Creating high-quality SEO content has often been a challenge, with many businesses unsure whether to write for search engines or for their audience. The good news is that in today’s digital landscape, especially here in the UAE, the two now go hand in hand. Search engines reward content that genuinely helps users, answers real questions, and builds trust.
Here are five key factors to keep in mind when developing your next SEO content plan.
When planning your content it’s important to bear in mind who your audience is. For example, if you’re a financial or insurance provider targeting professionals aged over 50 in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, content designed for platforms like Snapchat or TikTok is unlikely to connect. Instead, focus on channels and messaging that resonate with your audience’s lifestyle and priorities, such as LinkedIn, email newsletters, or informative blog content. Tailoring your tone, references, and platforms to the right demographic ensures your message reaches the people who are most likely to engage and convert.
By knowing your audience, you can create a plan that incorporates the font, style, vernacular and even distribution channels that work best for your audience. This not only makes it more likely that your target audience will see your content initially, but also makes it more likely that they will engage with it and find it interesting once they see it.
One thing about SEO that will never change is the emphasis on keywords. Before creating the content (we don’t encourage post-publishing keyword stuffing), it’s important to do your keyword research.
Keyword research can include looking at competitor content, but also double-checking the keywords and phrases that your audience actually uses.
A good example of this would be a car service centre in Dubai. There’s little value in focusing your content on the keyword “auto technician” if most people are searching for “car service Dubai” or “car repair near me.” Local search behaviour can vary, and understanding how people actually phrase their queries makes a big difference.
To figure out the keywords that people are really using, you can look at Google Trends, use the Google Ads keyword planner with location filters set to the UAE. You can also analyse competitors such as well-ranked garages in areas like Al Quoz or Mussafah to see which search terms they target successfully. Once you know what works, adapt your content to match the same intent and language.
Be sure to create value with your content. We’ve all read the articles that drone on and on without actually saying anything, and with lower attention spans and increased mobile device internet access, grabbing and keeping someone’s attention is trickier than ever.
To double-check if you’re giving real value, make sure that you’ve addressed the question, comment or topic within your headline and/or metadata. Whether your audience finds your content via social media or search engines, the headline and description snippets will have encouraged them to click through. So, make sure the experience of your content matches up with your audience’s expectations of the piece.
Remember that visuals are key to content. Our eyes naturally skim read, look for headings and are drawn towards pictures when we’re consuming content, so be sure to maximise the use of imagery. A great way to optimise your images for SEO is to use image alt tags to explain to search engines what the image is of.
You also need to ensure that your image file size is optimised, especially for smaller screens and smaller devices. Large images not only take ages to load (and will slow down the page speed), but will also use additional data to download on mobile devices, which won’t make anyone happy.
Last of all, remember the fundamentals of SEO. Once your content is ready, it’s important to double-check the following before going live:
Need a hand? We understand that this sounds overwhelming. Luckily, you’ve got us on hand as your friendly SE experts. We can work with you to create an SEO campaign, or even support your content plan journey. Give us a call today to get started.