How to write SEO texts not only for Google, but for the reader and rank with them!

Fortunately, the search engines and Google in particular have learned a lot in recent years when it comes to recognizing the relevance and quality of the texts on a website. Fortunately, you won’t get very far with stupid keyword stuffing, senseless stammering or even hidden content. Instead, you need “really good” texts. But what are actually “good” texts and how do you ensure that they really rank in the search engines?

You write good texts for the reader and not for the search engine

The term SEO text is pretty misleading. An SEO text is – at least for me – any text that should be indexed in order to rank on a keyword or a series of search queries. However, it does not end here, because every website text and therefore every SEO text should fulfill other tasks. The goals for this can be varied. For example, to inform the user, advise, entertain, sell something and so on.

From an SEO point of view, a topic is of course always particularly exciting when there is enough relevant search traffic to be picked up and the competition has left room for improvement, or I can hope for links to other websites or social media shares with the post.

Text should never be written just to feed the search engine. This is a wasted opportunity.

Text search engines such as Google and Co. can recognize contexts and thematic connections through statistical evaluations and the quality of the content is rated at the latest by visitors and readers based on their search behavior. A good text that is well researched and offers the reader added value is rewarded with a good ranking.

Regardless of whether it is an online shop, company presence or blog – if you want to attract users or readers and rank well, you need content with added value. These can be both informative and entertaining. However, in order to be able to offer added value, it is essential that you know your own target group. What is it that moves you? What problems, needs and preferences does she have? Where and how does she look for it? This information is identified before the creation of the text as part of a research!

How do you find the right keywords for a text?

The challenge in creating search engine optimized texts is not finding the right keywords and using them as often as possible. But on the contrary! Individual keywords are far from important. Instead, it is a whole set of keywords, a word cloud, that is used to generate statistical relevance for a search query on Google.

Depending on whether the topic or certain keywords are the default, I start by finding a title for the keywords or the relevant search queries for the topic. I use ahref’s great Keywords Explorer 2.0, the Google Ads Keyword Planner, HyperSuggest, keyword.io and the SISTRIX Toolbox to find relevant keywords and, if necessary, to cluster and prioritize them enriched with data.

In addition, I always look at the top 10 on Google beforehand to get a feel for what Google considers relevant and where there are opportunities for positioning. With some argument, my article has to earn the ranking. This could be, for example, that the information in the ranking articles is out of date and that I can score with the latest facts and figures. Sometimes it is also important to write the most extensive article or an extremely crisp one with many statements as a kind of checklist, etc. pp.

Using tools such as HyperSuggest, I usually work with a list of W-questions that I have researched in advance and that I think would be useful to answer. I like to hang on to these, pick up interesting aspects from articles that are already climbing, and knit a thread that runs through the article and has a comprehensible story or a logical internal structure.

Where and how often do keywords have to be used?

I always write my texts first, always counting keywords or analyzing terms. In the first step, my goal is to write the best article that achieves the set goal!

It only has to be stated in the text what is really necessary to achieve its goals.

The meaningful terms for this result from research, the competitive environment and term analysis. Of course, it must be immediately clear to the user what the article is about, so I use the relevant search terms in the page title, the heading H1 and usually again in the first and last sentence of the article.

And how do I make sure that the text also ranks?

After the text has served its purpose in terms of content, I check the term weighting with the keyword.io data tool. The first check is always whether the search phrases or keywords for which the article should rank are actually the most dominant terms. If the analysis of the most important terms reveals new, meaningful aspects for the topic, I will work them into the text.

The keywords of the targeted search phrase should be the most dominant terms in the TF-IDF analysis . I also try to consider proof keywords, i.e. terms that appear in many of the ranking documents, but there is also a reason for this, because they are part of an important aspect that I should take into account anyway.

If the objective is a single term, for example a category description about “Marketing”, then this is of course the core and center of the text. However, that does not mean that I am ignoring other secondary terms.

Expectation conformity and relevance can be demonstrated by using co-occurring terms.

If the text is still not found in the foremost places afterwards, you may have to add content again. If that doesn’t help either, the trust or the thematic credibility of your website is likely to be lacking. I always try to get links to trustworthy sites, to strengthen internal links and, if that’s not enough, to publish several articles on similar, more general or more specific topics and aspects in order to become a thematic authority from the point of view of the search engine.

Ranking articles also need to be clicked

The CTR in the search results must of course also match! From my point of view, it therefore makes perfect sense if the copywriter, who has already dealt with the topic in detail, comes up with a catchy headline, an optimal title and a click-strong meta description. For me, the SEO colleague has the task of checking this and giving advice on potential for improvement.

If possible, the URL should also contain the main term and of course the meta description for an improved CTR. Otherwise, each search term must appear in the article at least once, but as often as it makes sense.

Convince with uniqueness instead of length

Like a teacher at school, Google doesn’t believe in copying. In order to rank well with texts, they have to be unique. Therefore, the research work also includes a competitive consideration. But the content should focus on uniqueness not only because of the ranking. If you offer the same content as your competitors, you won’t lure anyone out from behind the stove. With uniqueness, on the other hand, you have the chance to turn visitors into repeaters and fans.

Contrary to popular belief, there is neither a minimum nor an optimal length for SEO texts! The question here would be ideal for what?

There is no optimal length from an SEO point of view or from other perspectives.

Unnecessarily inflating texts and thereby unnecessarily lengthening the transmission of information is a bad habit that we owe to per-word accounting models. Website texts are not prose and only rarely are fiction.

A text should be as long as necessary and as short as possible!

Do pictures, videos and tables help the ranking?

I am an absolute opponent of including media in an article just so that an image, video, or table is in the post. When I sometimes see colleagues embedding bad competitor YouTube videos just to have a video on their site, I wonder whether they are even aware of the purpose of their own website.

If, on the other hand, it helps the reader to understand something, to illustrate something, but also to entertain or loosen up, I like to use graphics, photos, videos and other elements that break down the text into smaller bits or information through other channels into my brain Transporting visitors.

I have had very good experiences with the creation of very informative YouTube videos. These improve the page on which they are integrated and can themselves attract traffic and views on YouTube. This means that they often pay off twice. Unfortunately, producing really good videos is very time-consuming.