Using Your Content To Improve Search Results
Keywords are the words and phrases on your website that people will input into a search engine like Google when they’re looking for something on the internet. When you use keywords effectively, the search engines will index your website and drive visitor traffic to it.
FREE Checklist: SEO For Beginners
You can improve your keyword search results by optimizing the content you publish. You need to ensure it speaks to your audience but also shows search engines that your content is authentic, on topic and relevant to your audience.
10 Tips To Improve Your Keyword Search Results
1. Publish Content Regularly
Even if you have 100 articles ready to publish, don’t do it all in one day. Instead, drip the content out over a few weeks or months. The more content you have, the more opportunity there is to attract new and returning traffic to your website. Remember that quality content is better than lots of low-value content. If that means posting less, that’s okay, because it’s better than posting a lot of rubbish. More quality content means the search engines and your audience are fed a regular supply of useful information from you.
2. Promote the Content You Publish
Publishing regularly will eventually work even if you do next to nothing, but it could take years. Instead, take matters into your own hands and shout to the world about the content you want them to read.
Share on social networks, ask your readers to share, and get the word out.
3. Repurpose Your Content into New Formats
Once you create content in one format, remember to repurpose that content into a new format too. Some of your audience likes reading a blog post. Some would rather watch a YouTube video. Create your content in all the forms they like.
FREE Checklist: SEO For Beginners4. Name Files Properly
If you upload images and other files to your website, which of course you should, name them using keywords so that the search engines see them. Search engines can’t ‘read’ images but they can read the descriptions that you give them. An ‘alt image tag’ are the words that you use to describe your image. To improve your keyword search results, use keywords to describe the image and that will be picked up by the search engines. Don’t just use the word ‘image’ or ‘photo’.
5. Build Links Internally and Externally
Link building was trendy in the ’90s, and some people think it doesn’t work anymore. This isn’t true. It’s always worked, but when you build links now you need to do it strategically. Don’t let people link to you who aren’t authentic, authoritative or legitimate. Link internally to the content you want readers to see, but also content you want search engines to index.
6. Develop Headlines Using Keywords
A headline is designed to grab the attention of your viewers, but also it helps the search engines know what your content is about. They’ll match those keywords to keywords in the content to ensure it’s a match.
7. Make Your Content More Visual
Beautiful content with attractive images, colors, and an easy to read typeface grabs your audience’s attention. But it also lets the search engine know that your website is legit and professional. You can learn more about optimizing your website images from Yoast, which is a comprehensive system for improving all the SEO on your website.
8. Use a Variety of Types of Content
Don’t just put up one type of content, switch it up. Add video, images, text-based content, infographics, and more to your website. The variety will help people learn better and signal to search engines that you’re authentic and providing lots of value.
FREE Download: 5 Step Content Strategy9. Choose the Right Keywords
Keywords need to be specific to your audience and your niche. There’s no point in adding keywords that fit another idea or niche to grab traffic because, ultimately, it doesn’t work. Take the time to use the tools of the trade, like SEMrush, to study keywords.
10. Optimize Search Results
After adding all the keywords, content, and more to your website, you’ll also want to ensure that the resulting search looks right. You can use a plugin like Yoast SEO to help edit the meta descriptions that will show up in the search results.
Free Checklist: How SEO Can Improve Your Keyword Search Results
Search engine optimization (SEO) is good for search engines, but it’s also useful for your audience. Optimization ensures the topics you choose to publish are relevant to your audience and that they can find your content due to the keywords and signals you provide the search engine bots.
Without SEO, you’re just hoping that the search engines will somehow stumble across your website, figure out what you’re writing about, and then hopefully send relevant and targeted traffic to your website. You’ve put a lot of work into your website so it makes no sense to just pray for luck where traffic and success is concerned. For more information on how to improve your keyword search results download my free checklist, SEO For Beginners.