The SEO Content Marketing Strategy Implementation Guide to Rank Top Positions in Organic Search Results
The SEO Content Marketing Strategy Implementation Guide to Rank Top Positions in Organic Search Results
The 2023 Complete Beginner's Guide for Businesses and Content Creators
Table of Contents
This lesson will discuss some of the more advanced implementation of SEO content marketing strategies and benefits to help you capture website ranking signals and score top positions in search results. Be sure to follow through with the previous lesson on content marketing strategies for user experience for the best learning experience.
Top 6 Effective SEO Content Marketing Strategy Implementation Approaches to Increase Organic Keyword Ranking
#1. Pass the Mobile-Friendly Test to Improve SEO Content Marketing on Mobile Devices
Back in 2015, Google officially made mobile-friendliness a ranking signal worldwide. Webpages that do not pass the mobile-friendliness test will not appear in mobile search results.
Website Content Layout Affects Mobile-Friendliness
How content is laid out on your website could affect the way it displays on tablet and mobile devices. To be mobile friendly, content should intuitively shift to suit a mobile viewing port when visitors are on a mobile device. Therefore, a mobile-friendly design is essential to properly deliver content on different displays.
Top 2 Mobile-Friendliness Tests to Improve SEO Content Marketing
Test 1: How to Test Individual Webpages for Mobile-Friendliness?
To find out if your webpages are mobile-friendly, self-test individual webpages with Google Search Console Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.
Test 2: How to Test the Entire Website for Mobile-Friendliness?
You can also log into Google Search Console account and check the entire website for mobile-friendliness with “Mobile Usability” in the Search Traffic tab.
Top 2 SEO Content Marketing Strategies to Optimize Website for Mobile Search
If your website is not yet mobile-friendly, how do you make the change? Here are the top two recommendations from Google.
Strategy 1: Update to Responsive Web Design
Choose a responsive design that serves the same version of HTML coded designs to both desktop and mobile device users. The responsive design’s CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) code renders different sets of displays to users on various viewing devices.
Follow our lesson to learn more about Google Recommended Responsive Web Design.
Strategy 2: Implement Dynamic Serving
Implementing dynamic serving allows different sets of HTML to be shown on different viewing ports. The URL however, still remains the same.
#2. Optimize Image Search for SEO Content Marketing
Image search is another great way to capture organic traffic on search engines. This is especially useful if your business is an e-commerce store or your website is image-heavy.
How to Have Your Website Show up in Google Image Search?
To have your website show up in Google image search, you need to help Google to read your images. Follow the 2-step image optimization strategy below.
2-Step Image Optimization Guide to Improve SEO Content Marketing
Step 1: Use Keywords to Name Image Files
Search engines index keywords in image files. Using optimized keywords to name image files effectively increases your website’s exposure in search results. An optimized image file name should be a few words long and adequately describe the image content. Avoid uploading an image file with a random name like “IMG_02165.jpg” or “picture 1”.
Step 2: Include ALT Tags to Optimize Image Files for Search
Instead of inserting an image link as <img src=” image link”/>, try using ALT tags to optimize image files, so they appear in search results. ALT Tags in image source code help search engines to identify and index image content for image search. It is another excellent strategy to gain organic traffic.
Example of an ALT Tag
<img decoding="async" src=" image link" alt=" a brief but to the point description of image with keywords"/>
3 Good Practices of Creating ALT Tags
- Keep it simple and brief.
- Get to the point.
- Optimize ALT tags with keywords, but do not overstuff them with keywords.
#3. Reduce Content File Size to Increase Website Page Loading Speed
Images and videos are great visual content to boost visitor engagement. However, loading speed decreases for end-users when you upload hundreds of pictures and videos onto your website. We will talk more about website loading speed in the upcoming section.
Large Content File Size Impacts Website Page Loading Speed
User experience and conversion rate can suffer when a website takes too long to load due to large content file sizes. It can increase the possibility of visitors leaving the website without taking any action resulting in a high bounce rate.
Ultimately, you could be losing out on revenue because visitors are impatient and cannot wait a few more seconds for the website to finish loading. So make sure the visual content files on your website are as small as possible without compromising too much on quality.
How to Reduce Image and Video File Sizes and Increase Page Loading Speed
Reduce Image File Sizes
Use image tools such as Photoshop to reduce file size and keep optimal image quality. Photoshop allows users to optimize an image for web upload, while providing the option to customize the file size by adjusting the image quality. The helpful feature enables users to quickly and effectively reduce image file size in a few clicks.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Best for Creatives, Photography, Design, Video-
All-in-one creative suite of photography, video, design, and user experience tools.
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Help businesses create, source, and publish content across devices.
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Desktop and cloud applications such as Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Rush, Illustrator, and much more.
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Access to Adobe stock images, videos, and audio files.
- Because the software is cloud-based, you will always receive the latest updated version at no additional cost.
- One low monthly price to use 20+ Creative Cloud apps.
- Adobe Creative Suite is the industry-standard design application bundle for graphics, visuals, and videography.
- Require a significant learning curve to become an expert user of products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro.
Leverage Third-Party Video Hosting Platforms
Hosting videos on third-party platforms such as YouTube significantly increase webpage loading speed compared to hosting videos on your website. Hosting videos with a third party does not take up your own hosting bandwidth, meaning website loading speed is not affected. You can also benefit from the added advantage of receiving free exposure from a different marketing channel by sharing videos on YouTube.
#4. Improve Page Loading Speed for Better SEO Content Marketing User Experience
Website speed is an imperative user experience factor. Regardless of SEO, a longer webpage loading time reduces user experience. For Google, website loading speed is a vital algorithm and SEO ranking factor. If it takes longer for a webpage to load compared to an equivalent webpage from a competitor, the one with a slower loading speed could lose out on higher ranking.
Website speed has a lot to do with the content on a landing page, and there are a few critical reasons why a page takes too long to load.
5 Factors Affecting Website Page Loading Speed
- Large HTML, CSS, or Javascript files.
- Large image and video files.
- Any incorrectly coded on-page element.
- Too many redirects.
- The website lacks a Content Delivery Network (CDN) Service.
How to Test for Webpage Loading Speed
Try using the free Google Pagespeed Insights to test webpage loading speed for both desktop and mobile sites. The tool assigns a speed score out of 100, showing you what on-page elements affect loading speed and should be fixed.
Learn more about website page loading speed and how it affects SEO.
#5. Be Smart with 404 Error Pages
“Opps! The webpage you are looking for cannot be found…”
Whether it is the result of a technical error or an unintentional mishap, 404s are often perceived as a bad user experience. While it is not 100% preventable, there are things you can do to avoid the negative consequences of most 404 errors on a website.
3 Best 404-Page Strategies to Improve User Experience
Strategy 1: Check for Broken Links
Regularly check URLs for broken links. Tools like Semrush can identify all the broken links on a website in a few clicks. On top, Semrush also analyzes all your backlinks from “Follow” or “NoFollow” to text and image links.
Semrush
Best for SEO Marketing-
Discover all the best keywords to target and bring traffic to a website through Semrush keyword research tool.
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Audit webpages and suggest ideas to improve landing page health and SEO performance.
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Optimize a website for local searches to increase local customer traffic.
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Track daily changes of keywords important to marketing.
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Find unexploited opportunities to strengthen website backlink profile.
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Uncover all the keywords and content in competitors' SEO strategies.
Strategy 2: Use 301 Redirects
Use 301 redirects to replace broken backlinks. While you can easily fix broken links manually, contacting every web admin and asking them to replace all the broken backlinks pointing from their webpages to yours can be a challenging and tedious task.
This is where the 301 redirects can be useful. If you have replaced or updated content on a website with new URLs, take the time to permanently redirect the old URLs to the new landing pages with 301 redirects. So that website traffic and user experience will not be negatively impacted by broken links.
Strategy 3: Update 404 Webpages
Turn the inevitable cases of 404 errors into opportunities and capture more pageviews. Design 404 pages with the intent to redirect visitors back to other working pages of your website. Include links to similar pages that might interest visitors if they stumble upon a non-working page. You can even throw in a campaign promotion to reduce the “frown factor” of a 404 error page.
#6. Choose Subdirectory Instead of Subdomain for Blog Posts
If your business or content website has an active blog section, the subdirectory vs. subdomain discussion is an important one. The question of hosting your blog under a subdirectory versus a subdomain has been a controversial topic amongst web admins.
Examples of Subdirectory Versus Subdomain
- A subdirectory blog would be yourwebsite.com/blog.
- A subdomain blog would be blog.yourwebsite.com.
Subdirectory is Recommended for the Blog Section of a Website
We recommend placing blog under a subdirectory such as yourwebsite.com/blog. When blogging content is under the same domain as the other webpages, it allows “link juice,” or the internal link authority, to pass from a domain name to the blog webpages.
Moz, a leading authority in the SEO industry, has provided a detailed study about the use of subdomains versus subdirectories. The analysis is based on testing its own blog section’s organic traffic. Moz chose to have its blog fall under a subdirectory instead of a subdomain because the SEO rankings improved significantly when blogs are under a subdirectory.
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