KEYWORDS + CONTENT: THE HOLY GRAIL OF WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION (PART 1)
Several components make up a successful optimization strategy.
Your website should be the hub of your business’s online activity. It is the platform where you attract and communicate with customers and prospects. And, it is the first touch point for your brand to engage with the general public. But just having a website presence isn’t enough; in a world full of short attention spans, you don’t want your website to be left in the dust – on the second page of the search results.
So, how can you ensure that your business doesn’t fall out of sight and out of mind? In this two-part blog series, we will dig into how you can improve your website’s search optimization.
First, and foremost focus on keywords and content.
Keywords:
Search engines depend heavily on keywords utilized within website content. Using keywords and key phrases that identify your business and your mission will ultimately align you with the interests and needs of your customers.
Keep your keyword usage natural and calculated within your website content, and above all, try to avoid unnecessarily “stuffing” your content with too many keywords – you will get penalized by Google for this approach.
Be sure to utilize keywords not only within your page content but also in your page titles, header tags, and – sparingly – within your URLs.
Be sure to execute thorough keyword research before utilizing keywords in your website content. After all, the keywords you think your customers are using to search for your business, may not be.
Tools like Google Adwords Keyword Planner can be helpful when determining the keywords that are best for your business.
Find out how to better identify keywords: take a look at Content Marketing Institute’s “12 Tips for Keyword Selection to Guide your Content Marketing SEO.”
Content:
It’s not necessarily the amount of content on a webpage that is appealing to search engines; no, quality content is king – and lots of it.
Focus on ensuring that your website, blog and/or social media content is engaging, relevant and grammatically correct.
While you are producing content to help with optimization, ultimately your job is to attract and engage a potential customer. Make sure your content doesn’t veer away from this goal.
Are you just starting down content-creation road? Do you need tips on effective content creation? Check out my previous blog post, “What’s the Story with Your Content?”
After determining the keywords to use and creating an effective strategy for content creation, look to new methods like page load times, internal linking and mobile design, for improving the optimizing of your digital content. We will go more in depth about these additional methods in Part 2 of this series.
Keywords + content, if executed well, can personalize and improve your company’s brand online – while still staying true to the brand personality. Remember, the end goal: create relationships with real people, not robots. Keep your keywords and content intuitive and natural and you will see better results.
Let us know what questions you have in the comments!
