Optimizing Content for Google Search
What is Website Content?
Content on a website is not limited to bodies of text. The titles, headings, subheadings, images, and display, all combine to enhance or detract from the experience of browsing or searching a website.
“Great content is information that succeeds at teaching, persuading, or entertaining your visitors while also helping you to meet your business goals.” (Elisa Gabbert, Wordstream)
The purpose of this article is to provide a starting point for those businesses who would like to improve the visitor experience and thus the searchability of their website.
Beginning Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content designers and authors should keep the demographics and desires of their intended audience in mind while composing the outlines of content for the website. Once there is an outline of intended content, the most basic of SEO concepts comes into play: Keyword search.
Ideally a list should be made of words or phrases that are relevant to the intended article or page. The list can be entered into a site such as the “keyword planner” in AdWords to identify the most (Google) searchable words or phrases. These words can then be incorporated in a natural way into the page and/or article content.
This will become the most basic of the SEO optimization steps.
Content should be Relevant
What will interest your visitors? What will capture their attention and ideally keep their attention. Will your information answer questions and provide knowledge that they will find valuable?
If the content relates in some way to the purpose of your website then it will enhance the user experience if. .. It is written with intelligence. It is written with authority (truth), It fills a need or desire . It entertains while providing information.
Elisa Gabbart, A marketing professional at Wordstream, enumerated some important points to follow when composing content. She listed 8 important attributes for great content. They are: 1) Findable 2) Sharable 3) Usable 4) Readable 5). Memorable 6). Quotable 7) Actionable, 8) Reportable.
In summary, brainstorm and list relevant topics that would interest you and hopefully your readers. List possible words and phrases to use and put them into a key word search to rate their searchability. Incorporate the words into your content using a natural flow of words, headings and images.
Practice writing Worthwhile Content
Have you heard of the 10,000 hour rule? Malcolm Gladwell postulated in his book, Outliers, that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is needed to become expert in any field. Recent studies have clarified that the amount of improvement is subject to the type of field of study, but the point here is that there are very few people who will accomplish what they are trying to achieve to an expert level, the first few times. A content writer will do well to study the work of established authorities, do the research, then just buckle down and begin to write.
A Website SEO checker article states that writing good content also begins with the same basics as writing a good university paper. These are: “1. A good title that suits the topic …..2. An explanatory opening that can easily tell you what this page is about …..3. Thematic sections and subsections to organize your content …..4. Answered questions about this topic and a wide exploration of its aspects ……5. Some useful additional resources . There is not a perfect optimization, each optimization is surrounded by different circumstances, and however, some of the most entertaining on the Internet follow these simple techniques and remain dynamic and interesting.”
What do you do now? Begin! Google will be able to search and people will be able to find your words with increasing frequency as your expertise and efforts improve!
