You must have heard the popular saying that “Content is king.” This is true in SEO as a means of raising your brand awareness. Why is this so? This is because users are delighted whenever they find search results that meet their needs. This implies that your primary job with SEO is to develop engaging and relevant content.

That’s hard to chew, right? Well, that’s because SEO is similar to other skills where you must put in considerable effort to realize tremendous results. In the same way that having the best marketing technique won’t help you make sales on a bad product, SEO is ineffective without quality content.

What Makes Good Content?

There are a plethora of elements that come into play when creating top-notch content. Here are a few of them.

Intent

Search engines place a lot of preference on the intent of the content. It strives to understand what the user is looking for each time they input a search query. Google, for example, will try to deduce if the user is;

• Is trying to make a purchase
• Wants to know about something
• Planning to window shop
• Requires a service

As a business owner and content creator, you must understand the importance of publishing content that meets the searcher’s intent by adopting this SEO method. You cannot create “best tripod stands” content and use “retort stand” as your seed keyword. This is pointless because people only need information about tripod stands, and creating content with an unrelated keyword provides them with the wrong information.

Quality

The quality of your content stands out of the bunch. Today, many online businesses have blogs that add value to their website and enable them to rank on Google. Creating quality content is not easy as it involves you putting in the extra effort to be unique. However, you don’t always have to come up with content from scratch as you can build on what other creators have made, adding more value to it and in-depth analysis to make it great.

The point is that your content must be informative and relevant to users' search intent. Your content is not solution-driven; users will waste no time clicking away from your web page in search of more quality content. So, to keep users visiting your site, there’s a need for continuous publication of quality content.

Freshness

Freshness is another way to stay afloat in search engine ranking. When you publish quality content frequently, you stand a chance to get more noticed than websites that rarely publish content. However, the frequent content publication is just one way of signaling freshness to search engines. There are other ways to modify already published content and make it updated.

Updating old content with more recent and relevant information goes a long way in helping you rank high. Also, fixing broken links and refreshing old statistics help with content freshness.

Businesses often carry out keyword research for two primary reasons. The first is to rank high on Google, while the other is to create engaging content. Keyword research is beneficial for creating an opening for inspiration by showing you what it is that people want based on what they inquire about from Google.

What Makes Good Keyword Research?

There is more to keyword research and selection than combing through an endless list of keywords, picking anyone randomly. You need to understand the level of competition behind each keyword, as well as the intention. Quite fortunately, there are a bunch of keyword research tools that help with this information. Still, let’s study those factors that make up good keyword research.

Selecting the Right Keywords

Selecting the right keyword cannot be overemphasized when utilizing Search Engine Optimization for your content marketing. If your business offers a service that costs users $500 per month, you will attract the wrong audience, even if you rank #1 for a different keyword like “free service tips.”

The chosen keyword will mainly attract people searching for free services. That implies that you will get a lot of traffic on your website, but when action matters, they probably won’t subscribe to your service. When researching keywords for your content, you must understand the role of that keyword in achieving your business purpose. Think of it as a way of getting results rather than visits, even if it means giving away thousand-page visits.

Analyzing Keyword Competition

What’s next after selecting the most appropriate keyword for your content? You need a competent keyword tool to help you understand related keyword ideas. Naturally, you may gravitate towards keywords with high search numbers. Most businesses make the mistake of trading keyword competition analysis for keyword volume.

For example, the keyword “content marketing” gets up to 35,000 searches in a month. One can easily say, “Great! This has so much search volume; let me go for it”. However, the massive competition attached to the keyword is unknown to the business owner. You don’t just want to select an appropriate keyword; you want to ensure that you understand the competition around such keywords.

How to Select the Best Keyword

You can be sure of using the most appropriate keyword when you follow the selection advice below:

1. Using Keyword Tools: That’s right! Selecting the best keyword for your content happens with the help of keyword tools like Ahrefs. These tools make life easier for you by giving you additional information about keywords and information like the competition you’re up against.

2. Trail Your Competitors: Yes! You can also be sure of selecting the best keyword when you trail your competitors. If a business is ranking high for your chosen keyword, you can monitor what they are doing to rank high by inserting its site URL in a keyword tool.

As a business intending to grow, your website’s HTML is vital to Search Engine Optimization content marketing. You must have deployed the proper use of components like headers, title tags, Meta descriptions, and so on for a search engine like Google to grasp what your content is all about entirely. People often get discouraged when they find out HTML is a part of Search Engine Optimization. Don’t worry; you won’t be writing blocks of code.

What Makes Good HTML Practice in SEO

In this section of the article, we will look at key elements that play essential roles in HTML practice.

Meta Description

This section is more like the front cover of your publication, where you give readers a taste of the entire content. It is recommended that you optimize this section with the appropriate

keyword. Meta descriptions are always not more than 160 characters for easy display on PC and mobile.

Title Tags

The title tag of your content is what readers will click when your content comes up on the Google result page. This is the most crucial heading, with a blue/purple color that stands out. You want to ensure your title tag contains your primary keyword and is not unnecessarily prolonged.

Subheadings

The H1, H2, and H3… tags are perfect examples of subheadings. Using the proper order of subheadings in your content helps Google to read your page smoothly and helps the readers understand the flow of your content. The H1 header tag is for your content title, while H2, H3, and so on are descending subheadings. Using the proper subheading alongside other best HTML practices in SEO will present your content as relevant to search engines.

Alt Text

The function of alt text is to describe images in your content. This is a part of SEO, and many content creators do not use it. The essence of alt text is to make search engines read out what images in your content look like to readers with a visual impairment. You want to make this more descriptive, with a touch of keywords integrated.

Links are considered one of the key factors that get your content on top of Google SERPs. A strong link profile may take years to build, but you’ll be glad to have taken it the right way. Let’s show you the way around building solid links.

What Makes up a Solid Link Profile

Here are some essential factors to consider when building a link profile for your website.

Quality

It is not always about quantity when it comes to link building. You want to ensure that every link on your site is of good quality. Building your site link should be to the end that readers are getting value, not just a bunch of clicks that lead to irrelevant content. The point of link building is for search engines to reward content creators who provide their reader's value through link building. Before stuffing your website with dozens of links, think of the quality of individual links.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is used underneath links in your content. They allow readers to take specific actions while going through your content. A good example is a text that says, “Click here to read more” when you go through a product description. The anchor text aims to flow naturally with the content and add value. So, if your content talks about “gaming computers,” you want to anchor a link to a text that says “best gaming PC” rather than “gaming smartphones.”

When building your site link profile, always remember to do away with hazardous links. Also, do not forget to include internal links in your content.