When we deal with SEO, we think it’s helpful to talk about a ‘digital footprint’. By this, we mean everything that your brand or business publishes online.
Mostly this will be your website and the content you share on it, but it also means your social media activity too, as well as things like Google reviews.
Most people accept that publishing regular content on your site’s blog is a good thing to be doing. Today we’ll be looking at why publishing regular content, such as a blog, is great for your SEO performance and how you can maximise it.
A Symbiotic Relationship
SEO and content are not the same, nor are they completely different. There is a lot of overlap between the two. But most importantly, they are great at boosting the performance of the other. You can think of it like a symbiotic relationship. But the good kind, not the parasitic kind.
Aspects of SEO, such as keyword targeting, user experience and link-building will all help your content be found much easier. Likewise, ensuring your content is high-quality and publishing regularly ensures Google knows what your website is about, which all helps to boost your SEO rankings.
Keywords
Keywords and phrases are a central part of SEO. In one sentence, you are trying to match up the keywords on your website with what users are searching for online. In reality, it’s far more complex than that and Google has clever ways of understanding the intent behind a user’s search as well as understanding what and how useful the information on your website is.
Content is the perfect mechanism for including a high number of your chosen keywords in your website. In general, the more keywords included, and the more content, the more improvement to your rankings.
High-Quality Content
The caveat to pushing out regular content is that it needs to be high quality. Since 2011, Google has been incredibly hot on this. It will penalise your rankings if your content is jammed full of keywords and reads poorly, doesn’t include useful information and if it is just a rip-off of someone else’s work.
The other benefit of creating great content? Your readers will keep on coming back for more.
Make sure your content is written with a particular segment of your audience in mind, and that it addresses an issue specific to them. If it is fresh and unique it will be indexed much higher.
Online Interactions
Although Google has reduced the impact of linking to other sites with good authority, including links in your content is still a good idea. Firstly, it is helpful for your user if you’re able to show your workings and share your sources. Secondly, you never know when someone might reciprocate the link. Links back to your site are absolutely beneficial to your SEO. Finally, there are still some who believe that outbound links do benefit your SEO, so why not?
Content is great for your social media too. It gives you something to share with your followers and is the perfect way to get more eyes on your content. Any Likes, Comments, and Shares that you accumulate will all contribute to your digital footprint as well. The more active you are, the better chances you have of rising the search rankings.
We’re never like to say there are quick and easy answers when it comes to SEO. Ultimately, only Google knows exactly how to play it. We do know from experience though that some things are just a good idea. That’s why we know that content and SEO go together hand-in-hand. They should be done concurrently, not in isolation.
Need some help creating fresh and unique content, or getting the technical aspects of your SEO right? Let’s have a chat.
