Secrets to Great SEO Content in 2019

In this blog I want to share with your my learnings about great performing content in Google.

SEO and content marketing still works like a charm in 2019. Even with the explosion of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn – SEO has the highest ROI among inbound marketing channels.

Evergreen content – when even your old blogs bring traffic – is really a key to your online success.

See, if you post something on Facebook, it can go viral, but after a few days all traffic is gone, and you need to start all over. That’s not a stable, predictable growth, around which you can build a business.

While, if you are posting content on Search Engine platform – e.g. Google or Youtube or even Pinterest – even your old blogs are constantly discoverable and bring traffic. And every new blog just adds up more traffic. So, it works like a SaaS model.

Understand me correct, of course the future is in social media, but you should always exploit evergreen content opportunities, where you can.

So, how to produce high quality evergreen content in Google, which will constantly bring traffic and conversions?

1. Original, non-non-plagiarized content

Let’s start with fundamentals.
If you want to get any traffic from Google in 2019, you should only create original, non-non-plagiarized content.

Stolen, non-original or poorly paraphrased content will never work in Google these days. Some black hat SEOs are trying to use spin rewriter tools – believe me, these are just wasted money.

Moreover, with all these techniques you can even get flagged and penalized by a search giant.

If you are outsourcing high quality content, here is a list of free plagiarism checkers. You should always check. 🙂

Also, if you accept guest posts on your site – always check them for plagiarism and spammy external links.

2. Keywords Research

Create your content, based on data.

A lot of beginner bloggers just write blog after blog after blog. Month after month, hoping that occasionally Google traffic will come.

You can significantly speed up the process, just by looking on main searched terms, before writing content.

There are plenty of freemium keyword research tools:

• keywordtool.io
• keyword suggest
• ubersuggest
• Ahrefs
• Semrush

If you are scared away by these tools, just try simple Google autosuggest, “Related searches” in the bottom of search results page or free Google Ads keyword planner.

In my experience, blogs based on keywords and optimized for these keywords tend to perform much better in Google, and therefor getting much more traffic.

3. Comprehensive Answer

This one is really, really important.

With all Google algorithm updates (RankBrain, Panda, etc.), it is not enough anymore just to produce high quality copy, based on keywords.

In your blog, you need to give an ultimate, comprehensive answer to a search query and also all related queries.

Google really gives an advantage to pieces of content, where user is completely satisfied with the answer to his question and all its aspects. Create long form blogs, which targets not only one keyword, but the whole keyword cluster.

4. Long Forms

Long form content is partly related to previous advice.

Basically, what I’ve found works better for me: instead of writing ten short blogs, write one or two long form ones.

How long should your content be? At least 1600 words per blog, ideally in 2250-2500 words range. Some content specialists advise even more: 3K, 5K or even monstrous 10K word blogs.

Long form content, which covers all aspects of a specific keyword cluster has much higher chances to rank in Google, than 500 words blog.

I did a small research. And five 500 words blog in time have less ranking keywords combined, than one 2500 words blog. You can easily check number or ranking keywords in Ahrefs.

5. Low Bounce Rate – High Session Time

These are one of the most important metrics to track your content.

You should optimize your content in a way to have low bounce rate and high session time.

For blogs, aim for bounce rate below 60%, for landing pages – below 40%. Session time – at least 1-2 minutes.

These two metrics are among important ranking factors for Google. If users don’t bounce from your site and stay there for a long time – it is a major sign of high quality.

6. Build Backlinks

I know that link building is tough. Probably, it is the hardest part of SEO.

But, it is also one of the main reasons, why some blogs succeed (and their content reached millions of people via Google) and other blogs fail, even after years of work.

But, only build high quality backlinks, those ones which people actually click.

Try:

• guest posting
• participating in community
• influencer outreach
• directories
• forums
• backlinks from customers
• find backlink ideas from competitors (via Ahrefs)

That’s about it.

Content still has an amazing ROI, but remember it takes time to get there.
Building evergreen content machine can take years, so prepare for a hard work and patience.

Andrew Gorh – I like coding, SEO and helping startups to grow online with more than 10 years of experience. Check out my blog – Online Hikes and get more inspiration – Museuly.