How to create content that works with your SEO strategy

Aligning your content with an effective SEO strategy has many benefits, not least with respect to generating steady organic search traffic. Key to this is stepping away from the idea that there are any tricks you can use to make your content more effective and focusing on simply ensuring that your content is easy for search engines to access and understand. These are some of the tips we often recommend to clients looking to make that happen.

When you’re planning content bear in mind search queries

Content that generates organic search engine traffic answers questions that are being typed in by users. So, when you settle on the topics you want content to cover make sure you bear in mind what questions people are asking to reach the solutions that you’re providing in your content. This information can be incredibly useful when it comes to refining content so that it’s genuinely interesting and useful to those who are searching for it. Look at the queries your competitors are ranking for and try using keyword explorer tools to help expand the words and phrases you could use.

Use your keywords like a human being

The days of stuffing content with keywords so that it is difficult to read are long gone. You should make it a priority to write content that flows and which makes sense to read. However, you can also use keywords in specific places that will help to ensure that content performs in line with your strategy, including the page title, page URL, first paragraph of content, subheadings and image alt text. Semantic analysis can also be really useful as it will increase the number of options you have in terms of words that you can integrate into content that will meet the query intent.

Diversify the content that you’re using

We are increasingly seeing results from a greater range of content formats, especially video and images. Video, for example, can have a big impact on where your content is ranked by search engines and it is often a more enjoyable experience for the person consuming the content. There are so many video making tools around today that anyone can create this kind of content in a matter of minutes. It’s also worth being more open to using images and music, as well as ensuring that any text content you use is succinct and effective.

Monitor as much as you can

If you want to know whether your content is performing in line with the SEO strategy you’ve designed then you’ll need to do some on-page monitoring. There are lots of tools to help with this, including Google Search Console, which will identify the search queries that are generating the most traffic. Other monitoring tools can help you to dig deeper into performance, for example whether ads are generating clicks and which search queries result in conversions.

Creating content that works with your SEO strategy can be transformative for your business.