In your constant search for the perfect tweak to boost your organic traffic, it is safe to say that there are a few positive things you can do, but like anything worthwhile, it will take time for your efforts to be fruitful.
So far we have not found a way to outsmart Google, so the best way to improve your SEO is to avoid trying any sneaky tricks, such as keyword stuffing with irrelevant keywords or begging large websites for backlinks, especially if they are not relevant to your business.
Instead focus on delivering high-quality, useful content that will be valuable to your web visitors.
Table of Contents
Mission-driven content
Your content strategy should focus on the ‘why’ of your brand and not simply generating content to boost your search volume. Mission-driven content marketing strategies are all about making your web content more human.
Taking a more human approach to content SEO was a hot topic at the recent INBOUND2020 held in September. OK, so giving your content the human touch may not be a new idea, but giving your content SEO a mission was a key focus here.
How often have you written content that had a very different mission than your company’s mission statement?
This happens more often than you may think as your marketers will be creating content with an SEO ranking mission in mind rather than reinforcing your company mission statement and core values.
What will build strong SEO and long-lasting success is producing content that helps to support your company mission before trying to hit keyword targets. It’s all about creating a rich library of content that comes from the core of your business, which matters, and not something that has been created for vanity metrics.
Creating more valuable content ROI
Every piece of content you create for your website, blog, social media, and every video or podcast you record needs to deliver a worthwhile ROI.
However, you should aim to create content that inspires people who share your same passions and beliefs.
These are the people that will appreciate the value of the content you deliver and will stick around for more. When you get a web visitor who likes what they see and becomes a follower by signing up for your newsletter, follows your social media, subscribes to your YouTube channel etc. They will be more likely to share your content with their peers, who may also be in your target demographic with the same tastes, likes and needs.
You will be reaching people with your content that makes them feel something. They will be more inclined to save, bookmark and share content that resonates with them on an emotional level.
Content strategy built for engagement
Those who engage with your content will be more willing to react to it, whether that is to click through a link to buy your product or service, or to sign up for your email alerts, or to follow you on social media.
They will also feel comfortable talking about it online and offline to friends and family that they think will benefit from your information. For you, it will be like recruiting a rolling army of unpaid brand ambassadors that will happily talk about your information over coffee with friends, or in a chat on social media.
It’s like building a growing community that will take your message (and company mission) to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and giving it a big shout-out to everyone about how your product or service has made a big difference in their lives.
This sort of rolling engagement and spreading of your content will make for more impactful SEO than hitting vanity metrics that are quickly picked up and then forgotten about by people.
Remember that your web rankings will greatly improve when users spend more time on your website consuming your content, rather than when a user clicks on a hot keyword, lands on your site, realizes it’s not what they are looking for and quickly clicks away.
Delivering content that serves users’ needs
While we all should know by now that delivering content that best serves our users’ needs is a priority, especially since the 2013 Google Hummingbird algorithm update, what does that mean in practice?
It means that your web content strategy shouldn’t be based solely on keyword research alone. This is because not all of your target audience’s needs will be captured in that search. It can also mean that you start creating content that is based on high-ranking keywords rather than actually telling people what is unique about your business, product or service.
There is still an important place for keyword search. While there is no harm in weaving in relevant keywords into your content, and by doing so you may well end up increasing your organic traffic, but will the rest of your content be engaging and passionate enough to convert your users into customers?
The simple answer here is to make sure that your content strategy isn’t ‘keyword-first’ focussed but instead acts to engage with your users in a more human, audience-centric way that will encourage emotional connectedness and trust, and then make your keyword research a close second.
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Related posts:
- How Your Content Strategy Will Help Your SEO - December 27, 2020
SEO – the never ending job! I always try to focus on user enjoyment although that can be quite difficult when all you’re trying to do is sell them a bouncy castle! We’ve been lucky as we have some pages written about home hot tubs that have suddenly stated ranking well due to changes in peoples lifestyles due to Covid lockdowns and this seems to have raised our overall rankings for other keywords too. if only there was an easy magic formula for SEO!
It’s funny to see how search results have changed and Google has adapted to what people are looking for due to the impact of COVID. It’s an interesting peek at how the algorithms work to ensure people are getting the most relevant search results. Thanks for reading!