The goal of SEO is to increase the use and attention that the website gets. It aims to bring the right people to the website via search engine results.
The more people meet their expectation and get what they need based on their search engine queries, the more people will come back to the website.
The website has to be truly useful and provide real value so that when it comes up through the search engine, people actually use the website and come back as many times as possible.
Gary Vaynerchuk is an online and social marketing expert. He is currently the CEO of Vaynermedia which is an advertising agency that focuses on social media and digital marketing.
Below is one of his best advice to every website and content creator out there.
“Document, don’t create.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
What he means is that everyone who needs to create content for a website often has tremendous pressure because they think that they need to produce a masterpiece every single time.
He recommends thinking of creating content as documenting. Creating content consistently for your website daily or weekly at the very least is more important than creating a few masterpiece content. The more content you have, the more you can maximise your SEO.
Strategies for Content Creation
One of the best content creations and writing strategies is to think of at least 50 to 100 topics relevant to your website. If you cannot think of this many topics about your website then maybe your expertise is in something else.
Another great way to create content is to interview people. This is why podcasts are so successful. What happens is your content becomes about the life and ideas of the guest and how it relates to your website.
Micro-content works very well today because our world is dominated by social media and mobile phones. The most popular micro-content are quotes and short form videos mostly 30 seconds to 1-minute clips.
From a long article, content creators can take note of a few interesting quotes. From a 30 minute to 1-hour video, they can find 1 minute or 30-second clips that are very powerful and entertaining. These quotes and clips can then be posted on social media as a way to attract people to the main website.
Tools for Content Creation
The 3 main platforms for content creation are written articles (blogs), videos and audio (podcasts).
The content creator has to determine what his/her talents and strengths are. He/she also has to create content on something that he/she is very passionate about or else, he/she will run out of ideas.
An eloquent writer and storyteller can write blog posts and articles. The writer also needs the skill to generate blog post ideas consistently.
People who have natural showmanship, presentation skills, or even just plain good looks can do well with video blogs.
Those who have a good speaking voice like a radio personality can do well in audio and podcast.
The Frustration of Website Users
People get frustrated from websites not because they are bad, but because they just lack content.
What happens is people actually use the website; it meets their expectations and they get real value from it. A few clicks later, they learn how much content the website lacks.
This is very frustrating because they have already invested time and attention, and all of that just to realise that the content isn’t there.
Top SEO Techniques and how it is Relates to Quality Content
1. Page Titles
Each page needs to have a title that is brief, descriptive and attracts the target audience.
It has to be clear and concise, a sort of preview of what you will get once you continue reading on.
However, any website can have the best content and page titles in the world but if it only has 3 to 10 pages worth of content, people are more likely to search for the information elsewhere.
2. Internal Links
These are links inside the website that lead to content that is relevant to what you are reading now. The purpose of internal links is to help the user navigate the website easier. Do not make internal links just to create SEO friendly content.
“Don’t always link old posts from new posts but every couple of weeks go back and link newer posts from older posts.” – Alex Chris
3. Text Formatting: H1, H2, H3, Bold, Italics
Alex Chris recommends using H1 for the post title and H2 for headings. Bold and italics should be used to attract attention and emphasis.
He also recommends using short paragraphs to sustain the reader’s attention and give them short breaks when reading long articles.
Every website owner and blogger should think of the user in mind. They have to create valuable content first then create the design to match that content.
4. Use Images Wisely
Using images is not an SEO strategy but rather a wonderful tool for content creation.
A picture paints a thousand words; however, it may not exactly communicate the words you want to say.
This means images should be matched with words. Content creators should be careful with using images because it may affect page speed.
5. Page Speed
Everyone benefits from a fast website. It is important to note a few tips to make the site load faster:
- Remove unused plug-ins
- Images with smaller KB load faster
- Use online tools like Pingdom and GTMetrix to test the speed of your site. Some of these free tools can find out which components of the website makes it slower; the website owner can then change or remove them completely.
These points deal a lot with technical issues that might not be interesting for many bloggers and website owners. However, page speed improves the user experience. This is part of content creation and gives value to anyone who uses the website.
“A website that loads in less than 4 seconds is more likely to rank better in search results, get more page visits per user, and get more conversions.” – Alex Chris
6. External Links: Get Links from other Websites
This is not to counter the points I made on #2, which is about internal links.
In the early days of Google, they considered a website with many links to other websites as more significant and authoritative.
Over time, many websites have abused this technique and created a lot of spam content and links. Google addressed these issues by introducing various penalties, such as Penguin and Panda.
At the end of the day, it comes back to creating valuable content that truly helps the users of your website.
7. Maximize Social Media
Social media is similar to SEO in that it is a way to give exposure to a website.
However, both SEO and social media will not solve the problem of poor and lacking content. Good content keeps users coming back to the site.
What is good about social media is that there are comments, shares and likes, which are highly measurable. Hence, to determine whether your content is performing well enough, you should simply analyse the stats.
Social media, just like SEO, is an excellent way to gain more users, page views and visitors because it gives you the needed exposure when people share and engage with your content and updates.
For example, if your target users are teenagers or entrepreneurs, they will be more likely connected to other teenagers and entrepreneurs themselves. This gives your content exposure to the right people.
8. Our Mobile World
Going back to Gary Vaynerchuk, he stated that the mobile phone is the TV of our generation and the TV is becoming the radio. The mobile phone is more than a TV.
It is a tool for both entertainment and work. The world is becoming more mobile with every passing day.
Websites have to create content that is native for mobile phones; most websites today are still created for the desktop user in mind.
9. Mastery is One Step at a Time
Mastery in both SEO and content creation should be part of the daily life of bloggers and website owners. It is truly a journey and not a destination.
Trying to master SEO and content creation in one day can solve small problems but mastery of both processes, in the long run, can create a more successful website.
Content creation and SEO is all about putting in the work. Most people do not like to hear that but it is the truth.