Optimize Website Content: Quick Review

According to Google, title tags can “help a lot” with your rankings. It can help people searching to more quickly know which pages are most relevant to their search query. 

This is the first thing that people see and can help give a quick overview of your content. The more definitive you can get with your keywords to the title, the better it will rank. 

Optimize Website Content: Meta-Descriptions & Why You Need Them

A meta-description “is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your page for the benefit of users and search engines.” 

Google also really likes those creators who put meta descriptions on their content’s page and recommend that you write your own.

If you have a good meta description, then chances are your web page will have a good CTR, according to backlinko.com. Below is an excellent example of a well-written meta description:

Make sure to throw your keyword in the description because google bolds/highlights those keywords for people searching for your content and helps them find your content faster.

Optimize Website Content: Write Your SEO Content

So, when you are writing out your content, it’s always cool to look at others to give you ideas, structures, or starting points. But make sure that you aren’t stealing word for word.

So our best advice for creating content:

• Be originally yourself
• Help others by sharing valuable information

If you do these while writing your content out, we’re sure that you’ll rank higher in time. 

So what makes content original or unique?

Well, don’t make duplicate content. If you pull ideas from someone else, don’t just talk about their stuff.

You need to bring your voice and something new to the table. Here are some ideas:

• A New Tip or Strategy
• Better List of Curated Resources
• Strong Design & UX
• New Case Study (these are good, people like these, okay we like these)
• Streamlined step-by-step process

There’s a reason we keep referring to backlinko.com. Their content looks fantastic, it’s easy to read, to digest, and it has new information that others don’t.

They’re ORIGINAL!!!

So what are we doing differently, you may ask? We have a different voice, with different experience.

So we, through our voice, make it unique. We want our readers to learn and to laugh at the things we say.

Now the original content is gold, but it’s only the beginning. You need to help people know where to appraise it, how much it is, and what to do with it. Your content needs to be insanely valuable. 

How do I make insanely valuable content? Glad you asked.

• Add Details: images, screenshots, and steps to make it easy for someone to use
• Good Writing: Nothing worse than grammatical and spelling errors… 
• Update, Update, Update: Always update it if you find something new.
• Expertise: If you have firsthand experience with your content, write about it as you do! There are many freelancers out there who aren’t expert writers but still work in that capacity. Share a tip that no one knows, give some new valuable advice, teach them differently.

Doing these things will help you make sure that your content is valuable and will help a lot of people. 

So start with the basic checklist once your page is out.

Then you can dive deeper into it with more details.

Google has a number of great tools that will set you up for success:

Look at this great example from backlinko.

They did a fantastic job updating and revamping an already existing blog to help it get more traffic to the page. 

So just know if you feel you’re out of ideas, don’t worry. Just go back to an old blog and work on making it even better. 

Now I do want to take a second… How are you doing? This is a lot of information so I want to make sure that you’re drinking plenty of water and wearing those stylish blue light glasses you have on.

Are you good?

Great, let’s continue.

So here’s the deal, Google is pretty picky. It doesn’t just look at how many backlinks you have, or how much relevant content is on your site. Google also looks at User Experience. So, you may get ranked on page one, but if people don’t like your content, you won’t stay there. 

That’s just the fact of the matter.

So, do your research BEFORE writing your blog. Who else has written on that topic? Can you do it better? How competitive is the keyword you are trying to rank?

Backlinko did this and found out that the content they created had no chance to rank on the first page because the other pages were all tools that were running ads for their software.

So make sure to do your due diligence. Make sure that you don’t spend weeks writing up some fantastic content only to find out that no one will ever read it because of the competitive landscape. 

Be intentional about your content, be your original self, and research the crap out of your keywords and the Search Intent, so you don’t run into the same problem Backlinko did.

Optimize Website Content: Optimize for CTR

Okay, let’s review. What is CTR?

Click-Through-Rate

According to Larry Kim (not to be confused with Larry King), your CTR can be measured and changed with some initiative and revamping current content. 

His article talks about how he believes CTR can be measured.

He brings in some good points and graphs to show how CTR can increase your ranking. It makes sense because if more people click on your content, Google will likely reward it by ranking it higher. 

His key takeaway is to take content that isn’t doing so well and revamping it by:

• Including an emotional trigger in the title
• Promoting your content on social media
• Paid Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram
• Creating content that they call 10X Content (basically all the good stuff we’ve been talking about)

We like the ideas Larry from MOZ has, and we will share our favorite things to help you rank your content higher through a higher CTR.

Optimize Website Content: Make Your Title Tag A Question

It might seem obvious, but how many people search “Top 10 Ways to Increase Ranking through SEO” or “The Best SEO Tips.” 

People are probably more likely to search something along the lines of “What are the best SEO tips for a beginner?”, “How does SEO help my blog?”, “What are 3  SEO Tips I can apply today?”

So if you can, and it makes sense to have your title tag be a question, go ahead and draft a couple and see which one fits the best!

Optimize Website Content: Finish Filling In Missing Meta Descriptions

We briefly covered meta descriptions at the beginning of our blog it’s a great way to show people searching your topic to quickly know what your content is about and if it will answer the questions they have.

Remember, those small changes you make will give you that slight edge you need.

Optimize Website Content: Use Plugins To Help

Yoast & Rankmath are our favorite SEO plugins. They keep you on track when writing titles, meta descriptions, blog posts, and more.

Optimize Website Content: Emotions Can Help You

Now, Larry talks about using emotional title tags that trigger anger, fear, affirmations. We don’t like to trigger those emotions personally, but it’s entirely up to you and what direction you want to go. 

Our best piece of advice that we’ve been continually repeating throughout our article is to use them to make sense and not overload it and make it look like clickbait.

You want to connect with your audience, but people HATE and mean HATE feeling lied to or misled when looking for help. How would you feel if you asked for a raspberry shake, then you were promised a raspberry shake only to get it and have that first sip and taste like beets? 

I mean we love beets, but we hate misrepresentation.

Optimize Website Content: Add The Current Year To The Title & Meta Description

Adding the current year helps people know that your content is still relevant (or if it is not).

Adding a date to your content might make more sense for something technical versus an astrophysicist article on meteors. 

But adding the current year to your content can help people recognize that it’s up to date, and that helps build trust.

These are our advice to SEO basics and if you prefer to hire someone out we’d love to chat with you here.