Ritika Puri
SEO for marketing is one of content’s biggest gray areas. On the one hand, we know how important it is to be visible in search. On the other hand, we’re not quite sure how to make this goal a reality.
3 simple steps that will help you improve your SEO for marketing content
When it comes to SEO, marketers often have more questions than answers in front of them—which isn’t a surprise, given that Google doesn’t want the world to know its engineering secrets. Even still, there are some simple steps that your company can take to ensure that your content reaches the right audience. Here are three simple steps that will help you improve your SEO for marketing content:
1. Optimize Your Visibility
At the end of the day, your SEO goal is simple: you want target audiences to find your business through search engine results pages. Tricks and best practices aside, you want to connect to an actual human being on the other side of your computer screen. That’s why, when publishing content, you’ll want to make sure that you’re present in every relevant channel possible. Make sure that you’re cross-promoting content across social media, including your Google My Business account.
Make it easy for your audiences to find your content across channels. Since readers will be sharing and back-linking to your content, the visibility will eventually trickle back to your search presence.
2. Write Great Meta Titles and Descriptions
Even if you’re ranking for the right keywords in search—your efforts shouldn’t stop there. Once you’re visible in search, you’ll want to provide an incentive for your audience to click through the website from your search engine results page (SERP) listing.
This incentive is nothing more than what you already have to offer—the solution that you’ve developed to meet your audience’s needs. You’ll want to update your meta titles and descriptions with this messaging to ensure that your audiences have a compelling reason to visit your website. Make sure to write meta titles and descriptions for every piece of content that you create.
3. Be Keyword-Aware Rather Than Keyword-Driven
It’s common for marketers to be keyword-obsessed—a little too obsessed. What’s important to keep in mind is that Google’s algorithm is smart. While it’s important to know what keywords you’d like associated with your content, you need to take a step back to remember your core messaging.
You can split your keyword optimization process into two phases: before writing your content, make sure that your writing team knows the keywords you’re targeting. Then, use Google AdWords to look up approximate competition levels for your target keywords. If you notice that one of your keywords has “high” competition—meaning that there are a lot of people creating content around that concept—you could try pursuing a low competition alternative. Don’t worry about search volume, as Google is smart enough to recognize long-tail equivalents of a keyword or concept.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that SEO for marketing shouldn’t feel like time-consuming voodoo. A few simple micro-decisions can yield a world of difference in terms of your search visibility and rankings. These three steps will give you the structure and perspective that you need to kickstart your process.
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