The Important Role of Content in SEO
When one hears “SEO,” it’s almost automatic to start thinking of technical matters such as links, website indexing, and so forth. One crucial element that people tend to overlook but has quite the impact is content and producing quality content that assists SEO.
But what exactly does content have to do with search engine optimization?
Keywords
Keywords are the most crucial factor in getting your page noticed by search engines. Given the process of users inputting queries when searching online, making sure your content matches their queries via the right keywords is the trick to appearing on the results of potential customers.
Targeting Your Audience
Whether you’re aiming for local customers or an international audience, including the necessary keywords in your article or blog post should be done with as naturally as possible. For example, if you’re a baked goods store in Toronto looking for a better presence among your local customers, you can’t just place “bakeshop in Toronto” randomly within each paragraph.
It’s not just a matter of not appearing spamm-y (and avoiding penalization), it’s also about actually providing content that audiences will stop and pay attention to. Even if your ultimate goal is to advertise to users, quality should remain top priority.
Different Kinds of Content
SEO marketers and writers typically come up with different kinds of content to place the necessary keywords in. These are some of the most used types, and each one helps to contribute to a level of variety in terms of website content.
Articles
Almost every website is bound to contain a whole bunch of articles. Articles can literally be about anything – from informative pieces to features on an event. Also, they’re typically lengthy and leave a lot of room for elaboration.
Similar to what you’d read in a magazine or newspaper, while they’re not completely formal in tone, they’re not to be overly friendly, either. Articles typically keep a sensible tone that helps introduce important keywords and even establish an air of authority as well.
Blog Posts
Another very popular type of web content is blog posts. These are typically a bigger hit with younger audiences because of the playful tone used as well as the shorter length of the posts.
If your branding allows for it, blog posts can be great for when you want to appear more casual and personal to your audience. They also make it easier to “naturally” incorporate keywords into the text.
Infographics
With infographics, meanwhile, you get to really start diversifying your content since images are now involved.
From serious statistics to quirky (but still educational, of course) comics, infographics allow you to present matters such as product information to your audience in a way that’s easier to absorb thanks to the assisting images and introductory and concluding paragraphs containing the keywords.
Videos
Videos are the ultimate content diversifier – you move from just making the audience just look at/read something to creating a more dynamic experience thanks to moving images and even sound.
Videos don’t have to be published as often, but when they are, they should come with a paragraph or two of explanatory/introductory/concluding points where you can casually slip in keywords.
Making Sure Your Customer Gets Something Out of It
Apart from providing your customers your pitch, it’s important that you’re actually giving them something to take away from your posts as well.
Remember, these are people and you’re asking for their time. Respecting that, providing content that will be worth their while should be part of any effective site as it shows customers that you acknowledge them as humans and not as mere cash factories.
Helps You Build Domain Authority
Domain authority is the top factor in dictating the ranking of a website. You can go to sponsored content (aka PPC ads) all you want, but that’s all temporary. If you want a good ranking that actually sticks around, you’ll have to work on your domain authority.
Links
The best way to boost your domain authority is with links that lead back to your site, and such clicks that lead back to your site are made possible by your content being placed on popular sites. These inbound links are best achieved with engrossing content that’s well-written just for your audience and in accordance to their interests.
When your content is interesting and presents accurate information useful to your audience, you’re well on your way to becoming a go-to site for users, and with a better volume of regular traffic with little bounce rate, your website’s ranking is bound for better visibility.
Content is definitely more than just a website filler – it plays quite the significant role in getting you that increase in traffic.
This is why getting an SEO services agency with well-coordinated technical and content production teams is key in ensuring that your online campaign is geared toward a single goal, and that is building a presence for your site and better brand awareness for your company.