Having a dominant presence in the digital world is a hardly achievable task, establishing a good Search engine optimization ( SEO ) is crucial for differentiating your business from failure and success. So, high-ranking content is the goal, and here are 20 content optimizations to help you achieve it!
The basics:
We need to know what is content optimization.
Content optimization is a sort of editing of the content to make it more appealing to readers and easier for search engines to categorize. It’s not all about doing what the search engine wants, for example, creating low-quality text to hit a keyword can backfire big time. In the end, the emphasis is on writing content that people appreciate which will lead it to a higher ranking. Optimizing your content comes down to learning on-page SEO basics, playing them, and analyzing the results from looking at the google performance data.
Know, it’s a matter of how to do it, here is the list!
1. Keyword Research
Before we can start optimizing for keywords, we need to have a defined topic, and we need to see how people are searching for it. The best keywords are the ones that people commonly use, and we can use that information to our advantage. Take a frequent question asked by the customers, apply SEO tool to it and find the preasing that people search for. SEO Tools like “Answer the public”can save us a lot of time, and prevent us from using keywords that nobody looks for.
2. Interesting content
As I previously stated, the content needs to be appealing to the readers. We don’t need to write for search engines, we need to write for people that are using it! Making a high-value contract should be are no. 1 priority. We can achieve that by offering a fresh and more creative perspective than our competitors. People that enjoy your content will respond by spending more time on the website, the math is simple.
3. Readability
The content needs to be readable!
Besides that, our content must be grammatically sound to ensure it from being considered spam, sites with lots of spelling mistakes or poor-quality writing tend to be marked as spam by the search engine.
4. Keyword placement
Finding an awesome keyword is one thing, but knowing where to place it is another.
The best places for a head-punching keyword are:
- Page titles – Use an exact keyword in a title
- URLs – Try customizing your URL to have a keyword in it
- Image titles – Change the file name before uploading to include the keyword
- Headings – it’s the best place to use queries ( longer phrases )
5. Adding media
Images and videos are additions that improve users’ experience with written content. Visual content makes a page more stimulating and it can also help you realize the point of the text. They are fun, eye-catching and an absolute must in today’s world.
6. Analyzing the heading
The heading is probably the most important part of the content. It is a first impression on which the reader decides whether to read an article or not. Optimizing your heading can give you a chance to attract a larger audience and more clicks which can help to boost your website to the first page of the search engine. Using the headline analyzer tool is the best way to optimize and check the quality of the heading.
7. Contact Details
Every professional website should have a credible – NAP ( name, address, and phone number)
A huge factor in how you rank in the search is the proximity to the person searching. For example, the brand SEO Services Sydney inst going to rank as well for a person searching in Melbourne as it does for someone searching in Sydney. Google scans all of your information to confirm where you are located and whether are you a legit business.
8. Page Speed
Optimizing content for fast page loads is critical for success. In the sea of search results, nobody will stick around for slow content. You can check the speed of the page with speed testing tools like GTmetrix.
9. Mobile use
People should be able to enjoy content regardless of the device that’s being used (laptop, tablet, desktop monitor, smartphone). In the modern era, nearly 60% of all searches are carried out on mobile devices ad that number will continue to grow with the passing years.
Mobile optimization includes
- Content is responsive to mobile devices
- Buttons are easy to tap
- Linked text with copy is easy to tap
- Images appear correctly on the page
10. Use SEO-friendly URLs
People tend to overlook the importance of URLs when considering their search engine optimization strategy. Search engines reward clean URLs that relate to the topic on the page they cover. Cleaner URL provides a larger reach, unlike the complex ones that don’t relate to the topic and can be marked as spam,
11. Use Outbound Links
Outbound links are included links within the content and blogs of your website that redirect users to a different domain. Search engines give you more authority and credibility when you include a high-quality outbound link in your content. This shows that your website is credible enough to source other pages.
12. Remove duplicate content
Duplicate content confuses search engines, if you have two similar texts, Google is probably going to rank only one of them. You can avoid this by creating a new unique title, headings, etc…
13. Avoid distractions
You can very easily overload your webpage whit unnecessary information. Webpage filled whit popups and heavy menus will distract your audience and it will affect your conversion rate. The priority is to make readers concentrate on your content, so in this case, it’s best to try to make a minimalistic web page that retains focus.
14. Use Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are the short text that appears under the page title in the search results. If your meta descriptions are better than the ones above it, you can draw attention to yourself and metaphorically say steal some of the clicks from larger sites. whit time, you can maybe even outgrow them.
15. Use internal links
Internal links are links between your pages. They have the purpose of trying to keep a person on your site for a longer amount of time. If you are optimizing a blog, there are links within the main copy that points to related content on your site. They should be a helpful next step for the visitor’s journey.
16. Navigation
website navigation Is the only way for the reader to move from one piece of content to the next. By delivering the information quickly and without friction, a person will likely come back to visit the site once more. All written content should have a path to related information.
17. Social sharing
Social sharing happens offsite but we can optimize the content to help to ensure those shares.
By using plugins, we can add quick share buttons to our content which allows the visitor to share it on any platform with just one click.
18. Freshness
We tend to look for the search results with the most recent dates because believe that it’s the most accurate. That doesn’t mean that we need to create new content every single day, it just means that humans and search engines like regular content, and we can use that to our advantage.
19. Use schema
Website schema is microdata that is added to your code. It prevents the search engine from misunderstanding words and images, it just tells the search engine what is the content about.
20. Reach out for reviews
Before buying anything on the internet, people turn to good old reviews to see what other people think of the product and how it serves them. So, that means that the buyers try to inquire about new information about the company and products before buying. We can use that to our advantage, and by reaching to out to the customers for their reviews, we ensure positive feedback.
Time to optimize!
Now that you have your checklist, the only thing left is to start the optimization process. Give your content a better fighting chance in the search results.
Mianna Korben
Latest posts by Mianna Korben (see all)
- Content Optimization: A-20 Point Checklist - November 29, 2022
- How to Build a Perfect Home Gym - September 30, 2022
- 5 Activities To Unleash Your Inner Adventurer - May 9, 2022