With Google’s latest algorithm adjustments, search engine optimization has drifted away from keywords and shifted to focus on content quality. While keywords are still a very relevant and powerful tool in getting your site noticed, search engines are becoming increasingly more intelligent.
What is Quality Content?
Most quality content is said to show signs of creativity, readability, organization and solid research. While there isn’t an exact formula for how to convey all these things, we have some suggestions on getting you started.
Make sure the topic is within your scope
Articles relevant to the products you’re selling should be your focus. While it might be tempting to post about outside topics, the opportunity to educate your audience and relate to your business shouldn’t be missed.
Image placement
Placing images that are too large, irrelevant, or in bad taste can negatively effect your SEO as well as the amount of time your audience spends on an article.
Answering a question
Most effective articles help their audience in some way. In doing so, they create a sense of trust and familiarity between the company and its audience. By focusing on a central question it’s easier to structure an article and create a higher quality of content.
Keywords
Tools such as Google AdWords can help you to define leading keywords to use within your content. While they aren’t as crucial to SEO as before, they’re still helpful in smaller doses, and might help you to better articulate your message.
Backlinks
Linking to previous and relevant articles creates credibility. Many search engines are able to pick up on this, and will raise your site’s ranking as a result. Aside from this, it’s an excellent way of networking with other sites, as well as highlighting previous content.
Building & Keeping your Audience
As mentioned above, quality content is crucial in addressing your audience. Outside of this, it’s important to remember the factors that should addressed to make your articles powerful. For example, having a clear understanding of your brand and its goals is imperative when creating content for your site. Additionally, having a site that is free of security issues, excessive banner-ads and pop-ups will make your audience more likely to take you and your message seriously.