SEOPocket Guide7 Things Every Content Marketer

Should Know About SEO

[Source - Digital Marketing, 2014]

of companies reportthat their SEO andcontent strategyare integrated.

That still leaves a lot ofROOM FOR GROWTH.

Here’s what SEO tips industry experts

think that every content marketer should

have up their sleeves.

Create relevant, quality content

Google has adapted itself to show better results for its users — they’re looking for the best answer and Google wants to give it to them as fast as possible.

Google's focus is on delivering the best answer to searchers, so brands need to become that best answer for what buyers are looking for with content.

1. Create relevant, quality content

LEE ODDEN

KELLY WHITE

Search engines are incredibly sophisticated algorithmically, and their sole purpose is to serve content that they deem to be the most useful to a user in relation to their query. Poorly written content that is neither useful nor created with a human in mind is unlikely to gain you much traction, so stick to quality.

1. Create relevant, quality content

Go beyond keywords

The days of keyword stuffing

ARE OVER.

If you’re still throwing a giant paragraph of keywords into your footer (or even worse, in

“invisible text”), it’s time to update your strategies.

It's not enough to just pick one phrase and use it in the title, header and body text. You should spread your meaning out across a broader topic, and indicate relevance by using the related words and phrases.

2. Go beyond keywords

ANDY CRESTODINA

JESSICA JOYCE

Starting out with a keyword set is great, but today’s algorithms and users are using a much wider set of tools than just keywords. Good news — this change makes it easier to write. When you’re expanding to topics, you don't need to worry about keyword stuffing. The real goal is to write content that users want to read, consume and share.

2. Go beyond keywords

Keyword density is one of those things that can also be very easy to overdo. Take the keywords and phrases that you want to be found for and make sure they appear in your content naturally. ‘Naturally’ really is the key here, keyword stuffing may have been useful circa 2009, but it is really not best practice at all and Google will see straight through you. It’s best to take a topic like SEO tips for content marketers that is relevant to the phrases you’re looking to rank for.

2. Go beyond keywords

KELLY WHITE

JASON WHITE

Give search crawlers tight and narrow crawl paths to show depth in a subject vertical while providing a logical user experience.

2. Go beyond keywords

Linking goesa long way

is one great way to get more traffic to your site. Work on linking both internally

and externally to build authority(and make some SEO friends!).

FOCUSING ON LINKS

A healthy website links to itself and links outwards. I constantly use Screaming Frog to check my internal/external links. It’s very useful and provides a ton of technical data that you can leverage, beyond links.

3. Linking goes a long way

JESSICA JOYCE

KELLY WHITE

Internal linking and resource mentions are both useful at deeming your content as ‘useful’ to a search engine. With every post you create, you should be aiming to include at least one link to elsewhere within your own website or another of your own blog posts.

3. Linking goes a long way

Grow your authority through links, but don't become a spammer. The key here is to focus on the relationships that may lead to links, without worrying too much about the links themselves.

ANDY CRESTODINA

3. Linking goes a long way

Think beyond the written content

You may have your text optimized to a T,but your SEO strategy shouldn’t stop there.

Be sure to optimize all types of content – video and images included.

To gain the most SEO value from your audiovisual content on your site, remember to create supporting text on the same page.

MARTIN WEINBERG

4. Think beyond the written content

I’ve seen this for years. You find an amazing picture and place it on your site. That’s a great start, but it’s not valuable to your content yet. The bare minimum today is to re-name the image before you upload it (to something useful and targeted to your content). The next step is make sure the Alt attribute is also filled in (with appropriate, targeted content). Then, placement of this image is of the utmost importance. Placing this now optimized image in the section of your content that’s surrounded by the targeted keyword will make the image most effective.Now that that’s all done, the last step is to optimize the image’s file size to the smallest it can be, so it loads as quickly as it can — a quick and free tool is optimizilla.com

4. Think beyond the written content

JESSICA JOYCE

AMP Up

The use of mobile isn’t anything new to marketers, but it can be overlooked in SEO strategies when

we’re so zeroed in on our websites.

There are more searches performed on mobile devices than desktop computers and as part of Google's mission to deliver a great search experience, smart SEOs are all-in when it comes to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Content marketers need to ensure their content is mobile friendly and fast loading with AMP to deliver content near-instantaneously and provide a great user experience.

5. AMP Up

LEE ODDEN

Keep an eye on your analytics

Once you implement all these tips,don’t forget to check your analytics…

and keep checking.

There’s no point in having an ongoing content strategy without measurement. If you’re continually producing content without reporting on whether it is having any of the desired effects, then you really could be completely wasting hours, and even days, of your time. The exact ways to measure your content and the correct tools for doing so will depend upon what you’re trying to achieve by creating it.

6. Keep an eye on your analytics

KELLY WHITE

It's likely that you already have a few pages that are performing well in search. These are the traffic champions that show up at the top of your Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report. Why do they get traffic day after day, month after month? It's probably because they rank high!

But what about the pages that almost rank high? What about the phrases for which you rank high on page two? Do you know what those phrases are? In your Analytics, there's a list of the phrases that you almost rank high for. A list of your page two phrases. If you can find those phrases and the corresponding pages, you've found your lowest hanging SEO fruit!

ANDY CRESTODINA

6. Keep an eye on your analytics

Keep on adapting

SEO isn’t a one-and-done deal.Your strategies must adapt based on where your

company is going and what Google (and other search engines) are doing.

The job of an SEO is never over!

I believe an SEO strategy should be fluid. Regular checkpoints and real evaluation is needed to make sure you're on the correct path towards hitting your intended goal. Never be afraid to pivot.

BILL SEBALD

7. Keep on adapting

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