We shared our core content optimization strategies to improve SEO conversion. Here we are going to talk about the most essential but fundamental content practice that accelerates SEO.
What is Web Content?
When we think of content we often think of written words. However, in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) world, content is not just the text you have on your website. Content can include:
- Images
- Videos
- Infographics
- Case studies
- White papers
- Customer reviews
- Interactive elements
- Marketing material that conveys a message
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a proactive marketing strategy to create authoritative and engaging content that answers a question or solves a common dilemma.
Why is Content Marketing important for SEO?
In order to make SEO application successful, having adequate, relevant and insightful content is vital to a website’s health and wealth.
Content is the basis of everything online marketing. Good content is the groundwork for SEO. It drives link building, social media marketing, and conversion. If there is one thing you can do right now to get better SEO results, it would be to make effective content.
7 Effective Content Practices to Improve SEO
1. Create Content Around Marketing Goals
Center content on attaining marketing goals, and think about what action you want visitors to take after reading your content.
Remember, you are not writing for search engines. Providing great user experience is the ultimate driver for your website’s marketing effort.
Create content that prompts responses. Perhaps make an interactive product learning page to educate potential clients. Come up with a show-and-tell video or a more expressive photo gallery to showcase products.
Create a call-to-action to encourage email signups. There are many creative things you can do with content marketing.
7 types of Content Ideas to Engage Visitor Interest
- Easy to understand infographics
- Statistical charts
- Visually beautiful graphics
- Animated GIFs
- Attention-grabbing Memes
- “How-to” or “show-and-tell” videos
- Interactive Apps
- Contest with rewards
- Polls or Questionnaires
- Case studies with plenty of good examples
- Marketing materials such as white papers or Catalogs
- User opinion surveys
- Podcasts or Webinars
- Any call-to-action elements
If you are thinking about upgrading the visual content on your website, you don’t necessarily have to spend tons of money to get great results. There are many affordable and even free design tools to help you retouch photos, make infographics and put together videos.
2. Make Marketing Content Digestible
Your word selection, format, and design matter very much in content presentation. People have less patience when it comes to reading something that is difficult to process.
If your website is laid out in a disorganized or visually-awkward way, you may risk losing traffic. There are achievable adjustments you can make right now to enhance your content visually. You can call attention to your readers and scale SEO ranking at the same time with well-organized content.
5 Quick Ways to Make Content Digestible
- Use mundane words and get to the point with your concept
- Avoid excessive use of jargons, and always include explanation when using jargons
- Include headings to make content easy to skim
- Break long blocks of text into paragraphs
- Utilize bullet points for better organization
- Include adequate white space
4. Build Brand Awareness with Content Sharing
Great content also contributes to positive brand building. Utilize social media platforms, forums, or blogs to promote your content and gain brand awareness.
Make the content-sharing experience interpersonal. Provide useful information and insights to audience. Include share-friendly buttons or links on your website to encourage social media interactions. Take advantage of social media tools such as Hootsuite or Sproutsocial to help you better manage multiple platforms and boost performance.
5. Optimize Content with Keywords
We mentioned the importance of creating relevant, engaging and authoritative content in our SEO keyword research strategies. Effective content writing starts with identifying a list of keywords your business should rank for.
Visitor demographics from analytics report can reveal a great deal about your best-bet keywords. Pay attention to these analytics data and look into what your existing customers and visitors are using to search for your products and services. Use keyword research tools to narrow down this list and uncover the most lucrative keywords.
2 Benefits of Keyword Research Tools
- Competitor keyword analysis reveals what keywords your top competitors are trying to rank for. Tools like SEMRush, SearchMetrics, and Bing Ads Keyword Research can generate a list of keywords your competitions are ranking for and provide you with their complete backlink profiles. Knowing where you stand helps you to realistically plan for keyword targeting and set attainable marketing goals for SEO.
- Keyword difficulty accesses the competitiveness and the level of difficulty to rank for different keywords. SEMRush, SearchMetrics, and Bing Ads Keyword Research can quickly identify and recommend less competitive long-tail keywords to naturally rank for top positions in search results.
6. Create Original Content
What makes your website impressionable? Your online profile is like a storefront. What’s on your website can impact the decision of whether or not visitors become customers. Make an impression by being original, informative, and helpful. Mind the quality of content just like how you should mind the quality of any physical product.
2 Tips on Writing Original Content that Improves SEO
- Stay away from plagiarism because you are asking for Google algorithm penalties, and you could also face potential copyright infringements. If your website is discredited by Google, you will have a very difficult time recuperating. It’s simply not worth it.
- Stimulate response in your reader with thought-provoking and distinctive ideas. Make your call-to-actions stand out with creative visuals. Inspire readers with your work, and guide them to think further and beyond the context.
7. Stay Up-to-Date
Of course, you should try to update often, but don’t spam. Blasting valueless fillers does not help with SEO ranking. Instead, create meaningful content that engages audience.
This applies to successful social media marketing as well. The goal is to consistently create synergy in posts. They should encourage followers to respond to call-to-actions such as “like”, “share”, “buy now”, or “sign up”. In the contrary, drowning audience with low-value notifications can drive fans to click the “unsubscribe” or “unfollow” button of doom.
A Slow but Steady Progress
SEO success is acquired through long-term effort. Unless you have Grumpy Cat, there’s no fast-track to guarantee you overnight fame. Keep up with good content optimization practice, and you will find a set of drills that works best for your business.
