SEOs did not focus on creating quality content in the past.
They focused more on keyword stuffing their website content. And they use other search engine optimization strategies and tricks to increase the search engine rankings of their websites. A lot of these SEOs were successful in ranking their websites.
In most cases, the quality of content did not matter to these SEOs. Websites with low-quality content managed to rank in the search engine search results during those times.
Fortunately, Google changed its algorithm in 2011 to stop low-quality websites from ranking in their search results. Therefore, a lot of SEOs are now focused on creating high-quality content for their websites. They no longer post low-quality content to their websites. It is now more important to create useful and relevant content.
You can, however, publish any type of content on your website. Some content cannot rank in the search engines since it is difficult to rank this type of content in Google.
Here are the best types of content for search engine optimization (SEO):
Blog Posts
Content is one main ranking factors. It is, however, normal for websites to have their own blogs. It is, therefore, crucial to post high-quality blog posts to your blog. The blog posts can build your brand and increase your website’s search engine rankings.
Do not just focus on the latest developments and news in your industry. It is best to write about different topics. Focusing on various topics can help you reach more people.
Infographics
The written word is more popular on the internet since most people love to read. You can create infographics to make it easy for your readers to process the information.
It can, however, take thousands of words to express something. You can, however, use a graphic snapshot to share the same information. It is easy to express something using an infographic.
It is also easy for people to share infographics. Therefore, your infographics can go viral to increase your website traffic.
Videos
A lot of people love to watch online videos. This is because videos are more engaging than articles and even infographics. Video content is going to dominate in the future. It is believed video content will account for around 80% of web traffic in 2020 and beyond.
Trending Content
Trending topics usually have a short lifespan. However, trending topics are usually popular, so they can drive more traffic to your website. You can use trending topics to increase your website traffic in a few days.
If you want to launch a new product or promote your existing products, use trending content.
In fact, you can use hot topics and breaking news to increase your website traffic and generate high-quality links from reputable websites. This is called “newsjacking”.
Newsjacking allows you to inject yourself into the day’s big headlines. How? You find a huge story, which is very popular on the internet. Then, you provide an analysis. You must, however, make sure your analysis is relevant to your business or brand.
Here are the reasons to create newsjacking content:
It can increase your reach
A lot of people will see you as an expert and leader in your industry
It can showcase your brand or website is the best place for getting industry updates
You can, therefore, add newsjacking to your search engine optimization strategy.
How-To Guides
A lot of people are always searching for how-to guides on the internet. That is why how-to infographics, articles, and videos will remain relevant. You can, therefore, create a how-to guide in the form of an infographic, a video, or an article.
Your sales teams and support can come up with ideas for your how-to guides. You can also get content ideas from calls from your customers, inbound emails, and help center tickets. Create how-to guides to answer the questions and solve the problems of your customers.
If you get the same questions from several people, it means they have not found the answer to the question on the internet. If you can provide an in-depth answer, your how-to guide will rank in the search engine.
Lists
List posts are popular on the internet. If you can add a number at the beginning of your list post, your post can go viral on the internet.
A list post is more engaging. It is, however, crucial to do thorough research before creating your list post. It is beneficial to make your list post longer and as detailed as possible.
It is easy to rank perfect list posts in the search engine. List posts can increase your organic traffic.
SEO cannot be successful without content support; the two go together. On the on hand, the content you post might be lost in the many search result pages, which also have less than satisfactory traffic. On the other hand, your SEO efforts to have your page show up in the top ranking on the first search results page will be as effective as the content you post. Hence, great content is as essential as effective optimization, and non can do without the other.
How to Create the Best Content for SEO in 9 Easy Steps
Given this, below are 10 tips on developing great SEO content that takes your search engine optimization efforts to the next level.
1. Write For A Targeted Audience
Writing seems straightforward when you feel you have something to say. However, the content will have little to no significance if it does not have an audience. That is why this SEO writing tip is the most paramount factor. It ensures that you develop the right content for the right reasons.
The material you produce must appeal to your target market’s interests or offer a solution/answer to their questions. The content does not have to be about your product or service; it must be oriented around your industry. It is best to focus on your brand, asserting the company or yourself as an expert in your industry through SEO-oriented content. Also, make the content as informative and engaging as possible, doing your best to outdo your competitors.
2. Keep It All Under The Same Roof
Since you focus on your brand, it only shows the need to ensure that your original content stays under the same roof. That means keeping it under your domain name. For instance, you can host a blog in a subfolder in your domain (www.example.com/blog) instead of hosting it with Blogger or WordPress. Use the same strategy when you have whitepapers, infographics, videos, and other materials you want to share with your audience, embedding them onto your website.
3. Make Headlines That Hit Home
It is best to assume that you have a limited amount of text to make a lasting impression; hence, you should consider exploiting the potential of an effective headline. Therefore, write concise, interesting, and keyword-rich headlines for your SEO content. Furthermore, keep the meta descriptions interesting and make an effort to elaborate on your article’s topic. And it would help to remember that the title and meta description that the crucial details about you, your brand, or content that show in search results.
4. Use Keyword-Rich Phrases
Take the time to research the keywords to use because they will let search engines and your target audience know what your post is about. Keep the keyword phrases relevant and avoid using too many keywords lest search engines penalize you for keyword stuffing. Therefore, the game tactic here is to use your keywords thoughtfully and sparingly. Let your keyword phrases have a natural feel even as you throw them throughout your posts. Moreover, leverage blog tags, tagging some relevant keywords to the blog posts.
5. Structure Your Posts
You might post amazing content but have it all lost in an inefficient and unorganized format. It is best to break your material into smaller bits, using short paragraphs with subheadings to keep the readers engaged. It is all about doing back-end organization which search engines will factor when ranking your posts. Consider using the recommended tag hierarchy (H1 for titles, and H2, H3, and so forth for subtitles) to ensure you maintain a properly structured article.
6. Use More Imagery
People are visual, meaning they are intrigued by what they see. Therefore, consider including imagery in your articles. You can link them to your Pinterest account if you have one. Pinning the images on your posts can help promote your content on social media platforms while providing other avenues of generating traffic.
7. Leverage Social Media To Propel Your Content
invest in making the most of the power behind social media as a marketing tool and enhancing your efforts of reaching a target audience. You can post about your new articles and share links to the page on your social media accounts and in forums. You can engage your audience using descriptions and an elaborate call-to-action. Social media thrives on sharing; hence, including a share button on the blog posts and other materials you post can be helpful. Moreover, you can use Open Graphs on Facebook and Twitter Cards on Twitter if you want more control over how the links you share appear, boosting click-through rates.
8. Encourage Natural Link Building
We have come a long way since the days of link farms and PBNs, and although the game might be different, links maintain a significant role in SEO. Including links to your articles, pages, or website in posts ensures that you have a link back to your site if another site picks it up. Doing this to your videos, infographics, or an embedded code can help promote the content you share, increasing the shareability and chances of other sites linking to your posts. However, such efforts require you to invest significantly in quality.
9. Monitor your activity
Monitoring your optimization efforts go a long way in ensuring that you stay on top of your SEO writing. You can do this more efficiently using Google Analytics. It is a free tool to track website visits, page views, and the time spent on a page. Take note of the bounce rate to determine how users interact with your site after landing on the content you publish.
A high drop-off and low average time on a page suggest your content was not interesting or relevant to the audience’s needs. The same impact can be evident when determining the virality of your social media posts. Check the like and shares on what you post to gauge the level of interaction. Such metrics can give you a sound idea about the most well-received content you can replicate when creating SEO-friendly content.