Spring Fling time! 🌸🌱 Save 17% on quarterly & annual Elite plans. Ends May 29th
Updated: | Content Marketing, SEO
Vincent D'Eletto
Vincent D'Eletto
What really moves the needle in regards to keyword rankings and organic search traffic?
We've all seen the snake oil salesmen peddling their "weird trick" to obtain top rankings, only to quickly learn that you need to spend significant money for something you're not sure will work.
How can you obtain a transparent, unbiased answer on what's working right now without wasting your time and money?
To accomplish this, I reached out to 45 of the brightest minds in digital marketing to ask:
"What, do you feel, is the single, most-effective content optimization strategy to boost search engine rankings? "
Honestly, most people don't want to share the goods when it comes to SEO tips that haven't been beaten to death.
So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the answers I received were jam-packed with valuable information that can get you to the first page both efficiently and systematically.
Take a look for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments below!
45 Content Optimization Tips from the Experts
Here's a number of keyword ranking strategies from the people that rank content for a living.
Google is an answer engine. It's goal is to give people the most relevant answers to their queries.
For example, imagine someone searches for “content optimization tips” in Google. They click on a ranking article because the title, meta description and page URL indicate that it will solve their problem (give them some optimization tips). Once they land on the page they scroll down and discover that the content doesn’t give them the tips they were expecting. So they press the back button and leave the page.
In this situation, the content didn’t meet the search intent of the user. In other words, the needs of the searcher haven’t been met. So why would Google rank this page?
However, if by assessing what a user wants and then creating that content, you have just optimized it for users AND Google.
There’s three steps to using this strategy:
1) Understand a searchers query through research (and the type of content they want to see)
2) Include key topics in the content to signal to Google that this is a match for a users search results
3) Cover the SEO basics by optimizing your page title, meta description and URL
Once you know what a user is looking for, it’s just a case of creating that content and then optimizing it. By dialing in search intent, you get more clicks from Google, visitors spend longer on your site, you build up authority and you give users what they want. Everybody wins.
I believe targeting position zero, Google featured snippet, is the single most effective approach to content optimization. Even if you don't make it to the featured snippet section, you're still likely to reach page 1 with this approach.
Here's how to do it:
- Optimize for high traffic question keywords
- Include Q&A from the "People Also Ask" section of SERPs in your content
- Use the Inverse Pyramid approach in your content which means you'll initially respond to the most important questions with short answers (75-100 words) early in your content.
After that, you'll explain them in more detail in their relevant section/headings:
- Format properly by using H2,H3,H4 and lists
- Format your answers according to the audience needs. For example, if you're presenting a comparison between products, use tables. If you're sharing tips, use lists.
- Use words that appear more frequently in snippet results
- Consider creating a dedicated Q&A page for that answers all the popular questions about your product/service/topic
- Apply all the standard on-page optimization strategies
Understand that the goal of snippets is to share short and quick answers with the searchers, not the details.
So keep your answers short and to the point.
Disclaimer: After the recent Google algorithm update, pages appearing in rich snippets won't be repeated in SERPs. This makes the position less attractive but its still way more valuable than position 2-10 on Page 1 since it still has a higher CTR.
The single most effective strategy for boosting your content optimization doesn't even require a tool. Go to Google. Type in your main keyword in the form of a question. Click on about 10 different PAA (People Also Ask Questions), and then copy these and select the ones that apply to your content the most. After answering all of the questions, apply FAQ schema. The last step is to make sure you have jump links to all headers and use the keyword for the anchor tag #how-much-does-a-new-roof-cost. Do this for all your money pages.
It's tough to pick one but I will go with internal links. For every new piece of content we will go and add a quite a few internal links from existing articles, most with keyword rich anchor texts. If you build your site in this way and you also have strong domain authority, you will find that new content ranks very easily. At that point you have yourself a money printing machine.
A very easy way to add your internals is by doing additional resource links, the BBC does a good job of this with their news articles. You can add these in the middle of your content or at the end. They will naturally be very keyword rich and save a bunch of time since you don't need to read through the articles too carefully and insert it in the perfect place.
Help people get things done. Creating content that informs is great, but content that both informs and guides users to a solution will always be a great content marketing investment.
In 2020, you should not skip on optimizing for semantic search models. Through content, Google ranks on more than just actual keywords. They rank on confidence of quality in copy. They look at search entities and try to understand the intent of the query. This means, if you want to rank for a keyword, but Google doesn't think the searcher's intention is to find the page you wish to have rank, you simply won't rank. No matter how beefy and well-written your page is.
So, at minimum, look at the search results before picking a target keyword. Make sure the page you are trying to rank would fit into what Google is showing. Examples of a bad fit would be results that show only informational pages when you want to rank your ecommerce collection page. Don't even try. Instead, make a page Google will rank. It's the best bet you have to be favored by Google.
Proper topic research is the key starting point to online content in general. You have to do your research to determine what keywords, phrases, and overall topics your pages/content need to cover to get any traction in the search engines. Once you have the outline, WordAgents does the rest of the work!
For me, this is 100% matching the search intent (something that 99% of the SEO industry gets wrong). By understanding the true, psychological intent behind a search, we not only boost rankings, but boost conversions as well. Search intent isn't just information or navigational, but really exists in a spectrum of problem > solution > product awareness. By understanding whether the person wants to be empathized with (problem searches), given general solutions (solution intent), or is open to hearing about your product (product intent), radically changes how you write and what you put in your title/meta that earns massive CTR in search, further driving and retaining rank.
If you are optimizing your content and on-page you NEED To use Surfer. It gives you actionable insights that will do a ton of data analysis for you to implement so that you can get your pages ranking higher. I've been using it for several months and have seen awesome results on a number of pages. There are similar tools (POP, Cora) but Surfer is the most UI friendly and definitely has the best UX.
Regular content audits are the best optimization strategy to boost search engine rankings for an existing site.
Using a combination of your own data, Clearscope, Ahrefs keyword data, and competitor's pages, audit your entire content catalogue.
Remove irrelevant or thin content, update pages to better match ever-changing search intent, update pages to truly be the best in your niche, ensure inner linking is on-point, and fix any technical issues that may be holding you back.
While this "one thing" ends up being a combination of multiple tasks, it's vital to take a holistic approach like this as the algorithm gets better at determining what content deserves to rank.
Doing this quarterly or at least twice a year will keep your site nimble, fresh, and more likely to stay ahead of the algo curve.
The most effective content optimization strategy for us has been using extremely high quality images, and writing helpful, keyword-rich captions. Sounds basic but it does the trick.
Correlation, context, CRO! See what I did there? Alliteration yo!
The biggest increases we see are immediately after the changes are cached by Google, so figure out what you need to change and do it in one shot.
Correlation - Go and look at what the top ranking sites are doing, you might need to remove some of the top dogs (amazon etc) as they can skew what is required for an average site to hit those positions.
There are plenty of correlation tools out there at the moment and plenty of testing groups to show you what is and isn’t a direct ranking factor.
Do what the top ranking sites are doing - things that we know from testing are negative ranking factors = increases in rankings.
Context - Some of these tools will tell you to add a certain number of HTML fields, number of keywords and other very specific things, the key in this area is to not just add them like you’re decorating a cake. Look at how they are used and why, add them in the same context.
A good example for this is when a page has 150 images, all of which have relevant alt tags, it can be tempting to just slap a bunch of images on your page and tag them, DON’T, if the images are all used in a table to review certain items, then do the same!
CRO - I won’t write much on this because we don’t have sufficient data to support it, but we often see that when a page works (makes its visitors happy) then rankings tend to increase. I’m not talking vanity metrics like bounce rate, time on site and pages visited, I’m talking conversions, whatever the aim of the page is, optimise for that goal.
If I need to choose one, it will be regular content updates/upgrades. When a page starts to lose traffic, I check if it is still relevant and what can be improved according to the competitors who rank higher.
But I won't count on one strategy. Creating content hubs and covering all long tails for a topic or niche is a must. And lately, using services as SurferSEO, PageOptimizer Pro, or Cora delivers amazing results.
Interlinking your content also is crucial and powerful. If you don't do it, you are missing out.
From our experience, we can say that one of the most effective strategies to boost search rankings is to create content relevant for your audience using data, not just intuition. By data we mean any information that helps you to understand the search intent behind a keyword that you want to target.
And one of the best sources of this data is the SERP itself — seeing what’s out there helps you to get an idea of what a reader expects to see in your content.
While analyzing each SERP and checking the top rivals for a keyword may be a time-consuming task, with the help of smart, data-driven solutions, optimizing and creating content gets much easier.
The SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant will analyze your top 10 competitors in Google search ranking for a target keyword for you. The tool checks your texts’ SEO potential, reading ease, tone of voice consistency, originality, and gives you actionable recommendations on how to improve them. And all of this happens on the go, right in your Google doc or WordPress admin panel.
Applying the tool’s recommendations will help you to create relevant content, fine-tune your copy to your audience’s expectations and thus have greater chances of ranking higher.
It's hard to give one single thing, because it doesn't work that way. I guess if there would be one thing it would be "Do all the things". You really need to make sure your onpage SEO is good, your site has strong authority, and if possible, your article has links from elsewhere, both internal and external. Fundamentally it comes down to people loving your site. That's not to say "Just write good content", but the easiest way to rank is to have a site that people love, and then the whole SEO game becomes infinitely easier.
Most people spend hours on their content and mere seconds on their title... I recommend that people increase the amount of time & energy they put into the 'clickyness' of the page title. Spend 5x the amount of time you currently spend because the click-through-rate has a direct impact on traffic and an indirect impact on Google rankings. (Higher CTR leads to higher rankings over time).
When choosing the ideal title, I start by searching my keyword and writing down the top 10 current results for my keyword. Then I try to create a title that is BETTER than the current results. I'll often spend upwards of 30 minutes (even up to an hour) on the title.
The goal is to make the title as attractive as possible to potential visitors while retaining the main keywords that your prospect will be typing in to find your page. The time spent on the title will usually provide the largest ROI.
For us, the #1 thing you need to do to optimise your content in 2020 is to match the search intent of the query.
In recent years, Google has been “deciding” what types of pages should show for what query regardless of historical authority metrics such as linking root domains.
If Google decided a list blog post needs to be on page 1 for the query “wedding game ideas” then there is very little chance you will rank with anything else than a list blog post even if you have more links than the pages ranking on top.
So the first thing you should do, is just Google the query, identify what type of content Google decided should rank for this query and create a similar but better executed page.
That’s how you win SERP’s in 2020.
In the past I've made the mistake of adding content to sites that I had no intention to rank in the hopes of making things more "natural." In the end, I'm stuck with pages that are absorbing some arbitrary amount of pagerank and don't make me any money! I strongly recommend always having strong focus on making sure content you are adding has an end goal of adding true value to your website.
Not a new thing, but the biggest issue I continually go back to and correct is matching search intent. I'm still seeing a lot of folks get stuck in the assembly line style grind of identifying a few target keywords and then just getting 700 words about them written.
I get it - going to the SERP and clicking through all your top competitors takes time. But you're going to have a much easier time ranking if you understand what the different results are delivering, and where it looks like you may be able to slot in.
For example: Is everything on page one a ‘How To’ style guide, but you’re giving a general overview of a topic? If there’s a clearly preferred format/style of page ranking, and you’re not in line with it, it’s going to be hard to break through.
We all know to choose an achievable keyword, but each acts as a parent term within a basket of related long-tails and one-time searches. Finding those child terms and incorporating them into headers and in the content keeps you from activating the over-optimization tripwire. It also helps illustrate that your content dives into the topic in depth.
If you can do this while formatting your post in a unique way and matching the intent of the SERP, you'll find the true volume of your parent keyword is much higher than expected. One way to find these keywords is to take the top five ranking pages, collect all of the search terms they rank for, and then sort to find the ones that are common across all five pages. Filter by volume so you're not wasting optimization real estate, and now you have a list of freebie terms you'll rank for if you can dominate the parent term. It's also a great way to start creating an outline for the content.
These days, content optimization is all about the audience. User-focused content ranks higher, brings in more traffic, and converts better. Your writing should be clear, organized, and easy to understand to improve readability. Make it scannable by using headers, lists, and bullet points throughout.
Rich media, such as photos, videos, graphs, and quotes will make your content look more professional, authoritative, and cohesive. Users (and search engines) love content that’s well researched, so be sure to include studies, statistics, and sources wherever they’re applicable.
Most importantly, get to know your audience. Understanding who they are, what they need, and what they’re looking for when they land on your page is key for creating user-oriented and SEO friendly content. Address their pain points and consider where they are in the sales funnel when creating each piece.
You’re writing for people, not search engines. User-centered content not only makes your potential customers happy, but it’s also at the heart of what Google is looking for when ranking your website.
Test everything. Often times Google will reward an article that's entirely unique by placing it in the top 10 of search results for a specific keyword. Sometimes it only wants articles in line with what's currently ranking in the top 10. If you aren't ranking where you want to after 60 days of publishing an article, go back, evaluate your competitors, and try to make sure your piece is better, more in-depth and/or different than what's currently being produced.
The most effective content optimization strategy is to focus on content quality, comprehensiveness and content that addresses all user intent profiles and stages of the reader journey. Building topic clusters and user intent research is a major part of that strategy --- along with content gap analysis at the page, site section and site (or network) level.
Providing the best answer to queries, simple as that! After keyword research (another topic entirely) and categorizing queries into pages that will provide an answer to that query, it is a case of doing some research and finding out what Google already likes for that query (look at top 10 results) and then doing one better.
Include related keywords, include related questions, helpful original images/diagrams, videos, link out to relevant sources. All of this contributes to being a helpful resource, but it all relates back to - creating content that provides the best answer to queries.
My number one content optimization strategy is to invest time into finding really good keywords and then publish excellent articles on those topics. By "really good keywords" I'm referring to topics and phrases that have very little competition yet are still searched. That said, I don't require the monthly search volume to be high as reported in the various keyword research tools. This approach has served me very well for years and it's what I use on numerous niche sites and blogs.
If you already have a piece of content, my most effective strategy is looking at the queries from Google Search Console that your page is already ranking for. Then identify the keywords that you want to pursue and further incorporate them into your content.
If the keyword(s) that you want the page to rank for is not appearing as a query in GSC then there is a gap between the content on the page and what Google expects. Your goal is to then bridge that gap by improving the content.
The most effective strategy that has massively help us and our clients succeed has been the use of power pages. Power pages are pieces of content designed to rank for one grouping or topic of keywords. These are meant to be the most informative piece of content on the subject matter. We are able to create these through the use of our own internal tool, it takes data from popular SEO tools and shows you keywords that you missed in your content. Making sure that unique longer tail keywords have been added to your copy greatly increases your search rankings.
The most effective content optimization strategy for boosting search engine rankings is to actually invest some time thinking through your user's journey before even planning to write; before you even build your site. Match the journey through your site to their journey. Then match your content to their search needs. This can't be forced. You're either going to answer their search needs or you just won't rank.
The single, most-effective content strategy right now would be a really solidly-planned topic cluster, which addresses the various intent fractures of the primary topic/query you're looking to own. Whether it's one page, or many, it should address the primary and sub-topics in-depth, answer the questions that a searcher would be seeking on the topic. As part of this, internal links from other related pages (whether tightly related, or tangentially) are core to supporting the organic success of this content short and long term.
We focus a lot of doing the right level of keyword research - Nothing is as powerful for your site as traffic and until you have some, the game is doing very low competition keywords, that enable you to get a good base and show google your content is visitor friendly.
I have a feeling that every answer is going to be around nailing the search intent (which would be mine as well) so I'll go outside the box for variety's sake.
Entity optimization. To satisfy Google's NLP algorithms, optimize your content by sprinking in the entities (people, places, things, events, etc) that Google expects to see for a given keyword.
For example, if you're writing an article about "DUI lawyers in New York", you're going to need to mention words like "court", "hearing", and "license".
I use tools like Surfer to find these entities, which in turn uses Google NLP API.
Reverse engineering the right competitors is the ultimate strategy to boost rankings with optimized content.
It starts with the keyword. The right choice will have competitors that are in your page's reach - having comparable authority. The other factor would be the type of content ranking currently. Never write a blogpost where e-commerce sites fulfill the top 10. Pick competitors that are ranking high due to the top optimized content you are halfway home.
The rest is math. Check common words and phrases used by the competitors and make sure to use them in your article.
The next level would be to not only check common words and phrases but common entities as well. Use Google NLP API to review the most meaningful terms in competitors' content and put these in prominent places of your content.
Well, there is one more level in this strategy—precisely adjusted usage of essential terms and entities based on the competitors' content. If you are a perfectionist and want to use the full potential of the domain, you will be posting on - go for it. It is worth the effort.
Really spending time on analyzing the keyword data within your market to develop tightly focused content around topics represented in SERPs while avoiding cannibalization / diluting relevancy (mostly due to cannibalization as intent shifts).
Content optimization has gotten A LOT more holistic over the years. Instead of simply looking at keywords and volumes, its now key to understand the psychology and motivations behind search queries.
When you understand why someone is searching for a particular phrase, you can better create pages that directly answer that query. The more directly you can answer a query (be succinct, unambiguous & use relevant terms), the more likely you are to rank for said query - especially post-BERT update.
Once you've successfully addressed a visitors' query, you should guide the (now happy) visitor to their next best course of action. Understanding what a visitor wants after their first query is satisfied will let you further optimize the content to match their intents.
Avoid long-winded explanations, avoid excessive pronouns (which can confuse search engines more easily than humans), make it clear where to find the information they are looking for, and end with a call to action that really connects with the visitor.
Being able to anticipate the reader's next question and showing them you have the answer is how you keep them on your site. The longer a person uses your site, the more they trust your brand, the more regularly they visit & share your site, further improving your ranking - creating a virtuous cycle.
Writing supporting content is a great way to boost your rankings. Let's say for example your main site is about playing the drums - now there is a tone of extra information that's related to this e.g what drum kit to play, how to learn the drums, how to tune your drums and so much more.
So what you do is drill down into the sub topics and write content around these sub topics then link it to your main page. This way you'll get more long tail traffic but it'll also boost relevance for your site. Make sure when writing your supporting content you also interlink to your main articles to form a silo structure that will help keep the power of any links you build flowing around the site!
Analyzing SERP intent. A couple pieces to this:
1) Making sure that you are trying to rank with the right TYPE of content, and in the correct FORMAT. I can't tell you how many times we engage with clients and find that they are pouring resources into trying to get a product page to rank when, in fact, every URL in the top 10 is a blog post. It doesn't matter how many links you build, or words you write, if the content type is misaligned with the SERP, you will never rank.
Once you have determined the TYPE of content that is needed, the next is to look at the FORMAT. For example, if blog posts dominate the SERP, are they list posts, how-to guides, what is style articles? This is an important second layer to look at.
2) Once you have nailed the content type and format, the next step is to analyze the top 10 ranking URLs that align with that intent. Specifically, you're looking for gaps in two areas. Are there topics that they cover better than you? Do they cover topics that you are currently missing? Take notes of all of these, and use the insights to inform how you layer on and improve the depth and quality of the content.
This type of intent analysis can work for any type of content.
Focus on pages with a high bounce rate when re-optimizing existing content. Most people focus on length and completeness of content rather than good usability. Most of the time the user is looking for a quick & bite size answer - the content that can deliver that is rewarded with a low repeat search rate and therefore higher rankings.
The single most effective content optimization strategy, in my professional opinion, is that of repurposing content. It's usually a win-win all around because it can help save time, resources, and one does not have to work as hard to start ranking again, or more (as they would for a brand new content piece).
Plus, by anchoring to some of the existing content authority, websites can not only retain existing backlinks but can also earn new ones — more quickly. Moreover, there is a familiarity factor that also comes into play. Maybe once upon a time, Google really liked a particular content piece; however, it stopped ranking it due to the relevancy of it/a.k.a, the content material is outdated. So perhaps all that's needed to get it back on page 1 is updating the piece to resonate it with the latest information.
And of course, any additional pushes that can be made, such as sharing it on social channels, email newsletters, even putting some money behind it, can always come in handy.
On a concluding note, one of the easiest ways to discover content pieces that may need repurposing is to look at the analytics, and specifically, hunt for pages that used to get a lot of traffic but don't anymore.
Content depth through the use of related keyword phrases and developing topical clusters. By using not only your targeted keywords, but also targeting semantic keywords and related topics you can show Google that you truly are a topical authority.
It's important to look at both at your individual articles to make sure you are truly covering the subject and, it's just as important to develop content clusters to help Google understand the depth of your content coverage. As you utilze both related keywords in your individual articles and wider content coverage through topical clusters you should see a boost in your search engine rankings.
The internet has been led to believe that more content is better, this in most cases is a fallacy. So one of my favourite SEO tactics is to prune content by removal of unnecessary content/pages to remove site bloat and leave the best performing content for the search engines. Once this is performed you can then work on content marketing plans with a solid foundation.
I'm a big fan of Surfer SEO's content editor. It does a great job at recommending semantically-related keywords and also recommends the perfect frequency for them to be added. The other thing I love to do is to Google "what is + topic." This gives me related people also ask questions that I can then use in my content. This help reduce bounce rate because it allows you to anticipate the searcher's next question and keep them on the page.
Entity optimisation is one of the most powerful ways to optimise your content. A keyword can have several meanings. A machine/search engine can't quickly identify what a keyword really meant without having a context around its usage. On the other hand, an entity is something that's machine-readable, and a search engine can understand it quickly. One of the ways I optimise content around by extracting entities from the top 10-30 results for a given query and mapping them and order them by frequency. Then making sure these entities are present in the content and interlinked correctly with the semantic web.
As a sales development professional, I have to stay on track with the ways in which COVID-19 is changing the ways in which we engage with potential customers. As the landscape is changing, professionals need relevant, useful content to help guide their sales efforts. I’ll be using video as a content optimization strategy to help drive increases in organic traffic and lower bounce rates.
Answer-driven content. Break your article in 3 areas: (1) direct answer in paragraph, list, table or video format, (2) supporting facts, and (3) related sub-questions (where each answer links to a page on your site for internal linking).
When optimizing on-page content, it all really begins with your keywords. First, you'll want to establish your keywords and write your content with them in mind. Inserting keywords after the fact can be difficult, and it can create awkward phrasing or content that appears to be ""stuffed"" with keywords.
For your main keyword, you'll need to ensure that it is placed in the page or post title, as well as the page's URL. Then, the same keyword should be used in both the first and last paragraphs, as well as within the body of the content.
When it comes to your supporting keywords, their placement is also important. Include them in sub-headers (H2, H3, H4) and also within the content following the sub-header.
Your meta title and description also need a little love. Don't forget to include your primary keyword there, too.
What Content Optimization Strategies Work For You?
Now that you've seen the experts chime-in on how they optimize their articles, what do you think?
Here's what I learned:
- Tools like SurferSEO, Frase, and MarketMuse are in high-demand in today's environment
- It's very important to develop topical relevance via topic clusters and interlinking
- Take the time to learn what the reader wants and needs before you write a single word of content
- Let data lead you. Don't make assumptions.
Which strategies can be trusted and which can be ignored?
Let us know in the comments below!
Hey, I'm Vin. Founder and CEO of WordAgents.com. I create content that ranks really well on search engines for our clients. I'm also deeply involved with the SEO community; maintaining a portfolio of successful, profitable affiliate websites. You can find me playing guitar, drinking scotch, and hanging out with my German Shorthaired Pointer when I'm not working!
Regarding OnSite SEO items, many sites have stressed on the importance of character limit while crafting a meta description and title per site page.
What is your take on this? Does the character count vary for mobile & desktop?
Hey Frederic -
Yup, that's correct.
Meta descriptions should be 155 to 160 characters. While they don't have much SEO benefit in 2020, you should use them to improve your click through rate.
Title tags do have an SEO impact. They should be around 50 to 60 characters. You should do your best to include your target keyword as close to the beginning of your title tag as possible.