Top tips to plan and optimise your content in 2021
- Bev Salt
- Mar 22, 2021
- 5 min read
One of Stephen Covey’s 7 habits is to, ‘Begin with the end in mind.’ So on that note, let’s remind ourselves, “Why do we create content?”
Hopefully, we'll be on the same page; we create content to attract, engage and generate leads to our business, and ultimately, to increase sales.
Content marketing is BIG, in fact 70% of marketers cite that they are actively investing in content marketing [1]. The biggest challenge facing marketers today is generating content which drives quality leads.
To acquire leads, first and foremost, your content needs to be found, and in order to be found, you need to create high quality, SEO-friendly content. Here are my top tips on how to identify the type of content you need and how to optimise this content for modern SEO.
What type of content should I create?
Key Phrase Research
It can become challenging trying to come up with new content ideas day-in-day out. A great starting point is to be user-led. What do your users (target audience) want to know and how do they search for your product or service? Begin by undertaking key phrase research. Google has excellent tools such as the AdWords Keyword planner. I also use Google Search Console to look for ‘opportunity’ words (Find this under Performance/Queries). Here’s a useful guide on the best key phrase research tools available.
Understand Search Intent
Once you have identified key phrases, consider your user’s search intent. These can broadly be divided into the following categories:
Informational – how-tos, tutorials, guides
Navigational – name of brand, product/service
Commercial – reviews, best, cheapest
Transactional – coupons/vouchers
Once you’ve determined your user’s search intent (it could be a combination), you can then decide on the best types of content to create to meet the requirements of your user's search intent. For example, if your user’s search intent is transactional i.e., users want to buy, consider deploying shopper ads on Google, Facebook or Instagram.
If you’ve identified blog posts as a type of content you need, then you’re not alone. 52% of marketers agree that blogging is the most critical tactic [2]. Here are some pointers for your blogs.
Does Size Really Matter?
Yes.
Let’s define article lengths:
Short articles: 300 – 600 words
Shorter articles: 300 - 900 words
Average length articles: 900 - 1200 words
Long articles: 3000 – 7000 words
Longer articles: 7000 + words
According to SEMrush’s recent study [3], long articles get twice as many pageviews than average length articles. Longer articles drive almost 4x more traffic to your site than articles of average length.
Shorter posts gain over 20% less traffic compared to average length articles. You may want rethink the purposes of those short articles, they are shared 3x less compared to long reads.
Optimise your Content for Search Engines
Use Catchy Headlines (aka H1s)
H1 stands for Heading Size 1 in HTML. This is the largest heading size on your page. Search engines expect your H1 to be your main title. It uses H1s to understand the content on your page and how it is relevant to a user’s search. It is important to only have one H1 per page. Your title tag and H1 should both include the key phrases you’re targeting.
A recent study by SEMrush concluded that headlines which include questions, guides, lists, how-tos and numbers e.g., top 10 are the most effective headlines. They also found that longer headlines, containing between 10-14 words gain 50% more shares and backlinks compared to shorter headlines, containing 7-10 words.
Meta Descriptions
These describe and summarise the contents of your page for the benefit of users and search engines. They play an important role in your on-page SEO, (read my blog for an explanation of on-page SEO). You should include the key phrases you think people will search, as well as a call-to-action. This will give your page the best chance of being chosen. Search engines frequently change the maximum limit of meta descriptions. It’s currently recommended to aim for 160 characters.
Set a Clear Structure
It’s important to clearly structure your page. Use H2, H3 tags. We talked about only using 1 H1 tag earlier. The rest of the headings on your page will be H2, H3, H4 and so on. Each number should be used hierarchically. Unlike an H1 tag, you can use multiples of the other headings. These headings should be used in order and none should be missed out. Just as search engines use title tags and H1s, they use other headings to understand more about your content too. This makes it important that you continue to stay on topic and use words related to your key phrases.
Power of Visual Content
They say that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual [4]. Users love visual content. Visual content could comprise of: images, videos, infographics, slide decks. In SEMrush’s study, their analysis showed that posts containing at least one image, get 50% more traffic than posts using text only. These also get 30% more shares and 25% more backlinks.
SEMrush also found that posts with 7 or more images get x4 more traffic than articles containing only text.
As for video, posts that doesn’t contain a video get 92% less traffic and 24% less shares than posts with at least one video.
Compress Image Sizes. Always.
A tip on using images, always reduce the file size to the smallest size possible. This is particularly important when you want to include multiple images in a single document. Large files affect page load speed. It’s good practice to regularly undertake a page load speed health check on Google Analytics (Behaviour/Site speed). You can use tools which compresses your image size without distorting the quality such as ISO compressor.
Use Lists
Break-up long chunks of text by using bullet points, lists and numbers e.g. Top 10. SEMrush’s study found that articles with 5 lists per 500 words acquire 4x more traffic.
Add Alt Tags
An alt tag tells search engines what your image is. Always add alt tags on your images. A good alt tag describes the image for search engines and screen readers and includes key words.
Create Readable URLs
In most cases, URLs are automatically generated by your content management system. Sometimes, you may need to manually edit this to ensure that it is readable. Make sure that it is all in lower case, descriptive and include any target keywords.
Add Links
Internal Links
Internal links are related articles or resources from your own website. The reason to include them is that they allow search engines to find out what content on your site is related and to determine the value of that content. The more links an important page receives, the more important it will seem to search engines. Therefore, good internal links are crucial to your SEO. Here is an example from one of my blogs, the pros and cons of freelancing , you can see that I have linked to one of my other blogs, starting out as a freelancer.
External Links (aka backlinks)
These refer to adding links to sources which are external to your website. External links are good for SEO and it’s widely accepted that external links are one of the most important metrics for high-position ranking.
Submit Pages for Indexing
Lastly, don’t assume that your newly created content will be indexed by Google; this is something you can check, using Google Search Console. Go to URL inspection, then enter the URL you want to check. You can also submit your page for indexing here if it's not indexed already.
The infographic below from SEMrush succinctly summarises what we have covered in this blog. The next time you create content, remember to consider your users, as well as search engines.
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