Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content is Google’s number one key practice for organic search. Content quality is, in fact, one of the most important elements that will influence SEO success. Content must be written for the reader versus just for SEO. Our content should attract, engage, and retain our target audiences.
Content Marketing through the lens of SEO is all about consistency and relevance. Fresh, unique, and creative content gets rapidly indexed by search engines and generally ranks higher than low-value, repetitive content that needs to be optimized.
Content must have a purpose
Content must solve a particular issue or query our customers have. If we create compelling content with a goal, that content will already have an edge from an SEO perspective, making it much easier to further optimize for success. Content should closely also follow Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) guidelines.
You are ready to write after identifying your content’s purpose, key message, content type, and target keywords.
Best practices for creating compelling and optimized content
- Good length of copy. Search engines evaluate bounce rate (how many people leave the page with no onward journey on site) and dwelling time (how long the user spends on the page on average), so plan to produce content that keeps the reader hooked but refrain from a lengthy piece – unless it’s a guide.
- Scannable content. Long paragraphs could deter readers. Include bullet points or lists if the content allows it. Break up content when necessary.
- Include an image or video to help visualize the content or supporting resources that may further engage our audience.
- Internally link to associated pages within the site with descriptive text. Also, link to external sites if citing data, articles, or a webpage.
- Include the targeted keywords naturally in the copy.
While the instinct with many content pieces is to forget about them once they’ve been published, increasingly, SEO best practice favors a different approach.
Review content regularly
Content should be constantly reviewed and refined, with regular updates to its structure, text, and inbound links, because search engines prioritize new content regularly.
When planning new content, it is vital to go through all the steps outlined previously and chart how it will help boost the content you already have. Aim to add new inbound links to multiple older pieces of content with the latest content and create a framework to update it.
Things to consider when creating new content:
- Putting years in titles quickly signals to the search engines how old things are.
- Being tied to current news trends.
- Deleting outdated content. Repurposing content is golden! Do you already have content that focuses on your target topic? Leverage that piece and optimize it. Refresh the optimizations, add new internal links, and update resources.
- Take that one step further and create content in different formats: a video, an infographic, etc. Not all consumers absorb content the same way. Sometimes, a different format will suffice for a specific topic.
- Refrain from creating content already on our site for the same topic. This may defeat your efforts and dilute the relevancy by confusing the search engines with which page is mainly about that topic. Instead of recreating, repurpose!
- Evaluate your content’s performance. Is it not hitting the mark? Perhaps a different keyword should be targeted, or further optimizations are required. It’s wise to keep a pulse on how your content performs so you can modify or adapt to make the most of the content.