You’re going to need to build a lot of content to drive more SEO leads, but you can’t just stuff every piece of content with as many keywords as you can fit. Search engines love keyword-rich content as long as certain rules are followed. But keyword stuffing can lead to big penalties from Google if you aren’t following the rules—so what are best practices for building quality content that will drive new leads?

Follow the basic steps below for building SEO content, and keep your eyes peeled for the next SEO 101 post, which will include details on where to use your content.

You don’t want to get too trigger-happy with your key phrases; Google doesn’t like web pages that include key phrases used out of context or randomly repeated and will penalize you for your transgression. To avoid this, a good rule of thumb when building content is to include one key phrase every 100 words. Spiders love words in bold because it increases their relevance to the article itself. At the same time, you want your key phrases close to the top of the page. Another rule of thumb when building SEO content is to include the key phrase in the title (usually as the first couple words) to build more relevance for the article. Following the same concept that “keyword stuffing” is built on, Google’s spiders won’t make sense of content that is confusing or unreadable. Regardless of how Google feels about it, low quality content that pulls possible leads in can actually hurt your brand. Keep all of your usual marketing guidelines in mind for building content so you don’t end up driving customers away. If you’re disseminating content outside the realm of your actual website (like as part of a press release), how do you associate key phrases with your online store? Linking key phrases like “home and garden equipment” to your homepage or “best shovels” to a product page is an effective way to keep non-local content driving better searchability for your online store. How long is your customer’s attention span? The forest of content online makes it difficult to hold a potential customer’s attention for very long. Keeping your posts between 300-500 words ensures that your content is high quality, stays to the point, doesn’t get too wordy and keeps more customers on your site for longer.