How To Create SEO Optimized Content? 11 Best Way

How To Create SEO Optimized Content?: If you want your content to rank, it must be optimized. It is as simple as that. You cannot expect to attract new leads and queries if your content is not SEO-optimized, and SEO optimization is a dynamic field. 

For any type of content marketing strategy, the content that you create and SEO must be targeted simultaneously. There are measures to integrate SEO aspects within the content, like adding keywords, images, alt-texts, etc., and outward-facing measures, such as link building, topical optimization, and so on. 

While creating and optimizing content, a key consideration is to optimize it for humans and users, essentially your readers. Gone are the days when you would optimize content solely for search engines. 

Today, even Google is working for the user and working to provide the best value to readers. With this in mind, let’s discuss the primary 11 steps to  optimize content with SEO and make it rank. 

What Is an SEO-Optimized Content Strategy?

Simply put, optimized content has the best chance of achieving its objective. The objective can vary according to the business goals and requirements. Some businesses publish content to attract new leads, while others want to inform their readers and delight them with informational content.

So, the practices and measures businesses adopt to achieve their predetermined objective form content optimization. When we add the word SEO to the mix, it implies optimizing the content with SEO-oriented aspects.

While SEO-optimized content refers to the process of creating content that adheres to SEO principles, SEO-optimized content strategy is about developing the required structure to create, publish, monitor, and modify content to achieve the set goals.

In the end, SEO-optimized content and the related content strategy help improve the website’s rankings, provide value to the user, and increase organic traffic generation.

The Working of Content Optimization

Content optimization works like a machine, wherein every part has an important role to play. At its core, content optimization is adhering to the preferences, buying behavior, intent, and purpose of your customers when they engage with the web.

In other words, you need to analyze the keywords your target audience is using to look for the products and services you provide. Additionally, it is important to identify the purpose behind the search query.

Do they want to buy a trimmer? Or are they searching for a trimmer only to compare products before buying?

This process of differentiating the search intent is essential. For the former purpose, you need to create action-oriented content that inspires the reader to buy the product.

For the latter purpose, you must create informative content highlighting the best features of the trimmer you are selling and comparing it with others to provide a comparative analysis. This streamlining of content will help your customers make the buying decision.

Types of Content Optimization for SEO

• On-Page Content Optimization: Good content is easy to read, provides real value to the reader, and is written in a clean format. Great content is all those things and optimized with on-page SEO. Besides adding the right keywords, on-page SEO involves adding meta descriptions, meta titles, images, HTML tags, headlines, and alt-text for images.

• Content Optimization for Backlinks: Besides on-page SEO, focus on creating content that attracts backlinks. More backlinks to your website help with ranking. You need to add such elements in the content that attract backlinks. This includes adding infographics, guides, and professional roundup content.
• Content Optimization for Conversions: Your content must converse and engage with the reader. This is required to ensure that users stay on your page and do not bounce off to another website for the lack of valuable content. The longer a user stays on your website, the higher the chances of them getting converted into a subscriber and returning customer.

How To Create SEO Optimized Content?

11 Steps to Implementing a Content Optimization Strategy

1. Perform Keyword Research: Find and use highly relevant and traffic-grabbing keywords in your content. Your content must also revolve around these keywords so that the search engine algorithms can understand the topic and its purpose and then rank it accordingly.

2. Create Topic Clusters: An effective content strategy requires you to create topic clusters. This means creating one pillar page that will contain all the possible information about one topic and then adding dedicated pages for related content. For example, for a topic like AI, you can create a pillar page on “What is AI and its Applications in Every Industry.” This can be followed by dedicated pages for “Applications of AI in Healthcare”, Logistics, Retail, etc.
3. Develop Content Benchmarks: Content benchmarks refer to the structural details of the content. This includes identifying the typical word count for the topic, number of images, links, keywords, keyword differentiation, variation, type of content, and search intent. You can identify these by analyzing your competitors’ pages.
4. Optimize Page Title, URL, and Headlines: There are many ways to make your content perform well. One of these ways is to optimize the title, URL, and headlines by adding the target keyword to them. Also, use SEO best practices while deciding on the title, including limiting the character length to 65 characters. Use different types of heading tags, including H1, H2, H3, etc.

Optimize Page Meta Description for Conversions: Meta descriptions are the content users will see below the title tag on the SERP. So, writing a keyword and topic-oriented meta description is crucial. It can help prospective visitors decide to click the link and visit the webpage or not.

Optimize Image and Multimedia Content: You must add multiple relevant images to your content. Further, you must add alt-texts and integrate the target keyword into them. Use original images or create descriptive graphics to ease understanding for your readers. You can also add videos to the content, ensuring your website can process high-volume multimedia content without losing speed.

Optimize the Content Body: The content body includes the introduction, main points, and conclusion. Here, you must introduce the target keyword within the first 100 to 150 words while using the same throughout the content. The introduction must be engaging and enticing to get the reader to browse further.

Use “People Also Ask” to Drive More Traffic: Google is always giving hints about what you must write to get better ranking and visibility. Besides other things, there is a ‘People also ask’ section on the search results page. You must include three to five questions from this section in the content. It will help provide value to users and help your content rank.

Incorporate Internal and External Linking: Remember the point on cluster topics? You must add internal links between all the topics written within the cluster and allow search engine crawlers to understand the relationship between these pages. Secondly, add external links to relevant, high domain-scored websites.

Format Your Content for Maximum Consumption: Gone are the days when creating content was as good as search engine algorithms reading them and leaving them as is. Today, the content you create is for the users, and they are hungry for some valuable content. Hence, creating content not only involves providing the right information but also doing so in a conversational tone. You might want to write short paragraphs and use bullets, numbered lists, etc., throughout the content to improve readability.

2. Add Call to Action to Drive Conversions: CTA buttons are a great way to start an interaction with your audience. You can prompt them to take the desired action by adding engaging call-to-action elements between the content. These need to be clearly worded to subscribe to, call, buy from, or engage in another way with your business.

Conclusion:

With all the points we have talked about above, do you think you are ready to create SEO-optimized content? Following the principles above will make it easy to curate valuable content that can also be ranked easily. But you will need some practice and time to integrate all these aspects.

A better way to initiate a content optimization strategy is to use Scalenut’s SEO Hub to get automated recommendations on the types of content you need to create. This solution helps creators write targeted and precise copies with a faster production process and develop valuable content that engages readers and ranks high. Start creating SEO-optimized content today.