“Content is the king, and if you optimize your website content precisely, you can climb up to reach the top positions in SERP without any paid promotions.” If you have been looking for ways to optimize your website content, you must have come across this phrase so often. Publishing high-quality content on your website is extremely crucial, especially when you’re struggling to secure a place in the top position of SERP. Everyone from Neil Patel to Brian Dean is explaining the benefits of high-quality content and the need to optimize content before publishing. The overall purpose of the project is to get SEO success? In the end you want to sell more of the things you want to offer. And you will surely need the right content to do this. Consumers want to read good content on your website. And when you can offer such content to consumers, it increases their chances to buy from the brand. Great content can bring a massive shift in perspective. To make your website’s content work for you, you have to take care of ways to optimize the content well. You need to implement all the strategies to make your content highly effective. All the content on your website and by you or on behalf of your website on the internet should be a copy that converts. Even Google has mentioned publishing high-quality content while designing a Google-friendly website. The truth is if your website has high-quality, user engaging, and well-optimized content, you do not even need to rely on paid promotions to rank higher at all. However, the real question is how one should optimize the website content so that it can grab the user’s attention while meeting Google’s guidelines at the same time? Many website owners struggle to find the most suitable answer to this question and so often end up utilizing unethical content optimization strategies, which cause more harm than good. So, in this blog, we have decided to shine some light on content optimization techniques and list down the ways by which you can craft quality content for your website.
What Does Content Optimization Mean?
Before moving any further, let’s first take a look at what does content optimization actually mean? Basically, there are a couple of on-page seo practices that you can utilize to make your website content search engine friendly as well as appealing for the audience. While optimizing content, you need to focus on both the target audience as well as the search engine guidelines. Your content should be informative and provide value to the audience. Furthermore, it should also be easier for the crawlers to crawl your website for certain user queries. This can be achieved by following certain rules. So, without any further ado, let’s start with the content optimization guidelines. How to proceed with content optimization? The first thing we need to do is create user-friendly content. This means that the content should be informative and offer value. Let’s discuss the steps for doing the same.
Step 1: Find a Topic Your Readers Care About
The most important purpose of writing content is driving sales and choosing the right topic. Let’s consider a situation. You publish the best article, but it does not generate any sales. What can be the reason for this? It’s quite possible that it was not visible enough. Or the topic of the article was not relevant or serving the purpose and the interests of your audience. Therefore, the foremost important thing is to choose the correct topic. It will help you to in creating the ultimate informational content even which interests your audience. Moreover, it is necessary to do it in the right way. So, what you require is finding the best sources to find foolproof topic ideas. What are the sources where you can find out your favourite topics It is most vital for you to find the best posts on Reddit Reddit is one of the top-ranking engines having the most interesting topics displaying in its top section. It is undoubtedly of the best ways to find out the best topics for the target audience. Digital marketing experts can also use tools like Buzsumo or Ahrefs to find the most valuable and popular topis. On Reddit, the commonest of the users also help you to understand what the people want to know, and focusing on those questions will help you get an insight on what topic you must write on next. Suppose you understand the most popular topics on a given subreddit, for example, a gardening subreddit. Just go to the menu at the top of the page, and click “top.” 
You will find the highlight reel of viral posts. You click on the “past 24 hours”, then click “all time.” 
It displays the most popular posts on this subreddit (category) for 24 hours. You can surely choose these. Use the most popular questions on Quora. When the internet was a new thing, most users would reach out to Yahoo Answers to seek the best life advice and solve their problems. But, the biggest problem that came with yahoo answers functionality was a lot of spammers. That led to lowering the site quality, ultimately leading to the site losing its credibility pretty quickly. Enter Quora. Quora’s experts are verified, and many of them (including people ranging from former President Obama to myself) have plenty of real-world expertise. Nowadays, Qura is one of the essential platforms giving an insight into the right questions. it lets find the article idea on Quora on various categories. For example, you may use healthy eating. In this way, Quora helps you to know the most popular questions people are asking. 
You know what!? you will feel excited to know about the great questions you want to answer. Use Alexa to find out the popular search terms. To improve the sales through search engine traffic, you must understand the topics people are looking for. It proves to be beneficial if you use a tool like Alexa. Begin by entering the competitor’s URL. For example, if you want to find the gourmet food and drink creations of Mouth Foods, you can use them to get new customers. Click Find. 
Go to Alexa’s analysis page, scroll down to find the Top Keywords in the search engines. Typically, the first two keywords involve the brand name, but you’ll also see some great topics that people are looking for. 
The above example will show you the bourbon of the month, gin of the month, amarao delle sirene, and chocolate whiskey comprise popular topics. Suppose you create an article on topics such as DIY chocolate whiskey recipe or the best whiskey. This is how you can get great content ideas to rank well in Google. Uncover popular post topics with Buzzsumo Buzzsumo is the best tool to find the most popular topics to enhance your social traffic. It is the best tool to check the articles which have performed excellently on different social platforms. For example, if we search for “organic produce, “ these articles grab people’s attention. 
Some of the trendy articles in this category include a giant land area used by Costco; why organic produce might be making America less healthy. 
Using one of these topics or a combination of these topics, you can create your next article. Find out about your audience’s struggles via email You should leverage your email list if you already have it. Dropping a question to their inboxes will give you your next topic to write on. This is inspired by Derek Halpern’s technique of Social Triggers, top-quality whereby you send an email to your new subscriber asking about their biggest struggles. 
This will help you to get personalized feedback and hear about the customer struggles right from them. Learning about common problems will help you create a compelling article offering the best solutions and answers. It will also help you sort out your struggle in one go.
Step 2: Create a masterpiece
You need to create top quality content which sells. This means you don’t need anything mediocre. You must create something highly compelling and a piece of content that people want to share. Write a compelling blog post having beneficial content with a broad scope and detail for generating higher sales than you may think. Here are a few steps to ensure that the content you create casts the right effect on the readers. What are the KPIs you want to improve Before you begin to write your content, you must spend time deciding your exact goal in that particular article. You want to ensure that it matches the overall brand voice and content strategy. Most importantly, you want to ensure that you check the most critical key performance indicators. The KPIs have great importance in every content marketing campaign. ABCs of content marketing explains why it is necessary to define the KPIs before you start a content marketing campaign.” 
Ignoring this will just lead to frustration and discouragement. A great and effective headline One of the highly effective ways to drive people to your content is with a headline engaging all types of readers. Research shows that 80 % of the people will read the headline, and only 20 % will read the article. So, you can gauge the importance of the headline. Moreover, content with a strong headline will improve your page views immensely; for example, by as much as 500 percent in some instances. The headline is the central part of your content which can boost it so well. Your content needs a great intro. The introduction will define the article you are creating. It will draw the readers and inspire them to keep reading. If you create a curiosity in your introduction, giving a trailer of what is ahead, it will make your readers interested in what is to come. An interesting introduction encourages the readers to engage in the full article. Check this article on The Acorns Grow blog covering how to save and get out of debt. Best tip to write the introduction The introduction must promise what’s on the way but not reveal too much about it. This way, it keeps the readers engaged and wanting to read the rest of your content. The next thing to do is produce an actionable and in-depth content No one wants to read a 500-word blog post about a topic. That is so common and unhelpful. No wonder it is wholly ignored. You must focus on writing impactful and detail-oriented content to drive traffic and sales. Include a variety of new material to make your content an insightful piece that covers the topic exclusively. Every influential article must contain 1,500 words or more. 
Apart from being more engaging and selling more, it will also increase your search engine results as Google prefers long-form content. Research Thoroughly Writing a lengthy opinion piece is not enough, but you also require it to be thorough in the information you have written. There are just two ways to get the piece to convert better. One is to make it known for your opinion, and the other is to put in a lot of research in farming it. You must carry out lots of research about the topic and include the relevant information in it. So, you must produce data-driven content giving you top results. The Think with Google blog uses Google data to reveal fascinating insights into what interests people and society’s valuable and common trends. However, you don’t have to be a big tech company to get the ball rolling. Using this data online will help you to create better content for your topic. At times, you may also use proprietary in-house data or case studies to add valuable content to your article. The most important thing is not to gather proof for your claims while not forming any uninformed opinions. Have a lot of images Readers can be most engaged if they can find content more than text. It is found that content with images gets 70 percent greater views than the one without images. (Express Writers) 
You must write content people like to read thoroughly, and adding images will help you make more sales. Moreover, including plenty of engaging images motivates people to read what you want to say. So, it works the best for them. Featuring engaging videos Videos are a great way to engage the readers looking for content. The best part is that you don’t need to buy a local studio or invest in expensive equipment. Featuring small videos of the content, you might be publishing earlier using different mediums will help you make the right impression with readers compelling them to buy. You can do a great job by keeping visitors engaged using featured videos. For example, see this post of Lincoln Now.
Step 3: SEO Best Practices Implementing
When you write the SEO content which will be doing a great job for times to come, you must put your 100% into it. Make an effort to write a post that figures in Google’s top 10. How to do it? Well, you must implement the best practices to get the best search engine results. It is found that 72 per cent of marketers worldwide opine that successful SEO is deeply interrelated with content creation. 
Thankfully, getting great results from your content in the search engines isn’t difficult if you know what you’re doing. These strategies will make your pieces rank well and keep selling for years after you hit publish.
Step 4 Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
There are several keywords you can use for your content’s SEO strategy. But long-tail you can derive great success using long-tail keywords. Using very long and relevant keywords will help you gain a lot of popularity. 
You can find the best results by focusing on long tail keywords as they have a higher conversion rate and sell much better than more primary keywords. Always Analyze Relevant Keywords with Ahrefs Use Keyword Planner to find out long-tail keywords to target your post. You require carrying out some research first. But, Ahrefs can give you better results for research than other tools. Though it’s not a free tool long-tailyou can sign up for its free trial, which is enough to start with. You can easily find the long tail keywords by typing the general keyword into the Keywords Explorer and then hitting the search button.
You will find the “Keyword ideas” down the page. Ahrefs is the best place to make excellent choices for long-tail keywords. Choose keywords with the same terms and then click on “View full report.” 
Also, look for keywords having multiple search terms. this strategy will give you the best long-tail keywords for your article. 
You may also want to use the long-tail keyword in your piece or its title a few times across it. Also, incorporate key phrases in the introduction. Ensure that the search engine can get what your content says. Include the keyword a few times in the article. However, it will be a great idea to have the other key phrases in the article related directly to the topic. For example, this article covers board games for kids, with a lot of use of synonyms and related words such as “toys,” “family,” and “play.” Always include various types of related phrases in your content to get the maximum SEO results. Social Proof Always refer to the product you want to highlight in your content. People don’t like to trust a marketer’s praise for their product. So, it is necessary to include others’ reviews in your content to make higher sales. It gives a great idea of including social proof to show the community that your product has several fans. The writers interviewed Whole Foods Whole Story Blog suppliers to use the stories to build up the Whole Foods brand. 
Including successful customer quotes or case studies in your article will prove even more helpful. Write in a pleasant tone Content can give excellent results if it is fun and friendly. Write the description in the flavor of the brand you want to represent. Use more hearty, fun, and fresh words, and don’t make it look so formal and boardroom approved. Only fun content can drive more sales. Check that recipe description on Huckberry. It is a casual way of encouraging customers to engage more with Huckberry’s products. So, they have used simple sentences with a casual tone to work wonders for your conversions. Show an Urgency to Drive Sales you do not need to include urgency for every type of content. But, if you want to sell more products or want to resort to tugging urgency chords, time-sensitive writing can help. This piece by Blue Apron has mentioned only the summer specialties available from July through September. This is for readers who want the heirloom tomatoes and other delectables because they would like to sign up before the end of the summer menu. Introducing a subtle urgency is the right way to enhance sales without saying it directly. How successful is your product Carrying out thorough research while providing graphs and data will again be helpful. But, sometimes, the best way to portray the marketing claims is by showing the action with details. See how they have used data, results, and happy customer quotes on the IBM blog. 
When you use case studies and similar ways to prove your content, the written content will demonstrate how your product is the right and highly functional option for buyers. Authoritativeness Your company may own a great brand, but it will help if you add more authority, like including the quotes from the industry to learn more about a topic than what you know presently. It makes a more significant impact if you use the names of people you’re quoting or conduct individual interviews with them. See how Lululemon has listed the credentials for chef Haylee LaCroix, including her interview in the article. Use Reciprocity Power The law of reciprocity provides some of the most reliable and strong ways to persuade a person to take action. It is seen that you’re more likely to do a favour to someone if they first do you a favour. We need this at all times in our lives. That is why you want to be treated well by a shop where you have shopped for the last decade. The same goes for your copy. If you provide things for free, it will make readers feel a bit indebted to you. In the Evernote Blog, the writers are offering free templates for readers to use. 
Just this small favor turns readers to do business with your company. You can accomplish the same effect as you provide templates and free downloads. Though you do not ask for anything in return, but it will work in your favor. An Authentic Brand Voice Every brand has a distinct voice and it’s useful to utilize that voice rather than ignore it. If you want to make a better impression, it is most important to understand what your company wants. Use real employees whenever possible. Check the Starbucks 1912 Pike blog speaking about its employees and issues they want to consider.
Step 5: End with a call to action
Content optimization is all about polishing and presenting the content for which you’ve worked so hard. However, you cannot leave the reader clueless about the next step they want to take. The ultimate purpose of writing a content is to sell. So, last but not least, it is essential to ask your readers to buy. But, don’t be in a hurry to do it. You should surely sell at the end of the content as it might not work every time. Several customers require knowing about your brand a few times before parting with their money. Content marketing is all about building the best relationships and creating a great brand image. The content that sells may not always lead to a direct sale. It can also help in brand building. The most essential and most straightforward purpose of the content is influencing the way readers see your brand. It is necessary to create compelling calls to action to drive sales in the long run. The Rue Now blog gives a perfect example of how great content coupled with compelling CTAs can be an excellent combination for users to take action.
How to Optimize Website Content?
It is worth noting that there are different categories of content that you can publish on your website. The most common content categories are text, images, and videos. Some of the websites even have infographics as well. So, it is important to familiarize yourself with the right optimization strategies for optimizing each type of content.
Text Optimization
The text is the most basic form of content which both users and search engine can understand. This is the reason why it is always recommended to stack your website with quality text. While crawling text, however, Google looks for various factors to understand whether your website is suitable for specific user queries. Some of these factors include:
Page Title:
The page title is the first thing a user notices about your website. It gives a hint to both the customers and the search engine about what your web page is all about. So, it is important to craft the most appealing page title which has the potential to captivate your target audience. Follow the following guidelines to write the best page titles.
Keep the title length within 50-70 characters.
Try to write an informative title which gives the customer a hint about what to expect from the web page.
Precisely add keywords to your title. However, make sure to avoid keyword stuffing as it can damage your search engine rankings drastically.
Add words like Best, Top, and Ultimate. You can also shape your title like a question to make it more appealing. Many people use words like How, What, Why, etc. in their titles to enhance their conversion rates.
Write page title which set your website apart from your competitors. Don’t be a copy cat and try to write unique titles.
Of course, these are only a couple of guidelines, which can make more page title a little better. We recommend using your creativity to come up with a highly appealing page title. Let’s take at some of the examples to understand how you can get creative with the page titles. 
As you can see that Neil has written an appealing title that compels the user to click on the link. He has also mentioned his brand name (i.e. Neil Patel) in the title itself. You can do it too, however, make sure to mention the brand name in the last of the description. Writing the brand name, in the beginning, can damage the search engine rankings, and therefore it should be avoided. As of best SEO practices, it is advised to add your target keyword at the beginning. Here’s another example from Backlinko 
As of good SEO practices, your meta description should be between 150-170 characters. You would want to keep the describe people option as descriptive as possible while precisely sprinkling your target keyword somewhere between. Suppose you do not upload the meta description or your description fails to meet the recommended guidelines. In that case, Google’s going to automatically pick a description from the web page, which you do not want at all. Always make sure to upload a unique description for each web page manually.
Here are Couple of Tips to Write the Perfect Meta Descriptions.
Keep the description length between 150-170 characters. Google automatically shortens long descriptions, which may not tell the customer about the web page.
Do not stuff the descriptions with keywords. Google is smart enough to differentiate between a natural and keyword-stuffed report. So, make sure to place the keywords naturally.
Each website on your website should have a unique meta description. Copied descriptions can lead to content duplication.
Let’s take a look at some of the excellent, meta descriptions. 
Website Content:
Now, comes the actual website content. Of course, your website should be stacked with quality and informative content. But, it’s also important to optimize the content by formatting it in the right way. By formatting, we mean adding suitable heading tags, writing short paragraphs, adding internal links, etc. You can’t expect a user to read a 2000 words blog post if it doesn’t have the right format. It becomes difficult for both the user and the search engine to understand the content. So, make sure to optimize the content so that it is easier for everyone to understand it. Here’s how you can optimize the website content.
Add individual H1 tags to each web page. H1 tag contains the heading of the webpage and each web page can have only one H1 tag.
Insert the subheadings in dedicated H2 and H3 tags. Basically, you should maintain a hierarchal order while adding headings and subheadings to your web pages.
Lengthy paragraphs damage the content readability. Try to write concise and informative paragraphs.
It is always recommended to add bullet points in your posts as they make your website more appealings.
If you’re publishing blogs, always make sure to insert the target keyword within the first 100 words. Furthermore, every blog posts should have a conclusion as well.
Optimizing Images
Images are an integral part of every website, especially when you want to attract organic traffic. Publishing images improve the content readability and make your web pages more appealing. However, if the images on your website aren’t optimized, your search engine rankings can fall drastically. Search engines cannot read images. So, they use other signals to understand what a particular image is all about. The two of the major image optimization factors include image title and image alt text.
Image Title
Each image should have a meaningful title. For instance, if you’re uploading a cat picture, it is better to name it as “White-Cat.jpg” rather than naming it like “IMG001.jpg”. While you can add the target keyword to the image title, unnecessary keyword insertion is a bad SEO practice.
Alt Text
Alt text is the text which screen-readers use to read an image. It is also displayed in the place of an image if it fails to load by any chance. So, it is important to add a descriptive alt text to every image. You can insert your target keyword in the alt text. While uploading images on your website, make sure to compress the image size. Large image files can increase the website loading speed, which eventually damages the overall website performance. Therefore, it is important to reduce the image file size so that they do not affect the loading speed at all.
Video Optimization
Like images, videos can be a great way to attract your potential audience. However, it is important to optimize the videos as well. When it comes it videos, you can’t reduce the file size or add alt text to them. The one thing that you can do, though, is to keep the videos short and informative. For instance, if you’re uploading a video to demonstrate a tutorial to install a specific product, you should keep the video length as short as possible. Long videos do not only slow your website, but they also tend to get boring sometimes. Not everyone has the time and patience to watch a one-hour long video. So, try to upload short videos only. The best practice is to use a streaming platform like Youtube to publish videos on your website. Once you have published the video on Youtube, you can easily embed them in your source code. This won’t damage your website speed. However, while publishing videos on Youtube, make sure to add appealing titles, informative descriptions, and target keywords.
Additional Content Optimization Guidelines
Apart from the above-mentioned guidelines, there are a couple of additional guidelines which you should keep in mind while publishing content on your website. Some of these guidelines include.
Avoid Duplicate Content
If you think you can trick Google by publishing duplicate content, you’re wrong. Google is smart enough to understand which content is original and which one is simply copied from somewhere else on the internet. So, trciking Google is not the case at all. The truth is duplicate content damages your website in many ways. Copied content lowers website authority and can lose you a lot of your potential customers. It can even cause Google to penalize your website, which you would not want at any cost. So, make sure to publish original, informative, and high-quality content on your website.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
As we have mentioned earlier, keyword stuffing is a bad SEO practice and poses a huge threat to your website. There was a time when you could have expected to rank higher simply by stuffing your blogs with the target keywords. However, as per the current scenario, keyword stuffing is nothing but an unethical SEO practice. Maintain a natural flow throughout the web page and insert keywords when necessary.
Final Words
Optimizing website content is crucial. The above-mentioned techniques will help you publish content that attracts your target audience and also helps the search engine to crawl your website. However, if you aren’t familiar with content publishing tactics, you should consider hiring professional copywriters from SEO India who can write high-quality and customer-centric content for your website. Such professionals are familiar with the current
