Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any other factors. Visitors know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct others to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
A big part of giving your content marketing strategy the best chance of success is through content optimization. As opposed to optimizing content specifically for search engines, content needs to be optimized for humans so that it can become search engine friendly.
What is Content Optimization for SEO?
Content optimization is the process of giving your page text, blog articles, and images the best possible chance of achieving its intended goal through various best practices and techniques.
Sure, there are a variety of methods that marketers can use to achieve their goals, but there are other significant marketing elements that web content needs to adhere to in order to succeed in the world of content marketing.
Know what your readers want (and give it to them).
Write easy-to-read text
Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
AVOID:
- Writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes.
- Awkward or poorly written content.
- Embedding text in images and videos for textual content: users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can’t read it.
Organize your topics clearly
It’s always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions (categories, tags) helps users find the content they want faster.
AVOID:
- Dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.
Create fresh,
New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
AVOID:
- Rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users.
- Having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.
Optimize content for your users,
Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
AVOID:
- Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying to users.
- Deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines.
So, why is content optimization important?
If you did not optimize your content and just released it out into the wild, there is a very high possibility that it could disappear into the Google sandbox. This is why content optimization is so important – it ensures that the research and work you’ve put into writing great content achieves your content marketing goals.
You can write the best article in the world, but if search engines can’t find it, and it doesn’t satisfy search intent, it’s likely to fall flat on its face.
Stacy Layman
Director, Marketing and Creative Services
Jacksonville, Florida