PUBLISHED: MARCH 09, 2018 – ARTICLES: CONTENT THAT RANKS – EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

Online marketing has changed the face of business for good. You need content that ranks when you create a website. Nowadays, people search for information, solutions, and products every day. How? By simply typing a few keywords or key phrases, by looking it up on social channels, or by asking a question in a forum.

Information becomes more and more accessible. The side-effect? You will hardly come across the best (or most relevant) information on the topic. By developing and launching new ranking algorithms, the giant search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, are constantly upgrading the relevancy of their end-users’ search results.

Their main goal is to deliver the proper answers to people’s searches by finding and delivering the best existent content on the subject.

Content And Backlinks

According to a Google’s search quality strategist, named Andrey Lippatsev, the 2 most important SEO factors that Google takes into consideration when ranking websites are content and backlinks. Both of these components count, and none should be neglected.

High-quality backlinks can only be built once your content brings value and relevancy to a specific audience or platform. So, your main preoccupation is to develop and act on an effective content marketing strategy that’ll boost your site’s organic ranking up to the top of the SERPs.

In today’s post, you’ll learn everything you need to know to develop highly qualitative content that addresses both the reader’s and the search engines’ expectations and requests. Content that ranks brings visitors. Pay attention and apply!

Write Unique Content

In SEO, there are more written and unwritten rules that act as ranking signals. What is SEO? The more you disobey these rules the more punishments your website will get. Well, the first rule is to never publish paginated content, no matter the reason.

Google expects you to develop and distribute only content that is unique. In other words, you should never write exactly as other people did, if you want to rank higher in Google. Even if you take your inspiration from other sources, ensure that you write unique sentences and words that have never been used in the same way and order.

Before you hit the publish button, you should put your text into a plagiarism tool to see whether your content is unique in the eyes of the major search engines.

Provide Unique Value

Unique value is different from unique content, and the main difference is that this indicator is mostly appreciated by your content consumers instead of being assessed by the search engines. What do I mean by that…

When people get to your site and they stumble upon an interesting read, they’ll click on that post for a good reason. They trade their time and expect to read something good in return. If he or she finds poor content that has already been written countless times before on other websites, it means your content contains no unique value.

Here’s how you can provide unique value through your content:

• Approach a unique subject – Write about something that has rarely been addressed before, and develop the best-existent piece of content on the subject.
• Be truly relevant to your audience – Your customers come first. Therefore, think about their problems, challenges, setbacks, but also about their needs, wishes, and desires. Only write something if you can really help!
• Be helpful – Once you awaken your prospect’s interest, be as helpful as you can and lead them in the right direction, linking to the right resources and tools.

Develop High-Quality Web Pages

Google is also paying attention to the overall quality of your website. Remember: search engines want their users to arrive on the most relevant websites. However, Google also cares about the user’s experience on the website, meaning that poorly built websites and platforms will have a decreased ranking performance.

Google doesn’t like to make full disclosures regarding their Google ranking algorithms, so most of the details are kept secret. However, there’s a lot of information collected by marketers who have tirelessly tested Google’s algorithms.

Ideally, these are the factors that help your website pages rank in the SERPs:

• Relevant and helpful content. It must always be useful and practical. Change your reader’s lives and they’ll change yours.
• Unique content. Don’t write something that’s been already written a dozen times. Come up with unique twists and new approaches. Don’t be boring!
• Content structure & shape. Avoid blocks of text, and make your text (and web page) easy to access and digest.
• Backlinks & link-less mentions. You know what backlinks are. However, link-less mentions are a new SEO trend that’ll soon become viral. Simply put, link-less mentions are simply mentions of brand and business names.
• Fast-loading pages. Don’t let your visitors wait. They never like to wait. Improve your site’s loading speed and you’ll improve your users’ experience.
• Impeccable User Experience. Make your website accessible. Mobile optimization is a total must, as nowadays, most people are using their smartphones to consume content and access web pages.

Ensure Your Content’s Grammar And Spelling Is Impeccable

As I’ve already mentioned, you should never publish crappy content filled with grammar and spelling errors. Moreover, ensure that your text’s structure is easy to digest. Stay away from blocks-of-text by separating your most important ideas.

Use subheadings for that. Even though a few grammar errors might not be important to you, they could be to some of your users, and it surely is to Google. In fact, Google’s representatives have already stated that grammar mistakes can lead to website penalization’s, so ensure you proofread and edit your content with the uttermost care.

Aim For Balance When Optimizing Keywords

There is really no such thing as the ideal keyword density. The rules are always changing, and Google’s always shifting their algorithms so that marketers and webmasters can no longer exploit rankings with their keyword optimization tricks.

As Haley Vincent, Content Marketing Manager at ResumesPlanet, suggests, “If you over-stuff keywords, you’ll get penalized. If you don’t use keywords, your content will probably stay hidden. However, if you optimize keywords in the most natural way, both Google and your content readers will praise you for that.”

Conclusion

Great content always comes as a result of time, focus, and effort on your part. Everybody develops content, so you can’t expect to stand out from the crowd by creating something average. Learn what Google wants, understand what your audience wants, test your performance, measure your results, and optimize your strategies consistently and persistently!

About Michael John

Hi my name is Michael and I am here to help you create a website that works. If you require any help building your website please contact me. I am the owner of www.2createawebsites.com and would like to help you get online. View all posts by Michael John →