content optimization
TRANSCRIPT
Content Optimization
Content is KING
WHAT IS CONTENT OPTIMIZATION?
The Web is loaded with information presented through different types of content; text, images, video and audio are the most popular types.
In general, content optimization is the process of making the content of a website more attractive to search engines and users.
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT?
TITLE• Length: 60-65 char / 512 px
• Title tag contains important keywords first then Brand name.
• Meaningful and relevant with page content.
• Use only pipes (|) to separate important keywords/phrase (no comma(,), underscore(_), dash(-) or any other sign).
• Don’t duplicate title tags. Use unique for every page.
• Try to avoid Stop Words.
META DESCRIPTION• It’s a short description about
your page content.
• Recommended length 150 char.
• Try to write unique description for every page.
• Put your main keywords first.
• Tools: Character Counterhttp://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml
H1 TAG
SCHEMA (STRUCTURED DATA)
STRUCTURED DATAAll major search engines have agreed to a common format of representing data and this is known as structured data or schemas.
For example if you are selling products, you can specify the name of your product, brand, price, images, availability, condition, reviews and a bunch of other elements that will help crawlers index your product pages better.
There are also schemas for articles, where you specify the author, content, description, featured image and title.
Go for Schema Check https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
/
Enter your url in the FETCH URL box and click FETCH & VALIDATE. Google will show you on the right hand site what it can understand from the page and any errors that you need to fix.
AVOID DUPLICATE CONTENT• Content duplication is normal and can occur in
many situations. The most common is having duplicate content within your website either because of your archive pages or because of the way your website is structured.
• This is not very bad and Google will not penalize you for this but it makes it more difficult for them to understand which are the most important pages of your website that need to be included in their index.
• To bypass this problem and optimize your content better, make use of Sitemaps to let them know about your important pages and also of canonical urls.
• What is bad, is having content on your website that was previously published on other websites, even if you link back to the source. You need to understand that in order to rank your website higher, it needs to have lots of original and unique content.
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL LINKS
• Links are very important in the whole content optimization process. You need both internal and external links.
KEYWORD STUFFING
I have mentioned many times above the phrase ‘avoid keyword stuffing’ and this is because you no longer need to add your keywords many times in the text. This is not SEO but spamming. Search engines are clever enough to understand the context of a page and over optimization can get you into trouble.
CONTENT SILOING• Content siloing is used by the big websites to get ranking on
keywords. The strategy was pioneered by Bruce Clay.
• Means organizing your web site into subject themes by linking related pages together.
• True internal linking is what it's all about
• It’s all about making your site with a good structure and in an organized format, linking relevant pages orderly so that it helps users to easily navigate and enjoy your content.
Insurance
Travel Insurance
Domestic Travel InsuranceOverseas Travel Insurance
Cheap Travel Insurance
Car Insurance
Domestic Car InsuranceOverseas Car Insurance
Cheap Car Insurance
Health Insurance
Domestic Health InsuranceOverseas Health Insurance
Cheap Car Insurance
EXAMPLE
IMAGE
HOW MANY IMAGES TO USE IN YOUR CONTENT?
Some people suggest using one image every 300-400 words but in reality there is no guideline as to the number of images a page should have. Use images where appropriate and when it matters.
Drawback-1: when using a lot of images in a page, this adds to the loading time and this is not good especially for mobile users.
Solution: Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver images to the users and also decide whether or not to hide some images from mobile users. In pages that I have a lot of images in the text, I sometimes hide them on the mobile version of the site so that users on mobile work faster.
Drawback-2: On website’s that you run Adsense, images tend to grab the attention of the users and so less attention is given on the Ads.
Solution: To maximize your Adsense earnings, try not to have images close to the ads. You can start your post with an image but then give some space to the ads and then as you go deeper to the content of your page, you can add more images.
VIDEO• Adding videos to your pages
makes your content more interesting. A lot of people like to view a video rather than reading a long text article.
• Similar rules to images apply when adding videos to your website and in particular.
• Make sure that your video’s are short and to the point.
• Make sure that your videos are not set to auto play. This is distracting and frustrating for users (especially mobile users).
• Videos can really slow a website down so don’t try to stream the videos from your website but use a streaming service like Youtube.
• Make sure that your videos have proper filenames, good titles and descriptions. Search engines cannot view the videos and understand the content but they use the data you give them in the filename, titles, descriptions and keywords to figure out what the video is all about.
