For any business looking to get found online, SEO content is crucial, and let’s face it, if you’re not looking to get found online, you’re not looking to get found at all. The digital world is where your customers are, and it is there that you need to stand out to them and stand apart from competitors. Many small business owners feel they don’t need SEO content because they obtain most of their business through word of mouth referrals. Although word of mouth marketing is an effective way to bring in business and build up your reputation, it’s not a scalable way to grow your business. Search engine optimization, on the other hand, is.
As businesses look to reopening, people are hungrier than ever for content. Media consumption is spiking as so many scour their laptops, phones, and tablets for information about which businesses are open, what products and services they can access nearby, and how businesses are adjusting to the “new normal”. In the coming months, businesses are going to be challenged to adapt their SEO content strategies to meet the constantly shifting needs of consumers. Now you have not only seasonal trends and personalization to contend with but different stages of business recovery and access across verticals and regions, too.
We have never before experienced a global, all-encompassing, and near-universal experience such as this. Nearly every customer has been affected in some way. Customer journey maps must be updated but moreover, it is critical now that you are set up to monitor and analyze customer data in as near to real-time as possible. Searсh data is rich in customer needs and intent. Now more than ever, consumers are turning to search engines for their every need. The insights gleaned from search trends and queries, local search analytics, and on-site activity will help inform the decisions your business must make going forward. According to Bright Edge research in B2B combined search averages 76% of traffic.
Get ready to move fast on opportunities for prime search visibility and share of voice, as there’s a distinct advantage to being the first-mover. Choose your content types wisely to ensure you’re presenting information to customers in the best format for their needs, devices, and intent, and experience.
Make sure these types of SEO content are part of your arsenal:
Text-Based Content Types
Text-based web content still drives the vast majority of search results. It can be made more interesting and engaging with the inclusion of other content types (which we’ll talk about in a minute), but a well-written article or webpage is still one of the most powerful tools in your content arsenal.
This is what Google calls “Main Content” in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines—“any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose”. It can be text, imagery, video, or even user-generated content, and includes the page title. The written word is often complemented by multimedia elements but usually serves as the basis on which the content piece is built. Writing is a great way to establish thought leadership, to guide users through step-by-step processes, to share opinions and perspectives and expertise. Landing pages, glossaries, listicles, feature stories, media releases—there are countless ways to tell your company’s stories and share messages in writing.
Visual Content Types
Images can feature prominently in search results, depending on the query, and can really enhance the quality of a piece of written content. They can help tell the story, illustrate specific points, help a reader envision a complex idea, and more. We know that image alt text helps Google understand an image’s relevance to the rest of the page content (and to the query, as a result). But it serves an even more important function: improving the accessibility of your content. By now, descriptive alt texts should be best practice for all content teams.
Google says that a picture truly is worth a thousand words, in some cases. Using the example of a trestle bridge, the guidelines state that “a picture may be more helpful than a text description due to the unique design of the bridge.” Keep this in mind as you create written content, if you’re writing at length to explain something, could an image help?
Video Content Types
More than 500 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube per minute and users still can’t get enough, devouring over a billion hours of YouTube content per day. If video isn’t yet a part of your content mix, this is the time to figure out how you’re going to make it so.
Videos can also count as the main content, and they’re great for augmenting written text. Explainers, how-to guides, product or service demos, behind-the-scenes looks, expert interviews, and more are all great material for a high-quality video. Protect the reputation of your creators and your site by ensuring that these best practices are employed in every video you publish.
Audio Content Types
The explosion in popularity of voice search and content formats such as podcasts and internet radio has made audio content a key component in the marketing mix. In optimizing audio content for voice search, you want to make sure you’re using structured data, concise headlines, and descriptions that help people understand what the content is about. Google’s main concerns about voice search as far as search quality goes have to do with mobile-friendliness. When a person uses their mobile phone for a voice query, for example, it’s not a good user experience if the page they are delivered to isn’t optimized for mobile.
For audio content such as podcasts, the content you create around the episode is key. In fact, you should be considering SEO content implications even as you choose your topics and structure your shows, to ensure you’re talking about things people are actually lооking to hear about. Optimize your podcast title and description in the same way you do other web content, around a focused keyword. Write a blog post that helps people understand what the episode is about and share a transcript, if possible.
Interactive Content Types
Webinars, virtual events, online courses, and other similar interactive content, when put together wеll, offer great value for participants and therefore can be considered quality content by Google. We’re about to see an explosion in their popularity, given the potential long-term implications of the corona-virus pandemic, too. You can improve the interactive strength of your SEO content and virtual events by creating and optimizing supportive content for each channel in which you’ll promote the event. Create graphics to promote the speakers. Shoot a quick explainer video that tells people what they will learn or experience if they participate.
And don’t just hold the event and forget it about it—share the recording, write a wrap-up blog post, create an infographic with the top takeaways, create an ebook, and more. Ask participants to share their best photos and feedback and share them on a dedicated page on your site.
Well, there you have it. You are now armed with the information you need to stay focused on SEO throughout the entire content creation process — all while creating high-quality, engaging content that your audience will love.
If you would like to add anything more please feel free to comment below.
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