How To Optimize Your Content For SEO

The Complete Guide to Optimizing Your Content For SEO

Arsalan Haroon
ILLUMINATION
12 min readSep 3, 2021

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Everybody knows how crucial seo is today if you want to start any business online.

Knowing how to improve your content for SEO and what steps you need to take to optimize your content for seo is critical.

No matter how valuable content you create on your website and how much value you put into your content. It doesn’t do well on Google if you don’t optimize your content for seo.

7.5 million blog posts are published every day. SEO is the backbone for your content to stand out from the hundreds of content people are publishing every day

What step do we need to take to optimize content for SEO?

There are many steps in SEO, You have to optimize your content for all the SEO practices that we discuss in this article.

It can make a significant difference in your website traffic and ranking on Google if you work hard on seo and follow all the seo tips we learn in this article.

Let’s learn how to optimize your content for SEO so you can increase ranking and traffic on your website.

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Develop Strategies With Data

Data plays a crucial role in optimizing your content for SEO, yet many people don’t take this as their first step in seo or, even worse, don’t do it all.

Data can tell you many things that you can’t answer. It can give you answers about what your customers like the most. You can measure by seeing how much time they are spending on each of your content.

If people are spending more time reading and listening to your content on a particular topic. Then you know that your audience is interested in that topic. So you can create more content around that topic.

You can use your website data to understand what type of content your audience likes.

With data, you can also know what topic your audience isn’t interested in by seeing data on topics, that receive low engagement and low traffic compared to other topics.

Most people have a misconception that they only need to create content on a topic which they like.

But if you have a business, you should create content on a topic that your audience likes.

No matter how much you like creating content on a certain topic. If the audience doesn’t like it, it doesn’t worth it. Remember, You are creating content for the audience.

Data can tell you many things, It can give you a clear understanding of what you need to do and what dont on your website.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that your audience searches for. Keyword research is the crucial seo point that you shouldn’t ignore in every seo strategy.

Keyword research plays a big role in optimizing your content and ranking on Google. Keyword research tells you about what your audience is searching on search engines.

The purpose of finding the keyword your audience is searching for is. that we have to rank on that keyword and get traffic through that ranking.

So putting that keyword into our content increases the chances of ranking on that keyword.

Now, it doesn’t mean that you should do keyword stuffing like putting keywords everywhere on your website and think that Google does not penalize you.

If you did keyword stuffing in 2011, then maybe you can rank on top pages. But if you did this now, you can be sure that you will be penalized because Google is smarter than ever before.

Whenever you do keyword research, make sure you look at these three things in a keyword, especially if you have a new website. Then, You should only target those keywords which have these three qualities.

Volume

It’s an essential metric to look at. Volume tells you how many times people search that keyword on Google. Target keyword which has at least 100 volumes or more.

CPC ( cost per click)

It shows how much people are willing to pay to rank on that keyword on Google.

Cost per click tells you how valuable the keyword is and, the higher the cost per click, the more valuable that keyword is.

If people are paying more to rank on a keyword. Then it means it can give you significant results as well.

Low SEO difficulty

It will tell how difficult it is to rank on a keyword. If you see high seo difficulty like 60 to 90, then it means big websites are ranking on that keyword and, it’s harder to rank on that keyword.

If you have a new website, then finding a low seo difficulty keyword is crucial. You can rank on that low seo difficulty keyword without working harder.

These qualities are important when finding keywords. But finding keywords that can help you understand what your audience wants is crucial because you can provide your audience what they want if you target keywords that can tell you that.

Unfortunately, most people only look at these three qualities. Although, this is important. You have to look at keywords that can tell you what the audience wants.

Long-tail keyword

A long-tail keyword has three or more words in a keyword. Finding a specific keyword so you can solve your audience-specific problem is vital.

You have to find keywords that are long-tail keywords. Because they give an understanding of what the audience wants and what you have to provide them.

The short-tail keywords with two or fewer words can’t tell you much about what the audience wants.

But a long-tail keyword can give you an answer about what your audience wants. It is crucial to know if you are optimizing your content for seo.

Competitors keywords

Search your target keyword on Google and find websites that are ranking top pages. Install a keyword everywhere extension. It can give you all the keywords of your competitors that they are ranking on.

It’s an essential tool if you want more keywords to rank on Google. Finding your competitor’s keyword and optimizing your content for competitor’s keyword can increase your chances of ranking on multiple keywords.

Where to put your target keyword in your content?

It is not enough to find a target keyword. You have to know where that keyword would look natural to your audience and put keywords where Google wants to see your target keyword.

So here are some of the places you need to put your target keyword.

Title: Google will crawl your title before anything else and, putting your target keyword in the title can improve your chances of ranking on that keyword.

Meta description: putting your target keyword in your meta description is an old seo tip, but it’s still worth it.

Middle of your content: if you target a keyword, make sure you include it in the middle of your content and put them somewhere where it looks natural to your audience

Earlier and end of your content: when google crawls your website, It can understand what target keyword you want to rank your content if you put them earlier and at, end of your content.

Build email list

Most people think email is not that relevant today. But the truth is it is still an effective strategy to build your audience through building an email list.

The problem people have when doing email marketing is to get other people’s emails. And why do people give you their email?

You have to provide something like a free course or a free ebook to get their email and, Make sure it provides value to the audience.

Building an email list can help you get thousands of traffic without paying for those thousands of traffic.

But you must provide your audience something valuable so they can provide their emails to you.

If you get the audience’s email address, it doesn’t mean that you have to send them two emails in one day.

It becomes frustrating and, they will unsubscribe you. Make sure you only send a maximum of 3 or 4 emails in a week, don’t send them every day just send them one or two emails in a week, so they dont forget your brand.

Create Content For People, Not For Robots

Most people do seo and keyword research to optimize content for SEO. But They forget to create content that is for people, Not for robots. Ultimately, your goal is to get humans into your website.

Most people, when they get into SEO, They care about where to put their keyword. But they forget about delivering valuable content.

Google not only looks where you put your keyword and other seo tips. Instead, Google looks at content. If your content provides value to the audience and is unique from other websites, You can rank top on Google.

So while doing SEO, don’t forget that you have to create content for people and solve their problems because Google will like to give you top ranking if you solve your audience problem more effectively than anyone else.

Internal and External Linking

Internal and external linking can help you increase your traffic on Google and, the quickest way to increase your traffic is to do internal and external linking.

But let define what internal and external linking means?

Internal linking is the process of linking other pages on your website and, external linking is the process of linking to other pages on different websites. They both are crucial to increase your ranking and traffic on Google.

Most websites, When they recognize that internal and external linking can increase their traffic, They overdo it. Because it is an easy thing to do for increasing traffic, and, when they overdo it, This results in negative results for a website.

So just linking to three or four internal links in your content and two to three external links on each content is enough to increase your ranking on Google.

But make sure if you link to something on your website or other websites. It provides value to your audience and, your audience is interested in that topic.

For example, If you create content about fitness. Then make sure you only link to content that is related to fitness. Because your audience is interested in it, and Google prefers this. Because you are helping your audience get content on a topic which they are interested in.

Website Loading Fast

Let’s say, You created valuable and unique content on your website, which is not available on any website.

But what if your website takes 20 seconds to load and the audience waits for your valuable content that much? Probably not because the internet has made things fast.

If you don’t deliver your information fastly to your audience. they will go to another website that is loading fast. Today probably most websites are loading fast. So it means people have many options to choose from.

There are many reasons a website can load slowly. A common mistake a new website makes is that they upload a big image file, Which makes the website load too slow.

So before uploading any image on your website, use tools like Tinypng or any other to make your image file size smaller without compromising quality.

If you are on WordPress, you can use the smush plugin to compress your image file size. There are many other WordPress plugins for compressing images, You can check them out too.

You can use the Google page speed insights. It can give you results about if your website is loading fast or not.

It can also give you some of the solutions to make your website load fast. So talk to your developers about those solutions because these are technical things that you may don’t know about.

Backlinks

Backlinks are the Biggest Google ranking factor that can make your website trustable to Google and, it can increase your traffic and ranking on Google.

Backlinks are the process of getting links back to your website from other websites.

When other websites link to you, Google considers that they trust your website, That’s why they link to you.

When more popular websites link to you, It indicates to Google that you are providing something valuable to the audience. Therefore Google also increases your ranking and traffic.

But getting backlinks from a new website is different. Then from a website that is popular and has tons of traffic. Google trusts that website that has high domain authority and hundreds of traffic.

If you get a link from those websites, Google will trust your website because Google trusts those popular websites. The higher the domain authority of a website, the more Google trusts that website.

Top results on Google’s first SERP have 3.8 times more backlinks than those below them. You can see from this that backlinks can give your website top ranking and traffic on Google.

66.31% of pages have no backlinks. If backlinks are that important and can give you more ranking on Google, then why do most people don’t do it?

It’s not that easy thing to do it’s not like you just put keywords in your content and, something that you can fix from your website.

Building backlinks requires you to contact other websites in your industry and pitch them, which most people are not willing to do because they are afraid that they get rejected, and sure they will get rejected from most websites.

But it doesn’t mean they don’t find a few that will give them backlinks. Which will gives their website a great boost in ranking and traffic.

But getting backlinks from other websites doesn’t mean you should get backlinks from websites, which are not in your industry.

For example, if you have a website about technology and you get backlinks from a fitness website.

Google may not give more value to that backlink because it is not in your industry and, it doesn’t make sense to get backlinks from fitness websites unless their content is related to technology.

No-follow and do-follow links

No-follow backlinks don’t provide any value to other websites. If someone links to your website. But they give you no-follow backlinks. Google doesn’t provide any value back to your website.

That’s why people use no-follow backlinks because they don’t want to provide any value to other websites.

Do follow backlinks provide value to your website and, the owners of every website want to get do-follow backlinks.

Google gives value back to your website through do-follow backlinks and, that’s what improves your overall seo.

But how can you get backlinks from other websites? These are some of the ways to get backlinks for your websites.

Broken backlinks method

It’s a strategy where you find content from other websites that have broken backlinks and, you contact the owner of the website to remove their broken link with the fresh content you created on your website.

You can find broken backlinks easily from other websites if you have Ahref paid tool. You can use content explorer to find broken backlinks.

The broken link-building method works because it’s a win-win situation for both websites.

If you identify the broken link in other websites and contact the website owners. They will more likely link to your content because you help them find broken links on their websites that decrease their ranking and traffic on Google and, you get the backlinks for your website.

Backlinks through infographic

If you can create good design and valuable infographics, it can build backlinks for your website.

If you upload your infographic on your website and other people like that infographic. They use that infographic on their website. Then when people use it, they link back to the original owner of that infographic.

Long-form Content

It doesn’t guarantee that if you write long-form content. You can get backlinks, but chances are you can get backlinks if you provide more valuable long-form content.

Long-form content gets 77% more links than shorter posts. But you have to put more effort and work into that long-form content because if your content is unique from other websites, it can build backlinks for you.

Guest blogging

It is one of the most popular practices to build backlinks for your website. It’s a process of creating content on other websites for getting backlinks back to your website.

This strategy works because you create content for other websites for their backlinks. It is a win-win situation for both websites. But how can you find a website that can give you backlinks?

For example, if I type on Google. Technology “writes for us”. It can give all the websites which accept guest posts about technology.

Technology “writes for us”
The screenshot is taken by the author

You can replace technology with your industry and find websites that can accept guest posts.

But read their terms and conditions about guest blogging. So you know if they allow you to link back to your website or not.

Conclusion

These are some of the steps you need to take to optimize your website or content for seo. If you work on each seo practice, you can increase your organic traffic.

Most people think when they do seo, they will get results in weeks and months. But the truth is it takes years to get results from optimizing your content for seo.

It takes time, no matter how much time you put into doing SEO. You have to be patient and persistent in seo to get good results.

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