How can your website speed improve SEO? The 10 point checklist
There are no two ways around it; your website speed is fundamental if you want to improve your SEO. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with our ultimate 10…
We’re back with another installment of our SEO Support Series. Last time we were exploring the relevance and impact of keywords and phrases. Today, we’re taking things a step further: it’s time to talk all things CONTENT.
Your content SEO strategy is a core way to get your website in front of all the right people. It’s your golden ticket to getting yourself ranked higher on Google and bringing more and more potential leads into your world.
Long gone are the days when ‘keyword stuffing’ was the prime way to optimise your content and drag more eyeballs to your site. Google has wised up, and it’s now far more important to create content that is designed around your reader.
Sound confusing? We’ve got your back. Read on to discover our 6 point content SEO checklist and learn how to scale your SEO game.
If you want search engines to favour your content, you’d best make sure it’s easy to read.
Because it isn’t just your audience who is reading your content; it’s Google, too.
By easy, we mean:
Essentially, you want content that people will understand and continue reading right through until the end. If you can tick that box, Google will reward you.
This brings us back to the big red flashing cross above the idea of ‘keyword stuffing’.
We’ve talked about this topic in detail, but your aim should be to collate a series of keywords that speak directly to your audience. What are they searching for? What do they care about? What do they want to know?
Armed with this set of information, create different forms of keywords that you can subtly integrate into your content. Think headers, image tags, meta tags, snippet previews… the full picture!
You can make use of plugins, apps and website tools for keyword research and to check the level you are using in your content; remember, there is such a thing as too much!
We appreciate that this is the essence of SEO; however, there are some very specific ways that you can ensure your content is loved and appreciated by search engines.
When creating your website and blog content, strive to include:
These small additions will support your content tenfold and push it out on a far wider scale.
We’ve briefly touched on images, but they really are a massive part of your SEO content strategy.
Google wants to see that you are an authority on a matter; that your content is valuable and, basically, better than anyone else’s. A proven way to prompt this is by including high quality, engaging images in your content.
These images are great for breaking up text, adding context to your words and connecting with your audience. Afterall, our brains process images up to 60,000 x faster than text, and content with images produce 650% higher engagement than text-only posts.
Your audience knows this… you know this… and Google knows this.
Long-form content is seeing a huge rise in popularity; both from businesses who understand the value of optimised marketing, and search engines.
This is because content that delves deeper into a topic is seen as of a much higher quality, according to Google.
In fact, the digital team at Google was reported to say:
“We tracked the SEO performance of a number of different sites. The sites that provided exceptional depth in quality content coverage literally soared in rankings through the year. Sites that were weaker in their content depth suffered in comparison.”
Long-form content such as this should sit over the 2,000 word mark. But don’t make the mistake of rambling your way through those 2,000 words: break your content into sections and tackle the multi-faceted topic that you are exploring in an engaging, genuinely helpful manner.
You should regularly run through your content and check that everything listed is still relevant.
This could be anything from your address details to blog topics that you shared years ago. As you note anything outdated down, decide whether it needs changing, deleting or repurposing.
A bonus of doing this (aside from amping up your SEO ranking) is that it can give you some easy to create content: a popular blog post from way back could simply be rehashed with a different direction to deliver something totally new to the reader.
Search engines value fresh content, which is why we always recommend regularly maintaining a blog on your website.
Ready for the good news? SO MANY.
Here are a few of our favourites:
We hope this helps and gives you an initial insight into how content can skyrocket your SEO strategy! To discuss our SEO services in more detail, contact Littlebigbox for a no obligations chat.
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