If you are someone new to the world of search marketing, you might have heard of the term “SEO content” being thrown in the marketing meetings.
This beginner’s guide is designed in a way that it is an answer to three key questions:
What does SEO content mean?
What types of SEO Content are there?
What is my SEO content strategy?
What is SEO Content?
In order to understand what marketers mean by SEO content, it is helpful to break down the phrase into some of its component parts.
SEO refers to the search engine optimization or the process of optimizing a website so that people can easily find it through search engines like Google.
By content, we simply mean any information living on the web and can be used on the web.
Therefore, putting these two key concepts together, SEO content is any content which is created with the goal of attracting search engine traffic and attracting the users.
Here in this article, I am not going to tell you everything that you wish to know about optimizing your content for search engines, that’s a completely another guide. But here’s a super-rapid refresher on what you would need to do to SEO your web content.
- Keyword Optimization – You need to know how and where to use certain keywords in your content for maximum searchability.
- Keyword Research – If you wish to generate traffic through search, it is important to do some keyword research before you start writing anything. This way, you can pay attention to keywords for which some specific amount of search volume already exists. In simple words, write towards the topics that people are already looking for information about.
- Content Organization – The content on your website should be organized in a sensible way. This is not just good for SEO, it also assists visitors on your website find other relevant content easily.
- Content Promotion – Enhance the visibility to new content that you create by sharing it on social networks and the building links to your content.
Then there are also certain types of content:
SEO content may include any of the following things:
- Blog Posts – A blog is the easiest way to create a regular stream of SEO content. In general, blog posts are more attractive and more likely to fetch links than product pages. Therefore, they can be a really great way to build some authority for your website.
- Product Pages – These are the bread and butter of any retail e-commerce website. A perfect product page can serve as both the SEO content and PPC landing page.
- Lists – A list is just a kind of article, however, framing it as a list makes it really easier to scan. Such types of titles also seem to be somewhat more clickable been spotted in the search results or in social media notifications.
- Articles – Think of feature piece, interview, and news article. This is the real kind of content you would find on most newspaper or magazine style websites.
- Videos – Usually there are just a few videos on the web than pages of the text, regularly, it can be really easier to rank on the very first page for a competitive keyword by creating a video rather than an article. Based on what kind of site or business you run, videos can be really a great way to attract and reach an audience. Think of creating video tutorials of how to make use of your products, Or exemplify the process which is related to your business – for instance, a cook could make a video showing how to prepare the healthy salad.
- Slideshows – A slideshow is a way to display a series of related images. Sometimes pictures are more important than text like you say you are trying to show what all the celebrities wore to the Oscars. Here also SEO of your title, image file names, captions and more is important as there is less for the search engines to read.
- Guides – Guide is a longer piece of the content explaining in length how to do something. You can simply post a complete guide on your website, or you may just post a summary or some excerpt, needing visitors to fill out some registration form to read the complete guide. This can be a really good way to generate leads, however, keep it in mind that putting up a registration wall ma likely reduce the amount of traffic you may drive to that guide.
- Infographics – Large images or infographics that contain plenty of data on a single subject, may rack up many page views and links. But, because a lot of the content is included in the image and is not readable as text by the search engines, it is important to optimize the rest of the page carefully.
Describe your Goals
First of all, you need to determine your goals as a business or the website. Are you looking forward to driving sales through your website? Do you monetize your website through ads and therefore just wish to increase traffic and return leadership? Your goals will determine what kind of content you need to focus on.
If you are trying to drive product sales, your key focus should be fascinating, informative products images that are optimized for both conversions and search. Your secondary focus could be a helpful blog content illustrating when and how to use your products, linking to those pages where relevant.
If your website operates on an advertising model and the aim is to attract new readers through search, you would want to pay attention to rich content with stickiness.
Target your Audience
Surveys and your analytics software can assist you to get a better picture of your specific visitor or client. Simply consider developing market personas or the characters that represent your ideal site consumers and visitors. Then think about what type of content those personas would be looking for.
For instance, if you operate a B2B website targeting C-level executives, you may want to create some high-level white papers that can be downloaded and saved to read later on.
Then if your business targets some teens and tweens, you may want to focus on the frequent updates with less text, and more images or videos. You would also want to be sure that your site is optimized for mobile usage.
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Create an editorial calendar
Once you have an idea of who you are targeting and why you can start to build out an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is a schedule that dictates when you will publish new content and what type of content it will be. This will help you stick to a regular schedule (it’s especially important to create new content on a regular basis if you have a blog), as well as prevent you from scrambling to come up with a topic for new content at the last minute.
Analyze and Re-Assess
Last but not least, stay on the top of your website’s analytics. Analyze your SEO content to see what is working and what is not. Good measures of engagement and success include links, comments, page views, social shares, and conversion rates. Your analysis should have two goals:
Study your Successes so you can repeat those strategies – Look for patterns and make out if your audience loves videos. Then make some more videos. Just adjust your editorial calendar going forward so that you pay more attention to time and effort on the content types that really resonate.
Cut out Time for Improving and updating Older SEO Content
If you tried to optimize an article for a specific keyword, but it is getting more traffic for a different variation of that specific keyword, then just go back in and re-optimize for a new keyword. You may be able to significantly enhance traffic by putting that keyword in the title.
And there you have it! Please let us know in the comment section if you have some other questions about creating and optimizing the content for SEO.