Creating content for SEO, or search engine optimization, involves crafting material that is not only informative but also packed with relevant keywords to boost your website’s visibility in search engine results pages. Essentially, it’s about enhancing your site’s chances of being seen and chosen by potential visitors.
While there’s no foolproof recipe for producing the ultimate content, there are strategies that can improve your odds of success.
Major search engines like Google have shifted their focus towards ranking websites with more natural, informative, and helpful content. Content that isn’t overly optimized for search engines but genuinely assists users in finding answers to their questions will receive a ranking boost. You can learn more about this in “What creators should know about Google’s helpful content update“.
In exploring what SEO means, breaking down this sentence will help:
SEO or Search Engine Optimization means optimizing a website so that people can find it easily online.
- Content refers to information available and consumed on the web. It could be written articles, images, and videos. Make sure the content is made for people first.
- Keyword Research – people who desire to generate content using search engine traffic need keyword research before writing. This allows you to concentrate on keywords with a specific search volume.
- Keyword optimization – understand the use of keywords in your content to make it available when searched.
- Content organization – this includes structuring your site so that visitors can easily find it, as you want them to stay longer on your site.
- Content promotion – making new content visible via social sharing and generating links (internal and external sites) to your content.
Types of SEO Content
- Product Pages: A good product page takes care of the SEO and PPC landing page
- Blog Posts: With a blog, you can create a constant stream of SEO content. They have a high probability of attracting links compared to product pages, allowing you to build authority for your site.
- Articles: they are abundant in newspapers and magazine-structured websites. Your expertise can be used to highlight and share more in-depth knowledge of your industry.
- Lists: This type of article is framed as a list (such as 10 ways to exercise from home). It makes it easy for people to scan, and people like clicking such results found on social media. It’s good for presenting bite-sized information that’s useful for people short on time.
- Guides: this is a longer piece that sheds detailed light on doing something. While some people prefer to break them into a series of web pages, it is better structured as a single page.
- Videos: the internet has fewer videos compared to articles. A video makes it easier to rank for a competitive keyword than an article. You can leverage video to attract lots of audiences, depending on your business structure. Tutorials on how to use your products will help incredibly. Short consumable videos like Instagram Reels or TikTok are a major source of traffic. They make it easy for people to see your content at a glance.
- Infographics: These are large-format images with substantial data (graphics or charts) on a particular subject, and can generate views and links. Here are some infographic templates that can get you started.
- Directories: These are valuable links to resources centered on a given topic. For instance, an art store has a directory of places to buy various artwork around the country.
Guide to Creating an SEO Content Strategy
If you’ve been relying on the hope that one of your pieces of content will magically rank without a clear plan, it’s time to adopt a structured approach to SEO online.
Below, we’ll delve into four steps to help you define and fine-tune your SEO content strategy:
Define Your Goals
You should have your goals as a business or website. Is your goal to increase sales via your website? Are you after monetizing it using ads to boost traffic and readership? Your goals will point you to the content you should adopt.
Websites based on an advertising model aim to attract readers and focus on rich content like articles and videos. You need to make it entertaining and sticky so that it keeps visitors engaged.
Consider Your Audience
You should know your target audience; surveys and analytics software can help point to who your visitors are. The best feedback is directly from your customers. Even feedback from customers for your competitors can help. Places like Trustpilot and Google Business reviews are great places to start.
Develop marketing personas that stand for ideal customers and site visitors, and consider what content they might need. A B2B website, for example, with an eye on corporate-level executives should focus on creating white papers. Downloading such content and saving it for later comes easy.
Have an Editorial Calendar
After gaining knowledge of whom you want to target and why, the next step is an editorial calendar. Such a calendar will serve as a guide on what to publish and when to publish. With this, you can publish based on a schedule, especially for people with a blog.
Here are some tips on creating and sticking with an editorial calendar:
- Outlook can help – your entire marketing team can access the editorial calendar. It also allows you to keep a tab on deadlines and remind authors when a deadline is approaching.
- Have ongoing features – A food blog can have smoothies once a week. You need a category page for such endless features, which will allow visitors to find all the smoothie roundups in a specific place.
- Have lots of lead time – the production of complicated content like videos and infographics needs a series of edits to be perfect while optimizing each for the search engine can also be complicated
- Avoid planning too far in advance – adjustment in marketing goals, budget, staff, etc., often derails calendars. Therefore, preparing for the coming year does not make much sense. Perhaps, preparing for content on a 3-month schedule is ideal. Some industries, such as IT, may require you to prepare content monthly, as these fields tend to change frequently.
Analyze and Re-Assess
Make sure you are on top of your website’s analytics. This involves regular analysis of your content for SEO to detect what works and what needs adjustment. Metrics for success are page views, comments, links, social shares, and conversion rates for your Facebook (including tweets and likes).
Here are two goals that should guide your analysis:
- Keep track of your success to repeat the strategies – consider the pattern. Does your video have many views? Then capitalize on it. Structure your editorial calendar to focus more on content that converts.
- Dedicate time to update and improve old SEO content – for articles, optimize around a specific keyword to get more traffic for a different variant of it. Using such keywords may help increase your traffic.
Between the Lines: Content for SEO and Humans
It’s crucial to understand the delicate balance between creating content for SEO and human readers. Overemphasizing keywords and SEO tactics can result in content that’s hard to digest and lacks value for the reader. On the other hand, neglecting SEO can mean your content remains undiscovered by potential customers. The key is to find harmony between the two, always prioritizing the reader’s experience.
Content designed for SEO should be well-crafted, keyword-rich, informative, and reader-focused. By adhering to these principles, website owners can increase their chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages. Crafting exceptional content serves as the foundation for a successful SEO campaign.
Manage Your Content With KWALL
You can count on KWALL to support the development of your higher ed website, help you implement a CMS, and support you while you use it. We can also help you create a maintenance and support plan that works, so you can manage content through a content management system.
KWALL specializes in helping colleges and universities increase student engagement through the quality of their websites. Reach out and contact KWALL today to talk about how they can help you.
