If you have been apart of the SEO world you probably already know that content is king, which is still true to this day. However, good content will not rank quickly unless it has good SEO. After working with hundreds of different clients, they all have one thing in common, which is getting results quickly. This means there is no room for waiting when it comes to a good SEO strategy. Knowing this you might ask yourself “how can I make sure my content will rank fast?” We will get into the details of that and more.
But first, not all content is created equal. Good content is not graded by one person or organization; it is graded based on user behavior. If users find your content, read the entire piece, and share it many times that means your content is good. But if you think you wrote a perfect piece, people find it, click off it instantly, and do not share it that means your content is poor. Users will decide if your content piece is good and Google will gather that data and use it for ranking purposes.
Can Content Rank Without On-Page SEO?
The short answer to this is yes. However, it is not because Google is able to crawl the page and rank it accordingly, it is because that content piece may have powerful backlinks associated with it, has been shared a lot on social media and other channels, and has high engagement ratings and long session durations. These strategies and behaviors take time to achieve, and you could potentially have to wait months or years for all these things to happen before you get ranked high on Google.
Therefore, doing SEO for articles, pages, or blogs is important because you can tell Google exactly what the page is about, the keywords, and the most important aspects of the page so Google can crawl your page easily, index it, and rank it in a couple of days or weeks in a high position. As your page starts to get more views, shares, comments, and etc. naturally it will rank even faster. The bottom line is SEO will supercharge your content which is exactly what clients want.
Original Content Ranks Better
This might seem like common sense, but I must talk about this because a lot of people want to take the easy route and take content that has already been created and change it a little bit and publish it to get SEO value. I have also done this in my career, so I understand, but this will do not help your SEO efforts because Google’s search algorithm is smart and has a deep database of all the content on the web that it can cross-reference to check for originality. If you do not believe me, you can test it out on your own by doing an A/B test. To do an A/B test on a blog you need to create one that is original and one that is copied about different subject or topics, post it on social channels, and track that page’s progress over a 3-to-6-month period. I guarantee the original piece has better statistics compared to the copied piece.
If you are busy or do not know who to create new content pieces for your business, I highly recommend getting a marketing company to create content for you. If you go this route, make sure they are experts in SEO because if they are not creating content around keywords and optimizing the blog or article you are missing an important aspect.
Content Frequency
I need to speak on content frequency because many people do not know a lot about it. Frequency or freshness is a major ranking factor for Google, and it will also help speed up your SEO efforts. If you are writing 1 blog per month that is the minimum frequency that you need for your website SEO strategy. Google recommends that you write content 2 or 3 times a week. This is difficult especially for small businesses, but it comes down to numbers. The more blogs you can create with different keywords the larger the net you are casting to attract people to your website from Google.
If you do not believe me look up “Google’s Freshness Update.” Google’s Freshness, or “fresher results”, update – as the name suggests – was a significant ranking algorithm change, building on the Caffeine update, which rolled out in June 2010.
When Google announced an algorithm change on November 3, 2011, impacting ~35 percent of total searches (6-10 percent of search results to a noticeable degree), focusing on providing the user with ‘fresher, more recent search results, the SEO industry and content marketers alike stood up and took notice.
So again, you do not need to create a new blog multiple times a week but the more content you can create the more organic traffic you are able to potentially get. The higher the frequency, the better your overall rankings will be and the better organic traffic you will get.
Why Do Traditional Content Writers Hate SEO?
I have worked in the digital marketing field for a long time and when I work with traditional content writers, they think SEO is either a waste of time, does not work, or hurts the content overall. Getting content writers to warm up to the idea of using SEO techniques is a skill and will take time to develop. However, if they use good SEO practices and it starts to rank well, content writers start to understand why SEO is important because they realize that if their content is getting more views which you can be measured and reported on. That data is powerful and cannot be ignored.
This is why as an SEO person that has to work with content writers need to have a good relationship with each other because both of your success relies on one another. What I like to do is create a workflow where the SEO person creates the keyword or topic that has good search volume, the content writer writes it knowing the keyword, the SEO person will seed the keyword into the URL, title, paragraphs, alt text, schema, and metadata, next it can go to compliance or a manager for final approval, then to be published on the website. You can create your own workflow based on the origination, but it is good to have checks and balances for all content being written on the site to avoid errors.
How To Make Sure Your Content Is SEO Optimized
Follow the steps below to make sure your blog or article is being SEO optimized effectively. Most of these steps can be taken after the content piece has been created
Research a keyword or topic that has good search volume and low competition that is related to the business.
Add that keyword to the URL
Add the Keyword to the Title
Add the Keyword to the alt text and rich media filenames
Add the keyword to the H tags on the page
Seed the keyword to as many paragraphs as possible so it is the densest keyword on the page
Make sure the content piece is above 70% original
Have rich media such as images and video throughout the page
Add the keyword to the meta description of the page
Optimize the page for good page speed under 3 seconds
Look at other content pieces around the same subject to see if your content piece is to long or too short.
Check to see if the target keyword you are using is not on another page of your website. Keyword canalization can hurt your SEO efforts. Canonical tags can help you if the keyword has been used before.
Add schema or structured data to your page so good can understand better what the page is about.
Conclusion
If you apply these SEO techniques to your content it will help you rank faster and get organic traffic to your site quickly. This is easy to do if you write your own content but if you work with content writers it can be more challenging depending on their personality and background. At the end of the day, SEO only helps your content and does not hurt it if you do it correctly. I have seen content rank #1 on Google in a couple of weeks on keywords that have medium competitiveness with good SEO tactics. I also recommend trying to go after long-tailed keywords because they are more specific which helps with intent and a more qualified audience. Also, long-tailed keywords are easier to rank on than short, tailed keyword. I hope this blog was helpful. If you need help with your SEO content writing skills, please message us.