How To Optimise Content For SEO

We all know just how important SEO is for businesses and involves many different components but content plays a critical role.

It’s essential that the content your website has is SEO friendly and well-optimised to get maximum visibility. After all, you’ve probably spent valuable time writing it, so you need to ensure people are going to find it.

Why is content optimisation important for SEO?

Content optimisation is important for SEO for many reasons, the main one being visibility. You want people to actually see your content! 

Writing regular new content that isn’t optimised isn’t enough to rank well in search engine results (SERPs). The content you produce needs to be fully optimised in order to stand any chance of ranking well.

Well-optimised content is also a great way to build backlinks from high-authority websites. If your content is well-optimised, it’s far more likely the links will come rolling in and help grow the authority of your site.

Optimised content bolsters your site. Having a good amount of thoroughly optimised content is a fantastic way to bolster your site and put it in a great position to gain traffic, rank well and build links - everything SEOs want.

But just how do you optimise your content for SEO?

How to optimise your content for SEO

This can be split into two categories here, new content and existing content. 

New content optimisation

Keyword Research

We’d always recommend you start this process with some thorough keyword research. Using sites such as SEMRush and Answer The Public you can find inspiration for keywords to build your content around, with search volumes, competitiveness, search intent and many more key metrics.

Contrary to what some people believe, it’s not all about cramming in as many keywords as possible, whether that’s including loads of keywords, or stuffing your content full of one particular keyword. Identify 1-2 ‘long-tail’ (phrases) primary keywords and focus your content on this.

It’s also important to realise that just because a keyword has a tonne of search volume doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the one to go after. Other metrics need to be taken into account here, such as the level of competition and the relevancy.

Relevancy is paramount here. Your website and its content should be focused purely on your niche, showing Google that you’re experts in your field - it’s no good writing about something not connected to your offering. This is especially crucial since Google’s Helpful Content announcement that insists your focus should be on keywords that are directly relevant to your niche and ones that you can write informational and authoritative content on.

Another important thing to remember at this point is keyword cannibalization - an issue that can impact your rankings. It basically occurs when a site has more than one page targeting the same keyword and intent. So try to ensure that when planning your keywords, it’s not overlapping with another piece of content and is offering new and valuable insight.

Once you’ve got your keywords, don’t forget to include them within your title tag, headers (where relevant), body, URL and meta description.

Building A Solid Structure

Not only does a well-structured piece of content make it easier for your readers to navigate, but it also helps search engines to understand the content. So it’s great to split it into sections with their own headings and subheadings.

Once you’ve identified a primary keyword that you want to focus your content on, it’s then important to find keywords related to that topic and see where you can build those into this content. 

Usually, this gives you a great idea of how you could structure your content, by using these related keywords as ideas for subheadings.

Once you have your primary keyword, give it a Google and see what comes up. The ‘People also ask’ section is a great place to get an idea of questions your content could be answering. Split these out, with your secondary/ related keywords into sections and make sure you’re providing valuable insight at every stage.

Don’t forget to map out your headings using the relevant ‘H tags’ - H1 for your main header (only one per page), H2’s for subheadings and so on - and ensure they contain keywords.

Internal linking

Internal linking is extremely important to help search engines crawl all of your content. It helps GooLinkgle to understand and rank your website better and passes “authority” from one page to another. 

Therefore, as you’re planning and writing your content, think about what other pages or blog posts you could link to. Think the other way around too - which of my current content can be linked to this new one?

Don’t forget about the anchor text here, ensure the piece of text you’re linking from is relevant and descriptive to the destination you’re sending people to!

Keep it visual

You don’t want readers to get bored and leave your content because it’s too text heavy. SEMRush reported that articles with seven or more images receive 116% more organic traffic and those with at least videos gain 83% more traffic!

So it’s important that you try to include visuals (images, graphs, infographics, videos etc.) to encourage engagement and keep users reading the content for longer. When using imagery, don’t forget your SEO best practices (include ALT tags and use relevant image sizes and formats).

Infographics and original imagery are a great way to encourage shares and also a useful way to rank on Google image searches. So, where possible, try to incorporate these.

Be ‘Helpful’

So you have a chosen topic and keywords and you’ve started fleshing out the content. Now there are a couple of questions you need to answer as you’re going along.

As you’re writing, section by section, you need to be asking yourself - ‘Is this helpful?’ ‘Am I answering the readers' queries?’, ‘Will my readers need to go elsewhere to find more information on this topic after reading my content?’ 

Due to all of Google’s recent updates, it’s now more important than ever that your content is helpful, in-depth, provides genuine answers/ information and addresses the user’s search query. 

If users are needing to go elsewhere to find out more information - the content probably isn’t in-depth enough. It’s crucial you’re offering your expert opinion, backed by original content and visuals where possible.

Try to look at similar content that already exists and is ranking. Then ask yourself whether your new piece of content covers the topic more thoroughly and provides better or more profound insight. Try not to reiterate the same points as competing articles, but go way beyond this and really showcase your expertise in this area!

Writing with all this in mind will not only make your content more helpful for users and help your article with ranking it’ll also encourage links! Backlinks are extremely important for SEO and can help boost your website’s authority. So if you’re content is well written, people will link to it.

Although it’s not always achievable, it’s a great idea to ensure your content is as ‘evergreen’ as possible. Meaning, that once it’s written (with small tweaks and updates) it remains relevant and can continue to drive organic traffic to your website in the future. That being said, topical content can be very lucrative if it fits well into your niche. You can read Hubspot’s post around topical content vs. evergreen content here.

Title tag and description

Don’t forget your title tag and meta description. 

It’s a great idea to include your keywords in both of these where possible. But it’s crucial to make them catchy and enticing, as this is what will be displayed on the search engine results pages. Ensure the description includes a call to action encouraging people to click.

Keep it updated

Content should never be something that’s forgotten about once you’ve hit that publish button. 

There are always going to be other people writing similar content, so you need to ensure yours is fresh, relevant and still providing the best information.

You could update the content to include new studies, recently learned information, new internal links, seasonal information etc. 

Existing content optimisations

According to SEMRush, 65% of successful marketers perform content audits twice a year, and it’s a proven technique to boost your organic traffic! It takes much longer for new content to build authority and gain places on search engine results pages - so there’s a lot of opportunity to improve already indexed content that has authority already built.

So let’s assume you’ve followed the above actions when creating the original content - it’s now crucial to keep that content relevant. In your industry, things may be constantly changing so ensure your content is up to date with the latest information. 

As you’re adding new content to your site, try to remember your old posts and what’s within them to think about internal linking. Always go back to old content and see where internal linking can be improved.

Finally, ensure you’re up to date with the latest SEO best practices and these are implemented into all your site’s content!

In conclusion

So there you have it, a few key steps to ensure your content is optimised for SEO!