Many of us continue to hear the phrase, “Content is King,” and with over 60 trillion web pages, and growing, getting our material to the front of this enormous line is challenging. Google and other search engines are including more information in their queries that go beyond web pages, documents and pdf files. They now encompass images, blog posts, videos and especially those vital connections with social media.
Search engines now include images, blog posts, videos and social media content in their query results.
With the continued and challenging importance of crafting better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) methods, this begs the valuable question:
How can we optimize our content for better search results?
Optimizing our content marketing strategies
Let’s take a look at some of these tools for success on relevant content discovery and better optimization for our online marketing strategies:
Research Keywords and Trends on Social
We all understand the importance of the impact and role that social media plays not only in our daily lives, but our professional endeavors as well. To find out what’s trending on social without wading through pages and pages of posts or using an obvious choice like Google Trends, instead, try some of these other tools:
Buzzfeed – While most users of this popular site are simply wasting time, it’s a great place to take a quick look at what’s buzzing online. Whether it is a new food trend or a hot pop-culture phenomenon, Buzzfeed will be showcasing it there.
Swayy – Connect with users on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in one place aboard this app that will deliver content according to the keywords that you provide. You’ll get a daily email showing you what content is relevant and trending.
Zite – This great little app has branded themselves as being the innovator of “important ideas and smart opinions that are circulating in our world – what’s happening and what’s interesting.” You can select general trending topics and Zite will deliver the best of those topics in the form of videos, blogs, newspapers and magazines.
Don’t forget to use Twitter, specifically, from the dashboard, go to Home, Discover and Trends to see what’s taking flight on the Twitterverse based upon your location or change the city in your preferences.
More Efficient SEO
The impact of a website’s loading speed, if there are SEO crawling errors present and how friendly a site is to both social media and search engines, can not only improve performance, but more importantly, be better seen and found online.
Page speed, SEO crawling errors and social media friendliness can impact performance and exposure.
Check out these free tools that can help with how search engines crawl, find and index websites:
Google and Bing Webmaster Tools- A vast myriad of reports are available from both of these platforms that can help understand how websites interact with search engines. With Google for example, their reports will indicate everything from crawling errors to showing the keywords that appear most often in search results. You can also access statistics that show the viewing of authored pages and build graphs that reveal trends and other relevant information.
KnowEm SMO (Social media Optimizer) – After entering a website’s URL into their search bar, their SMO will analyze whether or not the HTML code is optimized for sharing on social media and the results will show a rough approximation of how the site will appear on Facebook’s Open Graph protocol, LinkedIn and Twitter’s Summary Card data when they are shared using the corresponding buttons.
Pingdom Website Speed Test – How fast a page loads is an important part of a website’s ranking on search engines. Again, after entering the URL into their search bar, the results show a variety of data on speed and size of different aspects of the page. It also offers suggestions on how to improve loading performance after analyzing the results.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool – This locally run software is downloaded and allows analysis, review and auditing of any given website. It delivers a wide array of comprehensive data including the examination of all elements on individual web pages, responsive codes, page loading speeds, internal and external links and much more. There is also an XML (Extensible Markup Code) site map generator available.
Note: The free version of their software limits results to 500 items, but subscription to their service at around $12 per month (US dollars as this UK based operation costs 99 pounds per year) will remove these restrictions.
Examine Results Using Analytics
Be sure to use analytics, available for free at Google and inside of most social media accounts. For a broader range of results, try these free methods:
Hootsuite – Offers a free, limited use platform that allows the user to monitor up to three social profiles, offers basic analytical reports, message scheduling, the addition of RSS connections and basic app integrations. Higher paid platforms start at $9.99 per month.
How Sociable– Keep an eye on your social presence and the competition using Sociable’s tracking tools. Their free platform allows information from twelve social outlets including Tumblr and WordPress, but if you want to hook up with the big players, like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid version that start at $9 for 90 days. Their monitoring examines brands, names and topics to keep you well informed.
Social Mention – A popular and effective choice for monitoring the hundreds of social platforms available online and help to keep a watchful eye on your all-important brand name and image. Once a query is typed into the search bar, results can be sorted according to date and time, sentiments are evaluated, users found, hashtags listed, keywords and sources are shown.
Fresh & Relevant Content Marketing
Keep your marketing content fresh, relevant and review its performance regularly to get the best results. Taking a regular pulse of your online information will keep it moving at a healthy pace and your content can stand out from the rest of the internet crowd.
