Content for SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of creating content that is both informative and keyword-rich to improve your website's ranking in search engine results pages. In other words, it's the process of making your website more visible and relevant to potential customers.
And while there's no magic formula for creating the perfect piece of content, there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of success.
However, recently Google, one of the major search engines, has become more focused on ranking websites with more natural, informative and helpful content.
Content that isn't as optimised for ranking on search engines, and actually helps people answer their queries, will get some boost in rankings. You can find out more at What creators should know about Google's helpful content update.
How Does Google Update For SEO in Content Affect Me?
They want to ensure that people using their search engines are helped out by the information on your website. Your content should be designed with humans reading it first, and then SEO. Your expertise in that industry or profession should come first, rather than summarising other people's content, add your own knowledge or tips.
What might seem like common knowledge in your profession might not be widespread knowledge to the public. Don't just create barebones content that forces people to search for more information.
If you write an article or do a video, ensure it answers the questions people have when they landed on your page or channel.
Google's update to their content writing policy is a step in the right direction. However, only time will tell if this will be enough to make a significant impact on the quality of web content.
For now, we can all play our part in making sure that the content we write is useful and informative by following Google's guidelines.
In exploring what SEO means, breaking down the phrase will help:
· SEO or Search Engine Optimization means optimizing a website so that people can find it easily online.
· Content refers to information available and consumed on the web. It could be written articles, images and video. Make sure the content is made for people-first.
Combining these two, SEO content refers to content created to get traffic on search engines. The following are the backbones of how to optimize content for SEO and people:
· Keyword Research: people who desire to generate content using search engine traffic need keyword research before writing. This allows you to concentrate on keywords with a specific search volume already.
· Keyword optimization: understand the use of keywords in your content to make it available when searched
· Content organization: this includes structuring your site so that visitors can easily find it, as you want them to stay longer on such site.
· Content promotion: Makes new content visible via social sharing and generating links (internal and from external sites) to your content.
Types of SEO Contents
The following are types of SEO content.
· Product Pages: A good product page takes care of the SEO and PPC landing page
· Blog Posts: With a blog, you can create a constant stream of SEO content. They have a high probability of attracting links compared to product pages, allowing you to build authority for your site.
· Articles: they are abundant on newspapers and magazine structured websites. Your expertise can be used to highlight and share more in-depth knowledge of your industry.
· Lists: This type of article is framed as a list like (10 ways to exercise from home). It makes it easy for people to scan, and people like clicking such results found on social media. It's good for presenting bite-sized information that's useful for people short on time.
· Guides: this is a longer piece that sheds detailed light on doing something. While some people prefer to break them into a series of web pages, it is better structured as a single page.
· Videos: the internet has fewer videos compared to articles. A video makes it easy to rank for a competitive keyword than an article. You can leverage video to attract lots of audiences, depending on your business structure. Tutorials on how to use your products will help incredibly. Short consumable videos like Instagram Reels or TikTok are a major source of traffic. And easy for people to see your content at a glance.
· Infographics: These are large-format images with substantial data (graphics or charts) on a particular subject, and can generate views and links. Here are some infographic templates that can get you started.
· Directories: These are valuable links to resources centred on a given topic. For instance, an art store has a directory of places to buy various artwork around the country.
Strategy for Developing an SEO Content Strategy
If you have no definite plan for your content, hoping that one of them will rank, it’s time to use a structural approach for SEO on the web.
The following explores four steps to define and refine your SEO content strategy:
1. Define Your Goals
You should have your goals as a business or website. Is your goal to increase sales via your website? Are you after monetizing your website using ads to boost traffic and readership? Your goals will point you to the content you should adopt.
People who want to drive product sales mainly need a captivating product page that takes care of search and conversion. Also, make sure your contents are helpful, such that it explores how and where to use your product.
For sites based on an advertising model, aim to attract readers using search to focus on rich content like articles and video. You need to make it entertaining and sticky, so that it keeps visitors engaged.
2. Consider Your Audience
You should know your target audience, survey and analytics software can help point to who your visitors are. The best feedback is directly from your customers. Even feedback from customers for your competitors can help. Places like Trustpilot and Google Business reviews are great places to start.
Develop marketing personas that stand for ideal customers and site visitors, and consider what content they might need. A B2B website, for example, with an eye on cooperate, level executives should focus on creating white papers. Downloading such content and saving for a later read comes easy.
Businesses that target younger people need content with lots of images, videos, and fewer texts. Such sites should also be optimized for mobile use. Currently, younger demographics love the easy to consume and digest content of TikTok.
3. Have an Editorial Calendar
After gaining knowledge of whom you want to target and why, the next step is an editorial calendar. Such a calendar guides you towards what to publish and when to publish. With this, you can publish based on a schedule, especially people with a blog.
Here are some tips on creating and sticking with an editorial calendar
· Outlook can help: your entire marketing team can access the editorial calendar. It also allows you to keep a tab on deadlines and remind authors when a deadline is approaching.
· Have ongoing features: A food blog can have smoothies once a week. You need a category page for such endless features, which will allow visitors to find all the smoothie roundups in a specific place.
· Have lots of lead time: the production of complicated content like videos and infographics needs a series of edits to be perfect, while optimizing each for the search engine can also be complicated
· Avoid planning too far in advance: adjustment in marketing goals, budget, staff, etc., often derails calendars. Therefore, preparing for the coming year does not make much sense. Maybe only prepare for content on a three month schedule. Some industries, such as IT, may require you to prepare content monthly, as that field is known to change frequently.
4. Analyze and Re-assess
Make sure you are on top of your website’s analytics. This involves regular analysis of your content for SEO to detect what works and needs adjustment. Metrics for success are page views, comments, links, social shares, and conversion rates for your Facebook (including tweets and likes).
Here are two goals that should guide your analysis
· Keep track of your success to repeat the strategies: consider the pattern. Does your video have many views? Then capitalize on it. Structure your editorial calendar to focus more on content that converts.
· Dedicate time to update and improve old SEO content: for articles, you tried to optimize around a specific keyword and get more traffic for a different variant of the keyword; make sure to re-optimize it for the particular keywords. Using such keywords might help increase your traffic.
The Thin Line Between Content for SEO and For Humans.
In conclusion, it is important to remember the thin line between content for SEO and humans. Too much focus on keywords and SEO can lead to content that is difficult to read and does not provide value for the reader. However, too little focus on SEO can mean potential customers do not find your content. The key is to strike a balance between the two, and to always keep the reader in mind when creating content.
Content for SEO must be well-written, keyword rich, informative, and human first. By following these guidelines, website owners can improve their chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages. Creating great content is the first step to a successful SEO campaign.
