Copywriting and SEO, tips for creating quality content and improving your website's ranking

Summary

1. Choose long-tail keywords that really stand out from the competition
2. Structure your ideas and write long articles to give weight to your arguments
3. Include the article's most important keywords in the page title (H1 tag)
4. Improve the Click-Through Rate (CTR) of your web pages with the Meta Description tag
5. The importance of the Text/Code ratio for natural referencing

Special care must be taken when writing texts for the web. It is on this basis that Google will define the quality of a page to position it more or less well in the search results. Also, because it's more difficult to read an article on a screen, you need to structure your ideas well and construct simple sentences to make it easier for visitors to read. Here are a few rules of good practice to help you write effective, relevant articles.

Choose long-tail keywords that really stand out from the competition

The choice of keyword is crucial. Before starting to write an article, it's a good idea to study other sites dealing with the same subject and find a more original approach that will help you stand out from the crowd. Rather than positioning yourself on short, often highly coveted keywords, it's better to choose long-tail keywords, which are less competitive. For example, an article written around the keyword immobilier neuf will have a harder time ranking than a page focusing on immobilier neuf de standing à Paris. The more specific the theme of a page, the less competition there will be.

It's also a good idea to put certain expressions in bold to develop a lexical field related to the main keyword. This technique makes it easier for Google to identify the theme addressed by the page; visually, the use of bold words also helps to break the monotony when visitors are reading.

Structure your ideas and write long articles to give weight to your arguments

There's no ideal length for a web article. With a minimum of 500 words, however, it's considered necessary to reach 1000 words for Google to take a real interest in a page. For a feature article, it's possible to go much further, provided you structure your ideas. Within an article, paragraphs should not be too long. Google recommends no more than 300 words per paragraph, which is also much easier for visitors to read. As a general rule, use one idea per paragraph.

Sentence length is important because beyond 20 words, a text becomes difficult to understand and memorize. It's advisable to alternate short sentences with longer ones, to give a more dynamic reading rhythm.

Rather than the passive voice, the active form is recommended for sentence construction. More direct, it creates simple sentences (subject - verb - complement) that are quick to read and understand.

Include the article's most important keywords in the page title (H1 tag)

Every word is important, since the title of an article (H1 tag) also appears in Google's search pages. Ideally, the title should be between 60 and 75 characters long. It should incorporate the article's main keyword and respond to visitors' search intent. Get inspired by what works by typing your keyword into Google and see how the best competing sites rank.

Improve the Click-Through Rate (CTR) of your web pages with the Meta Description tag

The content of the description tag is displayed below the title in Google's search results. Contrary to popular belief, it has no impact on search engine optimization (SEO), but it does play an important role in a page's view rate, since it presents the content of the article. Ideally, the description tag should include a maximum of 165 characters, beyond which it will be truncated on Google.

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The importance of the Text/Code ratio for natural referencing

This is a crucial element that many web copywriters underestimate. A high ratio sends a positive signal, it's a quality indicator taken into account by search engines (Google, Bing...) to measure the interest of a page and determine the quality of the code. To improve the ratio, you need to write long articles(with a minimum of 500 words), rich enough to arouse the interest of search engines and readers. A complete article generates more reading time. Google is capable of analyzing the time spent on a page, and takes this into account when determining the interest of a page to position it more or less well in the SERP(Search Engine Result Page), i.e. in its results pages.

Ratio = Text size (in Kb) / HTML code size (in Kb)

- The ideal ratio is between 25 and 70%.