CONTENT OPTIMIZATON

WEB TECHNOLOGY POST by Gene Vann
INTERNET MARKETING (SEO) TECHNOLOGY BLOG

Updated | September 19, 2015 | Marketing post | Content Optimization

CREATE YOUR CONTENT AND MAXIMIZE ITS POTENTIAL 
WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR PAGE CONTENT AND WEBSITE CONVERSIONS 

Hello again. In this segment we'll discuss content optimization. Sometimes called content marketing or inbound marketing. So lets get to it. Too give you a completed and rounded understanding of content development and inbound/outbound marketing strategies, it will require several different blog installments. I promise to cover the entire spectrum. We'll discuss the basics, touch on a few of the advanced practices, and I'll introduce you to a couple of free SEO tools in this one. 

You've probably heard the expression: "Content Is King" on the Internet right? Well here is another way to view that. In television the most popular shows get the lions share of attention, and therefore they have the potential to make the most sales for any given television advertisers money. Advertisers are willing to pay more for a spot on the most popular shows. And that's because those are the shows with the most audience per half hour, hour, two hours whichever the case may be. Why do these shows draw the biggest audiences? It's their content. They have the content that is most appealing to an audience during that particular broadcast season. These shows are generally very well written, highly entertaining, educational, news worthy or funny. But most importantly their content strikes a familiar chord with their audience. Websites are media and have the same responsibility. 

Bloggers and content will always be the driving force behind the Internet. Like a good sitcom writer, screen writer or story teller is to television. Bloggers provide that little something you were seeking, or otherwise not able to find. It could be information, explanation, education, training or entertainment. Bloggers are in my opinion the informants of the Internet. Sometimes it's a matter of semantics or context that has kept your understanding of a subject unclear to you. Then one day you come across a blog that puts it all into perspective for you. Bloggers are a friend in a strange place who uses weblogs to index information that show you how  to do something otherwise not known or understood before. Readability score is a very important measure that bloggers use. Your readability test score should match your intended audience spectrum. For example: Lets say you're writing about toy safety. Though toys are used by children you don't want to write in language and context that a seven year old might read, you want to write in the 11th-12th grade level so young mothers and fathers age 18- and up will relate to. But, bloggers and other website writers/operators must optimization their content to satisfy search engines as much as they do to help readers. 

Search engines have rules for content. If it is to be recognized categorized and marketed by them you must comply with those rules. Otherwise how are going to get your content seen by the largest audience possible. Social networks are great for getting traffic to your site but you need search engines too. The problem is: there are a lot of rules, and most of them are multi-dimensional, meaning there are various angles to the rule. Interpretations can vary sometimes. This can be down right harmful to you. It's what you don't know that hurts you. Remember that from the hope page here? So you need to gather as much information about a rule as you can, once you've learned of the rule. Here is an example of what I mean by that: 

Take for instance the rule against keyword stuffing your content so it ranks for those keywords. Now we all know that you have to be sure your content has your key words in it for crawlers to understand what your content is about so they can index it. Lets say you're writing about a cake making company you own called "The Best cakes In Town". And in your company website's content you write a 1500 word article about your cakes. And you use the "long tail keyword" (key phrase): The best cakes in town. And you really want to rank for that key phrase because not only is it a likely search phrase that will be used by a potential customer during a search query, but it's also the Title of your site and the name of your business. This makes it multi purposeful, it confirms the search has arrived in the place they were searching to be. #1 Increased traffic, #2 it confirms your ideal visitor #3 it converts clicks into sales on your site i.e., online orders and deliveries etc.

So in your content you find a way to use that phrase 200 times to see to it search spiders are influenced enough to rank you for that phrase. But by the ratio of words to key phrase (called a long-tail keyword) you've stuffed your key words and the spiders will penalize your post and rank you lower for your efforts. So not only will you fail to rank for that key phrase, but you may be penalized and down ranked for trying to manipulate the bots. The lesson here is to just make sure you're being honest as you write what you want your readers to know about your product, your brand and its values. The bots will know and respond appropriately. Their algorithms are advanced technology and l lot more so than you might think. They analyze your search term to get at the underlying meaning of your search in order pull the right pages from their index for you to read. Spiders/bots are powerful, complex algorithms that in all honesty; think. They're not self aware but they can do the math and you could find your site in trouble if you break the rules. Also, you stand a better chance of attracting back links to your article when its honest, authentic with no hidden agenda, and knowledgeable about cakes. Here's a tool to help you control the wording in your content. 

Don't use your keywords anymore than what is reasonably necessary in order to make a point during the course of writing the article. The bots will know where you're headed with it and they'll respectfully rank your article based on your sites link quality and authority within their internet index.  

First and foremost your content must be understandable. What you say and how you say it is important. If you are writing about the extinction of white rhino but the title reads "How to prepare a chicken dinner" there is an obvious conflict between content and title. Maybe you're eluding to them being killed because their meat tastes like chicken. Unfortunately designing your articles content like this is not search engine friendly because your head tags will conflict and confuse both search and reader. Not only that but the world knows rhinos are being killed for their horns, not their meat. 

Your title is just as important as your content. Giving your article, blog or story an appropriate title is the top most important part of optimizing your content. 

People decide what they are going to read based on titles and page descriptions in search. Here's a browser extension tool to help you with that. Works for Google Chrome users, take a look. 

The title tells them what the content is about. The title tells search engines in which category to place the content. When there's a conflict bots will decide for you and that never works in your favor because though your content will be made available it will be very hard to find. The accuracy of the content and its readability attracts back links from sites addressing relative subjects and information. So it all begins and ends with the title of your content and it's meta page description if you want people who are searching for the information your content provides to click over to your site. Identifying your audience is critical to your success. Google Trends can help you with that. 

Authoritative content is generally placed higher in rankings and gains more traffic than content that is not pointed and accurate and authoritative. When content is optimized for search engines and search result rankings it will convert to inbound marketing easier.  

Content is created for a purpose but if it is not optimized for search it gets no distribution and it cannot reach or be found by its intended audience. It is most important that your content is seen by it's INTENDED audience. So you must drive searchers to your site via search engines and drive your visitors interest by the sites content, which then drives your visitors to click your sites ads other product marketing techniques that are on the site relative to its subject matter. You can use apps like  

If it is not seen by it's intended audience it cannot attract back links and therefore cannot rank for its key words DUE TO A LACK OF TRAFFIC. Really in all honesty, Google places ranking and traffic generation for a website almost entirely on it's back links. They are what the spiders follow and how your site will rank from within a search engines index. Another problem with content that is not optimized for search is conversions; you'll have trouble identifying your personas. Sites that attract the wrong personas for their product will have trouble making sales. I will not delve into the science of personas in this particular post. I will most certainly address it in a future post though. Here's a little sample: You sell skis on your website, but you write about motorcycles. You will attract the wrong personas to your site if it's skis you sell. We'll get into the science of persona soon. 

Content should be aligned with your title, be organized, be valid, useful, informative and authoritative if your site is educational in nature.  

References should be used when appropriate to qualify what's being said when what's being said is on a educational platform or directed at professionals as an absolute. Smart content writers know their audience like the back of their hand and can develop content that fits them like a hand in glove. Of course this requires experience but once you learn who your audience is and how to write to them, you can increase traffic, back links and sales. These content writers know who they are addressing. They know what their audience wants to know, and how to present it to them. Analytic's are super important decision making tools, but nothing replaces knowing your subject, its audience and how they comprehend and digest the information that drives them forward to wanting more and to grow. 

The best copywriters and bloggers know in what context or nomenclature to write. In other words how to speak in the same language their audience speaks. Knowing your audience and how to address them is half the battle in all writing and in blogging. Lets stay here for a bit and discuss readers. Readers are your customers if I may put it that way. They are consuming your product, which is data or information in this case. So for all intent and purchase you could say they are consumers and therefore customers. Customers are the reason businesses are in business. For this reason I believe writers and bloggers need to learn about customer service values and techniques. If you've ever worked in a customer service position you'll know what I mean and how to apply it to your online business. 

Now, briefly lets talk about "Out Linking"  from your content and your readers. Out linking is when you create a URL link from your content to a place away from your website. A hyperlink. When your content is distinctive, educational or even unique, out linking is probably not much of a threat to your bounce rate. Bounce is a time on site measure which helps you understand your connection with your readers. A high bounce rate means your readers came to your site but your content or site features failed them in some way and they left. Excessive out inking sends your reader away from your site for too many times and too and too long by feeding into their surf impulse. You should limit the amount of out links on your site or within your content. Also, excessive out linking degrades the rest of your out links which can downgrade your sites search ranking. 

Search engines will give your site out links a value. But that value is divided up among all your out links combined. So in other words you are rewarded by search engines for out-linking. If you have done the research on what you write about, if it is informative and presented well; out linking is not much of a threat because your readers will always return to finish what they started on your website because the information is either easily digestible or the information is not available somewhere else. Referencing and expanding information is useful and usually important to readers who gobble up information like a Pac Man. But you must be careful not to persuade them that there is more and better information on another site than yours. Read the entire information string on the site you're sending them too to be sure it is only addressing and adding to that particular isolated point within your content. 

Readers appreciate a reference and won't leave your site permanently just because you introduce them to confirming information that supports what you're saying about the subject located somewhere else. In general they appreciate that you want them to have more information about what they're interested in. But in many cases it's quite the contrary. You send them away, they get caught up in the other site, they may not come back to yours. So be sure you only out link (hyper link) to a site that is only addressing what you are saying in the same paragraph of the hyperlink. I don't want my readers dating other sites, lol. Oh by the way, an out link from your site becomes a back link for the site you linked to. Some sites check their back links, know who's linking to them, and will link back to you giving you a useful and do follow back link in return. This doesn't mean for you to go and disavow your no follow back links. Check with Google before you disavow any of your back links. 

Some readers are very internet savvy and will save your sight in a new window or bookmark it so they don't lose it when they follow a link you gave them to another site. I try to have all my hyperlinks open in a new window. That way my site is still within their line of site as they explore the other site I linked them away to. These readers are more apt to return to my site immediately afterwards or bookmark it if they've run out of time. They'll come back because of your honest efforts to be thorough about helping them get the right information for their needs. They know you're just putting their best interest first. In all honesty they came to you hoping to find complete and rounded information. So don't under estimate your reader. They are pretty smart cookies. They'll want to get back to your site finish up what they started there if you information is compelling and informative.   

I like to put my readers first in everything I do online of offline, and in every decision I make about what I write. I do that in designing content, the honesty and completeness of the contents information and in my SEO efforts regarding the content among other things. From my perspective they come to me hoping I have the answers they need. And if I can expand on the information referencing another site I will do that for their benefit. People recognize good work when they see it. They'll always come back to you if you do good work in what you provide for them. 

Search engines rely on key words to determine where your content fits in on the Internet. The predominant words and phrases  called long tail key words tell the search engine what your content is mostly about. Upon registration with a search engine your website is placed at the end of the line in search rankings for the subject of the site. As it is called upon by searchers, search engines compare that frequency with other content of the same category on other sites and your content begins to climb in rank. That process speeds up if other sites are back linking to you. By doing so they are validating your content. 

Seasoned copywriters, bloggers and other web publishers develop a knack for their niche and learn how to present it to search engines as they're writing it, which saves time editing for optimization later. 

Okay, so lets have a look at some of the more technical aspects search engines will look for in the basic processes required for achieving maximum content page optimization. Beginning with page title: 

• Make sure your title includes your primary or most important keywords and does not exceed 70 characters (that's characters not words)
• Meta Description of your page should be as accurate as you can get it within 160 characters
• You have the option of 6 title tags which are placed before the heading. You may or may not need all 6. if you use more than one, place the keywords in order of priority with the most important tag at number one i.e., <h1>Georges Ice Cream Blog</h1>  <h2>the story of Georges ice cream</h2> etc
• Search engines don't understand images. "Image Alt Attributes" describe an image in readable text so spiders/crawlers can understand what the image is about  
  
• Try to put more text than html coding on a given page by a ratio of 25 - 70% more. 
• Check your content for broken links periodically. Repair any broken links 
• Make sure your page is mobile friendly. Limit Flash, Javascript and CSS above the fold of your page and make sure you have a mobile redirect in place
• Be sure the text on the page is legible 
• Create a custom 404 error page for your page/content
• Place the most important content of a page above the fold line of the page
• See that your content page loads fast. Page load time can defeat all your page optimization efforts.
• Define the language of your content in its html code (not crucial but does help internationally)
• Make sure you have structured data markup for "Rich Snippets" in place
• Make sure no email is set to "plain text". Scammers and spammers look for ways to breach the security and privacy of email. Your email trust setting should be HTML so they don't come in that way. Anti Virus programs sometimes change your email to plain text during updating. Re-install it.
• Web analytics lets you measure visitor activities on a page. Make sure you have at least one in place.

Depending on your content management system (CMS) you can search engine optimize your site well into the 80 and 90% optimized range. Word Press sites are great for this. When a page is optimized at 80% and above you have a better chance of attracting back links. Your site/content is being seen by more people and therefore giving you a higher chance of being noticed by other bloggers and websites that may want to link their site with yours. This does not mean that a site will not gain back links just because it is not optimized at the 80% range. On the contrary, you can out rank a Word Press or other popular systems with other site systems when your content is good stuff. You will still attract back links, but sometimes at a slower pace. Drag & Drop sites are not as easy to optimize as Word Press or some other CMS's. *Note: Word Press has D & D sites available too. They are not quite as SEO friendly, in which case you'll need a back link building strategy. What ever you do, don't buy back links. Organic back links only. Buying them will get your site into trouble with Google. Your site could be black listed. 

The most popular sites on the web have back links into the millions. But don't be discouraged, those sites have either been around for many years or are managed by a marketing team focused on back link strategies and campaigning for them. And even then, it still takes years to get a million back links. More important than numbers is the quality of back link. More on that in coming posts. Also, just a reminder to look for more content marketing post coming that will address other key aspects of content management optimization and Inbound Marketing strategies. So there you have it. If you follow the instructions in this post your content and website will begin to clime in search ranking immediately. 

Alright, that about does it for this segment. See you at the next SEO blog coming the week of 9/21/2015 
Best regards, 
Gene