The Ultimate SEO-Friendly Content Guide for Your Business

There are so many pro SEO tips out there that it can be hard to know where to start. That’s why to make things easier for you we’ve created the ultimate SEO-friendly content guide for your business.

Link to relevant content

This should really be a given, but there’s still a large number of companies out there who don’t seem to realize just how important it is. If you want to be able to stand head and shoulders above the competition, then you’re going to need to link out to relevant content. It shows the crawlers you’re a node in your industry, and it adds value to the browsing experience.

Encourage relevant, trustworthy sites to link to you

You’re also going to want to do the reverse of the first point by reaching out to sites you want to connect with. The more sites link to you the better your SEO will be, provided it’s relevant traffic that you’re getting. If you’re a plumber getting link referrals from a badminton site then you might get a huge surge in traffic, but 99.9% of it is just going to bounce back, which will actually harm your SEO.

Write guest blogs and embed backlinks

If you want to become a guest blogger then you need to do 3 things:

• Know your subject inside out like you’ve been writing about it all your life
• Take the time to come up with original and creative ideas
• Work with the site to create something that adds value for both of you, rather than just serves as an ad for you

Give every page a unique meta description

There are so many businesses that ignore meta descriptions for seemingly no other reason than they don’t have to Google themselves. If you remember that the rest of the world does, and they pay attention to what’s in the meta description before they get anywhere near the homepage, you’ll see that it’s just commonsense to optimize yours.

Localize your keywords and look for high-yield, low competition phrases

Your keywords are important because they’re your attempt to predict what users are going to search for when they want to find you. The more specific you can get them the better, but don’t do it at the expense of traffic. If you’re too precise then you’ll only get a dozen hits a day which just isn’t going to cut it.

Compress your images to enhance loading speeds

Loading speeds factor into SEO because Google is geared solely towards giving users what they want. If they keep redirecting people to slow sites that take an age to load that’s not going to be good for anyone.

Add an SSL certificate to reduce bounces

There’s more to SEO than your keywords. Sometimes all it takes to reduce your bounce rate and skyrocket the apparent relevance of your content to Google’s crawlers is to make people trust what they’re seeing.

Share links to your content on social media

Casting your net far and wide using the power of social media will help you to improve your SEO. Keep using keywords — a lot of people forget to do that. And if you can get one of your links embedded in a message that’s liked or shared thousands of times then that’s even better.

Use tools that will help you fine tune your content

It’s really important that what you put out there is readable and engaging, as well as SEO-friendly. Here’s a few tools that will help you with the former:

• TrustMyPaper and Studicus allow you to have your key information fact checked and woven into your writing in a way that makes a compelling case for what you’re trying to say.
• WowGrade and Grammarly are great tools if you want to prevent the age-old issues of typos and grammar mistakes stopping your content in its tracks when it goes to press.
• HemingwappApp and Supreme Dissertations help you find the perfect turn of phrase to get your point across. Less is often more when it comes to content, and these are the tools that will keep your writing short and sweet.

Common mistakes you need to know about

You’re going to need to put plenty of thought into your content marketing strategy if you want to take your SEO in the right direction. It may sound like an obvious statement to make, but so many businesses fail to take heed of it. To ensure you don’t follow in their rather unsuccessful footsteps, take a quick look at the common mistakes people make:

• Failing to keep content relevant to the core aims of the business — just because something is viral right now, doesn’t mean it’s relevant to what you’re trying to achieve
• Not fact-checking content before it goes live. You could have the best keywords and graphics in the world, but if what you’re saying turns out to be largely uncredible then it’s going to do your business more harm than good
• Not updating your keywords and not making them localized. This one speaks for itself really — if you want to stay ahead of the crowd then you’re going to need to keep constantly improving.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully you’ve found this article informative and inspirational when it comes to your SEO efforts. If you’re new to SEO you’ll have learnt some new techniques that will get you up to speed faster than your competition, and if you’re in need of a fresh approach we trust you’ve found it. Now it’s over to you to go out there and create the content that will take your business to the next level.

Guest article written by: Diana Nadim is a writer and editor who has a Masters degree in Marketing. She combines her passion for writing with her interest in research and creates thought-provoking content in various fields. She currently writes for IsAccurate, as well as number of well-regarded industry sites.