The recent move of Brian Dean to Semrush and his focus on content writing is both inspirational and noteworthy, as organic search success becomes an even more central element in the world of digital marketing.

Although SEO has been around for decades now, the need to truly differentiate yourself in a crowded digital marketplace is ever more important, no matter how small your business.

1) Think from an Audience Perspective

Yes, I am well aware that there's a ton of hype around the concept of brand personas, audience demographics, and creating your ideal consumer profile. All of these can be valuable efforts, but without understanding how to speak to your audience, everything becomes noise rather than message.

If you think this doesn't immediately translate to your situation, think of ways that your product solves a problem, and the moments at which your business shines the brightest, and then describe them in details only someone with your expertise would know. When you're giving answers to the questions your customers bring up, it's a good bet that you are probably supplying solid content as well.

2) Reading out Loud for Your Writing

The idea of reading our can seem intimidating, or silly. I get it: but get over these hang-ups and let your voice be heard, literally. Reading to yourself is a trick writers use all the time, and it really can help your writing come to life, for the web or any other format.

It's important that you don't get overly critical, and its not necessary to record yourself (although this can't hurt if you're looking to develop a podcast or want an accompaniment to text for visually impaired individuals browsing your web presence.)

3) Making Your Content Shine Visually

Whether you're selling dirt or diamonds, presentation matters. Especially in today's

information rich, education-first approach to web writing, at the very least make sure to integrate compressed (.webp being the 'lightest' new alternative to .jpg or .png) and arresting images to your words.

And consider taking it a step beyond the basics when it comes to adding visuals, video, or a distinguishing element to catch the eye of your target audience. Whether its an infographic of some kind (shared and cited from another website if needed) or a graph unique to your space, showing that you know and can demonstrate that you've done your research and care about making the keywords your audience is searching for, count.

4) Show Rather than Tell about Your Brand

Using words and whatever complementary visuals aid your story, make an effort to describe the process your product or service involves, and exactly how it resolves their issues or 'pain points.' In doing so, its very likely you'll cover a good deal of the areas that will appeal to your target audiences as well as make your article or blog post appealing to Google and search engines as a whole.

Though it might seem like content planning and keyword research isn't a way of capturing the essence of your brand narrative, it can be a very real part of capitalizing on the topics that matter to your audiences, as well as those that haven't been covered well by the competition.

5) Use Rich Text to Optimize Content Appeal

Much different from visually arresting aspects of content, using rich text code can help your page stand out on the 'results' page of Google. Put simply, along with your article, can appear different images, facts, or details about your business that are embedded in the code underlying your web page.

While the mere sight of code (as above) can be enough to make people, including myself, a bit nervous, using rich text snippets can make your content stand out an extra notch or two!

Although I am much less nervous around HTML than I was at the beginning of my career, when you are unfamiliar with coding the prospect of adding such 'schema' can seem daunting. Because of just such a fact, there are a ton of great template tools that can help you create just the kind of rich text (local business listing, FAQ's, or even job posting) that will help your content stand out.

6) Explore Making or Using Videos

For a bunch of reasons, making video clips can help your content get to the first page of Google results. Along with compelling writing, structured in a way that appeals to search engines, making an accompanying clip can push you over the top and into the #1 spot when facing competition without the help of video.

In addition to the dynamic potential for video: actually explaining more about your brand, service, or product in front of the camera can help improve user behavior itself on your site. Because people like to engage with videos, it can help viewers stay on your pages longer and even help them 'convert' to purchasing client, subscribers, or whatever the goal of your content may be. Engagement and interactions with your audience, driven by video, can help drive your business and brand to the next level!

7) Research and Monitor Your Rankings

My final piece of advice to consider comes in the form of keeping a close eye on the competition in your space. Even if you're just getting a start defining your site and space, services like Semrush (and others) often offer free subscriptions that let you track your site in sophisticated, albeit limited, ways.

Find out what keywords you want to track your rankings for, and setup alerts that will let you know when your prized territories are climbing (or falling) significantly. By paying attention to the visibility of your web-based articles and content, you can see with great detail what's getting a response from your readership, and then make it even deeper and more unique!