Content Comes in Many forms: An SEO Content Guide

What is SEO Content?

You may have heard people talk about SEO content and how it is helping them dramatically change their business, but what is it exactly, and what is all the fuss about?

At the core, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about optimizing a website so that consumers looking for your products or services can easily find you online when utilizing search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. 

The techniques employed by SEOs help a site to be more accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that it can easily be found. The strategies created by SEOs are meant to drive keyword rankings and hold a high-ranking placement on the search engine results page [SERP] of a search engine by increasing the number of visitors to a website. The higher your site ranks in a SERP for a given keyword, the greater the chance that the site will be found by more users looking for your products or services.

While many different aspects play into optimizing your website for SEO, one major way you can help your readers, and the bots crawling your site, to understand what you offer is creating and hosting a variety of different types of content.

SEO Content Comes in Variety

So, what is SEO content exactly? SEO content comes in many forms, but can be thought of as any type of information that can be found online and read, or watched, by users surfing the web.

There are no strict rules on what kind of content you can publish on your website, however, some types of content stand a better chance of getting noticed and ranked by Search Engines. 

Below are some of the types of content that are best for SEO and that you should consider adding to your SEO content strategy.

• Static Content – Sometimes called “Evergreen content”, static content is the meat and potatoes of your website. Static content inhabits the main pages of your site and provides readers (and bots) with the bulk of the information about your business. This is the content that can be found on your homepage, service, or product pages. 
• Blogs – Blogging is one of the most common types of content and tends to be a very successful tactic because blogs are easy to produce, provide relevant information for your readers, and are quick and easy to read. They are also a great way to help build your reputation in your industry.
• Articles – Essentially, articles are long-form blogs but tend to perform quite well for SEO purposes. Not only does longer content allow you the opportunity to write well-research, quality content that is super helpful for your readers, but Google (and other search engines) tend to rank long-form content higher, as there’s a great chance that an article contains more insight and therefore more value overall.
• Videos – It’s not surprising that video content makes up most of the online media consumption today. Videos are engaging, informative and can be a great way to showcase the personality of your brand. Depending on the business you run, videos can be a great way to attract and reach a certain type of audience.
• Infographics – You may have heard that old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”, which is definitely the case with infographics. Their graphic imagery, along with the attached text, enables the reader to take in a lot of information, without a lot of explanation. Because they are easy to interpret and share, infographics can be popular content.

The Importance Of Great Content For Your SEO Strategy

As we discussed, SEO optimizing your site is about WAY more than just creating stellar content for your readers, there are many technical aspects of SEO that work hand-in-hand with content to help you maximize your potential.  

While technical SEO is a huge factor in how your site ranks, you can’t maximize on the advantages of SEO, without high-quality content to back you up.  Having relevant and useful content on your website encourages visitors to stay for longer, which can have a positive impact on your search rankings.

Other added benefits of content, in relation to technical SEO:

• Get Higher Click-Through Rates (CTR) – Quality SEO Content Generates Higher CTR, which can be an important factor in ranking your website.  The more you get users to click on your links, the greater your chances of getting better rankings on search engines.
• Generate Quality Backlinks – Quality content can help you gain trust and can indicate the credibility of your website. By showing your credibility, or authority, you can generate backlinks to your site. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more likely it is that you will rank higher on Google.
• Incorporate Keywords in Your Content – SEO Optimized content is designed to highlight the products and services you offer by using keywords and terms that people may use in their queries. Writing quality content can ensure that you strategically use your keywords and will allow you to compete with other brands from your industry by providing information for readers and bots about what you do and proving yourself as an authority in your field.
• Enhance User Experience – SEO involves creating an easily navigable website, has a well-defined content structure, has quality content, and allows readers to navigate easily from page to page to find the information they are looking for. Optimizing your site in these ways maximizes your chances to be found online and helps you to gain traction on the keywords you are optimizing for.

How To Develop An SEO Content Strategy That Works

Now that you understand the importance of SEO and how it can help your business, it’s time to develop a content strategy that will help you increase the organic traffic to your website and, hopefully, lead to more business.

Determine your Goals

First, define your goals and decide what is most important for your business. Your goals will determine what types of content you should focus on.

For Example, a common goal for a lot of online business owners is to drive sales through your website. If this is your primary goal, you will want to start by developing enticing and informational SEO content for the products you wish to sell first. Optimizing these pages with the appropriate SEO keywords will signal Search Engines to rank these pages in the SERP and help more users find you online.

You may also want to consider creating helpful blog content that supports your SEO strategy and that demonstrates how and when to use your products. You can use these information content pieces to link back to relevant pages on the site, and in turn, lead to more conversions.

Determine your Audience

The tone of your content can vary a lot depending on the type of product or service you offer, so you’ll want to identify who you are speaking to. As a consumer, you would expect the content for a doctor’s office and a commercial roofing company to be very different, and you want to make sure your audience feels comfortable with what you are presenting.

Create a schedule and stick to it

Once you have an idea of who you are targeting and why you’ll want to come up with a plan of when you will publish new content and what it will be. Organizing your content ahead of time helps keep you on track and helps avoid any last-minute content crisis. Keep in mind that blog content should be written regularly to stay top of mind, but make sure you have plenty of beefed-up SEO content on your main pages before diving too far down the blog rabbit hole.

What Goes Into Optimizing Your Content For SEO?

We’ve talked a little about the importance of SEO content and how you can make this work in conjunction with your technical SEO strategy, but how do you prepare yourself to optimize your content for SEO?

If you are ready to revamp your website content, make sure it is SEO optimized to get the best bang for your buck. The following are a few things you should keep in mind as you are creating new content:

• Keyword Research – If you want people to find you, it makes sense to optimize your site for the things people are looking for. By doing some keyword research before writing your content, you can create content that focuses on topics for queries related to keywords and phrases you know already have search volume. 

• Keyword Planning- Plan where and how to use your keywords. You can create a list of primary keywords for your homepage to cast the widest net, and a secondary list to target your niche services. Use your most general keywords for your homepage and get more specific as you work to optimize the content throughout your site. For example, if you have a website for a dental office, you may want to target words like “Family Dentist” or “Cosmetic Dentistry” for your homepage content and words like “Dental Implants” or “Root Canal Treatment” on the appropriate services pages.

• Content Arrangement – How you organize your content can not only help guide your readers in a natural progression on a page, but can also help your readers to find related content, or easily find important information. You will want to think about the flow of your site as you start mapping out your content outline. For example, putting your contact information in an obvious place can help drive conversions and can help legitimize your business.
• Marketing- If you want people to see your content, you need to make sure you promote it. In today’s world, there are a million ways to share to new audiences on social media,  but you can also increase visibility to newly produced content by building links to your content, both internally from other pages or blogs, and externally from other sites.

How to Create High-Quality SEO Content

So, how do you create content that drives traffic by giving the bots what they want, and that is engaging for your site readers?

Be sure to include plenty of the keywords that you are targeting for that specific page, but keep in mind that good SEO content is written in a way that allows you to naturally incorporate any keywords or phrases you are going after. Cramming your content full of keywords or “keywords stuffing” as it is known, can appear spammy and negatively affect user experience. Finding a good balance between your keywords and informative content will help search engines, and readers, to understand your offerings. 

When creating content, it is best practice to include your primary keywords in your headers and make sure associated keywords are present throughout your content. Having your primary keywords in your headlines tells readers exactly what they are going to find and can help increase Click-Through Rates (CTR). Another option you may want to consider is including images. Images are attention grabbers and can increase engagement on a page.

As you start to gain some keyword traction and move up in the rankings, search engines will start to populate your site or article in the SERP for relevant user queries and increase organic traffic to your site.

While it can take quite some time to reach the first page, the more organic traffic you get, the more traction you gain. Additionally, the effects of SEO tend to be long-lasting in comparison to other marketing techniques, and once you are on the first page, it can be easier to stay there.

The Bottom Line

SEO content can be incredibly helpful in helping get your business in front of more eyes. The more content you have on your website, the more opportunities you have to include your targeted keywords. Additionally, having a lot of content on your site can be extremely helpful for readers, especially if it is a complicated topic, and give you a chance to prove you are an authority in your industry by showcasing your knowledge.

Contact a Professional

If you still have questions about SEO Content, contact the experts at JEMSU Marketing for more information. Our Brand analyst would be happy to provide a free consultation and offer guidance to help you optimize for your brand.

Don’t have time to do your own marketing and looking for help from a professional? Give us a call to find out how we can help today.