How to Know if Your Content is SEO Optimized
Is your web content SEO optimized?
With such intense competition in the digital space, more businesses have increased their search engine optimization (SEO) campaign for them to stand out. Implementing the best practices is important in maximizing your online visibility, and a critical part of this is creating SEO optimized content.
Content is king in marketing. It is no different with SEO. If you want your target audience to find your website on search results pages and engage with your brand, you will need to have an effective SEO content strategy.
Unsurprisingly, it is one of the biggest problems that businesses face today. Writing content is already difficult in itself, so writing content that is optimized for search engines offers a new layer of challenge.
So, how can you check if your content is optimized for your web pages? Developing effective SEO strategies for content creation is essential to boosting your conversion rates and driving more organic traffic. To help you with this, check out the information below so you can better understand the inner workings of SEO copywriting.
Important Components to Include when Writing SEO Optimized Content
There are various factors to consider when writing any piece of content for your website. Naturally, things like content quality and relevance are important. However, beyond these, you also must examine other SEO components to ensure that your content delivers your desired results. Check to see if your existing content has all of these, and if not, you can take note of the things you can improve on.
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Site Speed
Site speed may not be directly related to your content, but it can affect the users’ choice to look at your pages or not. In fact, this factor can make or break a website.
Even if you have the best content out there, it will be wasted if your pages take too long to load. Ideally, your site speed should be not more than two seconds. Any longer than that, and you risk losing potential customers and spiking your bounce rates.
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Meta Description
When writing content for SEO purposes, your meta description will play an important role in guiding search engines to find your pages. Meta descriptions are brief, 150-160 characters long write ups, that give a quick summary of what the page is about. These help Google determine the relevance of your page when users make search queries, so make sure you always include them in the content development process.
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Headline
The headline is another critical component that must not be overlooked in any piece of content. As compelling as the information in your body may be, you must make sure the headline is just as attractive and eye-catching. Effective headlines are key to boosting your click through rate and improving organic traffic since they capture your audience’s attention quickly and immediately.
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Keywords
Keywords are a non-negotiable part of SEO optimized content. You hear about it all the time, and you might already be familiar with how they work, but you still must be strategic when using them. From the very start, you have to make sure to choose the right keywords, which will depend on many factors like relevance, competition, search volume, and the like.
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Links
If you have an idea of how SEO works, you will likely know that links are extremely important for any website. Outbound links help you expound on your content and provide more information to readers, while internal links allow you to direct readers to other web pages in your site. There are no fixed rules to building your links but having a good linking structure will be a must to optimize your content properly.
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Structure
When writing SEO optimized content, you always want to think about the perspective of the readers. The information should be not only value-adding but also easy to read and understand. Thus, structuring your content will help make it more readable and logical.
For blog posts, using headings and subheadings will be highly beneficial to create a hierarchy in the text. Try to imagine writing your content in just one straight passage. If readers see this, they will likely be discouraged to continue reading since it looks too lengthy. With subheadings, you can segment your content more effectively and ease the experience for them.
Best Practices in SEO Copywriting
Some practices were already mentioned in the discussion of the essential components above, but beyond those, there are several other things you can do to improve your SEO content strategy. Ultimately, the best strategies will consist of a combination of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO efforts.
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Use Numbers in Headlines
It was mentioned earlier those headlines play a huge role in attracting your audience, so you have to pay attention to how you write them. Numbers are a great way to make your headlines more attractive. If you try doing any search on Google, you might notice that most, if not all, of the top-ranking pages have numbers on their headlines.
A study showed that this practice increased engagement by over 70%, so think about how much more you can boost your visibility by doing this.
2. Create the Right Type of Content
Blog posts are one of the most common types of content used for SEO, but you need not limit yourself to these. Depending on your objective and the available information, you can determine the most appropriate type of content.
Aside from blog posts, you can also explore videos, infographics, listicles, product reviews, ebooks, podcasts, interviews, and so much more. Each of these are appropriate for specific uses, so make sure you think about this carefully. Videos and infographics, for instance, are suitable for instances when you want to simplify your content to make it easier to digest. Adding visuals and focusing on key points will help you deliver your message more effectively.
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Know Who You Are Writing For
One of the hallmarks of developing SEO optimized content is knowing your target audience. Who are you writing for? Before you start with any SEO content, you have to answer this question thoroughly first. It will give you direction and guide you when optimizing your content to ensure it reaches the right people.
When doing your research, get information on who your audience is, what type of information or content they search for, what their intent is for making those searches, and what keywords they are using in their queries. From here, you can do your keyword research easily and accurately.
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Improve Page Speed
As you have read above, site speed is critical in ensuring your content reaches your audience. Thus, if you find that your page loading times are too long, check to see what you can do to improve on this. Some common ways include optimizing your images, minifying codes, enabling compression, and others.
Now that Google has expanded its page experience ranking factors to include Core Web Vitals, loading times will play an even bigger role in determining your rank. One of the Core Web Vitals, Largest Contentful Paint, measures how long it takes for the largest elements in a page to load. Thus, it will be worth revisiting your site metrics to see how you are faring in this aspect.
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Cite Facts
The Internet today is full of information. However, not all sites will necessarily provide information. Thus, when writing content for SEO purposes, it helps to add relevant data, statistics, and sources to support your points. It builds trust and credibility for your brand, which will ultimately give you an advantage over other pages.
Naturally, before you write down any facts, make sure you did your due diligence. Conducting research is important to ensure the authenticity and truthfulness of your claims or words, which will demonstrate your expertise in the subject matter. Google pays close attention to this
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Tell a Story
Another way to make your content stand out is to utilize the power of storytelling. Yes, it is true that you have to consider SEO factors like keywords, title tags, link structures, and others. However, aside from all these, the way you deliver your content will also have a huge impact on the reader’s experience.
If you are able to incorporate your brand’s story into your content, this will likely drive more traffic to your website. Write from the heart, make your story relatable and compelling so that users feel inclined to learn more about your brand and support it. Nailing this strategy will surely give you a unique point that differentiates your content from all others.
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Use Case Studies
What better way to showcase your business than by including case studies in your content? Case studies are some of the most effective content because they demonstrate the success of your products or services. Whether you do an experiment or talk about an actual experience with a client, users will be interested to learn about what your business did and what results you saw from it.
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Add Outbound Links
Outbound links help optimize content since they give Google a better idea of what your page is about. It contributes to the relevance aspect, which will help your pages reach the right users. Regardless of what you are writing about, you must always use quality outbound links that direct users to legitimate sites. Whenever possible, link to authoritative sites to attract more interest from readers.
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Be Clear with Your Objective
What do you hope to accomplish with your content? Do you want to direct more people to a page on your site, increase conversion rates, or something else? Whatever your purpose may be, you have to be clear about this. The best way to show mastery of a topic and convince readers about something is to know what you are trying to achieve in the first place.
Having a clear idea of your objective will help you determine what you need to research, how to insert call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and other things.
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Add Multimedia Elements
Sticking to text alone can discourage users from reading your content, so explore multimedia elements and add them whenever applicable. Whether it be images, videos, audio recordings, or other similar attachments, these can make your pages more engaging to users. It also makes your site more interactive, which ultimately affects the user experience.
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Use an SEO-Friendly URL
How you design your URL structure is just as important as other SEO factors. When search engines analyze a web page, they often look at the title tag, content, link anchor text, and finally, the URL. To make your link URL-friendly, make sure to include your main keyword. It makes it easy for Google to determine what your content is about.
Other best practices for your URL include using hyphens to separate words, keeping the link short and straightforward, and generally sticking to a simple structure.
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Include Social Share Buttons
Adding social share buttons will significantly boost your online visibility on social media networks. These allow users to share information about your products or services with a simple click, effectively saving them the hassle of copy-pasting your content to another site.
That said, how you design your buttons will greatly impact reception from users. As much as you want to increase your online presence on these networks, you also have to avoid distracting users when they read your content or purchase something from you. Think about where the most appropriate place will be to maximize the buttons’ functionalities while still delivering a great experience.
Partner with a Professional Agency for Your SEO Content Needs
If you need help developing SEO optimized content for your website, we are here to help you. P3 agency offers Clearwater website design services tailor-fit to our clients’ needs and requirements. With over two decades of experience in the industry, you can be assured that you are in good hands. Our team of professionals is knowledgeable in the field and can help take your digital marketing efforts to the next level.
Want to get started with building your content strategy? Contact us today at 1 800 515 9422 to schedule a free marketing assessment. We would love to hear from you!