7 Tips to Optimize Content for Search Engines
Search engine optimization hinges on content relevance. No relevance means no rankings and no revenue from natural search. Follow these seven SEO tips to ensure that your site is optimized for the most valuable set of keywords to drive natural search performance.
7 Tips to Optimize Content
Research keyword themes. Keyword research-powered knowledge of searchers’ desires should guide your natural search strategy, as well as inform the content strategy for the entire site. Use keyword research to analyze where there might be gaps in your site that need to be filled with fresh content. As you’re analyzing, assign intent to keyword themes — purchase, information, or pure navigational intent — to ensure that the right content is created to fulfill the desire implied by each theme.
Make sure that your keyword research is refreshed regularly — not less than annually, quarterly is best.
Remove self-competition. Map keyword themes to specific pages to ensure that as many relevant keywords as possible have a place on your site. This removes the natural tendency to try to optimize every page for a similar set of high-demand keywords.
Keyword mapping is especially beneficial on a site with a distributed SEO model, in which multiple departments manage their own optimization. Try to organize keyword mapping centrally so the departments aren’t battling for rankings on pages that are only semi-relevant for a high-demand theme.
Optimize editorial processes. Content optimization becomes much easier if SEO is incorporated before the content is created. Include SEO in editorial meetings to share keyword research that can generate new ideas for the content calendar, as well as guide the individual themes of content pieces.
The intent is to participate, not to dictate. Editorial creativity is critical to developing content that people want to engage with. So-called “SEO content” — text that is written solely to target keywords — is painful to read, doesn’t result in engagement, and fails to drive SEO performance.
