Last Updated October 26, 2023 ago | Published: October 26, 2023
In this article, we cover:
- What is content optimization?
- Why is content optimization important?
- What is the impact of content optimization?
- How to Approach Content Optimization like a Pro
- How Content Optimization Services Can Help
- Level Up Your Content Optimization with Rellify
Content optimization makes the most of what’s on your website and helps you create top-performing organic content to reach the top of web searches. We’ll look at how to achieve those goals, but first, let’s definite content optimization.
Content optimization is the strategic process of improving digital content to enhance its visibility and relevance. It focuses on maximizing organic search traffic by boosting a webpage’s search engine ranking. Key components of content optimization include:
- Thorough keyword research, where relevant search terms are identified.
- On-page SEO techniques like optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and headers.
It helps you create high-quality, user-friendly, engaging content that caters to your target audience.
Why is content optimization important?
Failure to use content optimization means less traffic on your website. It means you waste time and money on articles because you didn’t go that last mile to get them to fulfill their potential. Your content falls into the vast ocean of words on the internet that are seldom, if ever, seen. Profit is lost when content is not picked up by search engines and read by potential customers.
What is the impact of content optimization?
According to research by digital marketing firm Conductor, consumers who read a brand’s educational content were 131% more likely to buy from that brand. A week after reading that content, the study indicated, people were still 48% more likely to buy. Those people also tended to maintain trust and brand affinity.
But first, the content must be seen. Research indicates that the No. 1 result on a Google query earns about 28.5% percent of all clicks. Also, 88% of searchers click on organic results on the first page. The second page of search results gets less than 6% of website clicks (a marketer’s nightmare).
The competition for those top spots is fierce, and content optimization is essential. However, SEO-driven tactics have had to change to keep pace with ranking factors and search visibility.
Jürgen Kranz, CTO for rellify, the content performance application, observed in a recent blog post that millions and millions of websites and content providers compete for the first page of a Google search.
“In the past decades, the SEO industry tried to guess and re-engineer Google’s search algorithms that were handwritten by human developers. The SEO industry implemented all kinds of tricks and hacks to get website listings to #1.”
Now, search engine optimization requires more than loading up on keywords. Newer algorithms put more emphasis on the content and the context of articles on websites, Kranz wrote.
How to Approach Content Optimization like a Pro
Google wants to make every user experience satisfying by providing exactly what a searcher wants as quickly as possible. Part of how it achieves that is an emphasis on what it calls E–E-A-T — experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Google wants to exhibit that, and it rewards websites that display it by putting them at the top of Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs.
Optimizing content has two main facets. First, make it easy for other computers to interact with and assess your website. Then, produce relevant web content that “EEATs your competition” and gets you to the top of search engine rankings.
Success on the web depends on many different factors, all applied seamlessly within Rellify’s content performance application.
Make your content relevant
When it comes to content creation, it helps to think of E-E-A-T. To achieve this, your content needs:
- Keyword research. The Rellify Neuraverse and other services help you find ideas for content and focus them so you can create high-quality content that yields high search volume while avoiding competitors who have SERPs locked up. The best content SEO results will come from content that shows your expertise.
- Authority. Savvy use of links is one way to establish page authority. Search engines judge you, in part, by the company you keep, or the links on your page. Links from your content to reputable, well-traveled sites bolster your reputation. Avoid linking to sites that give off a spam vibe and get little traffic. If your quality content has been mentioned by another site but didn’t get a link, reach out to them and request it. Internal linking to quality web pages on your own website also helps bolster your reputation as an expert in your field or market.
- Trustworthiness. Consider the user intent behind searches that might bring someone to your page. It might be a potential customer or someone who shares the interest or passion that drives your site. Answer their questions accurately and thoroughly. If the users, or search engines, sense that you use your expertise and authority to waste their time or manipulate them, they will bounce quickly and never return.
Focus on technical optimization within your website
Website managers can tighten up their sites and establish formatting standards for the optimization process in relatively simple ways. Here are some examples of technical aspects and on-page elements to look out for.
- Title tags. These tell visitors and search engines what a web page is all about. They also tend to lead SERP and social media appearances. Make them count, and use keywords immediately in your content.
- Meta descriptions. Longer than title tags, these are a chance to sell your content and boost click-through rates. Make these keyword-rich, within reason.
- Alt tags. These often represent a lost opportunity. These HTML tags give images a text element that search engines can see and thus can improve a page’s ranking. Use your focus keyword in the alt tags and captions.
- H1 tag. The H1, H2, and H3 tags are, respectively, the main head, subheads, and sub-subheads. They help readers, and web crawlers navigate an article. Think of them as simple, clear signposts. Keyword phrases help.
- Page speed. As the user scrolls, slow loading and shifting elements can be frustrating and disorienting.
- Crawling errors. Every link on your website should lead to a working page. These errors frustrate users and the bots trying to index your content.
- Optimizing images. When you optimize images, you compress and resize them while using descriptive and keyword-rich alt text to enhance on-page SEO.
How Content Optimization Services Can Help
Because so many elements go into content optimization and the stakes are so high, you might want to hire someone to help.
Rellify’s content performance application uses AI (artificial intelligence) to identify strategic topics and leverages IA (Intelligence Augmentation) to produce and optimize relevant content that naturally ranks well in search engines. It combines the functions of many content optimization tools used by other services, simplifying the journey from brainstorming to boosting your conversion rate.
Rellify enables you to:
- Explore: Discover topics with high relevance for your target audience and take a deep dive for more.
- Plan: Optimize your daily editorial planning with simple clicks and organize by your own categories.
- Brief: Bundle all relevant information from your topic discovery for your editorial team.
- Create: Write best-performing posts with direct relevance score support from the Rellify AI back-end. Rellify’s AI connective writing and content brief functions help you to structure an article in line with your content optimization strategy. If you’d prefer, Rellify can also provide top-notch writers to do the work for you!
- Publish: Send reviewed and optimized content and approved articles directly to your CMS or export as HTML.
- Monitor: Measure the success of your content based on pages and topics and compare it with your competition.
You can’t automate content optimization. It requires vigilance. There can be risks to a business if things are not done properly. Unethical or clumsy SEO companies and practices (looking at you, keyword stuffing) can also result in a company being penalized by Google—dropping you down in the search rankings.
Level Up Your Content Optimization with Rellify
Ready to create new content, get more traffic, and secure more leads? Maybe you’re looking to optimize your existing content? The experts at Rellify are ready to develop a customized content strategy with end-to-end content development and management, publishing, analysis. Want a free demo? Contact the experts today!