5 WAYS TO OPTIMIZE CONTENT FOR SEO

Your digital marketing strategy most likely includes search engine optimization. SEO is very important for marketers. Optimizing the content of your websites, blogs, and pages will expand your reach and make your content visible to those who are interested in the topics you’re addressing.

While there a lot of SEO tactics, here are 5 simple ones to get you started!

Research

To have a successful SEO content strategy, you have to start by doing your research. The first step is to identify the target audience and conduct a keyword and user intent research. This allows you to get to know your audience and what they’re interested in. By knowing your market and your niche, you can design a content strategy that is effective and address their interests.

Pick your keywords and use them well

Google, on their blog, has communicated and emphasized multiple times the importance of valuable content over content that seems like it was tailor made only to rank high on the search engine results. If the content gives the impression that it was created primarily to rank on Google and not provide any value to the readers, it will not rank high no matter how many keywords are in there. Google even changed its algorithm to reflect this. With that said, avoid keyword stuffing. That is, having numerous keywords in your content that it might taint the overall message.

Pick 1-2 good keywords and keep the focus of the blog and content around those words. This will yield better results. Make sure to place the keywords strategically; best places for the keywords include: in the title, URL, headers, and meta description.

Link Internally

The more you keep users on your website, the better! When you reference a topic or a blog that already exists on your website, include the link to the blog or topic you are referencing. Inbound links communicate validity and relevance of your content to search engines. Not to mention, it helps keep users on your website!

Optimize your images

Your blog is likely to contain images along with the text. While search engines can’t see images, it can see the image’s alt text.  The alt text is what can be added to the HTML tag for the image when the page is coded. Make sure when you upload an image to your blog to include a keyword in the file name as well as the alt text.

Make sure your page is mobile friendly

In April 2015, Google changed its algorithm to favour mobile friendly sites. This is because Google has found that more people use the search engine on their phones than on their desktop. In the search results, Google tends to display sites that are mobile-friendly first. This is why, for optimization it is important that your page and website is compatible across various devices.