SEO is constantly changing and adapting, but one thing that has always been constant is the importance of creating and publishing content for your website. More consumers than ever are using search engines such as Google to search for and buy products and services or find answers and solutions to their questions.
In fact, according to statistics, Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day. And, it’s a search engine’s job to provide these searchers with the most relevant content for their search queries.
The content you create for your business should be optimised for SEO to allow it to rank in Google. This will help you to drive relevant and high-quality traffic to your website, which you can then convert into leads or sales for your business.
Here are our top tips on how to optimise your content for SEO success.
High-quality content forms the basis of a successful SEO strategy. Whether you’re writing product descriptions, blog content, or any other form of content for your website, you’re going to want to make sure that your website and content are found in the search engines when your customers are looking for your products or services.
SEO involves optimising your website and content to appear highly in the search engine results pages (SERP) for your chosen search terms. Research shows that 90.63% of content gets no traffic from Google so optimising your content will give you the best chance of being discovered by potential customers when they’re searching online.
Content marketing is any information you publish online that can be indexed by search engines, including website content, blog posts, images, graphics, and videos. The type of content you create will depend on your business, your audience, the channels you’re using, and the search intent of the original search.
Therefore, SEO content is the content that you create to increase search rankings and boost traffic to your website. The way your content ranks within the search engines is determined by the keywords and phrases you use within your content as well as the user experience and the number of links that point to that page.
If you don’t create content, your SEO strategy won’t be very effective and without SEO, it will be difficult to get any traction on your content strategy.
Here are our top tips for optimising your content for SEO:
Traditionally, you used to be able to create a website page and stuff it with keywords for it to rank. Google’s latest algorithms now look at more than just keywords when ranking a page; they’re still an important part of any SEO strategy.
Conduct keyword research to find out what keywords users are using to find your products and services, but you will need to use them cleverly and organically within your content. Using the keyword or phrase within the content and across the headings will help Google to understand what your content is about and how it matches the searcher’s intent.
We recommend choosing one or two long-tail keywords and focusing on those. Keyword stuffing can be detrimental to your rankings and affect user experience. Make sure the keywords are dotted throughout your content and are completely natural to improve user experience (something that Google now considers when ranking your content).
Long tail keywords are the longer, question-based keywords that people use to search for answers. They are also focused on the specific goals of your target customer, so you know exactly what your content needs to be focused on. People who are searching for long-tail keywords are more likely to read the content and look for more information from you.
Long tail keywords are more likely to drive the right type of traffic and turn into conversions for your business.
Once you’ve got one or two keywords to optimise your content for, you will need to incorporate them into your website content. The best places to use keywords to help your site rank for your target keywords are:
The title or heading of the content you write is the search engine and reader’s first impression of your content and will help them to determine what it’s about. Always make sure your keyword or keyphrase is included in the heading of your content, as this is what will appear in the search results.
When creating a page title for your content, make sure the keyword is included in the first 60 characters, as this is where Google cuts the title off in the search results. This is how searchers will determine whether your content is relevant to their query or not, so it’s important to include the keywords they’ve used.
The meta description also appears in the search results. The meta description is not a direct ranking factor, but it tells the search engines and searchers more about what they can expect when they click through to your website to read the content.
Make sure your keywords are mentioned naturally throughout the body text of your content and in your page headers. Make sure your content answers the questions your customers are asking, and you’ll find that the content is naturally optimised for the right keywords.
Search engines will look at the URL of your content to understand the content, and it’s one of the first elements that is crawled on a webpage. Make sure you include your main keyword in the URL of your content.
💡 Want to know more about keyword research for SEO? Take a look at our blog: How to do keyword research for SEO.
Headings are an important part of SEO optimisation. Header tags are HTML tags ranging from H1 to H6 and are used to add structure to the content you publish on your website. Making sure you use the right headings will help Google to understand the key topic within your longer pieces of content.
Always include an H1 tag on each page but make sure you only use one. Having too many H1 tags can confuse search engines into thinking the content is focused on several main topics.
Google prefers to see longer, more detailed content. The average post length of the search results on the first page of Google is between 2,100-2,400 words.
You don’t need every piece of content you publish on your website to be that length, but you’ll find that longer posts will perform better than shorter or ‘thin’ content.
If you’re going to create a long post, make sure you break it up into manageable chunks for user experience, using bullet points, subheadings, and lists to improve readability and make the content as engaging as possible for your readers.
High-quality links are an extremely important part of SEO optimisation. The more internal and external links you have to a piece of content, the more likely it is to rank highly in the search results. Links show search engines how relevant and interesting your content is to others, so high-quality links are a must if you want your content to perform well. However, it’s important to know that Google looks at the links pointing to a piece of content to make sure they are relevant, so it’s no good building links from random websites that have nothing to do with the topic you’re writing about.
Links from other sites are an important part of any SEO strategy. Linking to and from pages or blog posts on your website can also have a positive impact on your rankings.
Internal links help search engines understand the structure of your site's structure and the topic you’re trying to showcase your expertise. If you have written about the same or a related topic in another blog post, ebook, or webpage, it’s best practice to link to it.
💡 For more information on internal linking for SEO, read our blog: Internal links for SEO: What are they and why are they important?
The images you use on your site can have an effect on how search engines rank your content, and it can also influence how much search traffic is driven to your site from image searches.
Alt attributes are HTML elements that allow you to provide alternative information for an image for users who are unable to view it. Not only does this add to user experience, but using the keyword in the alt tag can help with rankings. Making sure the alt text contains your keywords will help to boost rankings, so optimising images is an important part of SEO too.
Most content creators create individual blog posts that rank highly for specific keywords. However, this can mean that the structure of your site is unorganised making it difficult for users to find the information they’re looking for. It can also mean that multiple URLs compete against each other in the search engine rankings when you create multiple pieces of content about similar topics.
To rank well in search and answer the questions your customers are looking for, the best approach is the topic cluster model. This involves choosing the broad topics for which you want to rank and then creating content based on specific keywords related to that topic. Creating, optimising, and then linking all of these pieces of content together will help you to establish authority in broader topic areas rather than just for one or two long-tail keywords.
💡 Learn more about topic clusters in our blog: The ultimate guide to creating topic clusters and pillar pages for SEO.
The content you produce for SEO should be based on topics that will stay relevant and valuable over a long period of time. You might have to go in and update statistics or links every now and again, but the content should continue to rank over the long term.
When you rank over time, you’ll drive steady amounts of traffic to your website for months and years to come. This can help you to generate leads over time and build trust with your target audience.
💡 You can find out more about evergreen content and SEO in our blog: What is evergreen content and why does it matter for SEO?
If you’d like to know more about how your website is currently performing and how to make improvements to drive results for your business, why not request a free digital marketing audit from our team?
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