With bil­lions of web­sites fight­ing for traf­fic, how do you set your­self apart from the competition?

With the help of Search Engine Opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO), you can out­rank your com­peti­tors and place your­self right in front of inter­net users who want what you’re offer­ing. Con­sid­er­ing that 86% of inter­net users ignore paid ads, organ­ic search remains a high­ly pow­er­ful way to dri­ve high-qual­i­ty traf­fic to your website.

How­ev­er, it’s not just about get­ting traf­fic. It’s also about how vis­i­tors inter­act with your site. The more engag­ing and help­ful your con­tent is, the longer vis­i­tors will spend inter­act­ing with it. Not only will high engage­ment rates guar­an­tee more con­ver­sions, but you’re also more like­ly to rank well in the SERPs.

Site author­i­ty is anoth­er reward you’ll gain from opti­mis­ing your con­tent. If it encom­pass­es Google’s E.A.T. val­ues (i.e., Exper­tise, Author­i­ty, and Trust,) you’ll be on your way to page 1 of the SERPs.

So, when it comes to SEO, con­tent is still king. And if you want to max­imise your SEO strat­e­gy, you’ll need to focus on your con­tent. But how can you do it?

Let’s dive into how you can opti­mise your con­tent for SEO.

What Is Content Optimisation?

Search Engine Opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO) is the process of improv­ing web page rank­ings in search engine results pages (SERPs). So, in the con­text of SEO strat­e­gy, con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion is sim­ply refin­ing your con­tent to enhance your SEO efforts.

SEO con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion is a repet­i­tive process that typ­i­cal­ly entails:

1) Revis­it­ing your SEO goals and objectives.

2) Iden­ti­fy­ing areas of weak­ness in your SEO strategy.

3) Tweak­ing your SEO strat­e­gy and tac­tics for even bet­ter results.

4) Stay­ing up to date with algo­rithm updates and con­stant­ly align­ing your efforts to SEO best practices.

Why Is Content Optimisation Important?

When it comes to SEO, there’s no room for com­pla­cen­cy — a Google algo­rithm update can knock you right off the top spot if your con­tent does­n’t adhere to its new expec­ta­tions. Plus, in recent years, Google has moved towards a peo­ple-first approach.

This means qual­i­ty con­tent made for humans will be reward­ed while key­word stuff­ing and grey or black hat SEO tac­tics will be penalised. Here are a few more rea­sons why opti­mis­ing your con­tent for SEO is a bril­liant idea:

Visibility and credibility

Inter­net users are con­stant­ly search­ing for rel­e­vant, high-val­ue con­tent, so organ­ic vis­i­bil­i­ty is cru­cial. Mak­ing it to the first page of search results increas­es both your vis­i­bil­i­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty. Inter­net users believe that the most rel­e­vant search results appear on the first page. In fact, 75% don’t scroll past page one.

Increased conversions

Since SEO is high­ly tar­get­ed and cus­tomer-focused, you can be placed right in front of the users who need your prod­ucts or ser­vices. If you rank in the top 5 of search results, you’ll get high-qual­i­ty traf­fic to your web­site. One thing organ­ic search has that paid social media adver­tis­ing does­n’t is that you reach cus­tomers when they’re mak­ing a pur­chas­ing decision.

Once vis­i­tors are on your site, opti­mised con­tent is what will keep them there. The longer they stay on your site and inter­act with your con­tent, the more like­ly they are to convert.

Non-stop promotion

SEO efforts run round the clock to pro­mote your web­site. If your con­tent tops the search results pages, you can take advan­tage of all the search activ­i­ty hap­pen­ing dai­ly. There’s no need to wor­ry about your bud­get run­ning out — once you’ve made the ini­tial invest­ment, your efforts will con­tin­ue to yield results.

Greater returns

Although it takes time to reap the ben­e­fits of a high-qual­i­ty SEO strat­e­gy, the results are worth it. Being the first list­ing on the Google results page guar­an­tees you almost a third of all search traf­fic. Even being in the top 5 search results can make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to your traffic.

Plus, search engine leads pro­vide a close rate that is 12% high­er than tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing. That’s not all: SEO can reduce the cost of cus­tomer acqui­si­tion by 87.41% com­pared to dig­i­tal advertising.

How To Optimise Content For SEO

Since Google holds the lion’s share of the search engine mar­ket, fol­low­ing their guide­lines is vital to a suc­cess­ful SEO strat­e­gy. The search engine giant uses more than 200 fac­tors to rank web­sites. These include domain fac­tors, page-lev­el fac­tors, site-lev­el fac­tors, back­links, brand sig­nals, and user interaction.

Accord­ing to Back­linko, the most impor­tant Google rank­ing fac­tors are:

• Refer­ring domains
• On-page SEO
• Con­tent quality
• Mobile usabil­i­ty
• Back­links
• Organ­ic click-through rate
• Dwell time

Conduct an SEO site audit

An SEO site audit is the process of uncov­er­ing issues that may affect your rank­ing on search engines. Audits are cru­cial as they allow you to address prob­lems that can make you lose out on organ­ic traf­fic. They also allow you to under­stand your com­peti­tors and bench­mark your site’s per­for­mance against key indus­try metrics.

To con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive audit, you’ll need:

1) A site audit tool such as those offered by SEM­rush or Ahrefs

2) Google Ana­lyt­ics to get met­rics and data about your site’s performance

3) Google Page Speed Insights to mea­sure your site’s per­for­mance on mobile and desktop

4) Google Search Con­sole to check if your site is indexed cor­rect­ly and how it’s show­ing up on search engine results pages

With a clear­er view of major areas to improve, you can refine your SEO strat­e­gy and opti­mise these areas for increased traf­fic and conversions.

Optimise your content strategy

When it comes to out­rank­ing your com­peti­tors, cre­ate con­tent for humans, not bots. The con­tent on your web­site should pro­vide val­ue and address vis­i­tors’ search queries.

Adopt­ing an audi­ence-first approach and under­stand­ing their search intent ensures that you deliv­er qual­i­ty con­tent that reflects your exper­tise. When you can give searchers exact­ly what they’re look­ing for, your con­tent is more like­ly to rank.

Con­sid­er what vis­i­tors stand to gain from land­ing on your web­site. Are you focused on a par­tic­u­lar area of exper­tise? Will a vis­i­tor have their pain points addressed, or will they leave frustrated?

Focus on cre­at­ing a sat­is­fy­ing user expe­ri­ence that demon­strates author­i­ty and solves prob­lems. Doing so reduces bounce rates, increas­es con­ver­sions, and helps your rankings.

To sum it up, con­tent that ranks and converts:

• is designed with the user and search intent in mind
• is sen­si­tive to user pain points
• demon­strates author­i­ty or expertise
• push­es cus­tomers’ hot buttons
• makes it easy for leads to act via clear CTAs and well-designed cap­ture forms

Audit your existing content

Opti­mis­ing your con­tent strat­e­gy allows you to craft new con­tent that’s bet­ter aligned with your SEO efforts. What about your old con­tent? The good news is that you can still improve and relaunch your old content.

Much like an SEO audit, a con­tent audit aims to iden­ti­fy issues in your exist­ing con­tent that may be affect­ing your SEO efforts.

A con­tent audit starts with iden­ti­fy­ing under­per­form­ing con­tent. To do this, you can use the Search Ana­lyt­ics fea­ture in the Google Search Con­sole. Keep an eye out for pages that receive notable impres­sions but don’t rank well. These could receive a major boost from being tweaked and relaunched. High-rank­ing pages that are expe­ri­enc­ing a decline in organ­ic traf­fic are also prime opportunities.

The next step is to opti­mise your con­tent. You can do this by:

• Updat­ing images for rel­e­vance, recen­cy, and size
• Improv­ing structure
• Iden­ti­fy­ing key­word gaps
• Pro­vid­ing more recent research
• Address­ing fre­quent­ly asked questions
• Giv­ing your audi­ence even more value

When your con­tent is opti­mised and ready to be relaunched, update the dates, and hit pub­lish. For max­i­mum reach, lever­age your mail­ing lists and social media pres­ence to dri­ve both old and new traf­fic across platforms.

Increase your domain authority

Increas­ing your domain author­i­ty used to depend on links. How­ev­er, Google’s most recent qual­i­ty guide­lines focus on Exper­tise, Author­i­ta­tive­ness, and Trust­wor­thi­ness (E.A.T.). This means that your rank­ing will be affect­ed by how close­ly your con­tent ticks these box­es. You can do this by:

• Pub­lish­ing con­tent that reflects your exper­tise or author­i­ty in a spe­cif­ic field (some­times known as Thought Lead­er­ship content)
• Gain­ing press cov­er­age or men­tions from oth­er author­i­ties in your field
• Have a clear ‘about’ and ‘con­tact’ page on your website
• Build trust­wor­thi­ness with author bylines, ref­er­ences, and exter­nal links to author­i­ta­tive sources

Strengthen your brand signals

Brand sig­nals tell search engines about the cred­i­bil­i­ty of your site. Google con­sid­ers brand sig­nals as an impor­tant fac­tor for deter­min­ing a web­site’s author­i­ty and tends to rank well-known brands higher.

A legit­i­mate and grow­ing social media pres­ence tells search engines that your brand is pop­u­lar and rep­utable, result­ing in more favourable rank­ings. So, make sure that you have an offi­cial LinkedIn page as well as Face­book and Twit­ter accounts with lots of engage­ment. Hav­ing qual­i­ty con­tent on these plat­forms, too, is imper­a­tive for sup­port­ing your SEO strategy.

Address key technical SEO issues

Even the best con­tent will go to waste if it can’t be found. Tech­ni­cal SEO involves improv­ing your site so that search engines can crawl, index, and ren­der it. Based on Google’s most recent page expe­ri­ence update, some key issues to address include:

Website architecture

A web­site’s archi­tec­ture is how con­tent is linked togeth­er and deliv­ered to users and search engines. A great web­site archi­tec­ture ensures that users can eas­i­ly nav­i­gate between pages. It also makes it easy for search engines to crawl your con­tent and make sense of it.

Page speed

A slow load time leads to a high­er bounce rate, which Google asso­ciates with a poor-qual­i­ty web­site. If your web­site takes longer than 5 sec­onds to load, expect a 38% increase in bounce rates. Plus, for every extra sec­ond that your web­site takes to load, con­ver­sions could drop by up to 4.42%.

User-friendliness

Google’s mobile-first index tells us that mobile friend­li­ness real­ly mat­ters. Con­sid­er­ing that 55% of all world­wide inter­net traf­fic comes from mobile users and that more than half of them will leave your site if it takes more than 3 sec­onds to load, ensure that your web­site is mobile-friendly.

Track and improve your strategy

For con­tin­ued suc­cess, your SEO strat­e­gy must be mon­i­tored and updat­ed. Keep up with Google’s plat­form and algo­rithm updates, as fail­ure to do so can cost you. Sec­ond­ly, ensure that you’re run­ning month­ly checks on the tech­ni­cal aspects of your SEO. Final­ly, make sure that your con­tent stays rel­e­vant and up to date.

Content Optimisation Tools

Con­duct­ing audits, man­ag­ing your efforts, and gen­er­at­ing SEO-friend­ly con­tent aren’t easy tasks. For­tu­nate­ly, there are qual­i­ty con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion tools that allow you to take the guess­work out of meet­ing your SEO strat­e­gy goals.

Con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion tools can help you:

• See where your con­tent needs revis­ing or updating
• See how you com­pare against competitors
• Research key­words and con­tent ideas
• Cre­ate new con­tent that fills con­tent gaps
• Find link opportunities
• Mon­i­tor your rank and progress

You have a lot of options when it comes to SEO tools. To guide your final deci­sion, con­sid­er the fea­tures that mat­ter most to you. If you’re after the ease of an all-in-one SEO and con­tent solu­tion, go for tools such as Sem­rush, SE Rank­ing, or Moz Pro.

If con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion is your pri­or­i­ty, con­sid­er tools like Surfer SEO, Frase, PageOp­ti­miz­er Pro, or Word­met­rics. Com­bin­ing any of the tools above with Google Ana­lyt­ics and Google Search Con­sole will boost your efforts and help you meet your SEO goals.

Content Optimisation Mistakes To Avoid

When you’re work­ing hard to main­tain or improve your rank­ings, the last thing you want is to get penalised or de-indexed. There­fore, avoid doing any of the following:

Over-optimising your site

Yes, you read that right. You can be penalised for over-opti­mis­ing your site. So, put an end to key­word stuff­ing, head­er tag stuff­ing, and oth­er forms of over-optimisation.

Using auto-generated content

It might be tempt­ing to get vol­umes of con­tent at the click of a but­ton. But rely­ing on auto-gen­er­at­ed con­tent vio­lates Google’s peo­ple-first approach and could result in penal­ties or de-indexing.

Deceiving visitors

Any attempts to deceive or mis­lead site vis­i­tors aren’t tak­en light­ly. So, stay away from tac­tics such as sneaky redi­rects, as you could be penalised or get your site de-indexed.

Compromising on quality

Togeth­er with thin or dupli­cate con­tent, avoid cre­at­ing con­tent that isn’t tai­lored to your audi­ence. Sim­ply repur­pos­ing con­tent or fol­low­ing trends instead of writ­ing for your audi­ence vio­lates Google’s qual­i­ty guidelines.

Not prioritising user experience

If your site is filled with dis­tract­ing pop-ups and ads, Google will inter­pret it as a low-qual­i­ty site. As your page may be deval­ued, avoid using tac­tics that neg­a­tive­ly affect user experience.

Final thoughts

An effec­tive SEO strat­e­gy is a great way to lever­age brand­ing, qual­i­ty con­tent, and aspects of web devel­op­ment to dri­ve qual­i­fied leads to your web­site and reach a larg­er audi­ence. To max­imise your results, focus on con­sis­tent­ly pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty con­tent while stick­ing to SEO best practices.