If you want to be found in the labyrinth of the internet, search-engine-optimized content is your road map to it. Yep, it’s that simple – and that complicated. In order to be seen on search engines, your content has to simultaneously be compelling to your readers and users while also playing well with the search engines themselves. When your content isn’t playing well with SEO, search engines will simply not rank you very highly because they will automatically assume you’re not what the user is looking for.
Partnering with a search engine optimization agency can be immensely efficient when you sit down to chalk out your SEO strategy because they know exactly how SEO works – even when it changes its rules!
The Basics: What is SEO and Why You Should Care
As the name itself suggests, SEO is content that is optimized for search engines to find and rank on their result pages. SEO content can be anything: your website home page, the product description of your latest product, a blog post, or even a how-to guide!
Search engine optimization agencies, which specialize in creating effective and tailored implementations of SEO content, ensure that all your content plays well with search engines. While you might (incorrectly) assume this is all about using keywords in your content, SEO involves keeping up with a changing set of factors and rules based on how search engine algorithms work.
When you get into the business of SEO like a search engine optimization agency does, you learn to keep up with all the changing currents of search engine algorithms and trends – a time-consuming but deeply rewarding practice for your SEO.
The Nitty Gritty: Creating SEO Content
Search engine optimization agencies draw on a rich checklist of best practices when creating strategies for SEO. Here are some of the primary strategies they use while creating great content that’s also SEO friendly.
1. Choose topics that you know will work.
Once all the background investigations of keyword research and technical SEO are done, and it’s finally time to start writing, the first step is choosing a topic for your SEO content.
Search engine optimization agencies typically ask three questions while narrowing down potential SEO content topics. These are:
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Does the topic have the potential to rank well?
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Does the topic have the potential to bring in new, organic traffic?
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Does the topic have the potential to boost your business and conversions?
When a search engine optimization agency can find a resounding yes in answer to all these questions, they know they have a winner.
2. Understand what your users are searching for – and why.
In technical search engine optimization agency speak, this is known as search intent. Search intent involves the process of reading into keywords to figure out exactly what the user is looking for.
According to a search engine optimization agency, if you have a lot of baking-related keywords in your content, and a user is looking for cake recipes, but you don’t offer any, you simply will not rank for that keyword.
This isn’t as difficult as it seems – but it can get tricky. These sorts of sticky spots are child’s play for search engine optimization agencies, who have years of experience analyzing search intent in keywords.
Many search engine optimization agencies start analyzing search intent simply by looking at the top-ranking pages for the given keyword and checking for things like how the content is structured and formatted, the angle it’s going for, and so on.
3. Offer comprehensive and valuable content.
While a lot of SEO involves learning to play nice with search engines, it’s often easy to forget you’re ultimately writing for real, human users. Once you’ve chosen the perfect topic and figured out what people want, it’s time to give it to them.
Search engine optimization agencies can help you decode search intent not only to figure out what searchers want to see but also the gaps that remain on the internet that you might be able to fill.
In order to create valuable content that users actually want to see, a search engine optimization agency will undertake an audit of the top-ranking pages to figure out what the latest trends are in your given niche. If a lot of people are talking about something, it’s probably both important and popular.
The trick here, a search engine optimization agency might suggest, is to find the gaps and fill them by offering unique content in new forms for your users. This can take the form of original research like polls, studies, or surveys stemming from industry expertise.
Alternatively, you can also go the personal route, as some search engine optimization agencies will suggest, to offer specialized and unique perspectives in your chosen niche.
Google, for instance, has repeatedly said in its search engine guidelines that its greatest priority is user experience. If you can tailor your content to bring something new to the table in your niche, you’ll have an assured hit on your hands.
The Upshot
Ask any search engine optimization agency, and they’ll tell you that SEO is simultaneously complex and deceptively straightforward. On the one hand, you have deep research to do, technical fixes to employ, and a lot of metrics to contend with. On the other hand, SEO, at its core, is about creating quality content for your users.
When you partner with an experienced search engine optimization agency like AdLift, you get a digital marketing partner that knows exactly how to strike a balance between writing for users and working hand in hand with search engines. Getting SEO right means you can find yourself riding the spaceship to internet stardom – let a search engine optimization agency be your pilot; all you need to do is relax and enjoy the results.
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