by | Jul 30, 2014

If you have been following our blog, you know that every organization needs to consistently publish quality, relevant content online to have success with Internet marketing.

This imperative is continually reinforced by Google updates, as Google increasingly alters its search algorithms to favour well-written, fresh content. Maintaining a company blog (that means you need to regularly post new blogs!) is one of the best ways to meet this emerging requirement.

Once you commit to developing and distributing great content, you should start to see your search engine results improve. This will generate increased website traffic, and – if your calls to action are well constructed – more inbound leads.

But before you can reap the rewards, you need to make sure your content (your blogs, infographics, images, videos, etc.) is optimized for search engines. Each piece of content you publish should be crafted with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.

SEO

The best way to make sure SEO is part of your content development is to educate your writers about SEO best practices, and make “optimization” an integral part of the process.

Here are some SEO elements you need to consider for each piece of content:

  1. 1) What is the keyword focus?

Keywords are becoming less important than they once were, but you still need to help search engines figure out what your content is about. Think critically about which keywords you want to target with each piece of content.

Just be sure you don’t overuse them, because that’s known as “keyword stuffing”, and this will hurt your rankings.

  1. 2) Are you using keyword variants?

If you know the keyword focus and you want to avoid keyword stuffing, you’ll need to make sure you’re using keyword variants throughout the piece. Don’t just use the same phrase over and over again.

  1. 3) Is the blog connected to Google Authorship?

This is hugely important moving forward as Google determines which pieces of content have online authority and which don’t. Build your credibility and boost your content by enabling Google Authorship.

Click here to learn how to set up Google Authorship.

  1. 4) Did you do on-page optimization?

Make sure you optimize your page title, meta description, image alt tag(s), and H1/H2 headings according to best practices. Meta descriptions should be written to entice people to click on the search result. Image alt tags should focus on your target keywords. The page title and headings should be written with both keywords and readers in mind.

  1. 5) Have you done some internal linking to your website?

Linking key phrases to relevant content on your website (static pages, other blogs, etc.) helps search engines determine what those pages are about. It also draws readers deeper into your site.

  1. 6) Did you use categories and tags, if your content is a blog post?

Blog categories and tags are two more ways to ensure search engines are indexing your content correctly.

Your blog post’s category is the broader topic that it concerns (e.g. “Content Marketing”). It can have multiple categories, but don’t go overboard. Categories become useless if every piece of content is in every category.

You blog post should also have tags. Tags are more specific keywords that indicate what the post directly concentrates on (e.g. Category: Content Marketing; Tags: SEO, blogging, online marketing, keywords, etc.).

  1. 7) Are you helping your content be shareable?

An important part of optimizing any piece of content is to make it as easy to share as possible. That means making sure it has an attractive image that will look good if it’s shared on social networks, as well as including social sharing buttons on the page.

The Bottom Line
Of course, you should create your content for people: your customers, potential buyers, industry influencers, etc. However, search engine optimization must always be a piece of the puzzle if you want your content to drive visibility and credibility.
Use these SEO techniques to enhance amazing content, and you will get the desired result; a nice healthy sales funnel.

>> Core Online Marketing can take care of your regular blogging – and we always make sure to keep getting found by search engines top of mind. Contact us to discuss your online marketing needs.

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Ben Molfetta
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