SEO for beginners training – Module 2.

Copywriting
This lesson is all about copywriting. We’ll start by explaining the
importance of having high-quality content on your site. After that, we’ll
explore the essential elements of great content. Finally, we’ll take a
closer look at readability, and we’ll show you how Yoast SEO can help you
with writing readable content.

The importance of great content

We think high-quality content is one of the most important
requirements of a successful SEO strategy. Content writing requires some
creative writing skills, though. Now, we can’t all be Hemingway, but you
should make an effort to write well. But why is great content so
important?

There are a couple of reasons why you should aim to produce great
content. First of all, we’ve seen that Google’s mission is to organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. From
this, we can conclude that you have to provide the best possible
information to be the best result. In addition, in even a slightly
competitive market, good content is a must, because it helps you to
distinguish yourself from the other results. Furthermore, well-written
texts are important because they improve user experience, which is a key
aspect of SEO. Great content is simply part of providing good service to
your (potential) customers.

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Positive effects on SEO

Spending time on writing the best possible content is not only

worthwhile because of the above reasons; it also has positive effects
regarding SEO. Let’s explore a few of these positive effects.

1. Your message will come across better

Every blog post has some kind of message. This message is the
purpose of that piece of writing: what do you want to say? What
should a reader take away from your piece? An article on your
website could, for instance, inform people about features of your
product. If your product page is poorly written, chances are high
that people won’t understand your message. If your piece is well
thought out, nicely structured and free of misspellings and typos,
chances are much higher that people understand the message of
your text.

Interestingly, getting your message across to search engines

works in a similar way. If you structure your text well and write
clearly, Google is much more likely to understand what your text
is about. Of course, this can positively influence your ranking
immediately.

2. A lower bounce rate

If your content is well-written and nicely structured, chances are
much higher that readers will actually stay on your site to read
your post. That will result in lower bounce rates (the percentage
of people who land on your website, and do completely nothing
on the page they entered), and will eventually improve your
ranking in the search engines.

3. More trust
High-quality pieces will lead to more trust from your readers. If
your content reads well and is free of typos, it will look much

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 more professional and legit. This will make it easier for people to
trust you and your blog. If people trust your blog, they’ll be much
more inclined to return to your website to read your next post, or
to buy your product.

4. More (social media) attention

Attractive blog posts are more likely to be shared on social media
or talked about among friends. For a post to be shared on social
media, you first have to convince someone to read the piece itself.
And more importantly, someone has to think your post is
awesome enough to share it on their timeline on Facebook or
Twitter (or any other social media).

The elements of great content

Before you can start writing your content, it’s important to find the right
focus keywords, as we’ve discussed in the previous lesson. If you want to
rank high in the search results, you’ll have to figure out which words
your audience searches for. These are the words that you should use in
your text.

If you’ve done your keyword research properly, it’s time to write!

High-quality and SEO-friendly content has three demands: it should be
original, readable and findable. Let’s take a closer look at those three
demands.

1. Content should be original.

The first pillar of high-quality and SEO-friendly content is
writing original content. Your blog post or your article should be
fresh, new and original. It should be different from all the other
blog posts and articles that are already on the internet. It should
be something that people want to read. Try to keep in mind that
original content doesn’t necessarily mean new content. For
example, giving your opinion on a certain topic, or giving a

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 structured overview of older information, also counts as original
content.

2. Content should be readable.

Your articles should be easy to read. Readability is important for
your audience. If your text is well-structured and clear, people
will understand the message of your text. Above that – as we’ve
seen before – readability is also important for SEO. People read
your text, but Google reads texts too. If your text is easier to read,
has a clear structure with subheadings and clear paragraphs,
Google is more likely to grasp the main message of your post. If
Google understands the message of your post, your post is more
likely to rank in the search engines.

3. Content should be findable.

The final pillar of awesome and SEO-friendly content is to make
sure your content is findable. Findability has to do with
maximizing the likelihood Google picks up your content in the
search engines. It’s important that you take this final step after
you’ve written an original and readable post. Findability should
never compromise the originality of your idea, nor the readability
of your text. Yoast SEO can help you finetune your text.

Readability and the Yoast SEO plugin

We’ve seen that readability is one of the key elements of great content.
But what makes a text readable and why is readability so important? And
how can the Yoast SEO plugin help you with creating readable content?
Let’s explore this a little bit further.

What does readable content look like?

First of all, a readable text is a text that is well-structured. It should have

an introduction, a body in which you convey your message, and a
conclusion. Within this bigger structure, the text needs to be divided up

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further into paragraphs that reflect your ideas and arguments. These
paragraphs need to be preceded by subheadings that clearly state the
content of each paragraph. Furthermore, make sure to start each
paragraph with a topic sentence. The topic sentence is the most
important sentence of that paragraph. It will give the reader an idea of
what the whole paragraph is about. All following sentences in the
paragraph will then elaborate on that topic sentence.

Image 1: Ideal structure of a readable text

In addition to these structural elements, you also should consider

stylistic elements. Your text should be pleasant to read. When it comes to
your choice of words and sentence structure, go for short and clear rather
than long and convoluted. Write sentences that are not too long and use
transition words to indicate relationships between sentences and
paragraphs. Transition words are words such as ‘in contrast’,
‘additionally’, or ‘therefore’. These words give your readers direction
when reading your text. Finally, don't go overboard with complicated
terminology. Don't stuff your sentences with long, difficult words when
you can also use simpler words to achieve the same effect.

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The importance of readability

We’ve already discussed briefly why readability is important. Before we

go into the readability analysis of Yoast SEO, it’s important to
understand why readability is crucial for your SEO strategy.

Focus on your audience

Most importantly, readability is important because you want to focus on

your audience and their reading experience. You want your text to be
pleasant to read, and you want your readers to be able to grasp the
message of your post quickly.

Scannable texts

Additionally, it’s important that your text is scannable. People want to be

able to quickly scan a page to get a general idea of the content of your
page. People want to know if your text provides the answer to their
question, before they read the article fully.

Splitting up a text into paragraphs that are preceded by subheadings

makes it easy for your readers to decide whether or not they would like to
read your article, or which parts they want to read. The same goes for
topic sentences. People tend to read the first sentence of every paragraph
as they’re scanning through the text. Therefore, make sure to
incorporate these elements into your texts.

Google’s ranking algorithm

There’s also Google’s ranking algorithm to consider. Google is becoming

smarter and smarter in how it evaluates websites. To determine the topic
of a page, Google makes use of some of the same factors that human
readers use, like headings and subheadings. You want Google to
understand the message of your text, because if it does, it’s more likely
that your post will rank.

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Voice search

As voice search is becoming increasingly important, readability becomes

more important as well. When you use voice search – for example, on
your phone or on Google Home – you might get a spoken result for your
search term. In that case you don’t want to have to listen to extremely
long, convoluted sentences. If clarity is important when reading a text,
it’s even more important in order to grasp a spoken message.

What does the readability analysis in Yoast SEO do?

So, readability is important. For your readers, but also for your ranking in
Google. Luckily, Yoast SEO can help you with writing readable content.
The Yoast SEO plugin offers a readability analysis. You can find this
readability analysis in the Yoast SEO meta box and in the Yoast SEO
sidebar (Image 2)
.

Image 2: Readability analysis in the Yoast SEO meta box

The readability analysis uses an algorithm to determine how readable

your post is. It features several checks that’ll give you advice when you
write your post. By following the advice, you can make your text easier to
read and understand.

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Readability checks

Yoast SEO uses the following checks to give you feedback on the
readability of your text:

● Transition words
Do you use transition words like ‘most importantly’, ‘because’,
‘therefore’ or ‘besides’ to craft a coherent text? Using these
words improves the flow of your article as they provide hints to
the reader about what is coming next.

● Consecutive sentences
Do any of your consecutive sentences start with the same word?
This can quickly become repetitive and annoying. Always mix up
your sentences to keep your article readable and free of obstacles.

● Paragraph length
Some people tend to use extremely long paragraphs. Doing so
makes your text look daunting, as it becomes just one big blob of
text. Break it up, use shorter paragraphs and insert subheadings.

● Subheading distribution
Similarly to long paragraphs, texts without subheadings are
difficult to scan, which makes them rather daunting. So, we check
if you use enough subheadings to guide your readers through the
text and help them find what they’re looking for.

● Sentence length
Sentence length is one of the core issues that make a text hard to
read. If your sentences are too long – over 20 words – people
might lose track of your point. Often, readers have to jump back a
few words to understand what you mean. This is very tiring and
inefficient. Try to keep the number of words in a sentence in
check. Shorten your sentences. Aim for a clear and simple text,
not a complex literary masterpiece.

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● Passive voice
The passive voice is a grammatical construction, where the noun
or noun phrase that would be the object of an active sentence
(such as “Yoast SEO calculates your SEO score”) appears as the
subject of a sentence of a passive voice (“The SEO score is
calculated by Yoast SEO”). Using a lot of passive voice in your text
makes it appear distant, and your message will be less clear. Your
sentences become wordy and hard to grasp because readers have
to work harder to understand the sentence structure. Whenever
you use the passive voice, always consider whether a better,
active alternative is available.

● Text alignment (Premium)

The alignment of your text can have a big impact on the
readability of your content. More specifically, using
center-aligned text makes your content harder to read and less
accessible. That’s why Yoast SEO Premium’s readability analysis
comes with a text alignment check. This check analyzes your
content for center-aligned text blocks with more than 50
characters. If it finds any, you’ll see a red traffic light. If you’re
writing in a left-to-right language, it’s recommended that you
switch to left-aligned text, and if you’re using a right-to-left
language, then right-aligned text is the way to go.

● Word complexity (Premium)

Yoast SEO Premium also comes with a word complexity check.
This assessment checks your text and highlights words that are
considered complex. If more than 10% of the words in your text
are complex, we’ll recommend you to users shorter and more
common words. If you click the eye button, the plugin will
highlight all the words that can be considered difficult.

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Conclusion
At Yoast, we think high-quality content is one of the most important
requirements of a successful SEO strategy. We’ve seen that high-quality
content has three demands: it should be original, readable, and findable.
We’ve taken a closer look at readability. We’ve seen that readability is
important for your readers, but also for your ranking in Google. Finally,
we’ve shown you that the readability analysis of Yoast SEO helps you to
write readable content.

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