Website authority is a measure of the overall strength of your site or domain. Strong sites tend to show up higher in the search results and have traits that include, but certainly aren’t limited to:

• Comprehensive coverage of the topics surrounding relevant keywords
• High-quality content—both in terms of technical aspects, such as grammar, and engagement aspects, such as how easily audience attention is captured by the content
• Demonstrated expertise and authority about the topics at hand
• Strong internal and external linking strategies
• High numbers of backlinks

Many SEO companies and other sites offer ways to measure website authority. You can use a website authority checker to get an idea of how your website authority scores in relation to competitors. You can also use tools provided by SEO companies such as Moz or Semrush.   

How Do You Create Website Authority?

If you aren’t happy with how your site scores or you’re starting from scratch and want to build a site with ample authority, we’ve got a number of tips for doing so. Start with these seven ways to build authority on your website. 

1. Pay Attention to User Experience

When considering the authority of their site, many people only think about content. But the way that content is presented to your audience and how your pages function are huge parts of whether or not your site is seen as authoritative.

Imagine this scenario: Your child has a sore throat and you turn to Google to find out how serious it might be and what you can do to make her feel better. You search with a related phrase or question and click on two of the results. 

The first page you click has a bright orange background, flashing fonts, pictures someone loaded from their smartphone and a number of ads for unrelated products.

The second page you click on has a cream-colored background, standard fonts, professional images and layout and no ads—or only professional, relevant ads. 

Even if the content on both sites is the same, which one are you more likely to trust regarding your child’s sore throat? As you can see, user experience matters, so work to ensure your site functions well on all devices and presents information in a way that is expected for the audience, niche and topic.

2. Create High-Quality, Comprehensive Content

The content on your pages matters too, obviously. Start with keyword research that supports a content strategy for your site. Then move on to content optimization, including:

• Creating comprehensive, semantically complete content about the keyword or topic. In other words, ask yourself “What are all the things my audience wants or needs to know about this topic?” and then ensure your content covers it all.
• Ensure your content is well-written. Find and work with experienced SEO content writers, and use proofreading and editing services when necessary to ensure content makes sense and is grammatically correct.
• Fact-check content to ensure it’s accurate. Ask writers to cite sources for statistics and facts they use in content so you can double-check the accuracy. For niche or technical topics, consider hiring a subject-matter expert who can ensure the content is accurate.
• Create unique content. Don’t just rehash (or spin) competing content. Find ways to add unique value by adding your own information or opinion.  

3. Leverage Real Experts

Think about the example where a child has a sore throat. If you turn to the internet for some answers, which of the following pages will you take most seriously?

• A site with no about us page or attribution—just random content that includes, among other things, an article about sore throats
• A blog post from a mommy blogger who has five kids and leads into her advice with some stories about how many sore throats she’s dealt with in the past
• A page on a medical clinic site that is bylined by a nurse or doctor that works for the clinic, indicating that—at the very least—the content was reviewed by a clinician before it was published

For most people, those three examples are listed in order from least authority to most authority. You’re likely going to take the information signed off on by a clinician more seriously than the anonymous information.

When possible, work with content creators and reviewers who can add authority to your content because they are real experts. 

4. Use Structured Data to Support E-E-A-T

People aren’t the only entities you must convince of your authority. For Google to rank your page high in the search engine results, it has to believe you have authority for the keywords and topics. Google uses guidelines such as E-E-A-T to help determine website authority for this purpose.

Obviously, search engine evaluations and rankings are highly programmatic—meaning computer programs do the work of ranking pages. You can boost your success with these programs by “feeding” them your content via structured data. Structured data refers to site coding that helps search engine bots understand the parts of your content and how they work together.  

5. Claim and Optimize Your Knowledge Panel

Google automatically generates knowledge panels for the search engine pages. These small snippets of information are designed to provide searchers with quick answers to questions or overviews that point them in the right direction to more in-depth information. 

If you, your site or your business are the subject of a knowledge panel, you may be able to claim it. Once you claim it, you can suggest changes for it and use those changes to further optimize it to support your site and authority. 

6. Bolster Your About Us and Author Pages

Take time to ensure you have compelling, comprehensive about us and author pages. Some helpful content for about us pages includes:

• A history of the company or site
• Pictures and bios of your team to humanize your site
• Lists of experience and credentials that help position your team as experts
• Discussions of your mission and vision

If your team, freelancers or other experts contribute to your site’s blog, use a byline structure that identifies the author of each post. Link that byline to an author page that demonstrates the authority of the author via a bio and list of credentials. 

7. Pay Attention to Your External Links

Backing up claims, statistics and facts you use in your content with quality external links can help improve your website authority. However, do pay attention to which sites you’re linking to. Linking to low-quality sites without authority can negatively impact your own authority.

Look for government and education (.gov and .edu) sites you can link to. You can also link to high-quality news sites, blogs from experts or any other site that provides authoritative, quality content. 

Get Help Boosting Website Authority

Crowd Content can help you create high-quality SEO and thought-leadership content that boosts the authority of your pages. Reach out to find out how we can help or open a marketplace account and start ordering content from experienced freelancers today.

The post 7 Tips for Boosting Your Website Authority appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What Is Keyword Search Intent?

In simplest terms, search intent is the purpose of the user’s query. When people use Google and other search engines, they have a goal in mind. They may want to learn more about a topic, solve a problem, buy something or find a specific page on a website. If the content on your pages matches the user’s search intent, you’re more likely to make a sale, add a new subscriber to your email list or convince the user to bookmark or share your site.

Types of Search Intent

SEMrush has identified four types of keyword search intent: transactional, commercial, informational and navigational.

Transactional User Intent

Transactional means the user wants to complete some type of action. The user might want to fill out your contact form, sign up for your email list or contact your business by telephone. These actions bring people into your sales funnel and give you the opportunity to convert them into paying customers.

Commercial Intent

When it comes to generating revenue, commercial intent is probably the most valuable. Users with commercial intent are interested in buying a product or service. They may not buy from you the first time they visit your website, but they might download your lead magnet or take advantage of a free trial.

Informational Intent

Users with informational intent want to solve a problem, answer a question or learn more about a topic that interests them. “How to do SEO” and “Why do zebras have stripes?” are examples of searches with informational intent.

Navigational Search Intent

People with navigational intent want to get to a specific website, not just any website that answers their question, solves their problem or helps them complete a purchase. For example, someone might type in Panera to find the corporate website for Panera Bread.

Matching the User’s Intent

Matching the user’s intent starts with keyword research. In many cases, it’s easy to understand what the user needs. For example, “buy mystery books” and “pet food coupon code” align with commercial intent because it’s clear the user wants to buy something or obtain a discount on a future purchase. Someone doing an informational search might enter “types of orchids” or “how to remove stains.” Keep an eye out for these signal words when you’re coming up with a list of keywords to target.

Identifying Keyword Search Intent

Some keywords are a little more difficult to figure out. The user might want information, or they might want to buy something. There are a few ways to determine the true intent of a search. The first is to contact your existing customers and ask them what keywords they use when they search for products, services and information related to your niche. You could also send out an anonymous survey to gather data from as many customers as possible.

The second way to identify a user’s search intent is to check out your competition. Type the target keyword into your search engine and look at the top-ranking pages. What kind of content do they have? How have they incorporated the keyword into their content? You don’t want to copy from your competitors, but you can get some good ideas by reading their content and figuring out what they’re doing to match user search intent.

Finally, using Google’s autocomplete feature and checking out the “People also ask” box on the search results page can give you valuable insight into a searcher’s true intent. Autocomplete makes predictions based on the text you type, making it easier to find out what terms people are using. For example, typing in “best shoes” brings up predictions for “best shoes for plantar fasciitis,” “best shoes for standing all day” and “best shoes for nurses.” Based on these suggestions, you might surmise that many searchers are interested in buying supportive shoes that can relieve pain or help with specific foot problems. The “People also ask” box displays questions that are closely related to the user’s search intent.

Optimizing Your Content

Developing New Content

Now that you understand the search intent of the people in your target audience, it’s time to optimize your content. One of the best ways to do this is to create landing pages that are optimized for commercial and transactional keywords. People “land” on these pages when they click links in emails, online advertisements and other online locations. On a typical landing page, you offer something valuable to entice the user to give you their contact information. Some business owners offer discount codes or coupons, while others promise to deliver white papers or case studies via email.

Blogging is also a great way to deliver content that matches the user intent for your target keywords. For best results, the primary keyword should appear in the post title, a few times in the body of the post and in at least one header. The title of the post is your first opportunity to convince the reader that your page matches their search intent, so it should be clear and concise. “A Guide to Buying Nutritional Supplements Online” is much better than “Nutritional Supplement Tips” because it’s likely to appeal to users with commercial intent and informational intent. It also clearly states what type of content you’ll provide.

Revising Existing Content

If you have existing content that doesn’t align with your target keywords’ search intent, go back and revise it. You may need to update an informational page to match a user’s commercial intent, for example. Revising content can be time-consuming, but it’s important to update your pages as much as possible. Just changing a few words here and there isn’t likely to change the content enough to make it match a different type of search intent. At Crowd Content, we have teams of experienced SEO content writers available to help you create new pages or update existing ones.

Changing the formatting on your existing pages can also help you do a better job matching user search intent. Incorporating keywords into your page titles, headers and descriptions give potential customers a quick overview of what each page has to offer, making it easier to convince them that the content meets their needs.

Benefits of Matching Search Intent

Matching search intent has several benefits for your business. Google’s predictive tools make it easy for the search engine to understand if your optimized content is closely related to other queries. If you focus on matching user intent, your site may show up in the results for more searches. Optimizing your content based on keyword search intent also helps reduce bounce rates. If a visitor comes to your website and the content doesn’t match their intent, they’ll probably click the back button. Once this happens, it can be difficult to convince them to come back. If the content matches their search intent, they’re more likely to stay a while and read what you have to say.

In some cases, optimizing your content for search intent makes it more likely you’ll be featured in Google’s snippets. These snippets have premium positioning at the top of the search results, making your site much more visible to potential customers. Finally, you’re likely to get more page views if a visitor sees you’ve made an effort to match their search intent. For example, a visitor might enter your site on a landing page, click over to a blog post and then visit your contact page to submit a request for information.

Tools for Online Marketing

Online marketing tools make it much easier to identify appropriate keywords, determine the user’s intent for those keywords and optimize your content to appeal to your site’s visitors. The SEMrush tool is one of the most comprehensive as it helps users identify appropriate keywords, determine the user’s search intent for each keyword and optimize their content accordingly. SEMrush also takes the guesswork out of building links, creating a content marketing campaign and analyzing traffic.

Wrapping Up

Quality content is one of the most important aspects of a successful website. Blog posts, articles, case studies and other types of content position you as an expert and can help you match each user’s keyword search intent, giving you more opportunities to generate revenue. If you’d rather focus on SEO and web development, Crowd Content’s experienced writers are ready to create reader-friendly content that gets results

The post Optimizing Your Content to Match User Keyword Search Intent appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The good news is that it’s possible to create eCommerce content at scale if you have the right resources and support. We wrote this guide to help you understand why you should make content creation a priority, explain how to grow your business with large-scale content creation and get the support you need to maximize quality without ignoring your other responsibilities.

Benefits of Large-Scale Content Creation

Increased Authority

When you search for information online, who are you more likely to trust: an established company with a strong web presence or a no-name company with two or three pages of content on its website? If you’re like most people, you’re more willing to trust a company that does a good job communicating what it does and how you can benefit from its products or services.

Large-scale content creation capitalizes on that natural instinct by increasing your authority and making you seem more trustworthy to current and potential customers. Imagine how much faster your business would grow if you had a website filled with articles, blog posts and other content positioning your team members as experts or showing people how your offerings can solve their problems.

Higher Search Engine Rankings

Search engines are one of the best sources of traffic for companies in every industry. When someone searches for a term related to your business, you want your website to show up as close to the top of the first page of the search results as possible. The farther down the page is, the less likely someone is to click the link and visit your website.

Google considers dozens of factors when determining how to rank each page. According to Search Engine Journal, quality content is the most important. You can spend weeks tweaking your site’s design or optimizing each page for mobile devices, but your time is better spent developing quality content to drive up your rankings and improve the user experience. Focusing on content also creates opportunities to optimize your site for other ranking factors, such as frequent updates and the use of relevant keywords.

Better User Experience

SEO is important, but it’s not quite as important as serving the people in your target audience. Visitors won’t feel comfortable subscribing to your email list or making a purchase on your website if you deliver a poor experience that makes them question your authority or ability to meet their needs. Many factors influence the user experience, but one of the most important is the quality of the content you publish.

Your content should be useful, meaning it’s original and fulfills the user’s needs, and credible, which means readers must be able to trust your message. Large-scale content creation gives you additional opportunities to meet a user’s needs and help them trust what you have to say.

More Opportunities To Collect Data

The main purpose of publishing content is to attract people to your website, educate them about what your company has to offer and persuade them to sign up for your email list, buy something or take some other action. What many business owners don’t realize is that publishing content also gives you an opportunity to collect data about the people in your target audience.

When most people think of content, they think of articles or blog posts, but there are dozens of types of content you can use to achieve your marketing goals. Publishing quizzes and surveys can help you gather demographic information or find out what products or services your customers would like you to offer. Maps, calculators and other tools can also help you collect data and gain a better understanding of your customers’ needs.

Improved Brand Awareness

Brand awareness refers to how familiar people are with your brand. If most people have never heard of your company, then brand awareness is low. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have extremely high levels of brand awareness because their names, logos and products are familiar to millions of people around the world. The more content you publish, the more opportunities people have to see your company’s name and associate it with the products or services you provide. Large-scale content creation can lead to higher levels of brand awareness. This happens when members of your target audience stumble across your brand in search results for relevant queries. Soon, they’ll consider you a thought leader in your niche.

How To Grow Your Business With Large-Scale Content Creation

If you’re ready to reap the rewards of creating eCommerce content at scale, here are the first steps you should take.

Hire the Right People

To maintain a high level of quality, it’s imperative you have the right people on your team. Just because your marketing manager excels at conducting marketing research doesn’t mean they’re the right person to create content and publish it to your website. You may need to hire a full-time copywriter or someone with extensive experience in content marketing.

If a full-time hire isn’t in your budget, consider working with a team of experienced freelancers. Crowd Content has thousands of skilled writers available to help you produce eCommerce content at scale, leaving you free to focus on business growth.

Streamline the Process

Inefficiency and disorganization are two major roadblocks to large-scale content creation. That’s why it’s so important to develop a standardized process for choosing content types, producing the content and getting it published. Your process should include activities like choosing a topic, writing the content, optimizing it for search engines, having an editor review it, adding design elements and publishing it to your website.

Plan Ahead

Large-scale content creation is much easier if you plan as far in advance as possible. Many companies use editorial calendars to plan what they’re going to publish over several months. An editorial calendar typically includes the topic, a draft title, the type of content to be produced and a short description of what the content should cover. It should also include the anticipated publication date for each item.

You should also prepare for large-scale content production by creating a set of branding guidelines for your company. These guidelines explain how you want your business presented to customers, investors and other stakeholders. Although most people think of logos and colour palettes when they hear the term “branding guidelines,” you can also include grammar rules or instructions regarding the tone of voice you want writers to use. For example, some business owners prefer a formal style of writing with a third-person point of view, while others prefer a more conversational tone.

Make Assignments

When giving assignments, be sure to consider each writer’s skills, experience and role in your company. For a document that uses technical terms to explain how a software package works, you may want to assign the content to someone who was involved in developing the software. Something less technical, such as a blog post on the benefits of working with your company, might go to someone in your marketing department.

Who Can Benefit From Creating eCommerce Content at Scale?

Almost any business can benefit from creating eCommerce content at scale, but this approach is especially helpful for product-based businesses that rely heavily on online marketing. If you sell tangible products, there are dozens of ways to grow your business with large-scale content creation. One of them is to write keyword-rich product descriptions and category descriptions for everything you sell.

For example, if you sell kitchen products, you could have category pages for pots and pans, cooking utensils, baking pans and kitchen electrics. Then you’d have a keyword-rich product description for each item. Every time you publish a new category page or product description, you’ll have another opportunity to drive organic traffic to your website and educate people about what you have to offer.

Another way to benefit from large-scale content production is to produce detailed buying guides. Like product and category descriptions, buying guides drive traffic to your website and help you improve your page rankings. They’re also useful for showing visitors they can trust your expertise.

Grow Your Business With Content

Content is one of the most valuable assets of any business. Whether you’re blogging about industry trends or publishing detailed descriptions of the products you sell, every piece of content creates an opportunity to educate, entertain or persuade. Even better, content marketing is less expensive than many other marketing methods, making it a cost-effective approach for almost any business.If you’ve been looking for a way to grow your business, large-scale content creation could be the answer. The expert freelancers at Crowd Content are ready to help you create high-quality content at scale and provide expert insight that can help you improve your search engine rankings, drive traffic to your website and convince more people to buy from you.

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And yet, many brands neglect the holy grail of web conversions: landing pages.

Landing pages are essential for increasing brand awareness and driving revenue. But there are key elements that make or break whether they succeed or send people packing. If you aren’t optimizing your landing pages for conversions, you’re missing out on some big opportunities.

In this post, we’ll show you how to optimize your landing pages for maximum conversions so you can make the most of your traffic and turn web traffic into customers.

Defining Landing Pages

What exactly is a landing page, and what does it do?

In simplest terms, a landing page is a single web page that visitors “land” on when they click through from another source. This might be an advertisement, an email or a search query on Google.

You should design each landing page on your site to accomplish a specific marketing goal in exchange for providing some value to the visitor. What qualifies as something of value? It could be:

• A free e-book or printable
• A white paper with insights
• A webinar or free course
• A coupon, promotion or free trial for a product or service

When visitors land on these pages, enticed by your offer, they’re encouraged to take action. Common “calls to action” (CTAs) include inviting visitors to sign up for an email list or giving them the chance to make a purchase on the spot. If the user takes you up on your offer, your landing page has succeeded in converting them.

Remember, landing pages almost always have a singular focus. It goes back to what researchers refer to as “the paradox of choice.” When people are presented with too many options, they tend to get overwhelmed. Don’t crowd your page with multiple calls to action such as “Follow us on social media!” “Start a free trial!” and “Get 10% off!” If your page is cluttered, the user will likely take no action at all — and might even leave your site.

Why You Need Landing Pages

Landing pages aren’t a typical part of your website’s structure. That’s why you usually won’t find links to landing pages on a site’s main menu. Rather, each stands alone to serve a highly specific short-term marketing goal, such as:

• Improving the performance of a paid advertising campaign by responding precisely to the user’s need or intent
• Increasing conversions on a particular product or products
• Generating leads or driving free trial activations
• Encouraging mailing list signups

Aside from achieving these marketing goals, landing pages are important for a few other reasons.

For one, they boost your credibility. A good landing page provides a concise, crystal-clear message that explains the value of your brand, product or service. A great landing page tells visitors your business has their best interests in mind. For example, addressing buyer concerns on your landing page can increase conversions by up to 80%.

Great landing pages also build your brand. Even if your landing page doesn’t immediately convert a visitor, it can create a strong impression that will help them remember your offering in the future. Memorable landing pages also make it more likely visitors will refer friends and family to your offer, which is arguably the most important aspect of any marketing effort.

Because they help convert leads into paying customers, landing pages are a critical part of your digital marketing strategy. These pages help guide users further along their customer journey because they act as a nudge to take action. And the more optimized they are, the better they can serve their purpose.

Optimizing Your Landing Pages for Conversions

There’s a lot that goes into maintaining a strong digital presence. Fortunately, much of the work you probably already do also applies to landing pages. This includes things such as:

• Making your website mobile-friendly
• Improving page loading times
• Maintaining consistency across your website
• Focusing on technical SEO

If you’re already covering these bases, you’re halfway to optimizing your landing pages. But there are a few more things you need to know and put into practice to get the most out of your conversion machines.

Let’s take a look.

Make Headlines!

Catchy headlines entice people searching the web to click through and visit your site. This applies to your homepage, any content you create and — yes — your landing pages.

Since landing pages are typically focused on providing a benefit to those who click through, you should draw visitors in with a strong value proposition. Maybe it’s a limited-time offer, a free e-book or an exclusive webinar. Whatever the case, incorporating words such as “now,” “today” or “free” can pull visitors in.

When crafting headlines, make sure you match your meta title to the actual page title. They needn’t be identical, but they should definitely express the same idea. This assures users they’ve come to the correct location. Don’t risk jeopardizing your reputation and search engine rankings with misleading meta tags.

Make Content Appealing and Scannable

It’s difficult to strike a balance between enough material and the minimum amount of visual crowding. Effective landing page designs contain features that showcase how beneficial the product or service is without detracting from the calls to action or offer.

Look at a landing page as a potential customer would to optimize it. Ask yourself:

• Are your logo and branding prominent on the page?
• Are your CTAs clear and recognizable?
• Is the messaging concise and representative of your intended goal?

It’s also important to focus on the quality of the copy. Once you’ve hooked your visitors with a catchy headline and a visually appealing design, it’s crucial to keep them engaged with copywriting that’s compelling, punchy and succinct.

Break your content down into scannable chunks to encourage users to read all the way through your landing page. There’s probably more than one feature or benefit to what you’re selling, so use numbered lists or bullet points to make them more digestible.

Video content, in particular, is getting more popular on landing pages, since not everyone engages solely with text. This doesn’t imply your page should be devoid of words, however. Combining strong copy and compelling video is a great strategy to keep people engaged.

Leverage Social Proof

Look for places to insert reviews or testimonials about your product or service, which are an element of social proof. Social proof has been shown to increase conversions.

If you don’t already have testimonials to draw from, incentivize your past customers to provide them. You could also highlight how many individuals have already taken advantage of your offer if your product or service is popular. This could entice others to join the trend and try your goods or services for themselves.

A video or product demonstration may give context if you offer something unique or misunderstood. This also aids potential consumers in imagining themselves using your product or service.

Call Your Visitors to Action

One of the first things visitors see on your website should be your CTA. And while this may be a little more difficult if you’re designing for mobile users, it’s absolutely crucial for landing pages.

But don’t stop there.

Landing pages are unique in that they’re a mix of engaging content and continual calls to action. While you need a strong call to action at the top of your page, be sure to have one at the bottom too. And if your content can support it without things becoming crowded, add a few in the middle as well.

Also, make sure your CTAs are easily recognizable. Contrasting buttons, prominent arrows and even imagery that draws visitors’ eyes to the desired action are all excellent strategies.

Track and Refine

A big part of optimizing landing pages lies in the process of analyzing and refining. There are a number of great tools out there, such as Google Analytics, that help you track page interactions.

The best strategy is to use A/B testing. This involves looking at the statistics and creating alternate pages to figure out what elements help move visitors down your funnel. You can A/B test different visuals, copy, CTAs and just about any other element. This gives you the ability to polish each landing page to maximum efficiency.

Landing Pages and SEO

A big part of your marketing strategy and website is largely about SEO. And while it’s a discipline unto itself, effectively optimizing a landing page has some search engine-specific considerations you’ll want to pay attention to.

These include:

• Incorporating a strong keyword strategy
• Building landing pages based on target audience personas
• Focusing on backlinks in your marketing efforts
• Making your landing pages sharable

You’ll also want to create individual landing pages for each audience category to maximize your SEO. Since landing pages are focused on singular goals, you won’t want them to be too broad. Instead, build a specific page that speaks to smaller groups of your target market. As long as your landing pages aren’t competing with each other, you’ll see results.

In short, any SEO strategies you use across your main website should be incorporated into your approach with landing pages. Aside from generating more and more leads, the extra traffic will boost your search rankings.

Optimize Your Landing Pages With Great Content

While it’s tempting to toss up any old page and call it a day, landing pages are too important to your brand to skimp on quality. By taking the time to optimize them for your target audience, you can ensure you’re driving more of the right traffic to your site and converting more leads into customers.

If you need help polishing your landing pages, the Crowd Content platform gives you access to thousands of qualified and professional freelance writers, many of whom specialize in crafting compelling landing page copy. If you’re ready to start driving conversions with your landing pages, sign up today.

The post How To Optimize Your Landing Page for Conversions appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

If you want to rank in Google, you simply can’t ignore them. Whether you’re writing content or hiring a skilled freelancer to do it for you, you need to follow these practices if you want results.

But first, let’s dive a little deeper into SEO for the uninitiated.

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO, is a set of methods, techniques and approaches aimed at improving your website’s organic search engine rankings. At its core, SEO is about improving website rankings and traffic through:

• Discovering the queries people use to search the web
• Understanding what those people want when they search for them
• Addressing those desires with quality content

It’s worth mentioning that organic search results aren’t paid advertisements. Rather, they’re the sites you see ranked on results pages when you type something into Google. They’re how the majority of people search for information and discover brands on the web.

To understand SEO, it helps to first understand how search engines rank web pages.

Google and other search engines use automated software known as crawlers or spiders to scour and index the web. These crawlers start from designated sites and crawl outward, following internal and external links on each page to discover and crawl other pages. In the process, these crawlers create a massive index filled with vast amounts of data about every page on the web.

The search engines use this data to assess the quality of each page across various metrics. They also use sophisticated algorithms to determine the kind of content on each page and how engaging, informative and entertaining it is. In other words, search engines determine how well each page ranks for a given search query.

Why SEO Is So Important

When someone searches for a word or phrase, the search engine references its database and algorithms to provide results that best match the query. Those results include blog posts, news articles, business listings, images, videos and everything else you find on the web.

In other words, search engines connect people with content. This puts content creation front and centre for every brand on the web. Without content, a brand has no voice.

But content without SEO is shouting into the wind.

Creating keyword-optimized content is the key to getting your brand’s voice to the right people. By understanding who your users are and what they want, you’ll create content that answers their questions. And that leads to increased reach and visibility and more customers in the sales funnel.

SEO Best Practices

While Google and other search engines are relatively open about what they expect from high-ranking content, the specifics are closely guarded secrets. Search algorithms are veritable black boxes. And as user behaviour and expectations evolve, so do the algorithms.

Put simply, SEO is an ongoing practice that changes over time. That said, there are timeless best practices that, when followed, help your brand achieve results.

Create Great Content

Making sure your content reaches the proper people is integral to SEO and your larger marketing strategy. But some marketers put their entire focus on these aspects and treat the content itself as an afterthought.

This is a huge mistake.

Without great content from the beginning, you’re amplifying a voice that may not align with your brand. You should treat your content with no less consideration than you do your product design or customer service.

Creating great original content starts with research. You need to understand who your audience is, what they want to know and what kind of messaging resonates with them. Then, you need to create content that aligns accordingly.

Keyword research, in particular, can help guide content strategies. Popular search queries show you what users are looking for on the web, and these are excellent signposts to follow for content creation. But it’s equally important to consider the search intent of these keywords. If you create content that answers the wrong questions, it won’t rank well. And when it does reach people, it’ll fall on deaf ears.

Great content that’s tailored to a specific keyword aims to provide answers, insights and valuable information to the people who search for that keyword. It’s engaging, lively, well-written and on point. Most importantly, the focus of great content is the reader, above all else.

Use Keywords Effectively

In the early days of the web, marketers could cram keywords into their content and the traffic would pour in. There were even formulas for including precise numbers of keywords in headers and body text based on content length.

These days, search algorithms are much more adept at identifying mechanical, keyword-stuffed pages. Forever in the service of web searchers, Google’s ambition is to provide the best possible content to people using its service.

Take, for example, a method still practised by so-called SEO pros: sprinkling exact keyword phrases they want to rank for throughout their texts verbatim. This may well work for some keywords, but search queries usually don’t align well with the written language.

Consider the following sentences:

• “It’s difficult finding good doctors Seattle, Washington.”
• “Finding good, affordable doctors in Seattle, Washington, is challenging.”

Believe it or not, you don’t need to include exact phrases to rank for a given keyword. Google’s algorithms are highly sophisticated. They do much more than scan your page for precise matches. They know what your content covers, and they’ll rank it according to its value to readers. Not on how many exact keyword matches it contains.

Put simply, there’s no need to inundate your readers with awkward keyword-stuffed sentences.

Match Search Intents

Instead, focus on writing great content that matches the search intent of the keyword you’re targeting. If you’re creating a blog post about the difficulties of finding good doctors in Seattle, do your homework. Find out what the pain points are for this particular problem and then address them.

Once you know the essence of your content, its target keyword and who you’re writing to, be sure you blend it together naturally. Include the keyword in the headers and throughout the body, but don’t force it. It’s also a good idea to include it in the headers, meta tags and meta descriptions.

Another keyword best practice is to build clear strategies for each page of your site. Every time you create new content, whether a blog post or a landing page, you should optimize it for a keyword you haven’t targeted. Brands with the best SEO results assign specific keywords to each page so they don’t compete with themselves for rankings.

This is where adjacent keywords come in handy. If your goal is to boost another page, creating great content on related topics gives you more reach and visibility. And you can always connect your new page to the page targeting your primary keywords with internal links.

Link and Share Your Content

There are two types of links to keep in mind when creating SEO content: internal links and external links. Internal links connect the pages on your site, whereas external links are those on other websites, such as social media.

While external links are undoubtedly important, don’t underestimate the importance of internal linking. Don’t assume every person reading one of your blog posts will follow up their visit by perusing your products and services. Web browsing is more organic than that. Think about all the rabbit holes you’ve gone down on Wikipedia or YouTube.

As mentioned above, internal links are also crucial for redirecting visitors to the keyword-optimized pages you’re keen on ranking well.

In short, semantically link together blog posts, landing pages, product pages and any other pages as much as possible. Give your visitors ample opportunity to truly browse your site and get to know your brand.

Of course, if you’ve done your job well and created outstanding content, it’s likely to earn its fair share of engagement on social media. But don’t assume social media is separate from your SEO efforts, because they’re intimately related.

Social media platforms are excellent SEO boosters. Content shared across these platforms already has some serious search engine benefits by simply being on them. Moreover, many web users rely on Facebook and Twitter for much of their content discovery. If your brand doesn’t have an active social media presence, now’s a good time to start working on it.

Lastly, if you have a network of colleagues and bloggers who serve similar markets, consider reaching out to them to share with their networks. This gets you in front of the right people, boosts your social signal and builds relevant links back to your site.

Actionable Tips for Improving SEO in Content Creation

SEO best practices necessitate a holistic approach, with content creation at its centre. Only by focusing on every aspect of quality content creation can you expect great SEO results.

That said, some of your efforts carry more weight than others. The following three tips can help guide your content creation and improve your search rankings.

Focus on Keyword Intent and Relevance

This can’t be stressed enough. If you’re incorporating keywords without understanding the search intent behind them, you aren’t doing yourself or your brand any favours. And if you create keyword-targeted content that answers questions people aren’t asking, you’re doing more harm than good.

Understanding intent is tricky, but taking the time to understand what people are searching for with their words helps illuminate things. Early in the keyword researching process, always ask yourself the following:

• Do I know what kind of information the people searching this keyword are looking for?
• Does it make sense for my brand to have content that provides this information?

If someone’s looking for dinner, they may not be interested in learning about the science of baking. If they’re looking for quick and easy pizza recipes, they probably aren’t concerned with industrial-grade pizza ovens. Connect your brand to the content to the keyword — in that order.

Stay Current and Give Visitors a Reason To Return

Websites with dynamic, regularly updated content usually rank better than those with the same old information. Take Wikipedia, for example. It’s constantly evolving with new and updated information, and it’s why many search results have a Wikipedia entry in the top five.

If you’ve created some great content and managed to rank well for a few keywords, don’t rest on your laurels. Be proactive and keep making new content that supports and strengthens your core SEO strategy.

Aside from the SEO benefits, making sure your content stays fresh and current keeps your visitors coming back. It increases the chances they’ll rely on your perspectives and knowledge as their go-to source of market information. And that leads to more customer loyalty and builds trust in your brand.

Update Old Content

Incidentally, providing fresh content doesn’t always require a focus on new, new, new. One of the best budget-friendly ways for brands to improve SEO performance is by updating old content.

Search intents change over time. The content you created two years ago may no longer align with its keyword’s intent. It might also reveal opportunities for entirely new keywords. Updating aging content to better align it to the keywords currently in use versus when it was published is quick, easy and very effective.

The best part? You’ve already done most of the work. All you need is a fresh take on the information within, some keyword tweaking and perhaps a few additions to make the information current. Afterwards, you’ll have content that Google sees as both reliable and fresh.

Boost Your Content SEO With Crowd Content

SEO best practices aside, remember this above all: You’re creating content for human beings, not an algorithm. If your blog posts delight, engage, inform and entertain and your site adheres to the best practices outlined above, you’ll rank well. And better still, those results will last longer and be more resilient, even through changes to ranking algorithms. And that’s much more value to you and your brand in the grand scheme of things.

At the end of the day, both Google and your readers will love you for it.

Creating high-quality SEO-optimized content is no easy task. But you don’t have to do it alone. At Crowd Content, we’ve built a wildly successful platform that connects talented freelance writers to brands seeking highly polished SEO content at scale. If you’re ready to engage, entertain and inspire your readers and invigorate your SEO efforts, take a look at how we can help. And don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to find out more.

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