SEO-Friendly Content for Beginners

A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me for help writing SEO-driven content. I wrote him the following email, and I'm sharing it here for anyone who needs it.  

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What's happening, Drew?

So, when writing a web page, you want to create a series of headers that will draw traffic. I'll try to explain them here.

First is your H1.

An H1 looks like this.

Your H1 is ONLY the main search term and geographical area. Only. 

Nothing fancy, as much as you'll want to make it a catchy headline. Don't. That's for the next one. 

So, what's the main search term? I was looking up my friend's solar company, and this is what I found, courtesy of the free website called UberSuggest.

You'll see here that I typed in the search term, "solar power ogden utah," but the major search term was alternative energy. All my ads and marketing should be optimized for that, because that will drive traffic and boost my SEO score. My headline would now say, "Alternative Energy in Ogden."

H2 goes immediately under the H1

It's slightly smaller. Whatever. Doesn't particularly matter, but this will be your catchy phrase—your reputation builder. 

"Providing affordable solar power solutions since 1999," "Giving you control over your energy bill," "Green energy solutions that meet your needs." Read Ogilvy on Advertising for help on how to write these, but also realize that most people don't care that much.

Next is body text—H1, H2, and then a paragraph below. 

Your paragraph details the problem—not the solution. Save that for the next paragraph. At least that's how I see it. You, Drew, are selling to two different audiences, so that can be tough. 

For vendors, you're pitching that ad dollars can be saved until actual sales, and for consumers, that they can make returns by simply shopping. That's going to have to be a strategic question for you alone. I'm not sure where you want to go with that. Maybe have two headers that say, "For Sellers," and, "For Earners," or something like that. Not sure though.

Here, you should include a [PHONE NUMBER] and link to contact you if someone's interested.

Then you separate the next paragraph with an H3

These headers all look the same for some reason. At work, they look different. Anyway, make sure in your first paragraph that you've introduced your 1) brand name, and 2) location.

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Now, it's always my best practice to include bolded leaders to a bullet list, but that's just because I think they are:

• Effective
• Interesting 
• Easy to read

Now for another paragraph header

Add more information about how your product makes people feel good about their choices. Get a browser plugin called Keywords Everywhere—it lets your browser give you metrics on the popularity of a search term and how much it costs per conversion. It's awesome. I see the internet in a whole new way.

One more CTA (call to action), just because if you were unsure before, and the last paragraph really drove the point home, now you can call [THIS NUMBER].

Anyway man, that's what I have for you. Here are some tools worth exploring:

1.     Moz Keyword Explorer - this is a subscription based tool that's better than UberSuggest

2.     Google Trends - find out most common search shit

3.     Word Cloud - look at competitor pages for useful data

Otherwise, good luck. Hope this was helpful.