No matter if your business is just getting started or if you’ve been around for years, it’s essential that you are doing everything you can to get potential clients and customers to your website in an efficient and targeted way. When you put so much time and energy into making content for your business, having the right knowledge on how to grab attention (and keep it) in the digital realm is very important.
And to grab attention, you need to know how to optimize your site for search engines, as search plays a huge part in getting your website recognized for the right reasons. In this article, we’ll teach you some of our favorite tips for SEO-friendly content creation and page optimization to ensure your website gets found, search after search.
What is SEO-Friendly Content?
Having SEO-friendly content on your website is a great way to grow your business outside of your advertising and other marketing efforts. In fact, SEO is your best tool for getting your best marketing asset in front of millions of people every month.
SEO-friendly content ranks high in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. By optimizing your content for search engines, you are helping people find you much easier online. Optimizing doesn’t JUST mean packing your page with keywords–you can do much more to get noticed.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important factors you should focus on to get the best SEO-friendly content for your website:
Tip #1: Use sub-headers
A way to get a big search engine impact is to use sub-headers the right way. Sub-headers help make your content easy to read and when people can read your content easily, they are much more likely to both find the relevant information they need and share your content with others, extending your reach for all the right reasons.
Another great reason to use sub-headers is that the search engine algorithms use headers and sub-headers to understand the content and will often favor pages with the properly formatted and relevant sub-headers and headlines. The search algorithm will utilize these keywords and headers and will attach relevance to those keywords with the writing on our website. All of this means that your page is far more likely to appear higher on the search if you utilize headers and include relevant keywords.
Tip #2: Add links to previous published content
Backlinks play a big role in how search engines rank web pages and if the content you have on your page is good, it will earn more external and internal backlinks.
To drive traffic throughout your website, make sure to link older posts on newer content. If you do this, you will make it easier for visitors and search engines to find your earlier posts. Indexing previously posted relevant content makes both your fresh content and your older pieces more relevant and provides proof to search algorithms that your pages are pertinent to the information that your audience is searching for.
It also helps to link to other relevant websites that are well established to lend more credibility to your page. The better the links you provide, the more you will help your own content rank. Showing that you have credible links and sources helps your visitors feel more comfortable if they are visiting for the first time and want to make sure your company is legitimate.
Lastly, always check for broken links and make sure to replace as needed. If someone is trying to navigate your site and come upon broken links, it makes it look like you don’t update your website and you stand to instantly lose credibility.
Tip #3: Choose keywords wisely
Even before you start writing, make sure to write down and think about the keywords you want to rank for. Keywords are a MAJOR part in getting recognized for SEO content.
Do some research on the keywords your audience is searching for and plan accordingly. Look at some popular websites and take notes on how they optimize their keywords. Keywords can be used in your headlines, titles, main copy, blogs and descriptions too. This is a big part of getting your website noticed, so be prepared and ensure you use keywords wisely – don’t just keyword spam your posts. Focus on providing relevant information first, and when editing your content, do so through the lens of both readability and keyword optimization.
Tip #4: Optimize your page’s images
You may think images aren’t a good way to get noticed, but if you’ve ever done a google search and clicked the “images” tab, it may dawn on you how useful and important images can be.
Images add context to your website but they also bring people in who may not have found you otherwise. Adding images can increase your page speed as well as long as they are optimized properly, so always make sure to reduce the size of your images for the web, but make sure the quality isn’t compromised through overcompression. You can do this by reducing the size but keeping the DPI (dots per inch) high. Image editors can help you if you are not well versed in photo reduction or lossless compression for image sizing.
Tip #5: Make your content shareable
With apps like Tik-tok, Instagram and Twitter making people visible overnight, you don’t want to neglect your websites shareability. If your website creator doesn’t have the buttons already available to add to your page, you can use websites like ShareThis to make your content available to share immediately by anyone who visits your site.
By using this list, you are better equipped to create SEO-friendly material no matter what kind of business or industry your website is for. As time goes on, you will be able to see what works and what doesn’t. Use these tips and see what works to get the most out of your content. That’s not to say that SEO is easy, by any means.
As it stands, SEO is a bit of a moving target, requiring ongoing education on the Google search algorithm, changes to the ways in which content is crawled and ranked, and how best to work the system to your advantage. While these tips will help you get started, it’s ok if you still need a little help.
Need Help Getting Your SEO in Shape?
There are countless moving parts and technical elements of a website that need to be built and maintained with care. That’s not every business owner’s specialty, and that’s OK.
Managing your SEO and creating content requires a dedicated skillset and an objective eye, and sometimes that means calling in the experts.
At BHirst Media, we’re here to help. Contact Us today to learn more about our web design, content optimization, development, and website care plans, and make yourself known.
