It is the ultimate goal of marketers around the world; to get their content ranking highly in key search engines so that your website gets in front of your target audience. But knowing precisely what content search engines will love, not to mention your audience, can be a challenge.
Writing content specifically for search engines will typically not achieve the desired results. Search engines are looking for content which precisely answers a searcher’s query, therefore keep your audience at the forefront when writing content.
What content should you produce?
Evergreen content is a vital part of any SEO strategy. This is the content that will very rarely date, making it relevant to audiences for months (even years) after it is published. Start with a list of topics and frequently asked questions that you know your audience will search for.
If you’re struggling to come up with these topics, Answer the Public, can be a handy tool; you simply type in a keyword and it will provide you with a vast array of related questions, which you can turn into informative articles. You can subsequently supplement your content plan with relevant industry updates and company news.
Optimising your content
Ensuring that your content is optimised should work in the same way as you would optimise the rest of your site. You should ensure that your blog page is responsive, that its URL is clear (i.e. ‘/how-to-create-high-ranking-content/’ rather than series of numbers and letters that give no indication of the topic), as well as ensuring that your website as, a whole, loads quickly for users.
Your topic research should have already provided you with a strong long-tail keywords, your subsequent content (when written with the audience in mind) should naturally include the related keywords for a topic that search engines are looking for. In addition to this, you can also implement the following tactics:
Structuring your content
Both audiences and search engines love to see a well-structured article as it makes it much clearer and easier to digest. Break up your content with headings, bullet points and numbers so that key information can be gleaned quickly.
Adding title tags and meta descriptions
Your title tags give search engines a clear indication of your article’s content so that it can be accurately indexed. Your accompanying meta description should give your audience a small snippet of what to expect from your article, encouraging them to click through and give it a read.
Images
Images can add an entirely new dimension to an article. But whilst you audience will be able to see what the image shows, search engines will not, therefore you should add a descriptive alt tag to each image so that search engines can index accordingly.
Review your progress
Knowing what content has worked well and what hasn’t is a great way to plan your future content. How have audiences responded to your content? Have you had lots of clicks but high bounces rates? (This could mean that your content hasn’t been relevant). Have you had clicks and gained leads as a result? (This is the type of content you should continue).
Of course, content does not just refer to articles, blogs and guides, you can also gain fantastic results from video content. And it’s not only search engines that are loving video, social media platforms and (most importantly) audiences are also watching video content at an astounding rate. Therefore, it is something you should almost certainly consider within your content strategy.
Give it time
Content marketing may not show you immediate results, some of the most successful pieces continue to gain traction later down the line, so keep sharing and adding to your portfolio of evergreen content.