As a business owner, you aim to get as much traffic and engagement on your website as possible. However, that won’t happen without an optimized site.
Do you know what a fully functioning website needs to get more website traffic? The answer is content—and not just the usual content. It has to be optimized with other elements of your site. These include creating all kinds of content, as well as using the best web design principles, search engine optimization, and linking techniques.
At the same time, you should keep yourself updated with the latest practices and changes in the algorithm of search engines. This is because Google, Bing, and many other platforms keep changing their algorithms to eliminate malpractices and content manipulation. And so, for better optimization, you’d need to keep yourself updated with changes in the algorithm.
Apart from that, here are five crucial ways to optimize the content on your website:
Match Intent
Intent refers to the type of query that a user has when employing search engines. There are different types of intent, such as asking for information or navigation. In any case, your content has to match the intent of your potential target market. For instance, if most of your customers are likely to ask questions, then your content should reflect solutions and problems to those possible questions.
Do this by running thorough research of keywords in the industry. These will tell you what your target audience wants to know about. Also, take a look at the previous search queries and run a competitive analysis of your competition to see what’s in demand.
Moreover, you can even address multiple intents with the same piece of content.
Create Links
Creating content may seem easy, but optimization doesn’t end there. You have to link your content to your website’s other pages, as well as to other websites with more traffic and a high-authority domain. Keep in mind that this has to be done in a very strategic manner.
That is to say that you shouldn’t be adding or overfilling your content with too many links as it will leave your reader confused and take them away from focusing on the content itself.
To do this efficiently, you’d have to decide on a ratio of links according to the word limit of your content. Moreover, the links that you add should be linked to the words that depict their meaning or show what this link will be about. You should generally avoid using generic phrases like “learn more” as anchor words as they don’t add value to your content.
Establish Content Authority
You need comprehensive content for your website audience to establish authority. While producing content, you may have to quote historical facts, census data, economic figures, and other statistics to support your claims.
As a content creator and marketer, you’re bound to stay updated with different journals and research processes in your intended field. For example, if you’re a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, you need to analyze multiple SaaS websites and industry insights before writing about particular SaaS features.
Similarly, you don’t want to end up with repeated flawed tactics such as keyword stuffing and black-hat SEO techniques. Your copywriters should incorporate variations in your content. Additionally, you have to employ tools to grade your content to make it better than before.
Focus On Technical SEO Optimization
Content optimization is also needed to improve your search engine rankings. But content alone won’t win you the first place in SERPs (search engine result pages). You should know that SERPs are not just confined to the primary five or six links after a search query. Instead, you have to optimize your images, alt text, captions, keywords, and snippets to help organize information on a page.
Make your content accessible for other search engines to understand and represent when the user asks for it.
Use Trust-Building Elements
Remember that the user only spends up to a few seconds on your website and if they can’t trust your content and it doesn’t provide the right answers, they will simply go elsewhere. You have to use trust-building words to make your content more accessible. You should also embed YouTube videos from people that have authority in your niche. Besides videos, you should also install a WordPress tables plugin so you can add dynamic tables and charts to your content.
For instance, including user-generated content will help you build trust with your potential audience. After all, there’s nothing more effective than other people putting in a good word for your brand. User-generated content can include testimonials, product reviews, and the like.
Therefore, if you’re featuring product-specific content, make sure to include such trust-building elements.
Key Takeaway
Remember that with more advancements in technology, search engines are also becoming more complex. This means that to keep yourself and your website optimized, you must keep up with any change in algorithms.
Your primary focus should be to educate yourself on content optimization and adapt with the changing algorithms of search engines. Otherwise, using old metrics of optimization would likely stunt your website’s growth, and you’d end up with nothing.
Keep in mind that with the strategies mentioned above in place, you’d be in a better position to optimize your content with a holistic experience.
