The foundation of a good content marketing strategy is a combination of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques and effective content. Without good, well-written content, an SEO firm in Adelaide would have nothing to optimise for search engines such as Google. On the other hand, without an SEO strategy, your content would have a difficult time getting to the first page of Google’s results pages. SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand.
But what do you need to do to optimise your web content for search engines? You need to do keyword research, keyword optimisation, content organisation and content promotion.
- Keyword Research – Doing keyword research before you start writing allows you to focus on keywords that receive a significant search volume. You’ll be able to write topics that people are already looking for. You have to do this before you start making your content.
- Keyword Optimisation – For maximum searchability, you should know how to use and where to place keywords in your on-page content.
- Content Organisation – The longer people stay on your website, the better. They’re most likely to stay if your content is organised logically. It would help them find related content quicker and easier.
- Content Promotion – You can increase your content’s visibility by sharing it on social media networks and building both internal links and links from external sources.
Developing an SEO Content Strategy
There are four steps to developing and refining your SEO content strategy:
Define Your Goals
What are your goals? These should be clearly defined since they will determine what kind of content you should be focusing on. For example, if you’re looking to drive product sales, you should focus on well-designed and optimised product pages, as well as helpful and instructive blog posts that show how to use your products. If your goal is to attract new readers, on the other hand, you should be creating articles and blog posts that are entertaining, engaging, informative and “sticky”. “Sticky” content will keep your visitors on your site for a long time and will encourage them to return time and time again.
Know Your Audience
Who are you making your content for? Consider them and what kind of content they may be searching for. To get a better picture of your audience, you could conduct surveys and use analytics software.
If your business’ audience is mostly teens and young adults, you might want to use of entertaining images and videos to engage them. Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly since 95% of teens have smartphones and use them to access the Internet.
Create a Content Calendar
Once you know who your audience is and why you’re targeting them, you can begin building a calendar to dictate what your content will be and when it will be published. This will help you stick to a regular posting schedule, which is incredibly important, especially when you are handling a blog.
Analyse and Re-assess
Lastly, you need to stay on top of your site’s analytics. Analyse your SEO content regularly to see what is and isn’t working. Some measures of successful engagement include links, comments, likes, page views, social shares and conversion rates.
These are just the four basic steps to take when developing SEO content strategies. The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is this: even if SEO content is created to attract search engine traffic, that shouldn’t be your only goal. You should provide content that gives your audience additional value. This will ensure that your site will get the clicks that it deserves.