Content optimization plays a paramount role in your SEO success. However, content optimization isn’t just limited to search engines. You should optimise your content for both search engines and humans. When you create content for humans, it automatically becomes search-engine-friendly. On the other hand, when you create content only for search engines, your web page may generate organic traffic, but the customer conversion rate would not be satisfying.

Read on to explore why content optimization is important and top 6 strategies you can implement today to ace your overall SEO efforts via content marketing.

Why Is Optimising Content So Important?

Simply put, content optimization is a strategy to ensure your content has the best possible chances of achieving your intended goal. That goal can be getting new customers for your business, or creating brand loyalty for existing customers.

Content optimization is a broad topic, and there are lots of things you need to understand for getting your desired results. It isn’t just about writing great content that stays in the website, or performing technical tasks for bulk content distribution without persuading action: but rather giving your target customers what they really want - in short, meeting search intent and adding value. But you can only meet search intent and add value when you have the right search query data and when your content gets to the top of Google search - this is content optimization and it's a cyclical process.

Why Is Content Optimization Important For Search Engine Optimization?

Let's assume you’ve written a great value-adding content piece for your customers that’s related to your product or service. You want that content piece to go viral. A few weeks after publishing the content, you notice that nobody is reading your content piece. The piece is sitting somewhere in the corner of search engines. What’s the reason behind that? Here are a couple of key pointers you might have missed:

• You didn’t perform keyword research before publishing your content
• You didn’t add any real value for the readers
• The content structure is out of place, which means search engine crawlers have a hard time understanding your content.
• Your title tag and meta descriptions don’t reflect what your content piece is about.

All of these elements matter when you want your content to appear and convert in search engines. If search engines can’t find your content, it doesn’t matter how good the content is. Secondly, if you are pitching your content to the wrong audience, your content piece won’t convert.

To help you avoid this, we have compiled a list of content creation and optimization techniques to boost your SEO efforts.

Content Creation Strategies

1. Target Informational Keywords in Blog Posts

Keywords are the nucleus of your content strategy. Keywords are what make your content visible to search engines and your target audience. The better the keywords, the more engagement your content would get.

There are essentially two types of keywords: primary keywords and secondary keywords. Primary keywords tell search engine crawlers and your audience what your content piece is all about. While secondary keywords focus on the subtopics related to your primary keywords to get better rankings.

When writing a content piece, make sure to add your primary keyword in the following SEO-sensitive spots:

• title
• first introductory paragraph of your content
• meta tags and meta descriptions
• Alt Text of your content's images
• Whereas secondary keywords are relevant keywords included in your content body and subheaders.

2. Headers And Sub Headers In Blog Posts

Headers and subheaders are critical for content optimization and SEO. An H1 header is the title of your content piece and provides context to search engines and readers. An H1 header should always include your primary keyword because as we mentioned earlier primary keywords help get visibility for your content piece.

Sub Leaders are more like the subtopics for your content. For example, if your content H1, the first heading is ‘Top 10 Nike Shoes’, your subheaders can be Nike Air Force 1 and Nike Air Jordan Retro. Make sure you include relevant and right search engine keywords in your sub-headers.

3. Creating Content That Provides Value

A good quality content strategy is to find the pain points of your target audience and how your piece can help them overcome them. When you publish content with the right search intent in mind, your piece slowly starts to get traction on the internet.

The other way to gain traction on the internet is to create a pillar article and link other relevant content in that blog post.

4. Meta Descriptions That Increase CTR In Search Engine Results Pages

When you perform a search query, you must have seen a small description beneath the title and the URL. That small description is known as meta description. Search engines also often times create search results snippets for your websites. These small snippets are also a kind of meta description that provide further information about your content piece.

Even though meta descriptions don’t influence search engine rankings, they still have a huge impact on the click-through rate of your content. A good meta description lures users to click on the link. And obviously, the more users click on your link, the more leads and traffic your webpage generates.

5. Desktop And Mobile Speed

When most people optimise their content, desktop and mobile speed is the last thing they consider. However, it's something that can make or break your content marketing efforts. When writing content, you need to ensure that the content piece is easily readable from both desktops and smartphones.

With so much content out there, customers don’t want to wait for seconds when they looking for something. Search engines know that, and that’s why they see it as a negative ranking factor when web pages don’t have the optimal site speed.

6. Audit, Analyze, And Update Your Content Regularly

Content optimization is a long-term strategy. You can’t just publish your content and leave it there for eternity. Great content marketing is constantly auditing and analysing your existing content along with publishing new pieces.

You need to gather critical data through Google Search Console, such as audience location, age demographics, interests, and other key metrics. You also need to monitor your SERP rankings constantly and then tweak your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

Content creation and optimization can be a deciding factor in your SEO strategy’s success and failure. Great content is all about adding value to your readers, content that brings your ideal target audience to your website again and again and establishes your niche leadership.

Want to create content that's optimised for humans and search engines, or already have content that needs a push on Google? Get in touch and we'll help you create robust distribution channels for your highly valuable content.