Originally published November 22, 2022 , updated on July 18, 2024

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is essential for any content marketing plan. Your company needs to rank well in search engines to reach new customers and generate sales.

Websites with keyword-rich, original, and also relevant content appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). People visit higher-ranking pages more often, giving brands with high SERPs an advantage over their competitors. 

This article covers how search engines work and why you need SEO content development in your marketing plan. Keep reading to learn about the benefits of hiring an SEO content-writing company. 

How Do Search Engines Work?

Search engines are online software tools that allow you to input keywords or phrases into a search field. They use algorithms to determine the results most relevant to your query. In turn, you’ll receive a list of web pages that match those keywords. Popular search engines include Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo. They’ve become an essential tool for researching products, services, and topics and finding unique content online. 

Search engine algorithms have evolved rapidly over the past decade. Keyword-based search engines were first introduced in the 1990s and gave you lists of text files relevant to your queries. In the earlier variations, you needed to know exactly what file you were looking for. Over time, these tools became more sophisticated and could detect keywords within the text itself. Following this, companies began adding keywords to their website copy to make it easier for users to find. 

How Do Search Engines Rank Results?

Search engine results fit into two result types: Paid and organic. Paid results are when businesses pay for their websites to have high SERP rankings. Businesses can reach customers directly through paid advertising campaigns. The advertiser pays the search engine every time someone clicks on a paid search result, known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Organic results make up most of the SERPs, and this is where SEO content development helps. These results are found through a process of crawling, indexing, and ranking web pages. To start, search engines “crawl” the web. In essence, the search engine reads through several web pages to find the most relevant information. 

Next, the search engine processes its findings to comprehend and extract important data. It stores the information it finds in an index.

Algorithms then compare and rank relevant results from the index. They use various variables to decide the ranking. Some of the variables search engines look for include:

• Web pages with the same terms as the search query
• Interaction data to see whether other users found the result useful 
• Backlinks, which are connections between pages on different websites. Pages with a few high-quality links often rank higher than ones with many low-quality links 
• Other variables like the web pages’ publishing date, speed, and also mobile-friendliness

The search engine ranks the results based on all these factors and presents them to you, the searcher.

What Is SEO Content Development?

SEO content development involves creating original, relevant, and engaging content that improves the visibility of a website in search results. SEO content includes text, images, and other media that attracts potential customers when searching online for products or services.

You can create SEO content in several ways; each has pros and cons. The key is to choose the method that works best for your business. Some options include writing original blog articles, creating brand videos, and regularly creating new pages for your website. Companies often outsource this work to an SEO content-writing company.

Every article or page you plan to publish on your website should be guided by keyword research to ensure you create relevant content. You need to understand what your audience is looking for to drive traffic to your website. Keyword research involves discovering the search terms your target audience uses. In turn, using these same words in your content will increase your SERP rankings. 

While SEO-optimised content is key for high SERP rankings, your website also needs to be well-designed, user-friendly, and technically sound to rank well. But web pages won’t have high SERP rankings without high-quality, keyword-research-based content.

Should You Hire an SEO Content Writing Company?

SEO content development is crucial to any marketing campaign. It keeps your website fresh, interesting, and relevant, which helps attract potential customers. But it’s a nuanced field, and specialised software is required. For these reasons, many companies outsource this important task to an SEO content writing company. 

Hiring an SEO content writing company has many benefits, including:

1. Efficient use of time: Save valuable time by outsourcing the intricacies of SEO-optimised content to experts. 
2. Improved ROI: Ensure your content generates higher-quality leads. In turn, this will result in an improved ROI.
3. More targeted traffic: Convert users to customers by getting targeted traffic, where the user’s intent (e.g. transactional or informational) matches what you have on the page.
4. Increased visibility: Rank higher on SERPs by providing high-quality, keyword-rich, and relevant content. 

Goodman Lantern is an award-winning content marketing agency that specialises in SEO content development. Reach out to our team today, and we can help you figure out your next steps.

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