Read Your Site Content Out Loud

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Posted on by Wikimotive
Categories: SEO, SEO Tips, Tactical Tuesdays

Welcome back to another episode of Tactical Tuesdays with Wiki. This week we’ve got what might be the most important SEO tip we can possibly share… and it’s all about helping your website content absolutely rock…

You might notice I look a little different today – I’m recording this video while I’m on the way back from a conference. Isn’t technology great?

Your website content is literally the basis of everything you do with SEO. Without amazing content, you’re not going to outrank your competitors. Without amazing content, you’re not going to convert any potential customers. And sure, inbound links are a huge ranking signal too, but you’re not going to get any links if you don’t have good content.
The problem is – most websites have horrible content. Generic, boiler plate content that’s basically the same as all the other websites in your vertical isn’t going to help you. Remember, showing up well in Google is all about standing out.

Forget the tired old school strategy of throwing out tons of landing pages to target individual keywords. If you’re adding a page and thinking “oh man, this page is totally gonna rank well in Google” – you’re doing it wrong.

You need to be adding content that helps your human users, not content that just matches keywords. Google’s smarter than that now. You need relevant, unique content that matches the intent of searchers. You need to answer questions. You need to fulfill needs.
You need to write for humans, but optimize for search engines.

And how do you do that?
Here’s the massive, most important tip ever I mentioned earlier:
It’s simple – just read your content out loud.

I’m not talking about just reading through it in your head. I mean actually speak it out loud.

Your content needs to be conversational. When you read it out loud, it should sound like something you’d say face-to-face to a customer who just walked in your front door. That’s the kind of content Google wants to see, and it’s the kind of content that will help you outrank your competitors.

When you read it out loud, you’ll immediately hear when something sounds odd or fake or stuffed with marketing or sales speak.

It happens in every vertical. You’ll see stuff like “If you’re looking for a dentist in Boston, come to our Boston dentist office where we have the best dentists in Boston for all of your dental needs, and we serve patients from Cambridge, Newton, Lexington, Belmont, Wayland, Boxborough, Wesford, Arlington, Hopkinton, Wellesley, Andover, Carlisle, Lincoln, Dover, and more!”

Or a while back I saw a car dealer with “We’re your Dallas pickup headquarters! If you need a pickup in Dallas, come to our Dallas pickup headquarters, where we sell more pickups than any other dealer in Dallas. We’ve got more pickups at better prices, so get your next pickup from our Dallas pickup headquarters”
If you said either of those to someone face to face, they’d think there’s something seriously wrong with you. When you read your content out loud, you catch the odd word or turn of phrase that doesn’t sound conversational.

So now you know the ultimate tip for writing better content on your website. Get out there and make your sites better!

Now it’s time – put your hand on the screen right here…
BOOM.
We totally just high-fived cause you learned something awesome.

Thanks for checking out this week’s Tactical Tuesdays with Wiki, and don’t forget to come back next week for another awesome video.

See you next Tuesday!