The ultimate guide to SEO content

Search engine optimization is used to design a website and its content technically and in terms of content so that it achieves a better ranking in the results lists of search engines such as Google. Content – such as texts, images or videos – must also be optimized according to certain specifications in order to appear further up in the search results.

The content of a website is a decisive factor in search engine optimization. If you do not include the optimization of your content in search engine optimization, you will not achieve any success in the ranking of organic search in the long term. In some niches it may be possible to be successful without great content. However, as soon as there are competitors who compete with you for the best places in the Google ranking and offer high-quality content, the ranking of your website will deteriorate.

In the past, Google was dependent on the content of a website. Google and other search engines were only able to understand the contents of a website through text content and thus display them in the search results for relevant search queries. Search engines are now working much more intelligently and are able to capture the semantic connections of a website, but the importance of content has not diminished in practice.

Why is that? Using the various content elements, the search engine can deduce which search queries the website is relevant for and how relevant it is compared to other websites. Which elements are meant and how they can best be optimized, that is what this article is about.

While brand websites and blogs or other information portals have always placed great value on good content, this was not the case in the past with transaction-oriented websites, primarily online shops. Many shop owners feared that extensive content would lead to potential customers being distracted from the transaction. The concern was that instead of buying a product, potential customers would get lost in the texts. That is why “SEO texts” were often hidden from users, for example with very small font or gray font on a white background. So the necessary text for the search engine was available, but the users could hardly see it.

These pure SEO texts were not helpful for the users anyway, because it was only about using relevant keywords as often as possible in a text. The so-called keyword density was one of the most important indicators for the (supposed) quality of SEO content.

In addition, there were often separate pages for synonyms or even misspellings. In terms of content, however, there were hardly any differences between the texts.

All of that changed fundamentally in February 2011 with Google’s Panda update. Google had recognized the problem and wanted to improve the quality of the content with this update so that users can also benefit from the quality of the texts. So anyone who had bad content or hid it from their users was the clear loser of the Panda update. Up until 2016 there were always new versions of this update to make the content better and better.

Since 2016, the criteria of the Panda update have now been incorporated into the so-called core algorithm from Google. This means that they are constantly being refined and rolled out very regularly. The advantage is that you don’t have to wait for the next update to get ranking improvements through optimizations.

The Panda update is a filter that is regularly applied to the entire Google index and significantly reduces poor quality websites in terms of their visibility, i.e. shifts their positions in the search results pages significantly backwards.

The algorithm change was first introduced in the US market on February 23, 2011 and then played out worldwide for all search queries in English on April 11, 2011.

On August 12, 2011, the change to the ranking algorithm was adopted worldwide for all available languages, with the exception of Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In this context, one speaks of the worldwide release of the Google Panda update.

Incidentally, the name giver of the algorithm change is not, as is often assumed, the panda bear but the Google engineer Navneet Panda, whose contribution was largely responsible for the completion of this filter.

In August 2013, Google explicitly addressed the misspelling and synonyms of keywords with the help of its Hummingbird update. Since then, Google has recognized semantic relationships much better and you only need one page for each topic.

The aim of Google’s new search algorithm “Hummingbird” was to be able to better interpret search queries from users and thus improve the quality of the search results.

The code name “Hummingbird” (German: “Kolibri”) is intended to indicate that the search results will be presented quickly and precisely in the future.

The new search algorithm is able to interpret the entire search query (better) instead of just searching for individual words within the search query as before. Google understands the intention of a search query and the content of a web document even better. These two factors are fundamental to improving search results.

“Hummingbird affects all types of requests, but it is especially effective on long requests that keep growing.”

– Amit Singhal, Google VP Software Engineer

What is the Google Hummingbird Update?

On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of Google search, it was announced on September 26, 2013 that Google had undergone a major overhaul of its search algorithm and that a new algorithm, Hummingbird, has been the basis of the entire Google search since August 2013.

Why was this algorithm change so special?

The Google Hummingbird update differs from other Google algorithm changes because it is a completely new search algorithm that forms the basis of Google search. Google updates like the Panda Update or the Penguin Update were significant changes (updates) to Google’s ranking algorithm – which is part of the search algorithm.
Most recently, Google made a similarly significant change with the Google Caffeine Update in 2010. According to the then head of the Google search team, Amit Singhal, a Google algorithm was last changed so fundamentally in 2001.

What was the goal of the Hummingbird update?

The aim of Google’s new search algorithm “Hummingbird” was to be able to better interpret search queries from users and thus improve the quality of the search results.

The code name “Hummingbird” is intended to indicate that future search results will be as fast and precise as a hummingbird.
The new search algorithm is able to interpret the entire search query in terms of content, instead of just searching for individual words within the search query as before. Google understands the intention of a search query and the content of a web document even better. These two factors are fundamental to improving search results.

So Hummingbird pays more attention to each word in a search, making sure that the entire query is considered, not just specific words. The goal is for the pages that match the meaning to perform better than pages that contain only a few words. So Hummindbird was the final entry into semantic search.

What was the Hummingbird update like?

According to Google, the Hummingbird update is intended to enormously improve the quality of search results for long and complex search queries. With these search queries, the entire search query of the user is better interpreted and correspondingly more relevant results are returned. The search results are sorted differently than before and ultimately ensure a more targeted answer.

Were other Google updates unimportant now?

Since the Hummingbird update is a completely newly developed algorithm, which from then on formed the basis of Google searches, other ranking algorithms such as Panda and Penguin were most likely integrated into the search algorithm as an elementary component.

At the beginning of 2015, Google then rolled out RankBrain. RankBrain was directly named the third most important ranking factor by Google.

RankBrain refers to an algorithm used by Google which, with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence, is primarily intended to provide relevant search results for previously unanswered search queries.

The big difference to the Google updates to date is that the RankBrain itself learns anew and the adjustments to the algorithm are not made by humans.

There is a discussion among SEOs about how RankBrain should be classified in the systematics of Google Updates. Some SEOs – such as Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand – refer to RankBrain as part of the Hummingbird search algorithm.

Ultimately, RankBrain is another step towards better understanding the semantics of language. Google reduced this ability to a simple denominator with the words “things not strings”. Accordingly, since RankBrain, Google has not only been able to find “strings”, that is, chains of words, but also “things”, that is, the meaning of words.

Even if RankBrain ranks third in the ranking of Google ranking factors, it remains just one of several hundred factors that Google uses to determine the relevance and quality of a website in relation to a search query and to calculate the search results accordingly.

Since the beginnings of Google and Co., the importance of content for SEO has changed considerably: If the content was previously primarily intended for search engines, today it must primarily be written for the user. Google rates how helpful and user-friendly texts are.

The acronym EAT has been on everyone’s lips since 2018, especially since the major algorithm changes in August. Google updated its guidelines for evaluating search quality at the end of July 2018, placing a stronger focus on the “EAT” principles of expertise, authority and trust. Ultimately, however, EAT only means that good content must be relevant and helpful.

E = expertise
A = authority
T = trust

In order to evaluate these points, Google is using more and more user signals such as the bounce rate or length of stay on a page. The search engine tries to understand whether the user has found what he was looking for or expected and how much the user likes this content.

With the BERT update, Google tries to better recognize the context within a search query and to deliver corresponding results. Bert is the biggest algorithm change since Hummingbird and affects every tenth search query.

With the Google BERT update, Google wants to improve the understanding of complex long-tail search queries and show more relevant results. With the help of natural language processing, Google can now understand the semantic context of a search query much better.

BERT is a further development of Panda, Hummingbird and Rank Brain. With BERT, too, Google tries to recognize the context within a search query and to deliver suitable results.

As with all updates now, Google emphasizes that there is no need or possibility to react directly to the BERT update. Rather, it is more crucial than ever to create high-quality content and to make users happy.

With the updates of the Google search algorithm, the requirements for the content of a website have changed fundamentally. To follow Google’s quality guidelines today, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Research the topics for your texts thoroughly – this is the only way to answer all of the users’ questions and completely cover their needs.
2. Write unique texts and do not steal content from other websites.
3. Don’t worry about the length of your texts: just write as much as makes sense for the topic.
4. Write your texts for the users. So use the keywords as they would be used in normal parlance.
5. Also use synonyms, related terms and keyword combinations. This contributes to the legibility of the texts
6. Enhance your text visually: Use headings, lists, tables, images, videos and highlighting to present the content clearly and make it understandable to users.
7. Build the texts into the page in such a way that they are easy to read and easy for users to find. Otherwise there is a risk that Google will not rank your website at the top of the search results. Although you are allowed to “collapse” your texts to a certain extent or put them in tabs, sliders or accordions today, this can be a hindrance to good rankings.

Before you can start optimizing your content, you need to think about the different types of content you need and what content you want to make available to your users. In SEO we differentiate between four different types:

1. Transactional content
2. Informational content
3. Branding content
4. Social content
5. User generated content

Each of the four types of content has a different intention and has different goals. While transactional content typically aims to generate conversions and leads – i.e. sales – informational and branding content is geared towards imparting knowledge and answering questions. In the case of social content, entertainment is usually the focus.

The different types of content can classically be displayed on websites using different page types. Transactional content is usually mapped via classic “shop content”, i.e. category pages, product pages or brand pages. Informational content, on the other hand, is often covered by an online magazine, advice or blog article. Branding content can be found on service pages such as FAQs and on the home page. Social content can typically be found in a magazine or guide or on separate landing pages. Social content can also be integrated outside of a website, for example on Facebook, YouTube and other channels.

But not all types of content play an equally important role in SEO. While transactional and informational content have a direct impact on sales from an SEO point of view, branding content and social content only have an indirect impact on organic rankings.

With transactional content, the focus is on the transaction. This means that users should buy a product on your website, register for a seminar, fill out a form, take out a subscription or something similar.

The task of transactional content is therefore to inform the user in such a way that he:

1. can choose the right product or service,
2. Is convinced that you are the best provider for them.

Transactional content can therefore be found primarily on product pages, category pages, brand pages, pages for buying advice, registration pages, etc. But blogs are also popular for conveying transactional content.

Transactional content is the most important type of content for SEO. This is mainly due to the fact that terms with a transactional character often have a high, steady search volume and these terms have high commercial relevance. With this content you can generate permanent organic traffic and thus sales.

What optimization measures do you have to take with transactional content?

Because the transactional content – as discussed – is particularly important, you should start your optimization here and proceed particularly systematically:

Use of Keywords

Because the valuable transactional keywords often have a high search volume, the market is practically always highly competitive. Therefore, the most important thing to do with this type of content is the use of keywords.

Clear structure

Since you want to convince your users of your offer, you have to provide them with good, advisory content. So that the user can quickly grasp what is most important for him, a good structure of the content is the alpha and omega: structure the content in such a way that it takes up meaningful subordinate topics and choose the subheadings so that they are already conclusive for the user convey what you are about. Use bullet points, lists and tables to make your content easier to understand. Use pictures and videos that support the user in his decision in favor of your offer.

Use of conversion elements

The user is supposed to carry out a transaction at the end. So you definitely have to include conversion elements (also called call to action) such as a booking button or a booking form. In the example of our Academy, these buttons are clearly visible.

Informational content (also informational content) is primarily about the provision of information. In other words, you want to answer users’ questions and thus influence their decision. So you have to think in advance what questions your users and potential customers might have and answer these questions as best as possible and comprehensively. Informational content can be divided into evergreen content and time-related content.

Evergreen content is always relevant, while time-related content is only relevant for a short time. Seasonal topics count as time-related content because they are only relevant at a certain point in time.

In contrast to current content, which is time-bound, the creation of evergreen content is about keeping the possible questions of the clientele or target group in mind. And precisely those questions that are not bound by time and that will keep users busy in a few years. In order to create evergreen content, precise knowledge of the target group and their information needs is required.

How important is informational content for SEO?

Informational content is of great importance for SEO. Significant search volumes can be found in informational content. For example, over 5000 users search for “old-age provision” every month. Here you can create uniquely good content and thus achieve good rankings and traffic in the long term.

It looks different with time-based content. “Wm spielplan” is searched intensively every four years. As soon as the tournament is over, however, it subsides again. This is why time-based content isn’t that relevant to SEO as it won’t drive you long-term traffic. But if you work on this niche with seasonal offers, it is of course important for you to address this seasonal traffic with good time-related content.

Creation of evergreen content

However, if you want to use evergreen content on your website and thus achieve good rankings, you should be aware that it is not enough just to produce this content once. The constant demand for this topic alone does not represent a ranking factor. With every search query, Google evaluates again how relevant a target page is and also uses criteria such as the publication date or the time stamp of an update. This is intended to present the user with an optimal search result.

You should therefore regularly check your supposedly timeless content for possible updates or improvements. This applies not only to technical topics, for which a high level of dynamism ensures regular updates, but also to content that appears timeless at first glance. The higher the competition between websites for a certain evergreen content, the more criteria have to be optimized.

Tips for optimizing evergreen content

1. Use of keywords: The keywords that have search volume should be used in prominent places. But since the main thing is to answer users’ questions, you should focus particularly on mapping the topic comprehensively.
2. Structure: A clear and logical structure is just as important as with transactional content
3. Content upgrade: Informational topics typically benefit enormously from clear images or videos. So invest in good pictures and videos to differentiate yourself from the competition that deal with the same topics.
4. Internal links: Since the user does not want to buy or order anything here, you should use conversion elements sparingly. Instead, you can place internal links to your transactional pages at appropriate places.

Branding content is all content that you create to introduce your company and to explain what your company does. This content can span many different pages and can be found in all business models:

• Home page
• about us
• Career
• Service pages
• FAQs
• Press releases

How important is branding content for SEO?

At first glance, branding content is not relevant for SEO. Typically, your brand keywords will automatically get good rankings. However, before you start optimizing your page for generic terms with a high search volume, you should make sure that you achieve good rankings for your brand terms (brand, slogan, but also word combinations from brand and career, etc.).

If this is not the case, it is usually due to technical problems, which you should definitely investigate. A bad or missing ranking for brand terms is mostly due to incorrect crawling.

What optimization measures should you take for your brand content?

Aside from a full crawl, there is no need to optimize your branding content. Usually it is sufficient to use your brand keywords in the most important places (e.g. title and headline). Since your branding content will also be about your offer, it should be well linked to your transactional pages in suitable places.

Social content refers to all content that is suitable for sharing on social networks. Above all, it is characterized by its high entertainment value. Social content does not have to be published on your website, Facebook posts and YouTube videos can also be social content. The main focus here is on the content on your website. Social content is very diverse, the main thing is that users are well entertained. Good examples are infographics, images, and videos.

How important is social content for SEO?

Usually, users don’t look for social content, but instead use it when they find it. But that also means that there is practically no search volume for social content. So you cannot generate traffic through organic search with social content. Nevertheless, the content is important for SEO, because it helps you to market your content and your website or your company.

The marketing of your content is important in order to get links and mentions on other websites, which in turn represent important off-page signals.

What optimization measures do I have to take?

Since you don’t want to rank primarily with social content, keyword targeting is secondary. Instead, you should make sure that they are linking your most important SEO pages like transactional pages well here. This is the only way to ensure that the backlinks that you may receive from marketing your website via social content have the best possible effect on your transactional pages. If these pages are no longer up-to-date, you should still ensure that the content remains accessible or 301 redirects are redirected to the new content.

In addition to the types of content already described, there is another type of content that is difficult to put into categories due to its diversity: user-generated content, i.e. content that is provided by your users. This can be done, for example, in the form of comments or within a forum on your site in which users can exchange ideas. You might even give users the option to upload photos.

The advantages of user-generated content for search engine optimization are obvious:
You don’t have to worry about creating this content yourself, your users do it for you.
Users create the content in “their language” and thus expand your keyword portfolio with terms and topics that you missed during your keyword research.
You will also receive interactions with your website, and the length of stay will be comparatively long.

However, you also need to be very careful about what people post on your site. Apart from the legal aspect, it is also important for the search engine to continuously check these pages.

User-generated content therefore offers high SEO potential. However, it is necessary that you moderate and control user-generated content. Accordingly, user-generated content will also produce considerable effort.

There is no Google penalty for duplicate content. This means that if, for example, you take a press release from a company unchanged from its website and publish it on your website, you will not be penalized with a manual action by Google. However, Google will filter duplicate versions of content from search results.

So if two or more pieces of your website’s content are essentially similar, Google will pick a canonical (source) URL to show up in search results and hide the duplicate versions. It is not a punishment. This is a google filter that only shows one version of a piece of content to improve the searcher’s experience.

In addition to texts, images represent the most important content on a website. They have the advantage that they are easier to absorb than text and also loosen up the website and enhance it visually. In many cases, images (online shops, product images, hotel images, etc.) can also be decisive in consumers’ purchasing decisions.

But Google also rates text content with images better than content without images. Good images are therefore an important ranking criterion for a website.

The aim of image optimization is on the one hand to increase the placement of your own images in the Google image search and thus to create better visibility for the website. In addition, image optimization is also part of the SEO of a website as a whole, as high-quality content can be generated through images, which directly influences the ranking of a website in general Google search.

Tips for Using Images

• Avoid using stock photos if possible, and if you do, use high-quality and carefully selected stock photos
• Use images with a similar style. If you use images from different sources with a different look, it will appear unprofessional and unattractive to your users
• Optimize images for fast loading time. Save images in medium quality and in the appropriate size.

How do you create high quality content?

Now that we know what types of content there are, the question arises: How do you actually write good content?

Topics and keyword research

As already discussed, the EAT principle conveys a good idea of what constitutes good content. So it is important that you show expertise with your content, convey authority and build trust. So before you just start writing, you need to get comprehensive information on the subject. The following questions can help you:

• For which target group am I writing?
• How do I want to address this target group?
• Do I want to use “Duess” or “Sieze” my readers or not use a personal address at all
• What is the intention of the user reading my text? Is he looking to solve a problem or is his goal a transaction?
• What questions might a user have about the topic I’m writing about?
• Which pictures or videos can I use or create to better explain a situation?
• What additional information can I offer the user? For example in the form of links to other subpages of my website or to other websites?
• How do I divide the topic of my text into meaningful sections and sub-topics?

Your first starting point when researching the topic will certainly be the search engine itself. In many cases, Wikipedia should be a good start to familiarize yourself with a topic.

When researching, however, you should also look at the first results in search engines for relevant search queries for your topic. Here you will find the content that is currently ranking well. Use these websites as inspiration. Your thought should be: How can I prepare and present the topics of the top results even better. It goes without saying that you are not copying any content.

Take stock before you start writing

On extensive websites in particular, there is often the risk that a topic has already been dealt with. Before you start researching a new text, you should therefore check whether there is already content on your site that deals with the topic. Your goal must be to have only one piece of content per search intention on your page. So if there is already a post on this topic, it is advisable to revise it and improve it if necessary instead of writing a new, similar post. It makes no sense to provide two similar pieces of content for the user. How should the user assess what the difference is and which is more relevant for him? It also has problems for the search engine.

Once the research for the text has been completed, you can start writing.
The creation of a text is a creative process and there are no general criteria for the quality of a text. However, there are quite a few guidelines that can make writing your texts easier for you.

How many words should the text contain?

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula for the length of texts. The simple answer is: write as much as you need but as little as possible. The user must get all the information he needs and expects. This ensures that your content is relevant to a search query. Of course, complex topics need a longer text, while content on simple topics can also be kept short and concise.

If you want at least a rough guide for the length of your text, it can be helpful to take a look at the texts in the top 10 organic search results.

Which keywords should I include in the text and in which elements do I do that?

It is advisable to integrate the keywords that you have determined for your text through keyword research into the text from the start. This makes the text much easier to read than if you added the keywords later.

On the one hand, you need to use the important keywords prominently in your texts so that Google understands what your text is about. On the other hand, you mustn’t use the keywords too often, otherwise you will achieve exactly the opposite: The text will be difficult to read for the user and Google could rank the page worse due to the keyword stuffing and the below-average user engagement.

The ideal keyword density for a text is still controversial. How often should a keyword appear in the text? There is no one-size-fits-all answer because it depends a lot on the text and the keyword. The text must be user-friendly. Once you get bothered by the frequency of the keyword while reading, you should use it less often. Write a text yourself, have someone else proofread it and take this simple test. Of course, you can also use tools to measure keyword density. On the one hand, you can use the WDF * IDF tools for this. In addition, WordPress has the YOAST SEO plug-in, for example, which shows you whether your keyword occurs often enough in the text and sections.

So that the text is as easy to read as possible, you should not only use the keyword itself, but also different variants of the keyword – singular and plural, grammatical variants, but also synonyms or keyword combinations. In this way, you can also optimize for synonyms in the event that Google uses slightly modified results for them. Most of the time, the algorithm understands exactly which terms are to be understood synonymously. If your keyword consists of several words, you can also use stop and filler words between the terms. These are for example: “for”, “a”, “and”, “the”, “the”, “that” etc. Google still understands the keyword because the stop and filler words are ignored.

For how many keywords can I optimize in a text?

You should concentrate on one main keyword and a maximum of three to four secondary keywords per text. The keywords should come from the same cluster that you defined in the course of the keyword strategy. Based on the prioritization in the keyword strategy, you can evaluate which keyword is the most important within a cluster and is therefore included as the main keyword in the text. Different variants of the main keyword and secondary keywords may be used within the text.

Where is the best place for me to insert keywords in my texts?

You should of course not only use the keyword in the body text, but also in various other elements of your website, for example in the headings. The keywords have different meanings in the different elements. The use in the title and in the headings is of particular importance and much more important than, for example, in the ALT attributes.

In addition, the importance of keyword targeting also depends on the type of content. If the content is transactional (e.g. on category or product pages), precise keyword targeting is very important. It is less important on informational sites (e.g. guides, blogs, service sites). Again, it is hardly relevant for social sites.

In which style should I write the text?

As you write, remember that your readers will read the text on a screen or on their smartphone. Write in simple, short sentences so that the content is easy for readers to grasp. Reading behavior is different online than in print. Users tend to skim paragraphs rather than read them in full. It is therefore important that you formulate the statements in the text briefly and concisely.

In addition to writing new texts, when doing search engine optimization you should also deal with revising existing texts. Basically, Google prefers current texts to outdated ones. That is understandable: Who wants to read a text about the laptops of the 2000s when they google for “laptop purchase advice”. How important the actuality is, depends very much on the topic.
In a text about the history of antiquity, there should be much less need for updating than in a text about machine learning.

Basically, so that your text remains up-to-date and your users can always be up-to-date, you have to revise your texts as soon as the topic has developed further. To do this, you should consider right at the beginning which topics need to be updated frequently and which not so often. Establish a process in which it is precisely determined in which cycle who is responsible for checking the texts for topicality and initiating the revision.

With this plan you can structure the cycle of revision of the texts. When you write an article, note how important it is for the text to be up to date. A revision cycle is then derived accordingly: For example, once a month for highly topical topics and once a year for less topical topics. Responsibility can be based on the topic or on the editor, because he has already dealt intensively with the topic.

There are a few ways to improve your content. In addition to revising the content, revising the structure of a text can also noticeably improve the quality.

One of the most underestimated SEO measures is the formal optimization of texts with good content.

headlines

Headings help your users to quickly grasp the individual sections of your text. In this way, the user can better understand which sub-topics are dealt with in the text. He can therefore only read the sections that are most interesting for him. Therefore, headings should describe what follows in the section as briefly and concisely as possible. Use creative headings sparingly.

Headings also help Google and other search engines to capture the content of a text. In addition, they are one of the most important elements for keyword use. Headings are marked in HTML with h1, h2,…, h6. The h1 heading is your main heading.

Every website has a main heading – nothing more, nothing less. So there is exactly one h1 heading per page. You should definitely use your main keyword in the H1 heading. The h1 heading summarizes the content of a page so that the user and the search engine know what the page is about. You should structure the remaining headings h2 to h2 so that they appear in a logical hierarchy. The h2 is thus superordinate to the h3 etc.

Paragraphs of text

You should of course always use paragraphs. You should make sure that your paragraphs are not too long. Otherwise the clarity is lost and legibility suffers.

It is also advisable to use keywords in the subheadings. Here you can also include synonyms, variants or keyword combinations. The user then knows exactly what to expect in the individual sections. This makes your text easy to read.

Appreciation of the content with images

Images, graphics (and videos) not only enhance the visual appearance of a text, they also help the user immensely in understanding the text. In addition, there is great SEO potential in these elements, as such content can be found and displayed using the “normal search” as well as the image and / or video search. Particularly when describing complex technical contexts, representations of the content are very helpful for the user. The advantage for the user is clear: he can grasp the content of the page before he has even started reading the associated text. Are you wondering whether there are aspects in your text that are easier to explain with an image or video than with plain text?

Content revision

The revision can also make sense if the “first litter” was not optimal. Writing is also a creative work. In this respect, you cannot always expect consistently high quality from any copywriter.

If you notice that a text is technically correct, but not formulated in the best possible way in terms of language, it is best to plan a timely revision with fresh creative forces. This is another way to continuously improve the quality of your content.

Links are known to be one of the more important ranking factors in the Google algorithm. While external links, i.e. the incoming links from other domains, are talked about a lot and their acquisition is carried out with a lot of effort, the internal linking of a website receives relatively little attention. The internal linking is a powerful SEO tool and should not be limited to navigation and the use of the keywords in the link text.

External links increase Google’s trust in the domain. The higher the trust, the more Google trusts the internal links. In this respect, both types of links are important and it would be a mistake to concentrate only on external links and ignore the possibilities of internal links.

The practical thing about internal links is that you can freely determine them yourself. You can implement your own plan for the number, placement and design of the link texts.

In addition, there is no need to worry about Google filters. While the excessive use of hard money keywords in the anchor text has quickly led to ranking losses in external links since the Penguin update at the latest, the opposite is more the case with internal links. Google recommends in its PDF “Introduction to Search Engine Optimization”: “… the better the anchor text, the easier it is for users to navigate and the better Google understands what the linked page is about.”

If the target page is about “private health insurance”, for example, it is absolutely legitimate to internally link the page with the link text “private health insurance” as often as you want. You don’t violate any Google guidelines. Most websites make insufficient use of this option. But remember that the linked pages must still be relevant to the user.

How many internal links should I use?

Unfortunately, there is no guide value for this either. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Can you still read the text with the links or are you just distracted? Here, too, the top priority is again that the text must get better through the internal links.