What is Content Optimization For SEO?Everyone has a story to share with the world.
Whether you are writing a blog post, showcasing your products on a website or simply celebrating your enthusiasm for a brand, creating an excellent piece of digital content is only part of the story. The greatest book ever written might well be unpublished and stored away at the bottom of a desk drawer. In order to reach your target audience and tell your story, you must create great content, publish your work and appeal to the market.
Within a digital world search engines drive how your story connects with users. There are two stages of marketing. First, you can pay for advertising across search engines and second, you can earn positions in native search results. Optimizing content for organic search results includes 10 key steps. While Valve+Meter provides a far more extensive and technical process for helping professional brands market their products and services, search engine optimization (SEO) should be used by anyone creating digital content.
If you do not understand how search engines operate and how to create content that successfully appeals to search engine algorithms, then you might as well throw your work into the metaphorical desk drawer.
What is Content Optimization For SEO?
Content optimization applies strategies to your web page that align with best practices of search engines. The goal of content optimization is to boost your performance in native search engine rankings. Native results describe organic traffic on search engines including Google and Bing. The vast majority of searches will return answers that include a blend of advertisements and native results. More than 70% of all clicks from search engine results follow native results. When your content appears on the first page, featured snippets, images or videos results, you increase your chance of new visitors to your website.
The algorithms behind the search engine results page is vital to Google dominance among search. For any content creation, you must know search engines and understand the search intent of users. Therefore behind every blog post and web page you publish, consider what problem are you solving? What is the question that you are answering? What is the intent of your writing, imagery, videos and other digital media?
If you know the answer then you should also be able to consider the questions users will enter into search engines. This is the genesis of content optimization for SEO.
In terms of content marketing, the more times your web pages appear on the search engine results, the more likely people will visit your website. Search engine visibility helps your entire brand to grow. So whether you are selling products, services or sharing your influence on culture, nearly every digital discovery begins with a Google search.
Step 1: Create great content
Search engine optimization (SEO) means very little if you have nothing to share. So before you learn how to optimize content for SEO, you need to create exceptional content. Whether it be blog posts or web pages, your SEO strategy begins with great storytelling. You can choose to write, create images, illustrations, video or any other media that best tells your story. Search engine bots are gatekeepers but your target audience ultimately rewards high quality content. Before you consider how to rank, make sure that you create your own content that real people will enjoy.
Once you are confident of the quality of your blog posts or site pages, you can then begin content optimization.
Step 2: Keyword Research
The foundation of content optimization is keyword research. Target keywords identify the most relevant words and phrases users enter into search engines. Conducting keyword research finds the most precise keywords related to your content. For instance, if you have created a video and blog post about, How to Optimize Content for SEO, you find a number of keywords related to search engine optimization. As part of your content strategy you will need to consider more than just a number of words related to your subject, though.
Broad terms are highly competitive and even if you earn a high position in search results your blog posts may not be relevant to everyone. You want to choose a target keyword that engages your target audience. The more precise you can be in your research the more likely you are to reach the ideal users of Google.
A long tail keyword is more specific. For instance the phrase, “Optimize blogs posts for SEO” is more likely to rank for individuals and companies looking to improve search volume for content marketing. SEO content should focus on a single long tail keyword or phrase to earn organic traffic for that subject. This often requires creating content at scale to earn great search engine visibility.
Once you identify your primary keyword, create relevant edits of your content. A big part of content optimization is implementing keywords naturally within your content so that they appear unforced to the reader. In the case of blog content, many new SEO content creators do not provide enough context for all of the keywords you may need. This can lead to keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing happens when you attempt to cram as many keywords as possible into a body of copy. Not only does this subtract from the overall user experience, but it can actually cause Google to not rank your content highly within the SERP. Perfectly optimized content is not only good quality content but contains the proper keyword density that a search engine can find.
Focusing too heavily on content optimization can cause you to lose sight of the bigger picture. Remember that the goal of content optimization is to help your great content reach more searchers. Instead of forcing too many keywords, allow your work to stand for itself and move on to the next steps.
Step 4: Use Meta Descriptions
Optimizing your metadata helps potential visitors see a preview of your content. Once you earn a position amongst top ranking pages, compelling meta descriptions help to set you apart. Research indicates up to 40% of all organic traffic clicks the first search results. Optimized meta descriptions may help to set your content apart from higher positioned results.
Search engine algorithms crawl metadata. This means that it must be optimized for SEO, similar to the actual content on your page. Including target keywords and key phrases in your meta description and keeping the number of characters between 150-160 characters is best practice for optimizing meta titles and meta descriptions.
Step 6: Optimize Images
High quality images that clearly relate to your SEO content is valuable. Original images are preferred over stock images. Infographics, diagrams, charts, and illustrations can be dynamic content for SEO ranking. You should make sure your images are the correct size. Compress images for faster loading times and add alt text and titles that include your primary keyword.
Step 7: Website Performance
Like compressing your images, make sure your website has a fast load time and is mobile-friendly. The majority of organic traffic comes from mobile devices. While additional functions and custom features may seem to set your brand apart, the best websites are user friendly. Clean, crisp and minimal design rules SEO ranking factors. Google analytics considers page speed and bounce rate. When your web page is slow to load or cluttered with extra features, users will quickly find a competitor focused on answering their query.
Step 8: Internal Linking
One of the hardest things to do is link all of your content in a logical and strategic method. This is often due to the fact that most websites are not designed with a clear SEO strategy. Internal links are hyperlinks from one page on a website to another page on the same website. When you plan to optimize your content from the beginning, you should identify the most important page on your website. For instance, if you are helping companies and individuals create strong SEO strategies, then you need to link all of your blogs about SEO to the main page.
Using internal links strategically sends authority from one page to another. Since there are many keywords and lots of relevant content about every product or service, your SEO strategy will include primary pages, sub-pages and blog posts. Internal linking helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website and more importantly, allows visitors to discover more relevant content across your site. Google and other search engines consider page views and time spent on your site. If people engage with your content it is more likely to appear in search results.
Your content is more likely to earn external links when you follow this strategy. Inbound links from high authority websites is one of the most powerful ways to improve search visibility. When a third party acknowledges your content is valuable search engines are also likely to direct more traffic to your site.
Step 10: Monitor Performance
Using Google Analytics, Search Console, and other tools to monitor and analyze your SEO performance is vital to ongoing growth. Native search results are competitive and always changing. A great title tag in 2018 may not compete today. Internal and external links can break over time. An outdated meta description and a target keyword that no longer ranks due to an algorithm update should be monitored and updated.
The internet is a massive place where multiple parties are all competing for a certain piece of the proverbial pie. Your competitors are likely creating content very similar to yours, which is why you must regularly refresh and optimize your content to meet the ever-changing demands of your searchers. This will help keep your content fresh and ranking highly within the SERP.
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What Are the Benefits of Content Strategy?
Content optimization applies strategies to your web page that align with best practices of search engines. The goal of content optimization is to boost your performance in native search engine rankings. Native results describe organic traffic on search engines including Google and Bing. The vast majority of searches will return answers that include a blend of advertisements and native results. More than 70% of all clicks from search engine results follow native results. When your content appears on the first page, featured snippets, images or videos results, you increase your chance of new visitors to your website.
The benefit is more traffic plain and simple. Content marketing is a long term strategy to help your brand stand out in the digital marketplace. When you know how to optimize content for SEO then when you create the perfect piece of content about your company’s services and products, people are more likely to discover your brand.
When high quality content is properly optimized old content can be renewed. Google and other search engines are constantly crawling your website. SEO efforts find older pieces of relevant content on your website that aren’t ranking high and transform the performance.
Some of the many benefits of optimizing content for organic search include:
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