SEO Content Guide for Beginners and Professionals

SEO content and organic marketing content are attracting more and more attention. This has been visible during the Covid-19 pandemic, where digitalisation processes in most industries have really taken off. Businesses that have been sceptical and doubtful about digitalisation have more or less been forced into digitalisation. Now for those businesses, one of the biggest challenges has been to produce high-quality SEO content. The reason being that paid advertising and marketing budgets had been cut down significantly. So the most suitable marketing medium is through organic channels.

How do you stay relevant and successful during your digital transformation? It’s through quality and relevant organic content, also known as SEO content.

It doesn’t cost much to register a domain and set up a website. Naturally, you would then create social media handles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. to create traction and engage with the audience. Eventually, you realise that conversions are low or below what you expected. So you would try to get in conversions through social media advertising or Google Ads.

It works, but highly likely that you would end up burning over 80% of your marketing budget. And the real winner from your ambitious digitisation efforts would be Google and the social media companies.

In this article, I’ll be sharing the right tools that will help you with a successful digital transformation process and how to be consistently relevant to your audience.

A beginner’s guide to SEO content

I will answer three questions about SEO content. What is SEO content? What types of SEO content there are, and last but not least – content strategy. If you have any thoughts about SEO content or strategies that I don’t mention in this post, please leave a comment. I’ll answer it here as soon as possible or in a future post. If instead, you want to hire an SEO expert to help you with your SEO content, you can contact me here for a free 30-minute SEO consultation.

What is SEO content?

To simply break down the term “SEO content”, let’s start with the first half of the term – SEO. SEO is an abbreviation for search engine optimization and refers to various processes to optimize a website so that people can easily find it through search engines like Google. By content, we mean all the information that already exists or needs to be created and published on your website (I’ll mention more about different types of content below). In summary, SEO content is any information that is created with the intention of driving traffic to your website from search engines.

Optimizing SEO content

There’s a lot to keep track of in order to optimize SEO content properly. I won’t go through everything you need to know (because then this post would be a very very lengthy article on SEO content). Instead, I’ll cover the elements that I know will have the biggest impact on your SEO.

• Keyword Research
  If people searching for your goods and services are going to find your business in their search results, you need to know what keywords they use when they have a need. You can find this out by conducting a keyword research or keyword analysis and it’s wise to do one before you start writing. That way you can focus on keywords that already have a certain search volume and the right search intent – in other words; write against already searched topics in your field that lead to the desired result.
• Keyword optimization
  This can be a small art in itself. Keyword optimization is about how and where you use keywords in your content for optimal searchability and indexing by search engine robots or crawlers.
• Organise your content!
  Google likes content that has value to the people visiting a site. It has to be orderly with the right structure – menus, headings and other information. The content needs to be rich with infographics, images and most importantly, it should be relevant to the topic. Content that is reader-friendly is rewarded by Google with extra visibility.
• Promote new content on the site
  Updating your visitors with new content is also a key attribute to Google when it comes to ranking. It shows that we provide the latest content to our visitors. So new content should be visible when someone visits your site. To increase the visibility of new SEO content, you can share it on your social media accounts and link to the content (both internally and from external websites).

What types of content are there for search engine optimization?

Let’s jump straight into the types of content for search engine optimisation:

• Product pages
  Detailed information about your products and services. A well-crafted product page can serve as both content and a landing page for paid marketing (PPC – Pay per click advertising).
• Blog posts
  A blog is an easy way to produce a regular flow of fresh, relevant and high-quality content. The blog can be used in many creative ways. For example, you can create a forum or network for your topic in the blog. It is also wise to alternate between different types of content for search engine optimisation (which you will read about below) in the blog.
• Articles
  For example, a news article, an interview or other type of article. This is the most common type of content for search engine optimization and you will find articles on most websites.
• Guides
  Like this one (in a blog)! Guides are longer pieces of content that explain in detail how to do something. Sometimes guides are split across several pages, as this may be a strategy to get the reader through the whole guide. Another valuable tip is that guides can be used to connect with your customers. Publish a summary or an excerpt from your guide followed by a prompt for the visitor (CTA) to enter their email address where you will then send the full guide. At the same time, you get their consent to keep their contact details (you need to be aware of GDPR).
• Lists
  A list is actually a type of article that will be easier for Google to scan if the text is framed by paragraphs such as “5 Techniques in Plant Propagation” in case you work with garden and gardening articles. If you want a good example of a list, I would recommend checking out my previous article “Remarketing Lists: 6 Tips for Success“.
• Video
  It may be easier to rank for a competitive word by creating a video instead of an article (However, videos should not completely replace articles and other text content). Depending on the type of website or business you run, a video can be a great way to attract and entertain the audiences on your site. For example, a video could be about your work process or other moving content that educates or informs your customers about products or services.
• Glossaries
  I’m pretty convinced that most people use Google to look up terms and their meanings than using books and dictionaries. For example, a glossary of medical, technological or architectural terms.

Develop an SEO content strategy

Now it’s time to dive into how to develop an SEO content strategy. If you’ve been producing SEO content and hoping that some of it sticks and ranks for the right keywords and maybe, with a bit of luck ends up on the first page of the search engines – now is the time to rethink, and devote yourself to a more methodical approach to SEO content.

Here are four steps to defining your SEO content strategy

Define your objectives and key performance indicators

The goals you set will also determine the type of SEO content that will be most effective in achieving those goals. First, determine the goals for your business or website. Do you want to drive sales through your site? Or do you work with advertising on the site and want to increase traffic and create a recurring readership? If you are running a product sales business, your focus should be on creating attractive and informative product pages that are optimised for search and conversion.

The secondary focus should be on the blog with relevant and readable content, such as a blog article on “Bridal Trends for Autumn 2021” if you’re a business on bridal clothing. From the blog, you should link to the relevant product pages so that it creates a conversion opportunity for the visitor. If your goal with the site is to increase your visibility on Google and increase organic traffic, you should focus on rich content that is both informative or entertaining – preferably both!

Now decide which metrics to measure.

Without metrics, you won’t be able to track your campaign’s progress and make sure your investment is paying off or determine if you’re on the right path to success.

It’s no hidden secret that SEO takes time to deliver results and ROI, but by determining your metrics you can better demonstrate the impact your strategy is having on the business.

They can also help you manage expectations with other stakeholders. SEO metrics should form the basis of your strategy and serve as a way to both measure and report on success and progress. But you need to know what to measure.

Know your audience and keep them in mind

Find out who your visitors are and observe their behaviour on your site. How do they search? What captures their interest in your site? How long do they stay on your site? And when do they click out of your site? What information are they missing and what would they like to see more of? Through various surveys and data analysis tools (for example Google Search Console or Google Analytics) you can form an opinion of your visitors. Then try to find your ideal visitor, understand more about them (based on actual data) and then communicate with relevant information.

Think about what kind of information these people are looking for? For example, if you run a B2B website aimed at C-level executives, it might be a good idea to create a high-level white paper that can be downloaded and saved to read later. If your target audience is people in their teens, updates that contain more moving content and less text are effective. Also, make sure your website is mobile-friendly!

Create a content calendar

Once you have an idea of who you’re communicating with and why, it’s time to create a content calendar. A content calendar is a schedule according to which you will publish new SEO content and what type of SEO content it should be.

Analyse and re-evaluate

Keep up to date with what’s happening on your website. Study the data and capture your success moments. What should you do more of and what didn’t work well? Look for patterns and repeat these strategies. Was the video you posted appreciated? Create and publish more similar content to what performed well. Adjust your content calendar as you go and don’t lose the flow of insights about your visitors and customers. At the same time, don’t forget about old content. Clean up and refine old blog posts – maybe you’ll find an old topic that you can freshen up with new technology, science or other useful information that will be appreciated by your visitors. Make sure that the keyword you used in an old article is still relevant. If people search for another term with the same meaning – adapt your article and SEO to the new keyword.

However, it is for content that users visit your site in the first place. One of the best tips for getting the most out of the Google site experience update is top quality content. And your content needs to stand out. Here are some tips:

• Make sure you write content that will help visitors
• Communicate simply and use relevant examples
• Use exciting headlines
• Structure your headlines and images
• Watch your grammar

Include interesting facts, references and other experiences about the topic you are writing about.

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