Content is one of the most crucial factors in ranking a website, however, it is the uniqueness and optimization of the content that helps in ranking your website higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Content optimization is beneficial for gaining more backlinks to your site, educating your readers, generating quality leads, and improving social engagement. In this blog post, you will discover 7 secrets of optimizing content for your users and search engines.
Pro Tips for Content Optimization
Whether you’re involved in WordPress development, Drupal development, or using any other CMS for content management, there are certain steps that you need to follow for better content optimization and management. Here are 7 tips that you must follow to optimize your content for audience as well as search engines.
Research and Target Keywords:
Before you begin to write an article or a piece of content, you need to do comprehensive keywords research. Comprehensive keyword research helps you to create a set of keywords being searched about your content topic. Once you create a list of target keywords, you need to define the kind of content you will write. Whether you’re going to use your content to establish authority or create a supporting copy based on other pieces of content. When you’ve decided on your content type, you can easily map the researched keywords.
There are several tools available online like Moz keywords explorer, Google Keyword Planner, etc. Using these tools, you can research keywords and figure out what suits best for your supporting content or main cornerstone content.
Use Keywords in Your Key Tags
Your Page Title and the Meta description are the key tags. Using target keywords in the beginning of the title can help you rank your content for that keyword. You can use multiple variants in the remaining title to improve your click-through rate.
A Meta description is also a key component for a well-optimized page. It can help you earn higher click-through rates by helping readers understand what the content is about. You can use the target keywords in the Meta description as well and write it in a compelling way that prompts users to visit your page and encourage them to take any action with a call to action. Also, make sure to write the Meta description within 160 characters and keep the title tag under 60 characters to prevent truncation.
Write SEO-friendly URLs
URLs should be easy-to-understand, meaningful, and SEO-friendly. Make sure you use a clean, short, and search engine-friendly URL structure optimized with the target keyword(s). Keep the URLs to 3-5 words because if it is longer than that, you will not benefit from Google’s algorithm.
Use Header Tags in the Content
Whether you opt for WordPress development or Drupal development, in all content management systems, H1 tags are used as the main page title. Optimize your page title with the target keyword and write it in a way that best describes your content to earn higher click-through rates.
Make sure to use the header tags as follows:
- Use H1 tag for your page title
- Use H2 tag for content subheadings
- Use H3 to H6 tags for other relevant content subheadings
You should also use the primary keywords throughout the content and especially in the first paragraph itself. However, you must place your keywords naturally and not deliberately. You should avoid stuffing your page content with the target keywords for getting higher rankings. You can also break your content into bullet points to make it more readable and understandable.
Add Links to Relevant Source
Internal linking is crucial for content optimization as it will help readers and search engines navigate to important subtopics. It’s good to place relevant primary keywords in the anchor text for internal linking within the site.
Also, you can link your content to external resources that add value to your content. For example, if you’re using a statistic, you can always link back to an external source. Moreover, external linking will help Google or other search engines to understand how relevant your content is, thereby improving your search engine ranking.
Responsive Designs
Since Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing, you must create mobile-responsive content. If you are already having a mobile-responsive website, then make sure to test the appearance of your content on various mobile devices and platforms. Your content should look correct and consistent on all devices.
Content management systems like Drupal, WordPress, etc. allow you to build mobile-responsive websites that are loved by users as well as search engines. You can always hire Drupal developers or WordPress developers for making your website well-optimized and responsive across all mobile platforms.
Add an Effective Call to Action
Although it is not a major ranking factor, it’s good to add a call to action within the content. You can add a contact form, phone number, email id, or a subscriber form at an appropriate place on the page. Even if your content is SEO-optimized thoroughly, a poor call to action can waste the traffic that you received.
Should You Focus on Content Quality or Content Quantity?
There’s no limit to the word count of your blog posts. But you shouldn’t worry about how many words your content should contain. Try to cover your content topic in depth while maintaining its quality. Always give more importance to content quality than content quantity.
Needless to say, make sure you publish unique content that is well-optimized and informative. Also, do not forget to wind up your topic with a conclusion or final thoughts as it makes the content look well structured.
Also, you can link your content to external resources that add value to your content. For example, if you’re using a statistic, you can always link back to an external source. Moreover, external linking will help Google or other search engines to understand how relevant your content is, thereby improving your search engine ranking
Once you create a list of target keywords, you need to define the kind of content you will write. Whether you’re going to use your content to establish authority or create a supporting copy based on other pieces of content. When you’ve decided on your content type, you can easily map the researched keywords.
