A content optimization strategy helps you show up in top results and effectively leverage the power of content marketing.
85% of consumers trust companies that provide useful information without trying to sell them something. As such, consumers are increasingly relying on search engines to find answers to their questions before buying a product or service. As more and more people become self-guided consumers, content optimization is the key to capture your target audience’s attention in an already highly competitive environment.
In this article, I outline the top 7 content optimization strategies and how you can implement them to boost your content marketing campaigns.
What is Content Optimization?
Content optimization refers to the improvements you make to ensure your content is easily findable by the majority of your target audience. A content optimization strategy involves the approaches you use to ensure your content reaches the biggest possible target demographic. Examples of content optimization strategies include;
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Ensuring webpages are crawlable and indexable by search engines. Comprises a range of on-page, off-page and technical factors.
On-page optimization; having keyword-targeted, scannable, and media-rich web content for a standard search engine and human experience. Made up of anchor texts, meta descriptions, title tags, hyperlinks, imagery, and copy.
User experience (UX) optimization: Designing the entire experience of consuming content across any device, browser, or medium enjoyable, especially for mobile devices, tablets, and voice search assistants.
On-SERP optimization: Making the organic and paid listings on search engine results pages (SERP) stand out from others to attract more clicks and deliver greater brand visibility. Steps include using structured data markup for organic and greater ad relevance for paid ones.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO): Making sure calls-to-action and other kinds of conversion triggers are both as seamless and successful as possible.
Why does Web Content Optimization Matter?
80% of the outcomes from your content marketing campaigns come from 20% of your top content assets, similar to how the Pareto Principle works. Therefore, a content optimization strategy is the foundation of every successful blog post, guide, checklist, or demo video. It ensures;
Your content offers value to your target users and addresses their questions or pain points
Your content ranks better on search engines (SERPs)
Your content is accessible when consumers engage with it using different devices, eg, desktop, laptop, or tablet.
Your content enjoys better conversion rates
What are the Top Content Optimization Strategies for 2021?
Before we get into the checklist of different content optimization strategies, I need to acknowledge SEO and content optimization are sometimes used interchangeably. In my perspective, and for the purpose of this article, SEO will be considered one of the strategies that can be used to optimize content for better marketing outcomes.
Setting content goals is the first step to defining an effective content optimization strategy. This is because clear objectives give your action plan direction. The common content marketing goals are;
Achieving top search result rankings
Boost brand image
Grow website traffic
Boost revenue
Depending on your specific goals, here are some of the top content optimization strategies you can choose from;
1. Addressing Content Decay
If you stop updating old content assets, you end up with content decay. The impact of content decay is reduced traffic to your website or page especially if;
Your competitors provide evergreen content
Your old content is not updated to cover recent developments in your niche
You stop promoting your content leading to loss of new links referring back to your page
2. Optimize Content for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is arguably the most crucial technique when it comes to creating high-value content assets. Top tips you can use to boost your content for SEO include;
Using title tags, meta descriptions to help search engines understand the subjects your content is addressing
Carry out in-depth keyword research and use them naturally in your content copy
Incorporate seed keywords and niche-specific phrases to increase the relevance of your keywords.
Use a smart internal linking strategy by directing readers to other connected pages on your website that can provide more information about a given subject
Explore collaborative efforts such as guest-posting, product or service features, and co-marketing opportunities to build backlinks from high authority external platforms
Provide actionable content for a specific target audience to minimize bounce rates and boost page time
Ensure you have precise alt tags for your images to allow search engines to understand their content.
Use schema markups to boost how search engines read and understand your content
Ensure your site load speed is up to standard and all your UX issues are addressed
Ensure your website content is accessible to all users including people with disabilities across desktop, mobile, or tablet devices in line with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Create an AMP version of your content such that it loads quickly (AMP- web component framework to easily create user-first experiences for the web).
3. Leverage Featured Snippets
A featured snippet refers to a stand-out content result that answers a user’s query on a search engine. Unlike a regular search result, snippets show the description content first followed by the URL link. A featured snippet holds the ‘zero position’ on SERPs since it ranks higher than the organic search result which occupies position 1 on the search results page.
This content optimization strategy is responsible for a 35.1% share of all clicks. Google chooses the best result and shows it to users as an answer box depending on the search query. Although there is no specific schema markup to get your content as a featured snippet, some steps you can take to achieve this are;
Creating high-quality, comprehensive, unique, and entertaining content that answers users’ search intent.
Using the Q&A style for your content such that search engines can pick your answer and display it in the search results for the specific long-tail question keyword you aim to rank for.
Quick fact: 19% of all Google searches are queries
Improve the readability score of your content by using short simple sentences that are easy to understand. Bullet points, short paragraphs, rich media such as images and videos come in handy here.
4. Carry out Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is probably an underrated content optimization strategy because, on the other hand, it is vital to ensure your content is unique. However, being aware of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses can help you identify content optimization opportunities and stay ahead of the competing pack in the process.
Some of the key metrics you can evaluate to ensure your content is better than your competitors include;
Domain and Page Authority
Content word count
How often they update their content
Keyword density in their content
The number of external links referring back to their content
The number of social shares
Their Content EAT (Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness) Score
5. Deliver Timely Hooks
The bull’s eye when it comes to content marketing is to direct users down the conversion funnel. For this reason, well-optimized content helps the user to know what to do next. To ensure your content is serving its purpose;
a). Include calls-to-action (CTAs) in the copy of your content.
b). Use non-intrusive pop-ups to encourage conversions.
6. Establish Authority
Making your content authoritative is one of the content optimization strategies that requires patience to achieve. 5 great articles will not do the job. You may need 100 high-quality articles, which means your content must be;
Deep; well-researched and comprehensive
Wide; supplemented by other assets such as guest blogging or features on high authority websites or platforms.
Apart from the depth and width of your content, establishing authority also needs experienced writers on a particular subject to produce content for your chosen topics. Alternatively, you can rely on industry professionals with hands-on experience in your chosen subjects. Why? Because it is easy for your audience to identify whether the content is authoritative or not from a glance, especially if they are knowledgeable about the subject.
7. Optimize Content for Voice Search
Voice search is slowly but steadily catching on, and from a marketing perspective, it has the potential to be the new normal for search in the near future. To ensure your content is also optimized for voice search;
Add long-tail keywords and queries in your content mixed with natural phrases used by the majority when speaking about a specific subject
Adopt a conversational tone in your content because users usually interact with voice search assistants such as Alexa or Google Voice in the same way.
Make sure your content is optimized for local search queries because results for voice searches 3x are more likely to be more locality-based than typed searches.
If you have any further questions or would like a free web content audit, feel free to drop me a message and I will be more than happy to help you optimize your web content.
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