There’s a reason that every marketer walks around still uttering the phrase that content is king. It drives traffic to your website. It helps turn readers into customers. It is what makes your website act as a member of your business’s sales force.

There are a few basic content writing tips that small businesses can keep in mind when they are looking to improve their stature in the search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo are all evaluating content similar to how a person would evaluate it. Many times just providing what your readers will value will also help you in search engines.

Search Engine Optimization Tips For Better Rankings

Understand Your Keywords-Read this if you’ve never performed keyword research before. Once you know the phrases that your readers will use to find you, it’s understanding how to implement them into your writing that will help.

The Sooner The Better-Like people, search engines read from left to right. What does this mean? Using a keyword at the beginning of the sentence is going to hold more weight than at the end.

Get To The Point-You guessed it. Using the keyword phrase at the top of the copy is better than using it at the bottom. Using it at the bottom still beats not using it at all.

Read All About It-Your headlines are critical. Using your keywords in blog headers underscores their importance. Keywords in h1 and h2 tags will help your copy. So, it’s good to break your copy up with different subheadings to keep readers, and the search engines interested.

Anchors Away-When it comes to linking, you need to use your keywords in the anchor text. Stop writing links that say things like click here, read more, or go to page 2. Instead utilize your keywords when you link to another page.

Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.