Table of Contents
Content Optimization Checklist
The internet world has been very competitive nowadays. You need to optimize your content to get impressions and clicks. This article presents the ultimate content optimization checklist to make your search engine ranking easy and fast without failure.
1. Why does your content matter?
You are to think and answer why your content matters. Is this value-adding or a piece of writing to overload the internet? Find the reasons for creating new content in addition to the existing tons of content.
2. Does your content solve the problems of your audience?
You have to identify the audience and ensure that the article addresses their problems. The audience searches online for some solutions and hence requires that you provide solutions when they land on your site.
3. Keywords and competition
○ Length of your competitor’s articles?
○ What’s missing in existing writings?
○ What value are you able to a new piece of content?
The content must assess the fucus and the competitiveness. Length of your competitor’s articles matters though you are not always required to write longer articles. You are to find out the missing point that you can cover and add real value to the audience.
4. Content
Your writing must incorporate the core idea of the solution to customers/audience. Then the organization of the article must be readable with ease. The sections may be under different headings and better to be more than 1000 words.
○ What problems are your target customers trying to solve and why?
○ Title each section with an H2 or H3
○ 1200-1500 words
5. Compelling Headline/Title
Products and services are essential, but you can not ignore the impact of packaging. The eye-catchy title attracts more clicks and audiences. Follow the formulas below:
○ Active and Customer Focused
○ Tag your headline as an H1
○ Use Keywords in the headline
class=”wp-block-heading”>6. Supportive/Sub Headings/ Sub Keywords
Your writing should focus on single aspects but should not be limited to only one topic. It would be best if you covered the relevant sub-topics/keywords. Discuss the related points under sub-headings.
○ Tag the subheadings as an H2
○ Place Keywords to separate different paragraphs
7. URL: /short-keyword-URL
Your URL is important both to the robot and users. However, be careful about selecting the URL as it is not wise to change URLs once indexed and ranked by search engines. Maintain the issues below:
○ Don’t use special characters
○ Don’t use heavy categorization
○ Use keywords
○ Make it meaningful but sweet-short
8. SEO tags:
Your tags and titles must follow some SEO formulas. You may follow the below-mentioned ideas:
○ Meta Title:
i. 65 Characters Max
ii. Include the main target keyword
iii. Shorter is ok
○ Meta Description:
i. 154 Characters Max
ii. Include target keywords
iii. Keep it close to, and do not exceed 154 characters
○ Alt and Title tags: The image tags are essential
9. Social Proof
○ What makes the content shareable? What’s missing?
○ Quotes and Testimonials
10. Benefits:
It is essential to present the benefits for the audience. Everyone finds it is vital to get their interest fulfilled. So, let the audience know what benefits they will derive from your article’s products/services/information. Answer the questions:
○ What’s in it for your customer?
○ Why would they want to pay for your product or service?
○ What business problems do you solve by using this content?
○ Does it save time, help them make more money, or save them money?
11. Links-Internal& External
Linking of content matters a lot for SEO. Relevant links make your writing trustworthy, relevant, and authoritative. Therefore, ensure that you place relevant links internally or externally where applicable. Relevance for internal and authority for external linking are vital points to consider. Answer the questions below for linking:
○ Are there relevant internal links on your content?
○ Are external links given to authoritative sites?
12. CTA
Your Call to action plays a vital role in drawing the attention of audiences. Perfect and appealing call to action ideas include the following:
○ Buy Now
○ Contact Sales
○ Sign Up for a Demo
○ Watch the Webinar
○ Sign Up for a Free Trial
○ Download Now
Few more aspects
Content promotion
Content creation and optimization are not all if you can not reach your audiences well. Reaching audiences requires the promotion of content. Employ a good portion of your time in marketing and promoting your published content.
Trial and Error
Everything may not work for all cases. After all standard processes are in place, try some changes to find the functionalities. Find what works best for you. Experimenting with trial and error pays off.
Leave a Reply