The Importance of Content for SEO: Know How to Optimise It

A lot of effort is required to achieve organic search visibility, search engine rankings, and web page traffic – and creating optimised content consistently is key.

In essence, the deadly combo of content and SEO can drive any website to the top of the search engine result page (SERP) rankings. But, this is only possible when they both are in their best their state. Remember that if they are not at their best, they are likely to suffer Google penalties, recovering from which, is nearly impossible at times.

Here, we will try to expand your understanding of content and its SEO-specific value while explaining you what is takes to develop optimised content that can help boost search engine rankings of your website.

Understanding Content

Actionable marketer, Heidi Cohen defines content as: “High quality, useful information that conveys a story presented in a contextually relevant manner with the goal of soliciting an emotion or engagement. Delivered live or asynchronously, content can be expressed using a variety of formats including text, images, video, audio, and/or presentations.”

While Cohen’s definition is spot on, it should be understood that that the online content is not always useful and of high quality. There are content on the internet that are neither relevant nor useful to readers.

Another content definition by entrepreneur, Derek Halpern states, “Content comes in any form (audio, text, video), and it informs, entertains, enlightens, or teaches the people who consume it.” This again emphasise that content should be, at the very least, relevant and useful to the target audience.

 

What’s the SEO-Specific Value of Content?

Google, the search engine giant, processes more than 6.7 billion searches each day. Since our focus is search engine optimization, search engines can answer this question in the most satisfactory way. Google’s algorithms evolves constantly to offer relevant and useful results in the blink of an eye.

It is crucial to understand that the “revenant and useful” results Google attempts to deliver are nothing but small chunks of content that are available online. These are ranked on the basis of their usefulness and relevance to search engine users. This means, your content will only have some SEO-specific value if it is beneficial to online searches.

But, how will you ensure that? Google has recommendations for creating content that can benefit searches. When you follow them, you actually enhance the SEO-specific potential of your content.

Incidentally, only creating good content will not serve the purpose. There is a technical aspect of SEO that must be taken care of too to make the content more searchable and reachable. All in all, the SEO-specific value of content is based on its usefulness, value, credibility and how engaging it is.   

 

Why Do You Need to Optimise the Content?

You need optimised content simply because you can’t rank in search engine results without it. While creating content, you can optimise it by making it audience-centric and following the Google’s recommendations. So, what is audience-centric content and how is it different from other kinds of content?

In simple words, audience-centric content is the one that focuses on what your audience wants to hear, instead of what you want to tell them. So, in order to rank in SERPs, your content should be relevant and useful to your audience, which you achieve by making it audience-oriented.

 

How Can You Create Optimised Content?

Here are a few steps to help you optimise your content:

·       Research Keywords and Find Your Relevant Topic: Keyword research helps content to be visible in online searches. While choosing the topic and keywords, make sure to focus on long-tail keywords, ignore extremely competitive keywords with high searches, use a reliable keyword research tool and match your keyword to the topic.

 

·       Create a Layout & Format to Maximize Readability: When creating a layout, format your content to break in down into smaller chunks. Online audience has quite a short attention span and people are likely to skip your article if it has just one or two overly lengthy paragraphs. Your paragraphs should ideally consist of 1-2 sentences, but it can be stretched to 3-4 short sentences too. Also, make sure to include sub-headings and visuals after every 150-250 words to split your content further.    

 

·       Stick to Your Target Keywords and Topic: When creating content, make sure to stick with the topic and include target keywords in your content. Avoid inserting all the chosen keywords and covering everything in a single piece. Simply focus on the chosen topic and make use of the keywords that are relevant to the topic in question.  

 

·       Include Backlinks in Your Content: Include several links in your content to external sites. According to Google, credibility is an important SEO factor. So, linking your content to reliable, relevant, and authoritative websites will help search engines see you as a credible source of information. Also, make sure that the words/phrases for external links are relevant to the topic covered on that site. Your links should contain six words or fewer. 

 

Optimizing Content Once It Is Created

This the technical aspect of SEO that entails optimising the following:

·       Optimising Title Tags: When users perform online searches, the clickable phrase that they see at the top of every result is the title tag. It is important for several reasons. Firstly and most importantly, it helps search engines understand the topic of your content. Secondly, it helps determine which search result a user will choose to open. When optimising title tags, make sure to keep it under 60 characters (including spaces), avoid stuffing several keywords into it, be particular about the content topic and keep the focus keyword at the beginning. 

 

·       Optimising Meta Descriptions: The small text snippet that you see below the title tag and URL is the meta description. While it doesn’t impact your rankings, it helps decide a user whether or not to click and open a web page – and know that your click-through rate can affect your rankings. Keep it short and under 160 characters while including relevant keywords. 

 

·      Optimising URLs: It is another important SEO elements that helps determine whether or not a user will click and open your page. Make it readable, so that users don’t get scared by long URLs. 

 

In the End

If you seek online visibility and exposure, creating optimised content consistently is the only effective solution. A reputable SEO company can help you with this. Alchemy Interactive is an award-winning digital marketing and web design agency in London that offers all types of customised, result-driven white hat SEO services at highly competitive rates.