Developing an effective content strategy requires many key elements. Each contributes to the overall results you get in your search rankings and marketing efforts. As content marketing evolves, so do the strategies required to achieve consistent results over time.
The importance of integrating your content with your search engine optimization (SEO) continues to be an essential component in your use of keywords and content.
Having an SEO-based approach to your content marketing allows you to create the content that’s valued by your audience and the search engines they use.
What’s Matters for Search
In today’s marketplace, content has become the cornerstone of SEO. Your audience uses content to gain information on the services you provide, find answers to their most relevant questions and get the solutions that address their most pressing problems.
Search engines have developed ways to rank content in order to maximize the results they provide to their users. Long-form content, for example, is viewed favorably by search engines that try to identify quality content to meet the needs of their users.
Content that has strong visual component, including images, video, infographics, etc., are ranked higher when compared to similar content that lacks these visual elements.
Knowing what the search engines (and your users) value in your content is the first step to getting better results from your content strategy.
Keywords Still Drive Content
The keywords you target with your content determine the results you achieve in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Keywords are those words and phrases that your audience uses to find the content they need. But the ways in which businesses utilize keywords has developed over time. The right implementation of keywords into your content makes it much more effective and provides a greater return on your efforts.
Traditionally, business owners and SEO professionals tried to match exact keywords in their marketing. But search engines have become more skilled at identifying what users are looking for.
SERPs include results that use related words and phrases that cover the same topic without requiring an exact match. This provides you with greater options for your content development.
What matters most in your keyword and content strategy is to identify those keywords that are most relevant to your business. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to create a list of the keywords that are related to your products and services.
Creating a list of these keywords lets you determine what your ideal audience is looking for as well as those keywords that the search engines value most.
Content Strategy
Once you’ve compiled a list of keywords, you can begin creating your content strategy. The content you create for users will target these keywords when you incorporate them into the creation process.
Every piece of content you create should have a targeted keyword in mind. This drives the content’s message, keeps it focused, and increases its likelihood of reaching the right users.
A content calendar lets you plan your content creation and distribution in advance. It leads to a more strategic approach that generates increased traffic to your site’s pages.
The following are some of the most important content elements that can be used to target your keywords:
- Headlines
- URLs
- Pate titles
- Alt tags
- Meta descriptions
These allow you to place your keywords in strategic locations that benefit both the user and search engines that must crawl and index your site pages, making it easy for your pages to rank for the right keywords in the SERPs.
Understanding how keywords can be used as part of your content development enhances its quality and attracts more of the right users to your website.
The best strategies for your use of keywords and content marketing will be highly individualized to your business and industry. Let us know what your business is struggling with in the comments below.
We’ll provide the feedback you need to implement a powerful keyword and content strategy that provides real results for your business.
