When you think about website promotion, there are probably lots of different things that come to mind. It may feel like a thousand-piece puzzle, but in truth it’s much more straightforward!
A large part of your website promotion comes from proper content optimisation, at least in terms of organic traffic. Despite there being tons of advice out there, a surprising number of businesses still fall short on their content marketing.
That’s where we come in. We’re here to help you understand the principles of content optimisation. More importantly, we’ll let you know exactly how to ensure your content is providing the biggest buff to your business!
What is Content Optimisation?
Simply put, content optimisation is the act of producing content in such a way that it achieves higher search engine ranking, and thus reaches a wider audience. It’s all about maximizing the splash your content makes in an ocean of competition.
Thankfully, much of the checklist for optimised content is straightforward. Creating successful content is largely about using proper keywords, ensuring a healthy keyword density, good paragraph and sentence structure, being organized with metadata, and having a solid linking structure.
Of course, there are many other factors at play when optimizing your business website content. You’ll need to think about call to response (CTR) language, accompanying media elements, and how that all fits into your larger content marketing strategy.
The Importance of Content Optimisation
If you’re looking to digitally market your business, all roads lead to content optimisation.
Whether you’re a small start-up or a well-established player, it can improve your visibility online, allowing you to connect with a larger proportion of your target audience and see greater sales.
Here are the two key benefits you see once you begin to optimise content:
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Higher Search Engine Rankings
Having desirable content attached to your business means that your website will not only rank higher in search engines generally, but also get onto more popular (and lucrative!) SERPs!
Having a nice collection of polished, valuable content allows you to cast a wider net, where your site is offered for a higher variance of search queries. This will naturally lead to more traffic to your site, which further validates your site as the go-to place for those queries. It’s a self-repeating cycle that all begins with content optimisation.
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Communicates Superior Quality
When a business has taken the time to produce a network of supporting content, it shows that they value their customers beyond the checkout. When a business ensures proper content optimisation, however, it communicates a superior quality across all branches of said business.
Having optimised content gets you one step closer to becoming a spokesperson for your niche or industry. This can explode your organic reach and influence overall conversion. Actually, it’s even more basic than that. Optimised content is simply better with higher visibility and greater longevity.
How to Optimise Content
Getting started with content optimisation isn’t overly technical. Some SEO agencies won’t tell you this but even absolute beginners can improve their digital visibility after reading up on the subject a little!
When you’re ready to try it out, here are some fundamental steps to follow:
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Target Keyword Research
Start with the broad strokes of your niche or industry and filter down into more specific search terms and phrases that your target audience is using. You can use a multitude of SEO tools to look up keyword data, including how frequently they’re used and how competitive content targeting that keyword currently is.
The search terms you select become your content optimisation blueprint, your main keywords. They show you the kinds of topic you can cover and the sort of questions the consumer needs answering. There’s also related keywords to consider, the search terms that surround main keywords. Including relevant examples will further enhance your visibility, though it’s important to ensure your main keywords still lead your content!
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Produce the Content
When you have the general direction for your content, it’s time to begin making it! As with any persuasive writing, a clear structure and authoritative tone are paramount. Having said that, the average user isn’t looking for an essay so a friendly approach is also important for making a genuine connection with your audience.
Divide your content into manageable sections with clear headings. This is not just convenient for anyone reading the content in its entirety, but also those jumping to a particular part. As an added bonus, this kind of clear structuring makes content more favourable in the eyes of search engine crawler bots!
When your writing is finished, don’t rush your title tag! Unless the search engine creates one for you, the title tag is exactly how your webpage advertises itself in results pages! Your title tag should be indicative of the topic covered yet also reflect the words that your audience is likely to use when searching.
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Optimise Added Media
Written content is still king when it comes to digital marketing, but that’s not to say adding visuals and other media elements is a bad idea! A header image is considered a staple for many, but there are other enhancements you can make to your content.
It’s obviously best practice to include a meta-description for any images you use, but also spend some time thinking about file formats and compression. Optimized images load up quicker and therefore don’t impact your page load speed, a crucial factor when keeping hold of your site visitors!
Taking the time to get these peripherals right further communicates the professionalism of your business. At the same time, it provides a nicer experience for your customers, which motivates them to further explore your website and ultimately make a purchase.
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Link your Content Network
As we already learned, having a network of polished content shows that a business values the larger customer experience. You take that theory a step further when you’ve created a clean and convenient linking structure.
A healthy number of internal links on a webpage shows that a business is confident to speak on all areas of their field. It also makes it temptingly easy for visitors to walk further through your website… our earlier article on link building, anyone?
It’s important to ensure your internal links are relevant and that you don’t overdo them. Your readers may lose faith in your site if there’s too much self-promotion, so reserve links for when you absolutely know they’re adding value.
Getting Help with Content Optimisation
There are lots of SEO tools available, many of which are totally free! You learn a great deal about content optimisation from such tools, so even total newbies can grow their business in relatively little time!
If you run into any trouble with your content marketing, or just want to speed up the process, Shtudio provides all kinds of specialist SEO services. We help you to create top-tier content as part of an effective digital marketing strategy.
Clear up any questions by giving us a call on 1300 533 355 or whizzing over an email.