Have you been publishing pieces of content on your website regularly, but feel like it’s not making an impact? Or are you still hesitant to use content marketing, thinking it’s just fluff? Then this guide is made just for you.
Content optimisation is a key part of your successful content marketing strategy. Creating content that doesn’t get found is a waste of time and resources. Get your content’s SEO strategy right and you’ll see the difference. Here, we’ll explain what SEO is, why it’s important and how to do it well.
What is SEO optimised content?
Content optimisation is the process of refining and enhancing digital content to improve its visibility, engagement, and effectiveness. The process involves ensuring content quality, including keyword rich copy, writing compelling titles and meta descriptions, and earning authoritative backlinks. All of these help with your organic search rankings (organic traffic is boosted by SEO rather than a paid position on a search results page).
What’s the process of content optimisation?
Content optimisation is like baking a cake – a very special one. It’s a mix of the right ingredients, the right technique, an element of science and a sprinkling of care. Here’s the recipe.
1. Perform keyword research
When baking for someone, you consider their preferences, right?
The same goes when you begin your content marketing strategy. You need to think of your customers and what they’d be interested in. This tends to be a solution to a problem or an answer to a question.
Google the relevant search terms. Check if there’s search volume for these queries. But don’t be tempted to use these all at once. Rather, narrow your keyword research by considering search phrases with three or more terms (called long-tail keywords) and focus on these target keywords instead.
Why?
Studies show that long-tail keywords have higher click-through rates (CTR) compared to broad Google searches.
For instance, instead of the general term ‘Mexican food’ you could try ‘quick beef burrito recipe’ or ‘easy vegan tacos’.
What to avoid when using target keywords
Keyword stuffing is the process of unnecessarily using several keywords repeatedly in their content. This is a common mistake, especially for newbies who think this will easily put their content on the first page of Google search. Unfortunately, this only leads to:
- penalties by the search engine
- brand damage
- loss of users.
A better alternative is to combine your target keywords with semantically related terms. So rather than repeatedly mentioning the phrase “lawyer in Beckenham” on your landing page, you may include terms such as criminal lawyer, defence lawyer, or personal injury lawyer.
2. Look at your competitors
Now that you’ve selected your target keywords for your campaign, you’re ready to move forward to the next step. Take a close look at what your competitors are doing.
You’re likely to find several write-ups on your chosen keyword on various search engine results page (SERPS). Take a look at these pieces of content. Is it truly great content? Or can you discover ways to make it even better?
3. Cover the topic in depth
So, you’ve gathered your ingredients. Now you’re ready to start baking your high-quality content.
Think about a structure that is logical and user-friendly. Break it up with an optimised heading structure, known as the H tag structure. Basically, sub-headings including target keywords which help the user to navigate the content.
Capture your target audience by including semantically relevant keywords in your discussion. So if you’re talking about London, it’s inevitable for you to include words like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Or if you’re writing about Liverpool, then The Beatles and the River Mersey will likely be mentioned.
Showcase your thought leadership with the use of case studies and infographics. This makes your new content authoritative and valuable, which often leads to increased social shares and improved link-building strategy.
Add engaging metadata to get featured in Google’s snippets.
4. Be engaging with the use of white space
We’re almost complete with our content creation process. Now, let’s top it off with some icing!
Increase your web page’s readability and navigational ease with the use of:
- bullet points
- subheadings
- call to action (cta) buttons.
Add an image or two to your content to make it more engaging. However, ensure it has the necessary title tags, alt tags, alt text and image tags to maximise the full potential of your content.
And you’re done – and ready to share your creation.
5. Regular content updates
But you can’t just forget about your new creation. You must ensure your content remains relevant and doesn’t go stale. Go back to your published content and metadata and review it. Make the necessary refurbishments as needed. Remove out-dated information and add new facts that improve the user experience.
What are the advantages of optimised content for your business?
Optimised content brings many benefits to your business including:
Lower cost than traditional advertising
Compared to traditional advertising, content marketing boasts a 62% cost savings. Yet, it yields a remarkable threefold increase in lead generation. This makes it one of the best means of generating leads and also increasing both profit and revenue.
As an example, let’s look at Sage, a cloud business management solutions firm supporting millions of small to medium-sized businesses globally. They have various types of content such as:
- Guides
- Templates
- Trends and insight
- Podcasts
- Videos.
Through these pieces of content, they indirectly engage small to medium businesses in an active online conversation. This establishes them as a thought leader in the industry. As a result, they’re found easily by their potential clients as they appear on top of the organic search for search queries related to accounting, management software, payment and banking.
Long-term profitability
SEO does take time and effort, but the long-term profitability it delivers means it’s totally worthwhile.
If you’re familiar with pay-per-click (PPC), then you know that it’s the fastest way to put your brand on top of the organic search. However, it only stays that way while you have the money to pay for these coveted positions in Google Search.
With optimised content, you can have the luxury of staying on top of the organic search without the need to pay each month.
Let’s take a look at Hubspot and how it uses content optimisation to its advantage.
Hubspot is a CRM platform offering marketing, sales, customer service, and content management. You won’t see it advertising in Google Ads, but it continues to dominate the search engine rankings mainly because of its consistent content marketing strategy.
It has a massive treasury of topics about:
- website tutorials
- customer retention
- email marketing
- social media marketing.
Hubspot’s love for content is so huge that they offer a free daily email newsletter for anyone interested in the latest start-up, tech, and business news. This gives them a huge number of backlinks and internal links – metrics that Google regards highly.
Why you should outsource your content marketing strategy
Going back to the cake analogy, you’ll get a more professional result that pleases the crowd if you leave it to a baker.
Effectively optimised content needs a combination of technical and creative expertise. Writing SEO content with the user’s intent in the forefront of your mind, combined with an awareness of search engine preferences, can be quite the balancing act. You may do it on your own, but you’ll find it more productive and cost-efficient to let an expert handle the content optimisation for you.
We’ve got years of experience and a dedicated team focused on delivering high quality content that reflects your brand and business objectives. We’d love to help you boost your website’s visibility and engagement.
If you’d like to find out more about the ways that we can help you to increase your online conversions, please get in touch with the MGX Digital team.