What You Need to Know about Content Optimization

Content is king as the SEO experts love to say. But it’s not just enough to create great content on your website, you need to make sure that you optimize it so that people can find it. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how good your content is, it will never get read.

Keyword research is essential

The most important thing to do before writing anything is to search for keywords. As well as helping you to find keywords with which to optimize your content, research can also help you learn more about your target audience. It will help you understand who your customers are, what they are interested in and how often they search for it. You can then tweak your content to reflect this.

Keyword optimization improves both on-page and off-page SEO. The better optimized your content is, the more likely it will show up in Google. At the same time, the more your content shows up in Google, the more likely it is that it will be linked to.

Use a focus keyword

A focus keyword is one single keyword that you optimize your entire piece of content around. It is the main keyword that you will include in the page title, in some of the headings and in the meta data.

When you use a focus keyword it doesn’t mean that you have to omit other keywords — far from it. This is where Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are important. LSI keywords are keywords that are related to your focus keyword, although they are not necessarily synonyms of that keyword.

Search intent is the best approach

When writing content, make sure that you write for humans and not for Google. This is why it is essential to understand search intent.

Google has become so advanced in recent years that it can now understand exactly what users are searching for. That means that only websites that fulfill their intent will be shown in the results pages. This is because Google wants to provide the best user experience possible for customers.

Optimize your meta data

As well as the body copy of your web page, you should also optimize the page’s meta data. You’ll want to use your focus keyword in the title tag, the page’s meta description, the alt tag of pictures and everywhere else it is relevant. This includes the page’s URL. It should contain the keyword without being overly long, complex or ugly.

Use headings

Make sure that you use lots of subheadings in your content. A wall of text looks very intimidating. Besides, no one wants to search through a sea of text to find the one thing they are actually looking for. It will also make your content much easier to read and more engaging, too. Besides, subheadings also create an opportunity for you to use your keywords.

Optimize pictures

Most website owners neglect the importance of optimizing the pictures on their websites. While this isn’t technically a type of content, optimizing your images can have a huge impact on SEO. Once again, they are another way to get keywords onto your pages.