in trouble if you use your alt text as an opportunity to stuff as many relevant keywords as you can think of into it.
Focus on writing descriptive alt text that provides context to the image and if possible, includes your target keyword, and leave it at that.
Don’t include “image of,” “picture of,” etc., in your alt text. It’s already assumed your alt text refers to an image, so there’s no need to specify it.
Review for spelling errors.
Misspelled words in image alt text could hurt the user experience or confuse search engines crawling your site. You should review alt text like you would any other content on the page.
Don’t add alt text to ‘decorative’ images.
You should add alt text to most images on a webpage for the sake of SEO, UX, and accessibility — however, there are exceptions. Images that are purely decorative or are described in text nearby, for example, should have an empty alt attribute. Check out this decision tree for a more detailed breakdown of when to add alt text and when to not.
Use best practices for complex images.
Describe maps, charts, diagrams, and any other complex images using accessibility best practices. While browsers handle the longdesc=”” attribute differently, they are available to screen reader users.
Examples of SEO-friendly alt text
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples of alt text in action:
Keyword vs. Detail
Bad: in this image, a man is working on his computer, typing, or doing research. He’s frustrated by the look of it- perhaps he can’t find what he’s looking for
The alt text above makes it hard for Google to understand how the image might relate to the content on your webpage. There are no precise, descriptive keywords, and the text is too long.
Good:Man working on Google with his hands in his hair
Detail vs. Specificity
Bad: Keyword explorer tool
The alt text above isn’t too bad as it provides details of the picture but a better alt text would contain more information about the tool.
Good: ahref’s keyword tool for SEO keyword research
Context
More often than not, your images will have clear context to help you write alt the context of your within-page content. Text, but that might not always be the case. Some images might be ambiguous.
For images of this nature, it is up to you to write the alt text based on
Some images are also pretty self-explanatory and do not need any alt descriptions.
Adding Alt Text to Images in WordPress
Adding alt text to images is super easy using the WordPress block editor.
To get started, scroll to the post or page you’re editing and click on your image, so it gets marked with the blue frame. Then, go to the Image Settings in the right column of your post editor and type in the alt text in the Alt Text (alternative text) field.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that alt text plays a crucial role in an online world consumed by the importance of keywords. If you want to make the most of your alt text, keep these tips in mind and remember that the online world is constantly evolving.
We hope this post helped you understand how to write alt text for images for SEO. Remember that the more images you optimize with alt texts, the better your chances of ranking them in image search. You’ll also improve the overall user experience and keep visitors glued to your content.
SEO is one of a company’s most valuable tools to stand out and thrive online. However, mastering search engine optimization yourself can be easier said than done. Search engine optimization has become a critical component of digital marketing. However, some small enterprises still overlook it, with just half of them including it in their budget.
Multiple elements are involved in any optimization effort, from building backlinks to targeting specific keywords. With algorithms and trends changing, it’s hard for any business leader to stay ahead of the curve.
In this article, we’ll tackle the question of How much it costs to hire an SEO company or SEO services and the best practices when hiring one.
Seeking the standard cost of SEO services can be frustrating because the honest answer here is, “It depends.” Pricing can range anywhere across the board from $25 per hour to $10,000+ per month. No one can budget for an SEO project based on that kind of range.
SEO costing estimates
According to WebFX, most SEO projects cost between $400 to $10,000, depending on the service. These projects can range from working with an hourly consultant to hiring an agency for monthly SEO.
Stages: What determines SEO pricing
Size of the website
The size of your website is one of the essential factors in an SEO quote. A 10-15 page website will produce more work than an e-commerce company with hundreds of pages. This may appear unethical to charge based on the firm size.
For instance, Company that has a 15-page website will typically be on the lower end of the $400-$10,000 spectrum, while an e-commerce store with 50,000+ products should plan on a larger budget for SEO.
Company objectives
Some websites require basic structural work, while others have a results-oriented purpose requiring more resources. Suppose a company X has a $1,000,000 revenue and improves it by 10%. That’s an extra $100,000 for them. So, you will estimate the SEO rates accordingly.
Line of work
Certain industries are more competitive than others, and their keywords are also more competitive. So they require more effort and time, increasing the SEO costs.
Level of service
Each company sets its service standards, which can be time, project, or result-dependent.
Common SEO services
Background research
The first part of your SEO strategy is to think about who you want to target. Your content must be relevant, useful to your audience, and easy for new visitors to discover via search engines.
Getting to know your audience is crucial, so the background research phase should include gathering feedback to find out what your users want from your site. You’ll also need to conduct industry research, to spot current trends and get ahead of the game.
This process will give you an insight into the kind of content your audience is looking for and what form they prefer to consume the content in. In part, you can do the analysis yourself. But SEOs do this, too, along with other elements of the strategy.
Content Marketing
The essence of SEO is content marketing. The content of your website can be tweaked to increase SEO. Content marketing uses relevant content to encourage customers to take a specific action.
Drawing new eyeballs to your page after optimization encourages people to take action. It is the most cost-effective SEO technique. Many SEO businesses create content and distribute it to industry-relevant websites to gain backlinks to your website.
Keyword and competitor research
Keyword research involves thinking about how potential customers might search for your business. It is vital to identify direct competitors and check which keywords drive traffic to their sites.
Free keyword research tools could get the job done, but it is advisable to outsource SEO services for more comprehensive, in-depth research.
SEO services may include research, marketing, or technical SEO
Technical Search Engine Optimization
Technical difficulties are frequently detected during an initial SEO assessment, including a full-service package. Meta descriptions, title tags, alt tags, page speed, page experience, website architecture, schema markup, and other factors are all considered.
Each landing page should be as relevant as possible to at least 1-3 keywords from one group. There should not be pages optimized for the same keywords, as this causes keyword cannibalization.
Resource management
Resource management can sound daunting because of Google’s 200+ ranking factors, but the process can be simplified by focussing on the three main factors.
1. Information Architecture
SEO services for your information architecture should be geared toward the following:
Your site’s content should conform to best practices with an emphasis on:
Being unique and offering value.
Matching search queries.
Satisfying user intent.
Being of high quality.
Satisfying the fresh content Algorithm.
3. Backlinks
Link-building is when you get other websites to link to your site, driving referral traffic and telling Google that your site is worthy of citation (so you’ll earn a higher ranking). You can do this via great content, influencer reviews, and partner links.
Must be natural. Avoid popular link schemes like PBNs and paid guest posts. Instead, focus on building real links that boost positioning in the SERPs.
Quality is key: A lower number of High trust/High Authority/Relevant links can outperform a large quantity of lower quality links.
SEO Pricing Models
Before hiring someone, it helps to know how you’d like to work with them. Here are some of the most common options based on Upwork’s data.
Hourly basis
The contract for SEO services can be hourly. Most clients pay on an hourly basis when they want to bind the projects on an immediate basis. Because sometimes, the deadlines are fixed in advance, and the projects get delayed due to uncertainties. The average SEO cost per hour ranges between 80-100 USD.
Project basis
When you decide in advance to complete the SEO project and find an SEO partner to complete the whole project, the average SEO cost per project ranges between 5,000-30,000 USD.
Result basis
In this arrangement, you hire an SEO firm to produce a specific result in terms of ranking.
You don’t have to pay anything until the target is met because some SEO tasks are more straightforward while others are a little complex.
Monthly basis
You can hire a team monthly when you have good relations with an SEO company, which could be due to past positive experiences. The average SEO cost per month ranges between 750-5000 USD.
Set goals: Manage the measurable
Before establishing a budget, define specific goals for a campaign. Your goals should include measurable results, a specified timeframe, and an actual measurement for success.
The general consensus is that the most important metrics directly impact the bottom line. Organic sessions, goal conversions, and revenue fall into that category.
Setting achievable goals for your SEO will help you plan and budget better
Goal setting could include improving organic sessions by X%, increasing conversions by Y per month, and/or increasing revenues by Z%. When setting goals, remember that:
“…in most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit.”
A campaign with actionable goals makes it easy to develop a budget with which you can seek SEO services.
The Takeaway
SEO services and companies can be expensive, and many smaller websites may find this financially taxing. Because of this, it is easy for start-up companies with a low budget to fall prey to “affordable” SEO service advertisements that guarantee crazy results that sound too good to be true.
Here is our SEO pricing guide to help you find a great SEO plan.
Avoid agencies advertising ‘cheap’ SEO rates, like $100 or less
Pass on SEO plans that guarantee results, like page one rankings
Request deliverables alongside pricing to see what you’re paying for
Look for companies that customize their solutions to your goals and industry
Search for agencies that measure SEO performance and its ROI so you can see the impact of your investment.
You are now equipped with the basic guide to finding a suitable SEO service provider that suits your budget constraints. That said, you can confidently go out into the overwhelming waters of finding a legitimate SEO that will work with your needs.
We discussed the importance of keywords in SEO in our previous article, and now it is time to look at why it is important to choose the right keywords for your web content.
With the right digital marketing strategy, your organization will quickly reach more customers, increasing your profits. A central aspect of this effort involves choosing the right keywords.
Understand your keyword types
Different websites and businesses have different keyword requirements. Before diving into the vast ocean that is keyword research, it is of absolute importance that you first understand:
Your business and content you want to post on your webpages
Your audience search intent
Understanding the type of content and your intended market will help you narrow down your research to the keyword types in your selected category. Please read our article on keyword types for more information on all the keyword types.
Importance of choosing the right keywords
Keywords play a huge role in connecting websites to their audience and getting the much coveted organic traffic. For this reason, it’s important to understand keywords and the delicate science of choosing the right keywords for your content.
Search engine algorithms and keywords
Good ranking of your site on search engines will depend to a large extent on the choice and use you make of your keywords and key expressions.
Google and its competitors are no longer satisfied with simply filling pages with keywords without giving structured information. The days when it was enough to put them on the fly and stuff keywords (keyword stuffing) are over.
A few years ago, choosing your keywords carefully and placing them regularly in your text was enough. Then, ranking on SERPs with mediocre content was possible, but the Google search algorithm has evolved from its toddler days. It has adapted to giving priority to user experience and can now recognize and promote quality content that meets searchers’ expectations.
As it has become more demanding, it is clearly in the interest of readers looking for quality writing, concise texts, and good overall architecture. To get better positioning in search engine results and therefore have better traffic, content writers must ensure that they:
Are meeting the expectations of Internet users.
Are informative and didactic.
Answer a searcher’s most immediate questions.
Use quality keywords to satisfy Google.
Once you understand your market and search intent, you can look at keyword types and how to place them in text.
Target your ideal customer base
You must target the right audience to succeed when creating a business or website.
For example: Suppose you start a website about “baseball.” So writing articles about “softball” cannot make baseball fans interested in your website though these are similar topics.
You want to create exciting and relevant content for your clients and prospects. Keyword research will help you figure out what your audience is looking for. Then you can write or create content around that.
Builds social media shares and increases visibility
After doing the relevant keyword research, you can provide people with the proper information about what they want using the right keywords. When your audience connects with your content and finds it relevant to them, they are more likely to share it on their social media pages. In this way, your website will grow and advance organically. This will need less effort in the area of link building.
People tend to share what they like on their social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. So, if you are creating articles or images, then be sure to add the right keywords that will entice your audience.
Provide Credibility and Help Build Page Authority
Using the right keywords also helps build credibility. Using the right words, phrases, or jargon gives the impression that you are an expert in the subject matter.
Keywords are essential to avoid sounding amateurish. Keywords help build page authority, giving website visitors an immediate sense of being at the right place to have their queries answered.
Improve your ad targeting
Keyword strategies are highly beneficial for paid search, not just organic SEO. When you run online ads (which place your website or landing pages above organic search results), keep your keyword strategy in mind to ensure your keyword terms align with your business goals.
Choosing the right keywords for your content has several advantages
Google still ensures that any keywords used in targeted ads are relevant to a searcher’s needs. Choosing the right keywords to make your ads appear on search results is crucial.
Keep Up with Competition
When it comes to the Internet, content is king. Good content is rewarded by both the search engines (with higher rankings in search results) and the users (with more traffic to the website).
If you want to keep up with competitors and be relevant long-term, then keyword-enriched content is what you should concentrate on. You can meet your competitors head-on with the right keywords and have a strong foothold in the online marketplace.
Increased conversion
If you create content your audience finds interesting; they’ll want to learn more and might interact with other web content on your website. The conversion of traffic to your site to potential customers can only be possible if the content they interact with is correct.
It is not enough to use a bunch of irrelevant keywords to your web content or slap any selection of keywords to your text. Choosing the right keywords can mean different interactions with your website.
What Not To Do With Keywords
Keyword stuffing
As mentioned before, keywords are important for visibility. However, over-optimization can prove to be counter-productive. Search engines now can easily recognize sites that provide poor-quality and irrelevant content.
Overdoing it will only hurt the user experience. So, don’t try to be smart because search engines are smarter. You should undoubtedly incorporate as many keywords as possible, but only the useful ones.
Optimize all pages on the website
Unless your website has only one page, it should be taken as a whole, and each page should be interconnected. This will maintain a seamless flow of information and make it easy for users to navigate your site. Thus, avoid gaps or information asymmetry and don’t work on each page in a silo.
Keyword don’t dos
Don’t use off-topic keywords.
It is a no-brainer that your content should not have keywords unrelated to your subject matter. You could bring in shampoos and oils if you write about hair care, but you cannot talk about electric switches! The importance of keywords is to help search engines show relevant content to the target audience. If your content has irrelevant keywords, it won’t appear for the right searches. And, no customer would be happy to see an unrelated page while searching.
Don’t just use keywords anywhere in the content.
It should not appear forced. Keywords should be incorporated to maintain the natural flow of the content. If the SEO keyword importance hampers the readability of the content, there is no point. Keywords must be related to the subject matter and should make sense. Conduct a thorough keyword search before beginning the writing process.
Conclusion
Keywords are important in content strategizing. As a web content creator, whether copywriter or general writer, knowing your keyword base and ensuring each web copy uses the right keywords is your responsibility.
The right keywords will move your website from the ordinary, sub-par content provider to a well-respected, high-ranking site that is relevant and trusted to your target audience.
Writing SEO content is an intimidating task for many writers. From topic selection and gathering research to writing the post and pressing “Publish,” the writing process often demands hours.
That’s why if your post doesn’t earn the traffic you expected, it can be a major letdown. Fortunately, search engine optimization is a way to combat low traffic. SEO writing optimizes the content on the page so that search engines will more easily crawl its content and judge it favorably. It is given a better placement in the SERP.
SEO writing is a form of writing that helps websites become more visible to major search engines. A highly visible website with good content appears on the first few pages of results when someone searches for that topic.
Why Is SEO Writing Important?
SEO writing is done to help content rank better on Google. If the content is not optimized, it will come up several pages back in a search. For your content to rank, it also needs legit search engine optimization.
Put another way: Amazing content + on-page SEO = SEO writing.
The higher a website ranks in search engines, the more people will visit its site. More visitors means more organic traffic and, potentially, more leads. SEO content-writing jobs are increasingly in demand, so understanding what the job entails means you will be a more valuable asset to any company that hires you.
A study by Sistrix found that the number of clicks that pages get depends not only on getting onto that first page of search results but also on getting as high up on that page as possible. The first result on the first page gets clicked on by more than 28% of people doing the searching. After that first result, the percentages go down with each spot on the page. So you need your site to be one of people’s first results.
Writing for SEO is also important because it is a marketing technique that keeps going for the life of your website.
Content SEO crossword with marker on transparent wipe board.
Many people do well with PPC advertising, but if they stop paying for that advertising, it will no longer bring traffic.
Defining key terms
SERPs: Search engine results pages. In other words, the Google page contains all the results users can click on after a query.
SERP position: The exact ranking in Google Analytics. For instance, Position 14 would refer to page 2 of Google since only ten listings typically appear on Page 1.
Anchor text: The hyperlinked words or phrases directing traffic to other web pages.
Search queries: Words that users type or say into search engines.
Search volume: The number of times a term is queried per month.
Click-through rate: Percentage of clicks for a SERP result relative to how many times searchers saw that search result.
Conversion rate: Percentage of people who complete the desired action (a click, a purchase, etc.) divided by the total number of people who visited that page.
How to write for SEO
Keyword research
The first step before writing new content is to decide which keywords to target.
This process is known as keyword research, and it’s essential for a simple reason. You need to write content around topics people search for; keyword research will tell you that.
When you do your keyword research, the outcome will be a set of SEO keywords; both focus keywords and long-tail keywords that people type in search engines.
The easiest way to do this is to:
Go to Google and search for your chosen topic.
Visit the top 5 pages and analyze the type of content they provide.
Use keyword research tools such as ahrefs, Ubersuggest, etc., to find out for which keywords those pages rank and the traffic they get. We have provided a list of the best free Research tools to use in the market.
Then depending on the results, decide which main keywords you will target in your content.
Using a tool, find out the associated long-tail keywords and LSI (or semantic keywords)
Write engaging content
It seems easy enough, yet so many websites make content for all the wrong reasons. Write content that appeals to the interests of your target market or answers their questions. Not all posts need to be about your product or service, but they all should be industry related. Assert yourself and your company as an expert in your industry by writing SEO-friendly content that is interesting and informative, and do it better than your competition.
You need to make sure that you understand the user intent. In other words, your content should match what users want to read for the particular keywords.
One of the ways to find out is to go back to the Google search results and look for patents. For example, if you are writing an article about ‘SEO tools,’ you will notice that almost all results are about lists with ‘Free Tools.’
This means that Google has found out that when users search for tools, although they don’t include the word ‘Free,’ they intend to browse lists of Free tools.
This also means that if you target this keyword, you must adjust your title and content accordingly. Otherwise, you minimize your chances of rankings for that term.
Create headings using long-tail keywords
One of the characteristics of SEO-friendly content is that it’s easy to read by both search engines and users, and headings help in that direction. Most users won’t read your content; they will scan through it. Having meaningful headings, you help them find the part they want faster.
Search engines follow the same pattern, especially for long-form content. They scan the page and look for certain elements to understand how a page is structured and what topics or keywords the content is covering.
To make their job easier, you can use predefined heading tags in your HTML like the H1 tag, h2 tag, and h3.
Usually, a page has only one H1 tag used for the title, and the rest of the content has H2 for the main headings and H3 for the sub-headings. To further improve the SEO friendliness of your copy, try to use some of your long-tail keywords in the headings.
Use your keywords strategically.
Here is an excellent tip that most SEO writers fail to follow. Once you are done with the first draft, you need to go back and revisit your post introduction.
Your goal is to ensure that your target keyword is included in your opening paragraph. The reason is that Google always considers that content above the fold and high on a page is more important than content found down the page.
By adding your keywords in the first paragraph, you give a big clue to Google as to which keywords to associate this page with. It’s also good for the users since you can help them understand that they are on the right page.
Use LSI or related keywords.
The latest algorithms look for common words that accompany the keywords you use.
That lets the search engine know that the content is about that topic. If you aren’t sure how to use these companion words, study latent semantic indexing and put that knowledge to use.
Optimize images
A great web page may include several different ways to impart information. These often include other types of media to back up and expand on the information in the text.
The use of videos on the page is excellent for this purpose. Using helpful pictures is also useful to readers.
Too much gray text can be monotonous for people to read. Breaking it up makes it flow better and allows for easier reading.
Adding images to your content makes it more exciting and easier to read. While this is not directly related to SEO writing, it can help in several ways:
Users are more likely to share content with high-quality images on their social media networks than content with no visuals.
You can use the image alt text to give more clues to search engines about your content.
When properly optimizing your images, you have more chances of appearing in Google image search for your target (or related) keywords.
Links: use them (internal and backlinks)
Using links as information citations is a common way to show where the information came from.
However, your site should not be using information from low-quality sites. If you have links to spammy sites, the information on your page will also be assumed to be spammy.
Always link to high-level websites that are popular in their own right.
The overall goal of search engines is to make good information universally available. When you link to good sites, you show search engines that you are connected to other sites and get your information from useful sites.
Most SEO content writers forget internal linking. An internal link is a link that points to a page on the same website. When you publish a new page, it has to match your site’s topics. This improves relevancy and rankings.
Although internal links are not as powerful as SEO backlinks, Google uses them to understand what the linked page is about.
Final word
The success of your content marketing or copywriting campaign will depend on the SEO writing strategies you put in place.
Anyone can learn SEO writing. Mastering SEO writing is easy through practice and following some basic SEO principles. As with any other SEO-related project, it requires a lot of time and research, but the result (your website ranking high on search engines) is worth the work you put in.
If you’re a blogger, you’ve asked yourself how many words an SEO-friendly blog post should contain. Does the overall length of your blog matter for SEO? How would that impact your writing? The ideal blog length has been a topic of discussion for years. The short answer provided by Google for this brain-itching question is simple “it depends.”
What Google means is you shouldn’t restrict yourself to a character count that’s either too low or too high. However, Google has clarified that word length is not a ranking factor. However, any seasoned blogger will tell you that there is an ideal range for how long your blog posts should be. The main variables to consider when deciding how long your posts should be are:
Your audience
the structure of the post
Subject matter.
Searcher intent.
Subject matter
The ideal length of a blog post on a recipe for a food blog will be different from the ideal length of a post on the best foods that promote good eyesight. The subject matter demands are different for both these articles, so wanting to write them with the same length in mind might be a tall order.
Audience and intent
Another factor to consider is your audience and their search intent. Likely, a person looking for the perfect recipe to make dumplings does not want to read lines of tiresome text to get to the point of making them. On the hand, a person looking for foods that promote good eyesight might be looking for a lot of information on the foods chosen and the data backing it up.
You also need to consider that person’s level of intent; are they looking for basic discovery information, or are they trying to buy something right now in as few clicks as possible? Your content will reflect that person and their different stages of user intent.
What do statistics say about word length in SEO?
The ideal blog post length for SEO should be 2,100-2,400 words. According to Hubspot, the average length of their 50 most-read blog posts in 2019 yielded an average word count of 2300. Even though global attention spans are narrowing, long-form content still performs exceptionally well in search.
But before you go writing your 2,300-word blog post, keep in mind that not all blog posts need to be this long. Data suggests that 16 of 50 read posts fall under 1,500 words, so there are still plenty of opportunities to get your posts ranked even with a lower word count.
Advantages of writing SEO posts with longer text
Room for more
For best practices, writing posts with a word length of 1000 words and above is better for ranking. When your text is longer, Google has more clues to determine what it is about. The longer your (optimized) text, the more often your focus keyphrase appears. This is no excuse for keyphrase stuffing, though! If you optimize your copy naturally, your focus keyphrase will pop up here and there throughout your text. Longer posts provide versatility and give more room to fit more headings, links, and images.
Help in ranking for long-tail variants
A longer text might also help you rank for multiple long-tail variants of the keyphrase you’ve optimized your text. That’s because, in a lengthy text, you probably address various topics. Your article, or your other posts that take a deep dive into the subtopic, will have a chance to turn up in search results for the long-tail variants of your keyphrase. If you do some intelligent internal linking, you can boost traffic to the extensive post you’ve written. This will help you drive more organic traffic to your site. Check out our article for more information on SEO and ranking.
Avoid thin content
Although word length is not a ranking factor, if a page consists of few words, Google is more likely to think of it as thin content. All search engines want to provide answers to people’s queries. Thin content is less likely to offer a complete explanation and satisfy the public. Consequently, it will probably not rank very high.
The same goes for product pages and product descriptions in your e-Commerce online store. While these don’t have to be as long as a blog post, making them long is a good idea.
The ideal post length for lead generation
There’s often a disconnect between the posts that generate traffic and those that generate leads or new contacts for your business. Posts that get more traffic do so because they’re searched for by a wider audience, which sometimes means the topic you’ve written about is more generic and doesn’t align closely with your business. According to research, the ideal length of a blog post intended to generate leads is 2,500 words. This number was approximately 500 words longer than the average length of the most-read blog posts.
Writing longer content works in your favor for a blog post intended for lead generation. Longer content reinforces your knowledge and authority on a subject — particularly if it’s a keyword or a topic for a particular audience. When your coverage is more in-depth for these ideas, you increase your chances of ranking better — and while your audience might be smaller, your chances of converting readers into leads are far more significant.
Focus on quality, not quantity
Too many people emphasize the average word length for articles and the misunderstood importance of having more than a certain number of words on each page to rank well.
Give users what they want regardless of how many words it takes to say it. If it feels like you’re writing uninteresting copy to inflate the word count, know that your readers can feel it as well.
Google can recognize content that contributes little to no added value to the web. That means longer posts can hold your site back in search if they don’t say anything useful.
Ideal blog post lengths for different blog types
there are different types and formats of blog posts, so the ideal word length for blog posts can be determined by the kind of blog post you’re creating content for.
How-to blog posts
How-to blog posts should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Because how-to posts describe how to do something, the ideal length of the blog post depends on how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining how to do. For example, this blog post on how to search for something on google has 1200 words.
Listicles
Listicles, or list blog posts, should be 2,300-2,600 words. List blog posts are probably the most approachable format for new bloggers. Anyone can make a blog post just by listing off and explaining a few examples, tools, resources, or ideas for a given topic. Regarding the length of these blog posts, the rule of thumb is the more examples, the better.
Pillar blog posts
Pillar pages should be around 4,000 words since they are supposed to cover significantly more content than an average blog post.
A pillar page is your attempt at being the all-encompassing guide to any subject available on the Internet as a blog post. These posts serve as a “pillar” to a cluster of blog posts related to the topic explained in the pillar. You can learn more about pillar pages by watching the video below.
What-is blog posts
“What is” posts, or blog posts that answer a question (such as the one you’re reading right now), should be between 1,300 and 1,700 words (which this one is!).
These posts are the poster child for making blog posts “as long as they need to be.” When readers search for what, who, or when something is, they typically want a quick answer or explanation. There’s no need to bog down readers with too much information.
Minimum blog post length
There is no official minimum for blog post length, though Yoast recommends at least 300 words. Data suggests that writing longer posts should be the rule rather than the exception for your blog. This practice will help your website build authority in the eyes of search engines, which can help shorter blog posts rank better.
Summary
Google’s algorithm prefers more content word count compared to shorter content posts. It is not about quantity but quality. If you generate enough content for excellence, you’ll be able to rank in the top SERP results.
SEO is getting more complex and more innovative. A strategy is necessary to achieve long-term success. Whatever your approach, the message is loud and clear: your articles require a checklist of SEO items for them to rank well.
Word count appropriate to the goal and audience might help you get there faster, but it won’t guarantee results on its own.
Make sure to produce the best possible quality content optimized for SEO, and do it consistently.
For any business with a website, visibility and attracting organic traffic on Google is an important goal. Google is a powerful search engine that uses bots to crawl the web and determines the websites that are most relevant to a user. Websites are then ranked on the results page according to the criteria used by these crawlers. Google has to determine that a searcher’s query is relevant to your page. Ideally, websites should aim to be on the first SERP (search engine results page) if they want to succeed. No one visits the second page.
This may seem like a tall order for smaller websites competing for the same space as larger, more established sites, but it’s not that hard to feature on the first page as well. Google crawlers go through all web pages available, select the most optimized websites, and reward them by ranking them higher.
Optimizing your website, making a few changes, and tweaking things here and there is your best bet at appearing on searches.
Importance of appearing on the first page
Appearing on the first results page is crucial if you want your website to do well and grow. The first results page is a highly competitive space and takes effort to get there, but it is well worth it. Some of the advantages of your website appearing on the first results page include but are not limited to:
Improved visibility
Higher rankings on SERPs mean more visibility for your website. Traffic and click-through rates are highest on the first SERP. Not only that, but there’s also a significant decline in traffic to the first vs. last websites ranked on the first page.
Engagement scores decline as you go down the page.
Immediate exposure
Ranking on the first page exposes your business to more people interacting with it, which could convert to more traffic and click-throughs. Interactions with your website are essential as they will eventually convert to customers.
Increased industry authority
Google crawlers use a set of criteria to make sure that only the best sites are ranked first. Ranking on the first page means that your website and its content are relevant and provide immediate solutions to users. People trust your brand and will likely purchase from you or come back.
How to be found on Google
1. Get a simple domain
Choosing a domain name that reflects the purpose of your website is an ingenious way to get traffic to your site. Human beings are inherently simple creatures. A person is likelier to click on a website with a domain that is easy to understand with your focus keywords rather than one filled with random numbers and letters.
For example, if your business is fixing roofs and wants to create a website where potential clients can see what services you provide, choosing a domain name with the words roof in it would be ideal. www.roofingservices.com would be indexed by Google crawlers making your site appear when a person conducts a search.
2. Use location if available
If your business has a physical location, add it to your website. Studies show that people search local businesses online first before making a purchase. Using the above example, if the roofing services company was located in Seattle, the owner could add the location as part of the domain name www.roofingservicesseattle.com. This will appear in roofing services searches for a person living in Seattle.
This specificity will make you appear when people search the services you’re providing combined with a physical location. Add your business on maps and provide an accurate address for an even better ranking. Of course, the more specific your location, the better and easier it is to be found and create organic traffic to your site.
3. Submit your site to Google
Although it takes time for new websites to appear on Google searches, you can boost the processing speed by submitting your sitemaps to Google via the search console. Google search console allows you to submit your site for indexing.
Search using your homepage’s URL to determine whether your site is already included in Google’s search index. If it appears, you’re good to go; if it doesn’t, the search console will help. The search console has a lot more functionality than just assisting with the indexing of your website; it can also provide stats on how your site is doing, traffic and user interactions, and much more.
4. Create a keyword strategy
Keyword mastering is a necessity in SEO. We’ve described what keywords are in our previous article here. Keywords make it easy for Google to scan and index your web content. Learning how to use keywords properly is vital because misusing them (keyword stuffing) can lead to penalties from Google. Placing keywords strategically within your website and content is an art form you should invest time in learning. With proper keyword use, your site will be indexed and ranked higher on results pages, giving you more visibility for your niche.
Although Google has made it known that metadata does not affect SERP rankings in any way, metadata is still important in getting visitors to your site.
Metadata consists of a meta title and a meta description of a webpage on the web. Metadata helps viewers know at a glance what your page has to offer if it contains the information that would make them click your link.
Use clear and concise wording of the title and describe the content in a few carefully chosen words. Metadata helps you get seen, helps people decide to interact with your content, and helps Google identify your content’s relevance to users.
6. Optimize your Google My Business page
Listing your business on Google My business is an option a business with a physical location can opt for for more visibility. It helps significantly with the visibility of your business when people search online. It’s imperative to provide as much information about your business as possible. Complete business profiles get more clicks than incomplete ones.
Keep your business information correct and up-to-date, and update your profile and content like images if available. Follow through with claiming and verifying your listing to monitor, maintain, and optimize it as you see fit.
7. Create user-centered content
Focusing on ensuring your website is good enough for Google may make you lose track of user satisfaction, potentially harmful to your rankings, especially keyword stuffing. Google can detect this and penalize your site. Provide valuable, trustworthy, easy-to-read, and informative content, not just the keyword.
Make your website easy to navigate and provide information that answers a visitor’s most immediate questions.
A good rule of thumb to remember is to make content for human consumption, not Google bots.
8. Be mobile-friendly
Mobile devices like smartphones have taken over from the bulkier solutions like computers. It is estimated that three out of five Google searches happen on mobile, and more than fifty percent of general traffic has switched over to mobile. Optimizing your website, so it’s visible on different device types is imperative. Google is user satisfaction centered and favors mobile-friendly websites over desktop ones. If available, the best option is to use responsive mode for your website, as it will adapt to any screen size. If this option is not available, it is possible to tweak your site’s settings manually. A mobile-friendly site is:
Fast and has good loading speeds. Faster sites rank higher on Google and keep visitors engaged or coming back.
Learn and keep up-to-date with best practices for mobile web design.
Keep your mobile website clutter-free.
9. Work on your backlinks
Backlinks are links that point back to your website or web pages from other websites. They are important because they signal to Google that your content is reliable and improve your ranking, which may lead to more traffic to your website. An excellent way to create backlinks is through outreach to other websites by writing content for them. Another way is to create content that is so good other publications use it. Backlinks help assert dominance in your niche, leading to a higher click-through rate and hence higher rankings on Google.
Note: It is better to have a few high-quality backlinks from established websites that have low-quality ones. Google can detect and penalize your website if the algorithm thinks your backlinks are spammy.
10. Use Google
Google offers a lot of information, written and video tutorials, about optimizing your website, so you rank on the first results page. This information is free and straight from the source, so you know you can never go wrong.
Set aside time to go through materials necessary to gain knowledge on optimizing your site, which in turn creates visibility for your site.
Conclusion
The key to appearing on Google searches for your niche is ensuring your website and content are optimized for Google. Optimized content improves your ranking on the search results page, especially for the first page. This drives more traffic to your site, which could mean a higher click-through rate and potential customers.
The SEO process is never-ending, but the rest will be easy once you get the hang of it. Catching up with all the latest trends and updates and working on improving your output. Don’t get tired of working to improve your site; remember to have fun with the process.
