You’ve slaved over creating amazing content that shares your expertise and provides value to your audience. But now what? How do you ensure that content actually reaches the eyes and feeds of your ideal customers amid the dizzying sea of online noise?
The answer lies in the often overlooked art of content optimization. It’s the special sauce that can take your content from invisible to superstar status – driving a steady stream of organic traffic while ensuring visitors stick around and take your desired actions.
As a marketer in the trenches, I can’t overstate how pivotal content optimization is to any successful content strategy. When you purposefully optimize every piece of content, you maximize its potential for higher search rankings, increased user engagement, and ultimately, more conversions and revenue for your business.
Want in on this success secret? Here’s my step-by-step guide for whipping your content into prime, optimized condition every single time:
Step 1) Do Your Keyword Homework
Before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), research relevant keywords that your target audience is using to search for topics related to your content. Identify high-volume terms with low competition to target – these will be your content optimization guiding stars. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and kwfinder.com are super helpful for this.
Step 2) Craft Content with an SEO Backbone
With your keyword targets set, infuse your content with a strong SEO framework by:
- Using your primary keyword in the title and repeatedly (but naturally!) throughout
- Including related secondary keywords and semantic variations
- Structuring content under helpful subheadings with keyword-rich titles
- Optimizing images with descriptive file names, alt text, and captions
- Linking out to other authoritative, relevant sources
Step 3) Obsess Over the User Experience
While technically optimized content fuels rankings, you also need to create an awesome, engaging experience to keep users hooked. Optimize for human beings by:
- Kicking things off with a magnetic introduction that grabs attention
- Using simple, conversational language and breaking up text with images/visuals
- Including persuasive calls-to-action to guide users toward your goals
- Allowing seamless sharing to social platforms to amplify reach
Step 4) Shout Your Optimized Content from the Rooftops
Don’t let your brilliant, optimized content go to waste in the abyss of the internet! Promote that puppy through strategic channels like social media, email newsletters, online communities, influencer outreach, paid advertising, and more. Squeeze every ounce of potential from the content you worked so hard on.
Step 5) Make Content Optimization an Endless Cycle
Content optimization is a continuous process, not a one-and-done endeavor. Always be iterating and refining by revisiting your older “greatest hits” content and freshening it up with new sections, updated information, re-optimization based on evolving best practices, and a fresh promotional push.
With a blend of technical optimization and obsession over serving your audience’s needs, you’ll create an unstoppable force of content gold that keeps ’em coming back for more…and your business flourishing.
Still feel like you need a content optimization lifeline? My team lives and breathes this stuff. Shoot me a message and we’ll get your content primed for total domination.