What is Content and How Does it Affect SEO?
Content is the foundation of SEO. It’s what your users want and it’s what search engines reward.
Content is the key to building an audience and engaging with them over time, which is why it’s so important for marketers to understand how content affects SEO performance.
Tips for Creating SEO-Friendly Content
Do keyword research:
- Use the Google Keyword Planner to find popular keywords related to your business and its offerings. When choosing keywords, make sure they’re relevant to your website’s content and are likely to be searched by users
Optimize your content for search engines:
- Write your content with search engines in mind. Use keywords, but don’t overdo it. Keep your sentences clear and concise to help users find what they’re looking for quickly.
Write content for human readers!
- Write high-quality, engaging content that your audience will love and share
- Google wants to show users the most relevant and trustworthy content and it wants users to be able to get their needs met quickly
- Don’t just write for the search engines, write to provide value for your users
Don’t forget to add metadata:
- Include relevant metadata in your page content, such as titles, descriptions and keywords. This helps search engines understand what your content is about and can be used by Google to generate more accurate search results.
Content Promotion Strategies for SEO
Now that you’ve created your content, it’s time to promote it. There are a number of ways to do this, but the most effective ones include:
- Promoting through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter
- Leveraging guest blogging and influencer marketing (i.e., getting other people with big followings to share your content)
- Using paid promotion methods such as advertising on platforms like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads
Measuring the Impact of Content on SEO Performance
Measuring the impact of content on SEO performance is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. To do this, you need to be able to track your organic search traffic and conversions from content-driven SEO campaigns. You can also set goals for each piece of content so that you know what kind of results are expected from it and can adjust accordingly if needed.
In addition to tracking these metrics with analytics software like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture), you should also be analyzing them regularly with a spreadsheet or other tool so that you can easily compare them over time as well as across different pieces of content.
Adapting Content Strategies to Evolving SEO Trends
As SEO evolves and changes, you need to be sure that your content strategies are up-to-date.
- Stay on top of the latest trends and updates: Google is constantly making tweaks to its algorithm, so it’s important that you stay informed about what these changes mean for your site. For example, a recent update called “Mobilegeddon” was designed to improve search results for mobile users; if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices yet, this could cause serious problems with traffic and rankings–and even lead people away from visiting altogether!
- Re-evaluate content strategies based on evolving user behaviors: Another important factor when considering how SEO has changed over time is user behavior; while some things have stayed the same (like keyword research), others have shifted dramatically since 2009 when Google first rolled out its Panda update. For instance, back then most people were searching via desktop computers instead of smartphones; now nearly half all searches come from mobile devices! So if you’re not already optimising all of your pages with responsive design or creating new ones specifically geared towards this growing segment…you might want consider doing so soon before they become irrelevant altogether.