Optimizing Your Content For SEO

Content is a very important factor in getting a high ranking result on search engines, and many small businesses don’t realise this.

For search engines, the word content means words and a lot of them. Media isn’t included as far as search engines are concerned and it doesn’t affect your ranking. It is possible to be high ranked in a search engine with little words and lots of pictures and if that’s the case, Kudo’s to you! However, in general, content-rich sites are what rank highest.

Find target keywords that your competitors overlook

See what random things your audience searches for to do with your product or service. If you are a local business like a lawyer or a shop, localize your focus keywords and keep them precise, Lawyer In Canterbury for instance. Go onto WordTracker and see what is being searched for in your sector and see what variations there are. Incorporate spelling mistakes as quite often people spell things wrong in a search engine.

Keep your writing natural and don’t stuff keywords in as it looks unprofessional and Google can penalise you.

Create Libraries Of Content

I understand small businesses find it difficult to produce their own content, even more so when you are a sole trader. When your competitors have hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages of content on their website it’s hard to compete.

A quick and easy idea is find articles that are related to your industry and summarise them on your website. Always ask and link back to the original owner as otherwise it would count as plagiarism. This is covered under fair use copyright, as you are not claiming as your own. While you’re doing this, why not ask the article writer to link back to your website in return? Getting links to your website is also beneficial to your SEO.

Review products or services that are in your line of work. For instance, I write about my opinions on Buffer, Sprout Social, Canva, PicMonkey as my career is in marketing. Put plenty of keywords into your reviews and summaries, you never know, one day people might send you free stuff to review.

Answer Questions

Every question you have ever been asked about your industry makes a perfect blog. While, at the time you probably gave a shorter answer, you should elaborate deeper on the subject. If somebody wants an answer to a question they literally type it into a search engine and see what comes up, which is why Yahoo Answers and Ask are so popular. Having a blog increases your SEO substantially when updated regularly.

How To Tutorials

Another great way to produce content is how to tutorials. If there’s anything that your users could possibly get stuck on with your industry then write in-depth how-to guides on your products or services. Use relevant keywords and keep the title clear. If you’re feeling confident enough you can even create a video and upload it across all platforms whilst linking back to your website.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Try to update your website every time something changes, and post on your blog regularly. I recommend 2 or 3 posts a week, however 1 post a week can still make a huge difference.

Product Information As Content

If you are distributing another companies products, contact them direct an ask for any materials that you can use on your website. As long as you have permission you can fill your website up with plenty of content and all it took was an email or two to get it. This can be technical information, brochures or press releases. Quite often press releases have no copyright and are widely available.

 Rewrite the content in your own words to make it unique otherwise Google can penalise you for this.

Remember, you want content that has your keywords in it, otherwise it is quite pointless. If you are a business selling candles, you want keywords like candle, scent, wax, relaxing, aroma as well as the scents that you sell etc.