Roadmap to Creating SEO Friendly Content
Over the past 25 years, the SEO world and trends have changed massively and today, SEO has turned into more of behavioral science. Digital marketers and content creators need to understand search engine factors and search intent of users to be able to provide valuable and high-quality content that will succeed in the search engines.
Search engines have started to prioritize audience-focused content rather than keyword-rich content and we will see this trend continue in 2020 and beyond. In the past keyword-focused content failed to improve the user experience which brought lower conversions so marketers need to consider that in order to see a real ROI, they need to provide content that will bring value to their audience.
When creating content, audience and search engine needs should be taken into consideration and SEO optimization should be integrated at every step of content planning and implementation processes.
So here are tips to create user-focused SEO content that will help to increase your website traffic and search engine rankings:
Understanding User Behavior
The first step to creating valuable SEO content is to understand your target audience. Analyzing who they really are, what are their needs, and what they are searching online will provide an insight for you to create the content they would find useful.
Creating highly-targeted content will have an effect to compel your audience to take action and make purchasing decisions. So you need to define the main characteristics of your ideal customer by answering questions like what their main struggles are and what type of solutions they need. After defining the problems your audience has and how you can solve them, it’s time to include those answers in your website supported by keywords to target and calls-to-actions.
Keyword Mapping
An important aspect of content creation is having the search intent as the core focus. By conducting thorough keyword research, marketers can identify product-related questions and needs of their target audience along with how they look for the solutions. To accomplish that keyword mapping is needed to create content that involves target keywords. Pages and posts should all be assigned to each targeted keyword to prevent wasting the resources on low-performing keywords.
Having an effective keyword strategy would help to identify what topics your audience is interested in and search volumes for different topics. But the important thing here is to consider what the user is trying to accomplish by searching for those topics and create content that is tailored as a solution.
Structuring Content for Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets are a new and very popular feature in the search engine results pages (SERP) and their purpose is to answer users’ questions immediately. They are the little boxes of information that show up at the top of the results pages and if your content is optimized according to the requirements of this feature, chances are your pages will shop up in this box.
Most of the time, users won’t look further down when they see the answer they are looking for in the featured snippets which makes it even more crucial for business pages to take place in these boxes. To increase your chances of being featured in these boxes and steal traffic away from the #1 spot, make sure that you have high-quality content that answers questions users are looking for. Additionally using bulleted lists and including stats or data also helps to increase your chances of being featured.
Using High-Quality Visuals
One of the important elements of successful SEO implementation is using high-quality images and videos throughout the website content. It is something that favors both search engine rankings and customer perception of a business. Having authentic visuals will support the brand image and competitive edge. The more formats of answers a business offer for their visitors, the better chances of increasing search engine rankings. Also by providing relevant visual aspects to the web content, businesses can enhance their authority levels on search engines which will boost the organic rankings.
There are some other key issues to take into consideration when planning your content strategy:
- Make sure your website’s technical issues have been optimized such as mobile speed and crawlability.
- Be an expert on a topic that is relevant to your audience and make sure your website content reflects your competence.
- Assess your current content and see what’s working best and driving more traffic. And if you identify a pattern, keep creating content accordingly.
SEO is a long-term investment with high ROI for many businesses which makes creating SEO friendly content crucial and to be responsive to your audience needs.
If you think your SEO strategy needs a transformation contact us today to find out how can we help your business website can increase its search engine rankings.