Google loves high-quality content. As it states—content is among its top three ranking factors, but what makes content ‘good’ from an SEO perspective?

Effective content marketing goes hand in hand with proper SEO optimization. The integrated approach is a must for gaining traffic to the site.

As per the latest updates, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev revealed that “We have a top three list: links (the sites linking you), content and RankBrain for the ranking signal in the Google search algorithm.”

Apparently, SEO is getting way more complex than ever in 2019.As you would expect, it takes a lot more than just building links, creating any old content, and adding a few keywords to improve your organic search rankings and increase the visibility of your business or brand.

So, how do we think one step ahead? Now, that’s where we could opt for picking up the hint from the declarative statement — Links and content.

Let’s get started:

How would you define SEO content?

Let’s break down the phrase: “SEO” is search engine optimisation. Apparently, it is the process of adjusting different elements of the site for better user experience. Think your site as a real shop and then brainstorm different ways to play with different ingredients of the website to make them comfortable as they visit you. Utilise analytics to understand the aspirations of your audience.

The next part is “Content”—it simply means informative contents. Off course for the overall effects your content strategy should be a mix up of various formats.—educational, informative, promotional, cross-promotional.

And, here’s a super-quick refresher on what you’ll need to do in order to SEO your web content:

Keyword Research: Never forget to maintain a separate folder of your keyword lists and keep it updated at times. And, you might start with keyword research before you start writing. Consider using Google Keyword planner for this.
Keyword Optimisation: The placement of the keyword is of prime importance. You might want to pay importance to the factor to maximise search-ability. For instance, consider using the core keyword in the first 200 words of your sentence.To put it differently, you need to find out ways to curate your content to get more visitors. Like in this article, I chose my focus keyword to be “Optimise content for SEO”, and you could verify how discreetly I inculcated the words within the initial 200 words. Apart from, we could always maintain a good ‘keyword density’ uniformly throughout the content. Also, never forget to use LSI keyword for the purpose.
Content Organsation: You organize the content logically for better user experience from the content readability pov. One of the tricks is—Give a background of the objective, choose storytelling to expand the situation, give a hook or a problem in the next section, and ultimately solve it with a solution. Also, never forget to ask for a recommendation. We grow by exchanging knowledge.
Content promotion: It’s up to you to choose the channel of your choice for promotion. In another hand, link building is of prime importance. For linking purposes, you could check the page ranking factor and the domain authority to check the authenticity of the site.

How do you optimise each element of the content?

1. Optimise the Title Tag

It is vital to frame the title tag or the meta title and enriched it with the targeted keyword. Just be sure to place your main keyword at the start of the title tag and keep it under 60 characters. You can use Moz’s title tag tool to check how yours will display.

2. The Format

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
How to Optimize your Content for SEO—A complete guide | ThePost

See how I used the main target keyword at the start of the title followed by key variation “Guide” for a high click-through-rate(CTR)?

3. Optimise the Metadata

The meta description is the section that you see on the SERPs.It’s better to configure the keyword enriched metadata to let the visitors know the real juice inside the article for a high CTR. Stick to the 160 characters for the meta description.

Example:<meta name=” description” content=” Are you getting enough traffic? No? Check out this guide to know the secrets” />

4. Optimise the H1 and H2 Tag

Your H1 tag is the main heading on a page which is usually the ‘title’ area in your CMS.

In addition, if you use WordPress, this is most often the ‘enter title here’ field.In most cases, you could simply use your main target keyword with other important modifiers as per your convenience.

And, don’t forget to wrap up the subheadings in H2 tags (or H3 – 6 if there are headings under other subheadings).

5. Optimisation of images and videos

As per research carried out by Hubspot, “80% of marketers say video has increased dwell time on their website.”

Moreover, have a target of including videos, infographics, and many more creative visuals for great dwell time.

According to Duane Forrester, a content gives positive vibes and hence augments dwell time. Apart from that, it also triggers engagement at a higher rate. As such, Google crawlers give credit to the content.

Here are a few points to ponder:

Standalone stock images won’t help SEO
Use Images for story-telling or try screenshots to add value
Use tools like ‘Canva’ to rejuvenate the stock images or build your image from scratch
Best formats are JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
Optimise the file size for good page speed without losing quality. Use tools like PicMonkey and Pixlr to make sure the image doesn’t lose any pixels and become distorted as you compress the size of the file.
Add well descriptive captions to your images is an image optimisation best practice.
Use the keyword while you name the image file after download. It helps Google as it crawls to identify the subject matter.
Writing SEO friendly alt-text is beneficial for On-page SEO

The Better Linking Structure

Outbound Links

If you want to cite a source, go ahead and link to it. It not only helps users to read further into a sub-topic but also allows search engines to better understand relevancy based upon content you’re linking to. The credibility is built up mutually.

Just be mindful to link to authoritative sources. Don’t accept money from third-parties to link to their content from your own. Get more information here.

Internal Links

One of the alternative way of cross-promotion. internal linking are a key way to navigate both users and search engines through your content and help to spread link equity to key pages.