Optimising content is just as important in your content marketing strategy as writing and publishing them. If you fail to optimise content for SEO regularly, blog posts that would have been previously ranked on page 1 will fall down the rankings on Google.
Google regularly updates their search engine every year, with a stream of updates and algorithm changes, which leaves your content vulnerable to huge ranking drops. It’s worth staying up-to-date with the latest SEO updates so that any changes to Google’s ranking factors can be taken into account.
The most recent algorithm that Google is rolling out is the Helpful Content Update. This algorithm update is designed to boost content that has been written by people and devalue content written for SEO. As the Helpful Content update affects all sites, it means that sites that consistently publish high volumes of content that have little value will be penalised by Google.
HubSpot’s 2021 State Of Marketing Report reported that 69% of marketers are investing in SEO, which is up from 64% in 2020. Optimising content for SEO is essential as a well-optimised site that ranks highly on page 1 of Google will get you more traffic, inbound leads and sales.
We’ve put together 5 ways of optimising content for SEO so that your content ranks higher on Google.
Optimising Content For Search Intent
Search intent is centred around giving your audience the type of content they’re looking for, whether that’s answering a question or finding resources. As Google’s primary ranking factors are relevance, authority and user satisfaction, it’s key that you consider search intent when optimising content.
You’ve written a great piece of content that’s perfect for your site, but if it doesn’t answer the question or problem a user has, it won’t rank on Google. It’s important when you’re creating your SEO content strategy that you produce content that’s optimised for what audiences are searching for.
If you are writing a piece of content to rank for the term “football shirts”, there’s less success in writing about “The history of football shirts”. This is because it would not fulfil the user intent behind searching for that keyword. Users have different search intents when it comes to searching for a question or query, which should be taken into account.
You should also factor in that some keywords that previously ranked highly on Google will change over time. It’s key that you stay up-to-date with the search engine results pages so that your content remains on page 1.
Produce Fresh, Longform Content That You Can Optimise Later
Producing high-quality, long-form content that you can optimise later ensures that your site’s blog ranks well on Google. When creating this type of content, you will need to make sure your blogs cover the subject in-depth, as well as formatting the piece to make it easy to read for your audience.
There are many benefits to producing long-form content from an optimisation point-of-view for SEO. Not only will it increase your site’s online visibility, but it helps build authority as it’ll position you as an industry expert in that field. It’s all about quality over quantity when it comes to producing long-form content.
If your long-form piece is generating a steady stream of traffic to your site, then it’s worth optimising it every few months. By doing this, you can include new information that can be optimised for possible featured snippet opportunities, as well as building backlinks to help your blog’s SEO ranking.
Use Internal Linking
Internal linking is something that you should be doing regularly when it comes to creating and optimising content for SEO. You should make sure that when you are writing new blog posts you link back to previous pieces of content you’ve written.
If you want to make the most out of your internal linking strategy, you should follow these best practices to ensure your content ranks higher on Google. That includes linking to your site’s most important pages and using anchor text on the keyword that you are getting the webpage to rank higher for.
Whenever you publish blog posts, it’s worth linking back to previous blogs, provided that they are relevant to the subject that you’re writing about. For example, we want our blog “What Is Anchor Text And How It Affects SEO” to rank higher for the ‘anchor text’ term. As we’re writing a new post about internal linking, we’ll find the term and include the link to the phrase ‘anchor text’ back to the post we’re writing about.
The more high-quality internal links you use to optimise your content, the more likely it is that your content will rank higher on Google.
Improve Readability Of Your Blog Posts
Making your blog content easily readable for your audience is key not just for the user experience, but for search engines too. You could write the best piece of content around a niche topic, but if it’s not optimised for SEO, then readers will bounce off the site and find another site that answers their query.
That’s why when you are optimising your content for SEO, you should factor in how the content is structured on your blog posts. Paragraphs, headings and subheadings need to be clearly laid out so that it makes it easier for the reader to read through the piece of content you’ve written.
Optimising your SEO content with readability in mind will help the person answer a question or solve a problem they’re searching for.
Do Keyword Research
Whenever you are writing and optimising content for SEO, you should always do keyword research first. Keyword research is fulfilling what your target audience is searching for on a search engine and optimising your content around that term.
There are plenty of tools available that you can use to help you find the right keywords to include in your content. Some of our favourite tools that we use regularly to perform keyword research for optimising content are AHRefs, Google Trends and SEMRush. By using these tools, it can help you find out what terms or phrases people are searching for.
Researching the keywords that are relevant to your target audience will enable you to see which terms fit the blog post or piece of content you’re producing. The more keywords you can target when optimising your content, the more likely it is that your content will go from page 2 to page 1 on Google, thus increasing traffic to your site.
How Ricemedia Can Help Optimise Content For SEO That Ranks On Google
Optimising your content for SEO and getting it to rank higher on Google is an ongoing process, which takes time and effort. By using these five tips we’ve included in this piece, it’ll help ensure that content that was ranking on page 2 or page 3 goes back up to page 1.
If you are struggling with getting your content to rank on page 1 of Google, we can help optimise content for SEO that ranks well. Please get in touch with our expert team at Ricemedia today.
