The 5-Minute Guide To Content Optimization

Content optimization is the key to unlocking search traffic for growing websites...  In this article and video, you'll find out how.

According to a study by NewsCred Insights, a reader spends only an average of 37 seconds reading a piece of content on the web.

Content Marketing is the only marketing left. – Seth Godin

Content Optimization Tips

This figure makes it quite evident that you need to optimize your content to make an impact in such a short time span.

Apart from this, we all know that content is among the top factors that play a role in Google SERPs ranking. A great piece of content, if not optimized, may never appear in Google search result pages.

Keeping these facts in mind, it becomes apparent that you need to use content optimization techniques to get the best results for your effort.

In this post, we'll give you a simple, 5-minute guide to content optimization. We'll give you tips and techniques that you can start using right now to create better content with the same effort.

But first, let's see what content optimization is.

What Is Content Optimization?

Content optimization is...

...the basic technique of refining your written content in such a way that provides value to users, while at the same time is in accordance with the search engine guidelines.

With more than 2 million blog posts published on the web every single day, making your content stand out has become more difficult than ever. However, according to the content marketing prodigy Rand Fishkin,

You can create content that is 10 times better than what is currently being found in the search results for a single phrase or keyword if you optimize it.

How Do You Optimize Your Content?

The important question that is still left unanswered is...how do you do content optimization? Well, there are some strategies that you can follow.

Are you looking to create content that really works well for your sales? 

Tip #1: Follow the 3C rule

Create Correct Content!

This should be the bottom line for every piece of content you draft. Some of the attributes of this correct content that we are talking about here have to be:

• Grammatically correct
• No typos
• Links to reputed sources
• Fact-checked for accuracy
• Valid citations

Remember, anyone can write on the web but not everyone can write right on the web. That’s the reason why not everyone is a content marketing expert. In order for you to claim that spot, the first step is to learn the art of creating correct content.

Tip #2: Don’t over-optimize

Keywords are the core of content optimization on the web. To make keywords work for your content, you need to understand how they actually work in optimizing your web copy.

Therefore it becomes more about how you are using the keyword in the copy instead of which keyword. Here are some basic tips that can help you in keyword-based content optimization:

• Avoid stuffing at all costs
• Make natural use
• Use keywords in the supporting image texts
• Using the keyword in headings, subheadings, and the title

Another thing that works here is incorporating the primary keyword in the first 100 words of the web copy.

Tip #3: Intent-based content optimization

When it comes to marketing on the web intent becomes the most crucial factor. Intent is what allows you to guess why the user is here and what’s the action he or she is going to take.

Therefore, the key to content optimization lies in understanding user intent.

Let’s take an example here.

Suppose you are selling shoes on the web. The first keyword that might come to your mind when writing web copy for it would be obviously:

• Shoes

Now let us add some more words to it:

• Sports shoes
• Sports shoes for men
• Sports shoes for men on discount

As we continue to add more words to the actual keyword it becomes a lot easier to guess the intent of the user. Isn’t it?

This is where persona building comes into the picture. Create customer personas to try to think as closely as possible to the real-life users and figure out their intent. This will help you figure out the keywords that will work the best for your content.

Tip #4: Re-optimize

The smartest way to leverage the power of your already existing content on the web is to re-optimize it.

This is what we're doing in the video...  Doing content optimization a second time, almost one year after the post was initially published!

There are many marketers who have shown that chances of your content performing better increase many a time if you keep updating it periodically.

Here are three tried and tested steps to re-optimize your content:

• Identify it
• Improve it
• Republish it

It becomes important, first of all, to identify which content did not perform according to your expectations. Once you have that figured out, the next step is to make the necessary changes, improvements and whatever it is that needs to be done. And once that is done, you know the drill – republish it!

Re-optimization is also a great way to gather social proofs, as your content is already a day old even if you republish it by updating after one day.

Quality is the key!

It is a common saying in the content marketing world that "a piece of content, no matter how good or great, won’t perform well unless it is well-optimized."

There is no denying that writing quality content holds the number one spot when it comes to content marketing tactics that work. However, optimizing it is equally important.

Marketers usually tend to focus on one of these two things. This is the reason even after creating great content they seldom succeed with their content marketing endeavors.

And, the ones who have managed to successfully crack the code of content optimization are enjoying their share of success for their handwork and effort.

If you are planning to get the best results out of your content marketing endeavors, it is time to follow the steps we have mentioned and see how it goes from there.

Want to master the art of creating great content for your business? Check out this free report.

If you'd like to jump on a call and work through a DFY Content Marketing Action Plan, click the button below to book a time in our schedule!

From The Video

To pull off content optimization, however, we are actually going to optimize this blog post.

Content optimization is a process and in this article, you can see that there is a lot of really information about content optimization.

Content optimization is the basic technique of refining your written content in such a way that provides value to users while at the same time is in accordance with the search engine guidelines. You create content that is 10 times better than what is currently being found in the search results.

So here's the thing though, this blog post was actually written a long time ago... And it is ranking for the keyword phrase "content optimization." Here's where we see that inside Google Search Console. There's lots of different SEO tools out there that you can do this kind of content optimization in. Google Search Console is a direct line into the search results, meaning you can see in an instant where your content is ranking, what keyword is ranking, and then the pages they're ranking on. I also like SEM Rush. We use SEM Rush a great deal. But for this kind of play, SEM Rush is really pretty overkill.

Inside Google Analytics Search Console

Here's what I like to do inside Google Analytics Search Console.

So I'll go down to performance. And your performance is basically the total number of clicks that this website has gotten. The total number of impressions, which is just under 500,000. The average click-through rate and then the average position.

I enable the average position because I want to see where our content is ranking.

Now if you scroll down a little bit we have Done For You, we've got all the different queries or keyword phrases that we're ranking for.

So again, this is everything in Google. I should have looked at it when it was up here, but there's over a thousand keyword phrases in this list right now. So the way it's by default kind of structured at first is you get to see the position.

• Done For You, we're ranked number 4.3
• Done For You marketing 1.3
• Done For You funnels 1.9
• Done For You agency number 2
• Done For You sales funnels number 1.9

So we're on the first page of Google, second spot.

Video sales letter software, we're down around number seven.

All good stuff, but not why I'm here.

Content Optimization: Finding The Opportunity

I'm looking to do some content optimization on the content that has already created on the website and rank better for that content. So what I do is I just filter the queries a little bit differently. I'm looking for impressions. Where are there super high impressions? Where are my blog posts or where is my content showing up in the search engines but yet it is not ranking all that high yet.

It might be ranked on the third page or fourth page or fifth page.

So if we go look at this list again, you see the "text message marketing," we're ranked on the sixth page of Google. Done For You has actually been seen 2,400 times on the sixth page of Google for text message marketing, which tells me that we move up to the second page, third page, the first page, we're going to start seeing a tremendous amount of traffic for that keyword phrase.

The same with "how to increase my domain authority." 2,400 searches, 2,400 impressions.

Lead generation system," 2,400 impressions,

"Increase online sales, 2,400 impressions."

So content optimization right here, this blog post, this video that you're watching is actually in response to this "content optimization" ranking.   For content optimization, we've got 1500 impressions and our position is 78. So if we click "content optimization," we will see that for a little while, we actually dropped off. But our average position is 70 to 80 somewhere in there and we're climbing a little bit, 87 89.

Content Optimization: Influencing Rankings

So knowing that this particular page is ranking for content optimization, then I can start to influence that rank.

• Creating a video, creating multimedia content, is one way of doing it.
• Adding an MP4 file as a podcast file is one way of doing it.
• Editing the page, adding some new sub-headlines, reworking the content a bit and just basically republishing with a different date is another way to do it.

So what we're doing is we're refreshing the old blog post and then we're putting a new date on it.

Using Multimedia Content And Transcriptions

Oftentimes what I'll do is I'll take this video and I'll get it transcribed with Rev.com.  Once that transcript is sent back, I'm adding it to the blog post (LIKE THIS) which is letting me create MORE content quickly and cheaply.  I'll go through and add some links and format it and all that other stuff. But I'm adding another thousand words to the blog post!

So again, all of these things tell Google that we're not messing around. I mean, we're here to play. We want this thing ranked for the keyword phrase they've already said we're qualified for, and we want to push the ranking up. And you do this for one blog post a week or two blog posts a week, then you're really ... you're off and running pretty quickly.

It might take two or three months to start climbing, just start inching up the rankings again. But you will get there. I mean, that's the process of content optimization. It is a marathon. I mean if you want quick traffic, paid traffic is the way to go. Put some money in, you know, drop some Facebook ads, start running some traffic, getting some clicks and moving people through your sales funnel. You want content, you want free traffic, it's going to take forever.

Now what I want to do is go back and look for all of the keyword phrases that that particular page is ranking for. So what we're going to do is we're just going to copy this content optimization. We're going to go back to Google Search Console, paste the page URL in, and hit apply.

We have three blog posts with content optimization, that keyword phrase in it. Now we are going to ... so now I've singled down to this guide to content optimization. Now I'm going to pull up queries. Now queries are going to tell me all the other keyword phrases that this blog post is ranking for.

Digging Into ALL The Keywords Ranking For A Product

So here we have:

• content optimization, which has got 1500 impressions
• content optimization techniques 132 impressions
• content optimization tips 131 impressions
• optimize your content for 44 impressions

Now if we click this average position again, it layers that average position on top of it again. So we have:

• what is content optimization 59
• content optimization tips 53
• content optimization techniques 47 and then 77.  These ones that are like page 16 and page 17, eh, we'll get there eventually.

But those aren't the ones where ... I mean we might throw that keyword phrase in the blog post, but our hope is to move the middle of the road stuff up and bring the back of the road up to the middle and then we just keep pushing stuff up to the front of Google.

Now this particular blog post ... so whenever I do this content optimization piece:

1. Record video
2. Get transcripts for that video
3. Add the text in to this blog post and format it.
4. Add that MP4 file as a podcast and shipped that podcast off to iTunes and Google Play.
5. Share the video and link on YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn.
6. Then I go through and optimize this content with the keyword phrases

So if you would like an action plan for content marketing, then click the button below this blog posts or go to https://doneforyou.com/start/ and fill out the short little form. And we will put together a content marketing action plan for you, for your business. We will talk about your offers and your products and your services and whatever.