You might have heard the phrase ‘content is king’ thrown around quite a lot. While it’s true that having lots of content on your site will help it to rank higher, it’s more about quality than quantity. But how can you create this quality content that reaches your desired audience? That’s where content optimisation comes into effect.
Content optimisation is the process behind ‘optimising’ your content so that it is picked up by search engines. This increases the visibility of your content and therefore your site, business and/or services.
Let’s take a look at exactly how you can optimise your content.
Content optimisation is nothing without quality writing
The main goal of your content is to engage and communicate with your desired audience. If you read back a piece of content and you don’t feel or think anything of it, you know it needs some work. Although an undeniable ranking factor, churning out content for your site isn’t worth it unless it’s of high quality.
Your content needs to be original and unique. Not only does this prevent duplication penalties, but it also makes your site more appealing to a consumer. Ultimately, your content needs to have a purpose. Whether that be to inform, describe, educate or even just for fun – it should fit in naturally with the rest of your site. This goes for both blog and landing page content.
Not that long ago, Google introduced the E-A-T update. This update was to ensure that only the best content was ranking in user search results. E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness. If you stick to these three core values when writing your content, you shouldn’t struggle to start ranking.
Don’t over-optimise your content
Algorithms have a clever way of noticing when you’re over-optimising content. Over-optimising is when you cram in as many keywords and links into your content as possible.
While it’s incredibly important to be using keywords and links in your content, you want to make sure it’s done in a relevant and trustworthy way. Essentially, you want it to read organically and not appear as spam.
A good tip is to write your content first and then revisit it and find ways of optimising. For example, changing some words or sentences to better include your keywords or find appropriate places to include links that have a more natural flow.
Make use of headings
Once you’ve got a great piece of content that is optimised with relevant keywords and links, it’s time to think about structure. Chances are, you probably don’t think too much about headings. Well, headings are actually a great way of optimising your content for search.
For example, try to include your target keyword in some of the earlier headings. This helps the content to rank better in terms of relevancy and trustworthiness. If you’re writing a piece about pet toys and none of your headings includes the term ‘pet toys’, you’re reducing the ranking abilities of that piece.
You also want to format these properly so that the piece is easy to read. So, make sure to include any headings and subheadings in a bold or larger font.
Don’t forget to optimise images
Often overlooked, optimising images is another great way of validating your content. Consumers are incredibly visual and so love images to be included in any form of content.
This is especially true for blog posts or whitepapers. An image can help to break up the text as well as provide some context or demonstration to what you’re saying in your content.
Include alt tags on all images used. These are the words that will show up when a user hovers over an image. They also appear if, for whatever reason, your images don’t load properly. This at least provides some description.
You also want to ensure that the images you are using have been adjusted and sized properly to make sure they are viewed in the way you intended.
Remember to post consistently
Just like your social media channels, you should be producing content for your site regularly. Search engines love fresh content, so it’s important that you take the time to keep your content up-to-date and your blog ticking over nicely.
After all, you can’t expect to become an authoritative and trustworthy site if your content was last updated two years ago and you post on your blog once a month.
If you’re looking for support or best practice advice on producing content, get in touch on team@modo25.com