How to Optimize Content for SEO & Drive Conversions | Softuvo
In the land of fairies, whatever content we share online would rank number 1 on the search engines. However, outside the parallel universe, it doesn’t actually work like that. There are thousands of websites competing with each other to win that place in the web world. Now, the main difference between the top three ranking sites and the other pages of the site is content optimization.
No matter how much you try to trick the search engines, they are smart enough to judge your audience. Content is the king of the online world and will always be. However, several companies struggle to optimize that content in the right way. In this post, we will be guiding you on how content optimization can help you reach the right audience while boosting your overall rankings.
What Is Content Optimization?
It is refining a piece of content and making it appealing to the audience and easy for the search engines to understand and categorize. The fact is that when you write content that people appreciate, it helps you get higher rankings on the search engines. With the strategic content optimization strategy, you can qualify Google's content quality standards and attract potential customers to your website.
How to Optimize Content For SEO?
We all have to agree to the fact that Google uses more than 200 ranking factors to decide whether a post or a page should appear on the search results or not. Well, we’ll make that job easy for you! Below is the list of human-centric and Google-centric optimizations that will help you do the magic for your website traffic, rankings, conversions, and your brand reputation. Let’s read all about content optimization in detail.
The Basics - Keyword Research
SEO revolves around keywords, which is why targeting the right keywords is quintessential. So, the first step has to be keyword research. You need to understand that the keywords are the ones that your audience will actually use and they might vary depending on users or industry. For this, you can analyze the questions asked by your clients or customers and then use an SEO tool to find the phrasing people search. There are also some free tools like - Keyword Surfer, Answer The Public, Ubersuggest, and more.
Human Interest
Abide by this rule always - Write For Humans, Not For Robots. Yes, technology is marking a solid impression on Google, but you need to write content for your audience using Google and then optimize it. Well, it might sound all tricky but check out these points that’ll help you.
Curate content that uses the same personality or tone a customer would get when they visit your business in person.
Visual or written content is usually about topics that add value to the customer's life.
Don’t go for keyword stuffing and make the content look natural by focusing on the keywords that a customer would use to solve their queries.
And, of course, there might be hundreds or thousands of writers who probably have written what you are writing. So, try to add your fresh perspective to the content to make it interesting for the user.
Focus On Readability
One thing you cannot ignore is the readability of the content. To make your content readable for your audience, you need to follow a few steps as follows:
Go for the length that suits the topic. Yes, it is true that Google prefers long-form content where the user is providing detailed information about the topic, but writing content that provides relevant information in fewer words would go perfectly for Google.
Always choose the words that compliment your brand - whether it is emotional, technical, complex, or slang-y.
Ensure that content is grammatically sound.
Make it scannable by breaking the content into short paragraphs, bullet lists, infographics, or videos.
You can also opt for WordPress plugins like - Reading Time and Table of Contents to enhance the user’s reading experience.
Add Value With Internal Links
One fantastic tip for content optimization is internal linking. What are these? Well, these are basically the links to your own pages i.e. web pages, blogs, menus, and more. For example - if you are writing a post on Technical SEO strategy and you already have a blog that talks about the basics of SEO or a related topic, then you can always link that blog on that page as well. It will boost traffic and further widen the user’s journey. This means that now the users are expected to stay longer than usual, thus adding value. Not just that, the internal links get crawled by the search engines faster, so it is undoubtedly a win-win for you!
Empower Your Content By Adding Media
What looks good is always attractive, isn’t it? Of course, visual content is more stimulating and it enhances the storytelling by breaking the long-form content and making it look appealing. So, adding infographics, videos, images, or gifs to your content will help in enhancing the user experience. Apart from that, don’t forget to add video thumbnails, feature images, and other icons when uploading the content, since it helps your brand look more authentic to Google as well as your audience.
Seamless Navigation
It should be fluid! Yes, you read it right! Website navigation has to be smooth, so the user can actually move from one piece of information to another. When you deliver content that is exactly what your user is looking for and that too quickly without any friction, then it's definitely a big deal. It not only enhances the user experience as a whole but also makes the audiences return back to your site. So, there should be clear paths that your content should follow with seamless navigation as it will help in creating positive on-page behavior signals. And, of course, Google loves it!
Don’t Miss Contact Details
Your website credibility that marks the whole checklist of content optimization shouldn’t miss NAP, a term used by Google that means - name, address, and phone number. Google always scans all your listings everywhere where the company exists includes - social media, directories, and more. This is done to confirm that your business is legit. So, NAP is critically important for businesses, especially local businesses to increase the trustworthiness to search engines as well as humans.
Google ‘Helpful Content’ Algorithm Update
Google has launched its new ‘Helpful Content’ update. This update focuses on the content written for humans and underrates the content that is written primarily for SEO. In this update, Google also introduces a new signal to rank the web pages and will negatively impact sites that publish an extensive amount of low-value or unhelpful content for the searchers.
Refer to the post to know more details on Google’s latest update - https://searchengineland.com/google-helpful-content-update-what-to-expect-387328
Final Takeaway
Now, that you are geared up with the right content optimization strategy, you can plan and strategize your content in the best way to drive conversions.
Bonus Tip: Remember that content is an asset for your business and it takes precious resources, time, and effort to frame and manage the content. And, trust me optimization is the key to making the most of your investment.
