How to Optimize Your Content for SEO: The Ultimate Guide

No matter how much things change, how we learn and find solutions to problems has remained the same since Larry Page and Sergey Brin had their light bulb moment in 1998.

We realize we have a problem > We look for the solution on Google > Google directs us to the solution provider.

That is why the only way to win is to have an online presence and optimize your content so your customers can easily find you. If you already have content, there is one thing you need to do before you start optimizing it for SEO:

But before that, learn what it takes to get the crest of the SEO mountain, one copy at a time.

Collect and Analyze Your Data

A comprehensive optimization strategy is based on data. You cannot go all guns blazing optimizing everything in your way because you'll change something already working well. You take a structured approach instead.

Collect as much data about your visitors as you can and check for patterns. Are you getting enough organic traffic? Are people clicking your CTAs? When do people visit your sites? How long do they stay on the site? With these patterns, you can generate user behavior reports that show you what you need to optimize.

You might find that you need only to optimize a thing or two and improve how your content performs.

After analyzing your current content, you can optimize it for SEO in the following ways.

But just in case you're sketpical, here's your exclusive guide to the importance of SEO.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

For your visitors to relate to your seo-friendly content and click the CTA, you need to speak to them directly. They should feel like you understand them to trust you to solve their problem.

If you are starting and don't have customers yet, your target audience is the people who are most likely to want your product or services. If you are already in business, you can identify your target audience by analyzing your current customers. You can categorize them using the following classes.

• Age and gender
• Academic background
• Job title and income
• Lifestyle and personal values
• Sales funnel position

Once you have categorized them, you can create buyer personas to target different audiences with different content accurately.

Content that encourages high-school girls to click the CTA is entirely different from the content that a middle-aged truck driver will relate with. That is why your first step in optimizing your content should be learning who you are addressing with the content.

As you ponder on that, check out our guide on how to write show-stopping SEO content.

2. Keywords Research

Over 90% of online experiences start with a search engine. So, once you know and understand your target audience, the next step is to research what they are likely to key in the search engine search box. This is called keyword research.

There are several free and powerful tools, such as Google Trends, that you can use to research target keywords. The "People Also Ask" section on search engine results is great for fresh ideas. Another option is to search "Searches Related To…" and see what pops up.

Once you have a list of the primary keywords you intend on using, use them in your content naturally. You can strategically place them in headings to stand out.

How to Make Your Keywords Effective

For your primary keywords to galvanize your readers to action, you should make them powerful. There are so-called power words that successful marketers and content creators use.

Power words grab the reader's attention, stimulate their subconscious, and bypass the critical spot, convincing the reader to take action without even knowing it.

Some of the attention-grabbing keywords to use include:

• Free
• New
• Secret
• Imagine
• Today only
• Instantly
• Exclusive
• Premium
• Discover

Using "normal" words in keywords will increase your organic traffic. But using power words naturally in and around your long-tail keywords will increase the likelihood of the visitors to take action.

3. Create High-Quality Content

Google strives to serve up the best content for its users. So, for your content to remain relevant even after major updates to the search algorithm, that should be your goal as well. Apart from relevance, sharing content that is full of value drives engagement.

Although the frequency of creating content matters in Search Engine Optimization, you should go for quality over quantity or outsource the creation. The higher the quality of the content, the higher the likelihood of them interacting with you or sharing it. It also positively affects your search engine ranking.

In case you want some inspiration, check out our exhaustive blog on the top SEO writing examples to take you inside the mind of Google's algorithm.

What Makes Content Valuable?

For your content to be of high quality, as a general rule, it should fulfill the following:

• It should effectively solve problems that your target audience face.
• It should be flawless, without any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Every content should be proofread to perfection before being published. People can't trust your recommendations and solutions if your content is rife with errors.
• It should have a CTA that clearly tells the readers what they should do next. For instance, you can ask them to subscribe to a newsletter, start a free trial, or contact you for more details.
• It should have the correct length. People are more likely to trust you if they view you as an expert, which can be demonstrated by covering all the aspects of the topic. However, each content has its ideal length to rank well on search engines, so you should keep that in mind.

Creating high-quality, well-researched content positions your business as an authority in the industry, increasing customer trust and improving your search engine rankings.

4. Use and Earn Quality Backlinks

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from one website to another. Search engines consider backlinks as "votes" for a specific website or webpage. The more you have, the more credible, valuable, and useful your page appears, raising your search engine rank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important search engine ranking factors.

There are three ways to get more backlinks: creating them, building them, and earning them. Let’s take a look at each of the three ways:

Creating Backlinks

To create backlinks, you have to add links to your website from other sites manually. For example, submitting to business directories, leaving blog comments, and replying to forum threads.

Earning Backlinks

Earned backlinks are organic. They are earned when users find your content via Google searches. To earn them, you need to have high-quality content that is properly optimized.

Building Backlinks

This is when you agree with other site owners, editors, or web admins to link to your page. You have to have a clear value proposition for this work. Some link building tactics you can use include:

• Guest blogging, where you invite other people to write blog posts that will be published on your website. 
• Broken link building where you find dead links relevant to your business on other sites, then reach out and suggest your link as a replacement. There are tools to do this.
• Finding unlinked mentions of our brand and ask the author to add a link to the mention.
• Find relevant content with lots of links, make something better than those links, then ask the owner to link to yours instead.

SEO optimization is the key to a successful digital marketing strategy. It is the only way to get consistently good results from your marketing efforts

.

You can deliver content that reaches and converts more people through link building, quality piece content, proper keyword research, and the various tips outlined here. Ultimately, the online presence that good SEO optimization gives your business will benefit it for years to come.

Some businesses don't have a successful SEO strategy because of the amount of time and effort it requires. It is hard for them to concentrate on their business as well as develop one successfully. This is where outsourcing content writing services makes perfect sense.

Leave It To The Experts!

Suppose you need unique, quality piece of content that will support your SEO goals. Should you hire the top 6 writing assistants that smart content marketers use to do the heavy lifting for them? While that's a prudent idea, it's even better if you can have human writers crafting the copy the copy for you. As it's been said time and time again, software robots can only aid humans, not entirely replace them. In that case, Zoey Writers can help you build a powerful optimization strategy that will help with your company's overall success and performance.

We are a full-service content writing agency that implements effective digital marketing strategies that are guaranteed to get businesses on higher rankings in SERPs. Our services include blog post writing services, article writing services, white paper writing services, case study writing services, and more.

When you hire us to optimize your content for SEO, you can expect:

• High-quality content that’s fully optimized for the SERPs,
• Quick turn-around time as our professional SEO writers are skilled and experienced to handle SEO projects,
• Affordable SEO services that will help your business get more organic traffic,
• Relevant content that attracts your target audience and transforms them into customers.

From keyword research and link-building, to web page optimization and technical SEO, to competitor analysis and more, our SEO writing services run the gamut. Feel free to contact us to discuss your content needs and how Zoey Writers can help you achieve your content marketing goals. 

Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash. Thanks, Myriam :)