Many marketers used to think that content and SEO were separate elements. This is a huge mistake. Let’s find out with the DigiZiraffe team how SEO and content optimization are closely related.

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Identification of the subject and organization

Focus on keyword optimization

Content quality

Content Length Content Update

They say: Content is king. As cliché as it may sound, there is a lot of truth to it. SEO and content are intertwined and are two inseparable elements. (In other words: if your content is garbage, there is no point in doing SEO). That is why the Digital Giraffe team decided to share practical tips on creating a successful content strategy in this SEO guide.

Identification of the subject and organization

Your content strategy should be based on a good understanding of your audience’s niche and needs. We covered the first step in this process, finding the right keywords, in the previous chapter. The second step is identifying topics. Now, many times the keyword is also a standalone topic. But that’s not always the case. Look at the example below:

Let’s say you have an online marketing blog and you have several keywords like:

• How to start a blog
• How to create a blog
• How do you start a blog?
• How to start your own blog

You may notice that although the words are different, they are all about the same thing, creating a blog. It would make no sense to create a separate post for each of them. Instead, we will group them under one topic (how to create a blog) and cover it in one comprehensive guide that can potentially rank for each of these keywords.

(If you do a quick SERP analysis, you’ll notice that the search results for all of them are pretty much the same.)

Once you have determined the topic, you can go back to the keyword level and choose the one that best represents your topic, the main (focused) keyword (also called the target keyword). The basic principle of content strategy for SEO is simple:

1 page = 1 topic = 1 focus keyword

To choose a focused keyword, you should follow the keyword research principles we explained extensively in the previous chapter: consider search volume, difficulty, and relevance.

How to organize topics?

A great way to plan and organize your topics is to use a content hub. A content hub is a collection of pages that are all related to a specific topic. Pages are related to each other and provide an overview of the topic as well as deeper insights into subtopics. There are two types of content to achieve this:

• Pillar Content: A column page that provides an overview of a broad topic and usually targets a broad keyword (such as running).
• Cluster Content: Support pages that focus on subtopics with more detail but centered around the main keyword (e.g. benefits of running, running shoes, jogging mistakes)

This strategy has several advantages:

• You create more value for your readers by covering each topic in detail, they don’t have to visit other websites to learn everything about a particular topic.
• You have to plan and structure your content and cover all the important keywords systematically.
• You increase your authority on specific topics by linking to pages that are topically close.

Target different types of meaning and concepts. When choosing topics for your content, remember that there are different types of search intent (see previous chapter)—informational, navigational, transactional, and business. You’re not forced to “sell” in every post. By focusing on different types of search intent (including informational intent), you can target different stages of the buyer’s journey. As a side benefit: You will establish yourself as an authority in this field. You will build trust and brand awareness. You will reach new users (who may later convert)

Core keyword optimization

Once you focus on a keyword, you should use it to optimize your page for that topic. Here is a list of all the elements where you can use your main focus keywords:

• Title tag and meta description
• URL
• Title and subtitle
• Body text
• Image metadata
• Anchor text of internal links

Title tag and meta description

It’s very important to include your main keyword in your title tag (and to some extent in your meta description). Ideally, it should be as close to the beginning of your text as possible. If you’re writing about a specific topic, it’s natural for your keyword to appear in on-page elements that summarize the page’s content. Here’s an example of a SERP snippet for our post on “7-Step SEO Strategy” with your main SEO strategy keyword.

We’ll learn more about optimizing title tags and meta descriptions in the next chapter.

URL

Your URLs should be short and readable. This isn’t the most important SEO factor, but it can help. One advantage: If someone links to your page with a so-called “raw URL,” the backlink will include your main keyword.

Headlines and main text

The best practice is to use your main, central keyword in the H1 title of the page. If necessary, it may be used in some subheadings. Finally, it should appear several times in the main text.

Always remember that there is no such thing as the ideal number of keywords on a page (although this is known as keyword density). In fact, by trying to use a certain number of keywords in your text, you may end up doing more harm than good. (Come on, raise your eyebrows, gouge your eyes out, hehehe)?

Image metadata

You can include your core keyword in the image metadata, for example:

• Name of the image file
• Image title
• Image title
• Image Alt Text
  Alt text is the most important from an SEO perspective, it describes the image for visitors who have difficulty viewing the image (for example, their internet connection is cut off and only the image text is displayed) as well as crawlers (who can’t “see” your image).

This doesn’t mean you have to put it in all of these places. If your primary keyword is “outdoor sports” and you’re showing an image of a man climbing a mountain, you don’t need to use the alt text “man doing outdoor sports.”

Anchor text of internal links

Last but not least, you should use the focused keyword in the anchor text of your internal links. Anchor text is the visible part of the link. If it contains the focused keyword, you are telling Google what the page you are linking to is about. Here is an example: Learn SEO from Beginner to Advanced ?

Note: The same goes for external links. However, you can’t always influence the anchor texts on external pages that link to your site. In fact, manipulating the anchor texts of your backlinks can be very dangerous (it’s a big “no no” for Google). We’ll talk more about that in the link building chapter.

Now, the most important part about optimizing your page for your focus keyword: Don’t force the keyword into the text. If your focus keyword is “best content marketing strategy for small businesses,” using it in every element on the page just to tick off the wrong SEO checklist for the text is crazy.

Use common sense and write naturally.

What about LSI keywords? Many “SEO gurus” recommend using so-called LSI keywords. What they mean is that you should find synonyms and related keywords and sprinkle them throughout the page to make sure Google knows what you’re about. The truth is that LSI keywords are just a dangerous SEO myth. Here’s why: This term is meaningless and has nothing to do with the original latent semantic indexing algorithm. The “technique” places a lot of emphasis on the idea of artificially using specific words, which poses a huge risk to the integrity of your text (and usually leads to keyword stuffing). John Mueller, a webmaster trends analyst at Google, summarized the LSI keyword phenomenon as follows: “There is no such thing as LSI keywords, anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, sorry.” What to do instead? Think “how to make the post as relevant as possible”, not “how to stuff the post with keywords so that Google thinks it’s relevant”. It’s actually very simple: analyze your competitors, study the topic and cover it in a comprehensive way. If you do this, Google will figure out the topic of your page.

Content quality

Today, it is much harder to rank for almost any keyword than it used to be, most niches are oversaturated. But there is one strategy that absolutely works, creating content that is 10x better than your competitors, also known as the “10x Content” strategy.

In fact, this type of content has these characteristics:

better quality

• Cover the topic more thoroughly than your competitors (you can literally look at the top-ranking pages and try to figure out what could be done better)
• Provide more up-to-date information and data
• Provide more expertise (valuable and specific information from experts) and credibility (cite trusted sources)
• Be original, use unique data, offer new angles, experiment.
• Links to other high-quality related resources

Is “linking” to other websites good for SEO? Many people are afraid to link to other websites because they don’t want to “send their visitors away.” The truth is, linking to other quality resources can be beneficial to you from an SEO standpoint. Linking to relevant content helps strengthen the local signals of your pages. This can help Google better understand the context of your site and provide added value to your visitors.

Better design

• Use a unique layout for the most important parts of your content.
• Add stunning visual media (images, infographics, charts, gifs, screenshots, videos)
• Use your own images and avoid duplicate photos.

Better UX

• Make sure the text is legible (font type and size) and free of grammatical errors.
• Avoid long paragraphs and texts, write short, digestible paragraphs.
• Use navigation elements (like a table of contents) for longer pages
• Use quotes, info boxes, bulleted lists, bolded sentences.
• Optimize the technical aspects (we will talk about this in the next chapter)

Content length

Many people think that content length is a ranking factor. There is a famous study that shows that posts with around 2000 words rank better on Google.

While it is true that longer content ranks better on Google, it is not the number of words that brings high rankings. It is the fact that longer posts usually cover the topic in a more comprehensive way.

Expert Insights by Julia McCoy/Content Marketer, Founder of Express Writers Today, if my goal is to rank for a focused keyword, I would never create blogs with less than 2,000 words. In fact, to prove this, I launched a whole new site called Content Hacker. This was my “content length” experiment. Could I rank with just 11 blogs for at least a few dozen keywords, if those blogs were “megablogs” with 5,000 words each? In less than three months, we ranked for 2,500 keyword positions. Most of my 11 blogs are now ranking in Google for their focused keyword. Crazy?! The thing is, as a writer, you can’t “bluff” 2,000 to 5,000 words about your topic. And to get those rankings for Google’s “Expertise – Authority – Trustworthiness” qualification, you have to be an expert in your field. The length and comprehensiveness of the content essentially checks the “expert” box. Again, there are no shortcuts. You need to be an expert in the topic you are writing about and you need to prove it when writing the content.

So how can you approach content length?

• Look at the average word count of pages ranking for your core keyword to give you a rough idea of the length of the content. (For example, if every post in the first SERP is 2000+ words, you probably won’t rank with an 800-word article.)
• Cover the topic in a comprehensive way that covers everything a potential reader might want to know.
• Always remember that a large number of words alone will not improve your ranking. Focus on the quality of the content, not just the quantity.

Listen to me: Correlation doesn’t always mean causation in SEO. If something (like longer posts) is correlated with higher rankings, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a direct ranking factor.

Update content

Content rot is a real thing. No matter how successful a piece of content is, it’s likely that traffic will gradually decline unless you keep it fresh and up-to-date. Andrew Tate noticed that many successful blog posts follow the same traffic curve and described this phenomenon as the 5 stages of the content lifecycle:

So, how do you make sure your post doesn’t get forgotten over time? The answer is: regular and consistent updates. Regularly updating content is an important (but often overlooked) SEO technique.

One reason why updating content may have a positive impact on your rankings is that Google pays attention to the frequency of updates and tends to favor pages that are updated frequently for certain queries.This means that not every topic needs fresh content, but many do. Even if that’s not your case, updating is a relatively easy way to improve the quality of your content, which is never a bad thing.

Give me the meat: There’s a handy free tool by Animalz that can connect to your Google Analytics account and identify pages that may need updating based on decreased traffic.

Update vs. Re-release

While smaller changes to your pages don’t require any special steps, a major overhaul is probably worth republishing the post, so that it shows up at the top of your blog feed and lets readers know that the post has undergone a major update. Here are some reasons why you might consider republishing your post:

• Update affects more than 50% of content
• You have added a significant amount of new content.
• You have merged 2 or more posts into one post.
• Reposting is also a great opportunity to re-promote your post on social media and newsletters or start a new link building campaign.