While you should create content for your audience, it pays to think of how you can maximise your content creation efforts so it benefits your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts.

What does Google want

Google loves good quality, fresh and unique content.  That's it.  Honest

Give Google what it wants and your place in the search results will benefit as a result.

How does Google know?

To work out whether your content is any good, Google uses a complex formula (or algorithm) to give each page on your site a score.  The better your score, the higher your site (or page) will rank in Google. No one actually knows what the formula is, and Google changes it all the time anyway, but there is agreement that you need to pay attention to the following:

• Use keyword phrases in title tags and make them different for each page
• Use keyword phrases in your headings
• Use keywords and synonyms in the body of your content
• Use keywords in image alt tags and file names

When planning what content to create, do some reseach so you can match topics that people are actually interested in.

For example, on the Esssentee site our blog post about how much a website costs is one of the most popular.  It's a question many people  want an answer to.  And it is something that web designers and developers are a bit coy about answering - (with good reason).

The more content you have on your site the better, and you can target those long tail keywords  that don't get used as much as more generic phrases, but also doesn't have as much competing with it.  And the people using them are looking for something very specific so it's often more qualified traffic.

Don't be tempted to copy and paste content from other sources, as duplicate content is penalised.

Sadly, that's not enough

Well written, insightful content on it's own isn't quite enough, sadly.  In Google's eyes, if content is really good, it will get shared.

By this, it means people will link to it - from their own sites, blogs and social sites. 

So also think about what you could tell or show people that is so darn valuable that they will want to share it with everyone else.

Now ask yourself - does your mission statement or company history qualify?