Are you someone new to the world of search marketing? You would have definitely heard of the term “SEO content” thrown around in marketing meetings. If you don’t understand SEO, it might be challenging to survive in today’s marketing environment, and you might have already felt it. In that case, you might want to consider taking a Google SEO course or something similar.
This is a beginner’s guide to answering all the queries that rise when you think about the concept.
- What is SEO content?
- What are the types of SEO content?
- What is your SEO content strategy?
What is SEO Content?
If you wish to understand what marketers mean by SEO content, it is really helpful in breaking down the literal phrase in its component parts.
SEO related to the Search engine optimization, or it can also be called the process of website optimization so that your people can find it through search engines like Google.
By content, we literally mean any kind of information that lives on the web and can be actually consumed on the web.
So, when you put these two concepts together: SEO content comes to be the content created with the aim of attracting search engine traffic.
Here I am not going to tell you everything you wish to know about content optimization for search engines because that’s completely another guide. However here is a quick refresher on what is required to do when you want to do SEO of your web content.
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Keyword Optimization
It is important for you to know how and where you should use keywords in your content for maximum searchability.
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Keyword Research
If you wish to generate traffic through some search, it is important to do keyword search before you start writing. When done this way, you can actually pay attention to keywords for which a particular amount of search volume already exists. In simple words, write a topic that people are already looking for information about. If you’re struggling to conduct keyword research, contact a professional seo company in London (or wherever you’re based!)
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Content Organization
The content on your website should be arranged in a sensible manner. This is not just good for SEO, it also assists the visitors on your web platform to find relevant content easily.
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Content Advertisement
Enhance the visibility of new content that you create by sharing it on social networks and building up links to your content.
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Talk About Intentions
It is really important to keep in your mind that if search engine traffic is your individual goal, your results will certainly suffer. If you wish to please both the search engines and the potential consumers and return visitors, you have to permit value beyond search engine optimization. In simple words, there is no need to produce thin content bringing ranks and getting clicks. But this does not offer any additional value to the search engine user. The websites that advertise low-value content may be at the risk of getting penalized by Google. They may have higher bounce rates and low conversion rates as well.
Different Types of SEO Content
SEO content may include any of the following:
- Blog Posts – A blog is an easy way to create a regular stream of SEO content. Generally speaking, blog posts are engaging and are more likely to fascinate the links than product pages. So these can be a great method to build some authority for your website.
- Product Pages – These can also be called the bread and butter of any kind of retail e-commerce platform. A good product page can act as both SEO content and a PPC landing page.
- Lists – A list is basically a type of article, but designing it as a list makes it really easy to scan. These kinds of titles also appear to be more clickable when spotted in search results or in the social media feeds.
- Articles – Think of an interview, news articles or some feature piece. This is the real kind of content you may find on most newspaper, style websites or magazine.
- Videos – Generally, there are few videos on the web than pages of text, regularly; it can be really easy to rank on the first page for a competitive keyword by designing a video rather than an article. Based on what kind of site or business that you run, videos can be one of the great ways to attract and reach an audience. Think of creating video tutorials on how to use your products. Or demonstrate a procedure which is related to your business – for instance, a plumber can make a video displaying how to clear a sink.
- Infographics – Large format images or infographics that consist of plenty of data on an individual subject, may rack up a lot of page links and views. But because a lot of content is embedded in the image and thus not readable as text by search engines, it is important to optimize the rest of the page carefully.
- Guides – Guide is one of the longer pieces of content that clarifies the way to do something. You can post a complete guide on your web platform, or you may post an excerpt or summary, needing visitors to fill the registration form to read the complete guide. This can be a really good way to bring in leads, but keep in mind putting on a registration wall may lessen the amount of SEO traffic you may bring to that guide.
- Glossaries – There are a lot of people who use Google to look up the terms than using a dictionary. If you work in some specific industry, a properly built-out glossary can be one of the perfect ways to capture the traffic. Think of medical terms, fashion terms, architectural terms, and cooking terms.
- Directories – The directory is a useful classification of links to sites or the resources around some given topic. For instance, a perfume blog may create a directory of places to buy a gadget from key department stores to independent shops all around the country.
These are the basic types of SEO content, but it is important that you do not let this thing limit you, because the possibilities are endless.
- Slideshows – The slideshow is a method to display a series of related images. Sometimes pictures are more important than text as you may be trying to showcase what all the stars wore to the Oscars. SEO of your title, captions, image file names and more are important as there is less for the search engines to read.
How to Develop an SEO Content Strategy?
Have you been producing content in an unorganized manner, thinking that some of it will finally rank, it is time to commit and buckle down a more methodical SEO content strategy for the web. Here are four key steps to define and refine your SEO content strategy.
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Determine your Goals
First of all, determine your goals as a business or website. Are you looking to drive sales through your web portal? Do you monetize your website through ads and eventually wish to increase traffic and return readership? Your goals will decide what kind of content you need to focus on.
If you are trying to drive the product sales, your first focus needs to be attractive, informative product pages those are properly optimized for both conversions and search. Your secondary focus can be helpful blog content that demonstrates when and how to use your products, connecting to the pages where relevant.
If in any case your site operates an advertising model and the eventual aim is to attract new readers via search, you would certainly want to pay attention to the rich content with stickiness.
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Reflect on your Audience
Your analytics and surveys can help a great degree in getting a picture of your specific visitor or the client. Just think of developing characters, or marketing personas that reflect your ideal customers and site visitors. Then you need to think about what type of content those personas will be actually looking for.
For instance, if you operate a B2B website targeting C level executives, you may wish to create high-level white papers that can be easily downloaded and saved to read at a later stage.
If your business target teens and tweens, you may want to pay attention to frequent updates with very less text and more videos or images. You may also wish to be certain that your site is optimized for the mobile usage.
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Design an Editorial Calendar
Once you have an idea of whom you are targeting and why you can simply start building out an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is a chart that clarifies when you will publish the new content and what kind of content it will be. This will help you get glued to the regular schedule and prevent you from mixing to come up with a topic for the latest content at the last moment.
Then there are certain tips for creating and sticking to an editorial calendar:
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Use Google Calendar or Outlook
Share your editorial calendar with the entire marketing team. It is better that you set some reminders for the authors so that they get a notification when a deadline is approaching.
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Think of Creating Ongoing Features
For instance: A food blog may show up a vegetarian recipe every Monday. There are many blogs that link roundups once in a week. Craft a category page for every ongoing feature, so that the visitors can find all the vegetarian Monday recipes or link roundups in a single place.
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Give yourself Loads of Time
When you wish to produce the more complicated type of content like infographics and videos, there is certainly a need to give it a lot of time as it goes through lots of edits to perfect and can be even more complicated to optimize for search.
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Do not Plan for Far Future in Advance
Calendars get derailed after one month or two, because of the changes in marketing budgets, goals or staff. So there is no need to try and plan and schedule for the next year and risk wasting a lot of effort and time.
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Check out and Re-Assess
Eventually, you stay on the top of your site analytics. Analyze your SEO content regularly to see what is working and what is not. Good measures of engagement and success involve page links, views, comments, social shares, and conversion rates. In the end, your analysis has two core areas:
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Study your Success to repeat those strategies
It is important that you look for the real patterns. Look if your audience loves videos? If yes, make more videos! Adjust your editorial calendar moving forward so that you can pay attention to more time and effort on the content type that resonate.
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Cut out Time for Improving and Updating the Older SEO Content
If you have ever tried your hand on optimizing an article for a particular keyword, but it is getting a little bit more traffic for variation of that specific keyword, then it is important that you go back and re-optimize it for some new keyword. You may be able to properly increase traffic while putting that keyword in the title.