The focus here is optimising content for SEO to a level that it earns backlinks from authority websites and drives your Google rankings through the roof. How do you do it?
SEO has come a long way this past decade, from being overrun by stuffed keywords, to an industry dependent on quality content. What is now clear is that digital marketing is only as effective as the sum total of useful content. Let’s take a look at some easy strategies.
Create User-Centric Content
The most important strategy in content development is to focus on consumer needs. The biggest mistake people make is developing content for search engines rather than creating it for the end-user. Granted, improving your position on SERPs (Search Engine Research Pages) is vital, but establishing your site as a valuable resource is far more important. It’s equivalent to optimising content for SEO as the quality is the real deal here.
Ensure your site is useful, focus on addressing concerns, and most importantly, answer FAQs as comprehensively as possible. The value of your site depends substantially on your ability to satisfy your users.
Precise Content
As soon as you get the hang of creating content for people as opposed to optimising content for SEO, focus on the relevance of your content. Note that most of the clicks on your site are target specific.
This means they are looking for specific answers to specific questions. The focus of your site should be to answer these questions as concisely as possible. An evaluation into popular Google searches indicates that sites that offer relevant information have a better CTR (Click Through Rate), more Dwell Time, and a higher conversion rate.
The auto-complete function on Google searches that indicates related searches is a great place to access FAQs. This helps you get a clear indication of the trajectory of organic searches.
Track DT (Dwell Time)
Quality content has the trickle-down effect of keeping people on your site for long periods. The more useful your content is to the audience, the more they stay, share, and use it as a key resource.
The most efficient way to evaluate the quality of your content is to have an algorithm that tracks dwell time. The results of this evaluation will give you a clear indication of the effectiveness of your strategy and what you need to do next.
If you have a high click-through rate with a negative dwell time index, you need to differentiate your content. The value of your website is tied to its service as a useful resource – a more important aspect than optimising content for SEO.
Search Engine Optimisation
Ultimately, no matter how great your content, it won’t be worth much if no one gets to see it. Consider the fact that the first 5 results on Google’s front page account for about 76% of the clicks on search results. This means that for your site to make it to the big leagues, you need to optimise to improve visibility.
An effective SEO strategy involves business optimisation based on specifying a niche of operation. This means identifying what your business is, and offering a solution for a specific target market. Some key strategies involved are:
- Video search optimisation is also a very key function of SEO. Center your content around YouTube, or have video content on your website.
- Mobile-friendliness is also crucial. Mobile searches are far more frequent and have a much higher conversion rate. Call to actions on mobile searches are also significantly more effective.
Keep in mind that up to 20% of the 3.5 billion daily searches on Google are concentrated on front page results. This means that SEO, as a strategy in its entirety, is a key feature for optimising your website.
Knowing how to optimising content for SEO that provides an organic flow of keywords is the most necessary, vital skill necessary for improved visibility and effective SEO.
Focus on Content Relevance
Trust is a very important component of this business. The more relevant your content, and the more you address user issues the more your audience begins to trust you.
Note also that Google operates on a knowledge panel that ranks a website based on valuable, useful information it provides. Always ensure you are ahead of the curve by consistently providing fresh content, and be available for clarifications.
How quickly and efficiently you respond to your audience is what will establish you as a trusted brand.
Rankings also depend heavily on your ability to keep tabs on hot topics. How quick you are to respond to newsworthy and trending social issues will have an impact on building your site as a key, real-time resource.
User Experience (UX)
The most undervalued element in content development is usually UX. As much as your main focus is value and precision, always ensure you create a scenario that makes your content easy to understand.
Research on readability, find out what your audience needs rather than what other similar specification websites are doing. Develop content for the sole purpose of improving user experience will massively improve the value of your site than simply optimising content for SEO.
Verdict
The shift of the Google ranking algorithm from keyword density to content quality is a clear indicator that visibility is no longer the endgame. Now website owners are burdened with improving user experience as well as giving valuable information if they want to compete at the highest level.
Although there are several ways to improve rankings, maintaining content quality will always be the most important strategy.
