63 | How to Produce Quality Content in 2020
I’m joined by Richard Garvey from Acer to talk about SEO optimised content and bringing value through in-bound channels.
Write Content for the User First
Deliver high value content first and then worry about optimisation afterwards. Google wants you to give an answer or be useful and although you can create something that answers the question, if the user doesn’t like it, then Google makes it fall down the rankings. The creation of content is therefore two-fold as you must optimise for the user and Google, but always the user first.
Good content encourages the user to see and read more than one page. So when you are creating content, it’s not just about the content piece but content pieces and how they live together and how you continue to help that journey. Basically you need to create awesome content no matter where the user lands.
Step by Step for Great Content Creation
- UX; fast and user friendly site that’s easy to navigate. Get your site correctly implemented and technically good. It should look good, clean and simple. People want to know your product or solution and ultimately, they don’t care if there’s a crazy background that moves (unless you’re a site designer perhaps.)
- Keyword targeting; look at the search intent and understand what your customer base will be searching for.
- Create awesome content and optimise it. You can’t skip step 1 or 2 to do this well.
- Get quality backlinks by targeting the right people and create something that stands out.
Do your SERP Research
What is Google catering for particular answers? You can find out by looking at the search engine results pages. It’ll help you see what the intent is, even for an ambiguous search term.
Is it an infographic or video? for example. What are the headlines? Is it listicle or top 10s etc.
What’s the quality of the content too? Perhaps go to a longer tail keyword if it’s too competitive.
Whatever you do, do it BETTER.
“Millions of pages are created everyday so if you can create good content then you have a good chance to rank” – Richard Garvey
Recommended Tools for SEO Content Creation
- Ahrefs for keyword research, competitor finds and more.
- UberSuggests is free
- SEMrush more for tracking
- Google SERPs; autofill or ‘people also search for’ can be useful
Think about your end goal, for example, do you want brand awareness or product sales? This will determine what you create. Lower funnel traffic builds authority and long tail keywords convert better. There’s also that trust factor, so talking around your topic improves your visibility for a particular subject.
The Focus post-Algorithm update in May 2020
The strategy hasn’t changed. Focus on delivering and generating high quality content with backlinks. Keep the quality but you can do small things like EAT (expertise, authority, trust) so authorship needs to be on the page and expert biography on the page/separate page helps too.
Richard reels things you should be doing, such as optimising imagery, bold and highlighting text, title tags. Did you know that text in the middle is seen last? 80% see the title then headlines in the article itself, then bold text and if only if that’s interesting, then the whole article. You therefore have to make sure that every single thing on the page is interesting (unless it’s a more serious industry like finance.)
A brief mention of Links via SEO Content
- Social media is a ranking factor
- Content that goes viral improves rankings
- It’s easier to get a link to a site that offers good content and has good usability
What Content Works?
This solely depends on what you’re targeting. Generally, for B2B blog articles work well and long-form types of content. You need insights and imagery and ensure to update your pages to make it user friendly. B2C it’s the blog and traffic whilst for retail it’s usually product pages unless you want brand awareness via buying guides and so on. Gather data that you create from a survey or merge those together from the government and the company. You create a lot of value doing this, therefore it scales accordingly with links too, Richard says.
“Do your keyword research and create good quality content” – Richard Garvey
Fun stat: Interactive content is 7% more likely to get high quality links. Credit to James Brockbank.
Get in touch with Richard Garvey: LinkedIn | Website | Email: richard@acerseo.com
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Music credit: I Dunno (Grapes of Wrath Mix) by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/56346 Ft: Jlang, 4nsic, grapes.
