SEO. You’ve heard of it, but does it really matter? 

 

The short answer: yes, it does. A strong SEO strategy not only allows you to boost relevant traffic, sales, and profits, it also allows you to get extremely targeted with your marketing approach. 

 

The truth is, a high percentage of your prospective customers will be finding you via search engines, so it pays to ensure that your website is fully optimized and ready to draw these visitors in. And with Google doing away with cookies in Chrome by 2022, organic traffic is becoming even more important. Working on building your organic traffic streams now will lead to a more stable company down the road.

 

Creating great content is largely a two-pronged process: creating content for your target audience and creating content for the search engines. It’s a blend of these two that results in tremendously successful content, the kind that results in relevant traffic and conversions.

 

So how can you get started with SEO? Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be tremendously time-consuming. In this article, we’ll take a look at some SEO tips for creating content that’s fully optimized for search –and conversions.

 

SEO Tips for Optimizing Your Content

 

So what exactly is SEO and how can you use it to super-charge your sales? SEO, Search Engine Optimization, focuses on implementing some of the most common online searches with your particular website, which helps your website rank higher. SEO can increase the length of time visitors spend on your website, decrease your bounce rates, make ad campaigns more successful, and ultimately, if a targeted approach is applied, can lead to increased sales. 

 

If you’re just getting started or looking to optimize your existing content, here are some quick and simple SEO tips that you’ll want to employ.

• Do Keyword Research

First up, one of the most important SEO tips: keyword research. 

 

Make sure you’re targeting relevant search queries and keywords. 

 

There’s no point in finding a keyword that may be popular or trending, and targeting it –only to realize that the audience you’re drawing in is completely unrelated to what you’re selling. Here’s how it could work. Say you see that “Football” is trending on Google Trends. You happen to sell footballs. Is that a keyword you should be targeting? Not if most of those searches came from people who were just looking to watch the game! Instead, this is where a good understanding of your target audience and searcher intent comes into play. You’ll want to ensure that you’re targeting the type of visitors that are likely to lead to conversions –not disinterested prospects who stumble upon your site by mistake. 

 

Note: This is also where long tail keywords come in. Long tail keywords are longer, yet more specific keywords that are more targeted, and have less competition. 

 

See also: Create a Laser-Targeted Keyword Strategy With Long Tail Keywords

 

Once you’ve found specific keywords to target, you’ll want to do some more keyword research to see what else is out there, and find other, relevant keywords that you can target along with topics that you can cover. Start by looking at other articles that are also targeting that topic, run those articles through Surfer Seo or Market Muse (more on these tools below) to see what you can improve upon, or keywords that you can target that’ll help you to directly compete with the other high-ranking articles. 

 

Surfer SEO makes keyword research easy, you just head over to their Content Editor tool, punch in your main keyword that you’re targeting, and it’ll create a document that you can write your article in. You also have the option to view competing articles, and it’ll compile a list of keywords that you can target that are derived from these competing articles. 

 

You can also pull in additional questions from AlsoAsked.com and AnswerThePublic to answer in the article.

• Focus on Google

Google is the most used search engine and has a significant market share, meaning effective SEO starts with targeting Google. Google (75%) has more users than Bing (9.89%), Baidu (9.19%)and Yahoo (2.83%) combined, which are the second, third, and fourth most popular search engines. 

 

Google rankings place a significant emphasis on the quality of your content to make sure top search results are useful and relevant. This means that users are more likely to trust the top-ten Google search results more than low ranking results. 

• Use LSI Terms

Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI for short, is a key way to optimize your content. LSI are words used to provide context, which is then utilized by Google to list the most relevant results. 

 

Imagine you have a website that sells cars. When someone searches Google for “used cars for sale,” Google analyzes your website to see if it is related to the search terms. If your website doesn’t have optimized content, Google may not think your website is related to the user’s search. The LSI in terms in the “used cars for sale,” for example are “used,” and “for sale.” Those two terms tell Google that the user is looking for a vehicle, not toy cars, or even the movie “Cars.”

 

Using LSI terms on your blog posts, along with other key areas on your site makes it easier for Google to link your website with related searches. 

 

According to Neil Patel, Here’s where you should try to work LSI terms in:

 

• Headings and page titles
• Images
• Anchor and alt text
• H2 and H3 subheadings and other HTML
• URLs and Meta tags
• Meta descriptions
• Conclusions

• Create High Quality Content (And Evergreen Content)

Another great way to optimize your content is making sure that it stays fresh and relevant. Think about evergreen content as long term; standing the test of time. Evergreen content can serve as a good, timeless anchor piece on your website –helping to continue to draw interested prospects in for years to come. When an article is still informative or engaging months after posting, it receives a higher Google ranking because it continues to generate sustained traffic.

 

Informative, helpful content or how-to guides make great high quality content. This content is usually long form which tends to perform better than their shorter counterparts. This content should also be easy to read and engaging. 

 

SEO for evergreen content should focus on the main keywords that you want your website to be associated with during a Google search. Another key benefit of evergreen content is that you can establish trust with your reader by providing guides or information to help them learn more about a relevant topic. 

• Optimize Images

Choosing the right images and pictures for your content helps to optimize your post and your page. Ensuring that your image is related to your written content can help to enhance your posts, making them easier to read and more engaging. Google ranks image searches just like other searches and Google also uses metadata—the text description of the image—to rank image search results. 

• Make Sure You Have a Fast Page Load Time

Nothing drives visitors away faster than a slow website (Get it?). Google uses indicators like mobile loading time to decide search result rankings. Slow loading times can also create a negative user experience and send your bounce rate through the roof. Having a bad experience on a website makes people less likely to visit the page again, which can drive potential customers away.

 

For e-commerce stores, a fast loading time can increase sales because customers prefer a painless checkout experience. If your website is too slow or fails to load, it’ll lead to abandoned carts. It’s the online version of having to wait in a long line at a brick-and-mortar store.

• Add Videos to Your Content

If you’ve got followers, then chances are they’ll be interested in video content from you. Video marketing is also one of the most effective ways to spread awareness, reach your target market, and engage your customers. Google allows users to search specifically for video content, so getting some videos up on YouTube and embedding them into your blog posts can be great for generating traffic.

 

Using the right title and description before posting your video on your website or YouTube channel will help it to rank higher. Videos also are easy to share on social media, allowing them to reach millions with a click of the mouse. Having sharable links increases traffic and click-through-rates, and videos that are easier to share can boost your online presence. 

• Fix and Prevent Broken Links

Every internet user has encountered a 404 error or broken content message at least once. While broken content is a common experience, it can kill your sales. Having broken content can reduce trust, as users may question your website’s security. Broken links can also cause users to leave your website, increase your bounce rate, and decrease the average time users spend on your website. 

 

It is important to check your website for broken content regularly. Most times, broken content is easily fixed by correcting a hyperlink or URL. Clicking through your website is a great way to identify any broken content and fix the problem before it impacts your visitors.

• Format Your Page

Before your content updates go live, preview the page and make sure there aren’t any formatting issues. Formatting problems are common and preventing them can help to improve user experience on your website. Poorly-formatted articles with hard-to-read text or poor organization can cause viewers to immediately leave the page, which hurts your Google ranking. So it’s a good idea to do this with every piece of content and each page on your site. 

 

Make sure to view your page from both a computer and a mobile device! Your page can look perfect on a computer but still have issues on a mobile device. Your content needs to be optimized for both so make sure it’s mobile friendly.

• Write Engaging Titles

When you post written content like blogs, optimizing your title is extremely important. The title of your post is part of your page’s metadata, which is used to inform Google and searchers what your content is about. Your title is the first thing a user sees, even on a Google search result. Titles should usually be less than ten words and grab your audience’s attention, drawing them in. Ideally, they should contain your main SEO search term that you’re targeting as well.

• Do Some Link-Building 

Links help to add more authority to your content. Including relevant links to other pages on your site is another great way to improve your content’s SEO, so try to include a few internal links to relevant content in every piece of new content that you produce. Likewise, links to external content, and other websites can also help to boost your ranking, as can inbound links (outside links that link back to you). 

 

The Best Tools for Optimizing Your Content

 

While we’re looking at SEO tips, let’s take a look at some tools that can make life easier.

 

Let’s face it: Time is money. SEO is effective but not if it becomes too time-consuming. Using tools to optimize your website can help automate your SEO strategy in a cost-effective way.

• Keyword Explorer (By Moz)

If you are struggling with keyword research, Keyword Explorer by Moz is the perfect resource. Keyword Explorer is a research tool that lets you enter your website’s URL and receive keyword suggestions. Instead of having to manually review the most common search terms, Keyword Explorer automatically reviews your website and creates personalized keywords and terms that can improve your Google ranking. 

• Mobile-First Index Checker

Google checks mobile indexes first, so make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices. Since links and other content can appear differently on desktop and mobile versions of a website, Mobile First Index Checker reviews both pages for you. If there are any issues, you can quickly review and address them without having to manually check both sites yourself. 

• Cloudflare

A fast website is a key way to enhance user experience and improve sales. Cloudflare offers a host of free tools to check your page speed and website speed and fix any existing issues. Cloudflare also provides free DNS and CDN services. Another great feature of Cloudflare is that it provides you with data about your website visitors and SSL certificates, which allow your website to verify that it is a trusted source. Cloudflare also protects against DDoS attacks and hackers, an important way to improve your website’s security. 

See also: Website Speed and Load Times: Why It’s Important for Search Engine Optimization and Website Optimization

• MarketMuse

A great way to check your content to see how it’s ranking as well as find suggestions for improving it is MarketMuse. Use this to unlock your content’s full potential; getting tips that you can follow that will help you to gain a competitive edge.

• Surfer SEO

Another great content analysis tool, Surfer SEO is a powerful tool for optimizing blog posts. This program’s not free, but it’s a useful search engine optimization tool. It analyzes more than 500 on-page signals in one sweep. You’ll then get a simple recipe that you can follow to improve your rankings. 

 

For more tools, claim your FREE download worksheet!

 

SEO is not dead. In fact, it’s one of your most valuable marketing tools. Optimizing content helps improve your Google search ranking, which can drive relevant traffic and ultimately sales. While SEO strategies may seem overwhelming, free tools and resources make it easier than ever to master content optimization. And if you’re busy, the good news is this is one task that can definitely be outsourced. Enlisting the help of an SEO-minded content agency or a reputable SEO strategist can be a simple yet effective way to optimize your content and boost your rankings, allowing you to draw more relevant prospects in.

 

See also: Easy SEO Tips That You Can Start Using Right Away

 

Draw in more prospects and close more sales. Reach out for your FREE consultation today and see how you can start scaling your business.