In the world of digital marketing, it’s safe to say that SEO and content creation are among the most powerful tools in any marketer’s arsenal, simply because the goal of every company should be to rank higher in the SERPs. Why? Because ranking on the first page of Google for all relevant organic searches is the key to building brand visibility, expanding its reach, and building trust with your audience in the online world.
Creating SEO-friendly content is one of the best ways to market your startup in the competitive online market, especially in order to grow your business organically and improve your revenue stream so that you can start introducing PPC and other more expensive tactics into the mix. With that in mind, let’s go over the best ways you can optimize your blog posts to rank you higher in the SERPs.
Understand user intent
First things first, every blog post you create should fit into a specific stage in the buyer’s journey, and to do that, you first have understand user intent. Simply put, user intent is what your customer or website visitor is looking to achieve when they are searching for a product, researching various topics, or looking for businesses within a certain niche. Not all customers are ready to buy something right off the bat, and in fact, most will take their sweet time browsing the web for credible information before they commit.
This means that you can’t hope to sell your product with a sales-y article if most of your visitors are looking to learn about your industry or niche. This also means that you need to tailor your content according to user intent, specifically informational, navigational, and transactional intent. The first means that the customer is looking for information, the second that they are still learning but are looking for brands as well, and the third is when they are committed to buying the product.
Identify your primary and supplementary keywords
Next, you have to identify all of the relevant keywords that you’re going to integrate into your content strategy and put in specific places throughout each piece. Now, you have to be mindful about the keywords you’re trying to rank for, because some are more competitive than others. You can’t hope to rank high for a general keyword that yields several million results, instead, your goal should be to target those specific phrases that will help narrow down the search and put your content at the top.
Every blog post should have several long-tail keywords that are relevant to your business, your industry, and the specific topic that the article is about, as well as user intent. Assuming that your blogs are lengthy (which they should be) you can easily sprinkle numerous keywords into the article without overstuffing it, however, make sure that the keywords are truly relevant to the piece in order to avoid getting penalized.
Don’t forget about link building
Many people tend to forget that a big part of a successful SEO strategy is the process of link building, which is why you have to make sure that all of your blog posts are optimized to get featured on other prominent websites in your niche and industry. This is a cumbersome process that entails a lot of research and optimization, which is why digital agencies will nowadays enlist a white label SEO service to take care of the entire link-building process and help generate quality backlinks across the web organically.
The key here is for your blog posts to link to your other relevant work, and to follow the guidelines of the websites where you’re guest posting in order to earn that do-follow link. It’s also important for your blogs to maintain a level of quality that will get them trending in the online world and inspire other bloggers to feature them on their websites.
Know where to include your keywords
Keyword integration is trickier than it seems. It’s important that you put your keywords in all the right places throughout your article, including the title, the subheadings, and of course, to sprinkle relevant keywords where it feels natural but without overdoing it. Typically, you will want to stick with two to three keywords per piece if it’s an article that’s over a thousand words in length. You can repeat the keywords several times throughout.
Optimize images, meta description, and URL
While you’re at it, be sure to optimize your articles by integrating your keywords into the images, the meta description, and the URL. Use your primary keyword for the URL, one keyword for the meta description that helps explain what the piece is about, and one keyword per image alt-text that corresponds with whatever is in the picture.
Wrapping up
SEO should be at the forefront of your digital marketing strategy, as optimizing your blog posts is a surefire way to rank your website higher in organic searches. Be sure to use these tips to create SEO-friendly content that will get you on the first page of Google, and even inspire authority figures in your field to publish your pieces on their websites.
