Want Your Content To Rank Higher? Follow These Essential Tips:
The ever-changing digital world makes it difficult for your content to stand out. We get the frustration; sometimes the thing you spent hours and hours (and a lot of money) on fails, while the meme you posted gets likes after likes. With countless different types of content, like social media posts to blogs, to videos, being posted every day, the competition for your content to champion the SERPs is a challenge. Ranking the higher isn’t just a goal, it's CRUCIAL for driving traffic to your business and building authority against competitors. Ready to cut through the noise and get your content seen? Here’s a few tips to making a strategic approach towards your content strategy:
- Master Your Audience and Intent
You must understand who you’re writing for and what they are looking for before you even write a word. Audience research and search intent are concepts that need to be put into action. Your audience has specific questions, desires, and pain points that you can cater to. Align your content with their search intent. Whether they are looking for information, trying to make a purchase, or looking to navigate to a specific website, each of these intents require a different type of content. By matching your content to the user’s intent, you increase the likelihood of them staying on your page, which is a key signal to search engines that your content is valuable and useful!
- Utilize Powerful Keyword Search
Keywords are the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. However, it is a tricky game. You can’t stuff your content with a single keyword, you have to identify a topic and use a variety of related keywords to create comprehensive and authoritative content. While high-volume terms are tempting, there comes high competition with it. Focus on longer, more specific keywords that provide a comprehensive overview of the specific subject that your audience is looking for. This will give more conversion rates, with smaller competition. Also consider and embrace topic clusters. Don’t dump out information heavily, make it multiple subtopics. It will not only make your site look cleaner, but will give an authority of knowledge on the topic.
- Create High-Quality, Original Content
Google’s algorithm is now more sophisticated than ever, and it is designed to reward content that is helpful, reliable, and user-centric. This should already be a foundational goal of your content, but if it isn’t, here’s another reason to do so! Prioritizing a great user experience by lots of information and an aesthetically pleasing site is a great key. Break up long blocks of text, stick to the same fonts and colors, bold key information, optimized images are all great ways to ensure readability. A site that is easy to navigate, fast loading, and pleasurable to scroll through and read will have a lower bounce rate and a higher dwell time - which is exactly what search engines want to see!
- Optimize On-Page Elements for Visibility
On-page SEO involves optimizing elements on your website to help search engine bots understand your content. These details may be small, but they are critical to making you stand out in the rankings. Your title tag and meta description are your content’s first impression in the SERPs. They should be concise, compelling, and include your primary keyword. Even if you’re not #1 ranked, a well-written title can boost your click-through rate. Create a clear hierarchy for your content by using headings and subheadings. Link back to other relevant pages on your own site to help users and search engine bots navigate your content. If necessary, link to high-authority, reputable external sources to provide value and demonstrate your trustworthiness.
- Don’t Forget Foundational Technical Details
Having great content is the foundation, but having a strong technical framework and smart promotional strategy is what will send you to the top. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly, page speed is optimized, and build an off-page presence. It’s fundamental and valuable to make sure your site is solid.
Here’s the bottom line: you need to be consistent and adapt to the ever changing world of SEO. To have long-term success is to consistently create high-quality, people-first content, staying up-to-date with algorithm updates, and being willing (and ready) to adapt your strategy. By focusing on your customer’s needs and optimizing your content to them, your business’ site will climb the ranks and become an authority in your niche.
We get it; it’s a lot to keep up on and it can be difficult. We are here to help! Contact us today to see what we can do for you!
