The search landscape is evolving faster than ever before and as a content marketer, it’s your job to stay ahead of the curve.
Just as a car with no engine leaves you stranded, content with no SEO strategy can’t compete in the digital marketplace. And if you’re bombarding your users with keywords, blogs, and emails without doing any research hoping they’ll land, then you’re the driver leading your marketing efforts nowhere.
Here’s the issue—you can’t create content in a vacuum and expect to see results. In fact, SEO success hinges on high-quality, original content.
What You’ll Learn:
- The definition of SEO
- Why it is important for your site
- Impressive SEO data points
- Types of SEO content
What is SEO?
SEO, or “search engine optimization,” is a multifaceted process that involves tailoring your information and optimizing your website so that it’s more likely to be found by users on search engine results pages after they look up specific terms.
Whenever you type something in the Google search bar, what determines the answer? Or when you search for a certain product or service, what determines which sites will show up?
Basically, each search engine has its own algorithm that ranks content and lists its organic search results based on both the relevance and authority of a web page. The relevance is evaluated by how often you use particular keywords and phrases, and the authority is evaluated by the number of credible backlinks that point to that page.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO is made up of several moving parts. Being able to clearly identify them and learn how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important, particularly nowadays.
In short, search engine optimization is crucial as it makes your website more visible, which means more traffic for you and more opportunities to transform your prospects into loyal customers. Additionally, it helps marketers build relationships with their customers, increase brand awareness, and position themselves as authoritative and credible experts in their field.
As technology continues to advance, SEO will need to keep adapting to new search methods, new devices used for searching, and new ways of searching. What won’t change, though, is the act of people using that same Google search bar to find information and accomplish tasks.
SEO by the Numbers
To illustrate the importance of SEO for businesses large and small, we have gathered the following search statistics. These data points should be incorporated into your marketing strategy for 2020 if you’re looking to capture your local market:
- 80,886 google searches are performed each second.
- The average online searcher performs 3.4 searches per day
- Three words total are used in the average search query.
- 52.2 percent of all global website traffic was generated through smartphones in 2018.
- 63 percent of marketers site generating website traffic as their main challenge.
- More than 60 percent of marketers cite improving SEO and search engine rankings as their number one goal.
Types of SEO Content
It’s always a good idea to offer a wide variety of content to your target audience. A diversified content library means that you can more easily cater to various segments of your audience. Here are some of the main types of SEO content we recommend you utilize on your website:
Blog Posts
These articles often vary between 1,000 and 1,500 words and rank higher than other types of SEO content since they keep visitors on pages for longer periods of time. You can easily boost rankings by incorporating headings and content that provide clear answers to questions.
Blog posts are part of SEO content
Product Pages
When it comes to e-commerce sites, product pages are imperative to the business. They can be extensive and text-heavy or simple with clean and effective SEO keywords and text. This enables search engines to pick the pages up as unique and helpful. Not only do product pages tend to get more traffic, but they can improve your site’s ranking as a whole.
Ecommerce product page of Love Hair which has SEO optimized content (Source)
Guides
Guides are lengthier pieces of content that describe in detail how to do something. Many times, instead of posting an entire guide directly on their site, businesses will post summaries or excerpts, and then prompt visitors to fill out a registration form or subscribe to their email list to access the entire guide. While this is a great way to generate leads, the added restriction may reduce the amount of traffic that you will be able to drive to your user guide.
Moz’s guide to link building, as part of SEO content strategy (Source)
Lists
While this would fall under the “blog/article” category, SEO content displayed in the format of a list makes it easier to read by search engine crawlers, as well as your users. Titles like “Top 10 Reasons to Visit Prague” or “5 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint” also seem to be more clickable when shared on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Use lists in your SEO content to also generate a featured snippet on the Google SERP
Infographics
Infographics are relatively new to the SEO scene compared to its counterparts. They consist of large-format images that feature data often in the form of graphs or charts and usually amasses plenty of page views and links. However, since the majority of the content is embedded in the image and thus, not readable as text by many search engines, it’s crucial that you meticulously optimize the rest of the page.
Videos
Videos have skyrocketed in popularity over the last few years. And based on the type of product or service you’re selling on your site, videos might be one of the better ways to attract and reach your target audience. After all, visuals carry more weight than textual information and can easily drive more traffic to your site. And if you create a video with the target keyword you’re aiming to rank for, it will be much easier to rank on the first page of Google’s search results.
Create videos in your SEO content to target keywords and rank on Google
Final Thoughts
Even though algorithms and trends are constantly shifting, content is still king. That’s why, in order to stay one step ahead of the competition, implementing strong, easy-to-understand SEO content is a must.
To ensure your content is more SEO-friendly, make sure all of your ideas are organized logically, include relevant keywords, write with your audience in mind, and most importantly, structure your website in such a way that Google will recognize it. It’s going to require plenty of hard work and creativity on your part, but trust us—it will definitely pay off in the long run!
