Making the Most of Your Content Strategy for SEO

The European Summit (TES) for e-commerce and digital marketing affiliates landed in Cascais last weekend. The conference consists of a fast-paced and high energy networking event where professionals from numerous fields of the online industry can get together and soak up some insight.

While the usefulness of face to face networking can’t be understated, it’s often the incredible keynote speakers, presentations, and seminars that keep the experts coming back, year after year.

For this widely anticipated event, UniK SEO’s Business Director Grégorie Lacan hosted a lecture about content strategy for SEO and users. Hoping to not only highlight why content is so important in e-commerce but also to demystify this often confusing and sorely misused strategy.

Content creation is a massive tool for any online business. Helping to grow organic traffic, encourage brand loyalty, and of course- get that coveted top spot on a Google search. However, creating useful content is more than just throwing together some keywords and chucking your creations onto the web. Grégorie breaks down exactly how to write and create effective content for your online business. Read on for a short synopsis of his crucial presentation, or shoot to the bottom of the article for a free download of the complete PDF.

Content Strategy for SEO: Why Content Matters 

Writing content for SEO may help with your rankings, but you’ll never really connect with your customer base. While on the other hand, creating content fully focused on your customer base may gain you customer approval, but if it’s not fully optimized- who’s going to see it?

Creating content with both SEO and users in mind helps to achieve the optimum balance between user interaction and accessibility. Properly optimized content that is engaging and ideally focused has the potential to reach a wider audience and in turn, get that audience to do some of the heavy lifting for your online marketing campaign. 

Content Strategy for SEO: Creating Awesome Content 

Creating awesome content is a multi-step process, where each milestone is just as important as the last. Drop the ball in one category, and you may send the whole project crashing to the ground. Essentially, effective content creators should consider these four things:

  • Focus
  • Keywords
  • Length
  • Format

Considering things like what might interest your client, who will be reading or watching your content, and what will continue to be relevant to your brand and your customers are all key things to consider when looking to create effective content. 

Keywords can take you further when you think about what it is your customers need. Finding out the questions that your audience is asking allows you to tailor your effective content directly to their needs. Helping to hone in on your audience while simultaneously improving access to your business and your message.

The length of content has been shown to be a critical element to the content itself. Just as important as things like relevancy, audience focus, and even keywords. Creating content that is too long, or too short can have a noticeable effect on the engagement of your articles and videos.

Format really does matter. How you put an article or video together can be the difference between success and utter failure. Intros have been shown to be perhaps the most crucial element to any content, with stunning visuals and compelling themes not far behind. 

Content Strategy for SEO: Getting Your Content Seen

In order to get your content out to your audience, you’re going to need a bit of help. 

  • Social Media
  • Influencers
  • SEO
  • Frequency

Social media can be a great place to help get the word out about products and services, but going from zero to hero on these platforms isn’t so simple. Only about 1% of the 70 million posts produced each month see more than 1,000 shares.  This is why the use of influencers and backlinks is so important to your creation proliferation. 

Creating fully optimized content that is fresh and exciting is a great way to improve the interaction between clients and your products. As new industries and data are revealed, content can quickly become outmoded and irrelevant to your audience. 

Remember the ABCs of content: Always Be Creating. This is because there is definitely a link between the conversations and traffic that gets generated and how often you post new and engaging content. So once you’ve successfully created great content, follow up on it and refresh it with new information and fresh perspective. 

Download your Free PDF

As promised, here’s the full PDF used for Grégorie’s TES presentation. Available for free download! Snag deeper insight and fuller perspective through the use of this exclusive content, even if you weren’t able to make the TES Conference in Cascais.

Still left with some questions about creating awesome content? Please contact us for further information and updates! As we’re happy to keep you in the know and on top of your SEO. 

How to Run an Easy SEO Audit

Once again, The European Summit (TES) conference occurred in Prague earlier this month. From the 13th to the 16th of September, the TES gathered more than 2000 affiliates, media buyers, advertisers and publishers in the Vienna House Diplomat Conference Hotel for a unique networking experience. On Saturday the 15th, the second day of TES, UniK SEO’s Business Director, Grégoire Lacan, took part in the event with a seminar on “How to Run an Easy SEO Audit”.

In this article, you will find a summary version of this presentation. We will explain the importance and give you some lights on how to conduct an SEO Audit in 4 important categories: Technical, Keywords, Content and Links. At the end of the article, you may download for free the complete PDF used for Grégoire’s presentation.

What Exactly is an SEO Audit and Why is it Important?

SEO Audits are extremely important because they let you know what is the state of your website as search engines see it. Having in account the rules and factors that search engines use in order to classify your website in the organic search rankings, an audit lets you know what are the problems that need fixing and the optimization opportunities available.

Thus, an Easy SEO Audit is the first step in the optimization of any website. Through it, you get to know how your website is doing in terms of technical infrastructure, on-page and off-page elements. SEO Audits can also evaluate parameters such as indexability, competitiveness, website conversion & architecture, internal & external linking, link building and several others.

There are useful free tools online that provide help in auditing your website – we suggest some in this article. However, the most common approach for business owners is to hire the services of an SEO Agency. With teams of specialized professionals, these companies have the best audit tools, techniques and knowledge at their disposal.

1. Technical Audit

Technical SEO is the starting point of any successful SEO strategy. To maximize your website’s potential, it is crucial that it respects the technical guidelines and recommendations of the search engines. Only by following the rules can your pages be referenced correctly and achieve positive results for your business.

Here are some key factors you must pay attention to in what concerns the technical aspects of a given website:

    • Website Indexability: How is Google indexing your website?
    • Mobile Friendliness: Does your website work properly on mobile devices?
    • SSL Certificate (HTTPS): Does your website pass the SSL Security Test?
    • Loading Speed: Does your website load fast enough? Modern users don’t wait.
    • URL Length: Is your URL too long to rank positively?
    • HREFLANG Tags:  Does your website have them? They help Search Engines figuring out the different languages of a website.

There are a few free SEO Audit Tools that may come in handy when conducting a Technical Audit: Screaming Frog and SEOptimer are two great examples. You can find more tools and tips in the complete PDF for Grégoire’s presentation at the end of this article.

2. Keywords Audit

The SEO keywords are responsible for driving people to your website through search engines’ results pages. Here are some processes related to your website’s keywords that you must pay attention to:

    • Keywords Research: Research is the starting point of any keyword strategy. Make sure to do detailed research to find what are the exact words users type when they are looking for your service. Find more tips on Keyword Research in the PDF at the end of the article.
    • Do your On-Page: Make sure to pay close attention and organize each page and its respective elements based on keywords. Remember that your pages should not be competing with each other for the same keywords.
    • Keywords Optimization: For best results, your keywords must be evident to search engines. They should appear in your meta-data, alt text of images and videos, titles, URLs and more.

3. Content Audit

Content is undoubtedly one of the most important ranking factors for websites. Thus, when conducting an SEO Audit, you must evaluate the quality of your content. Do consider the following factors:

    • Website Architecture: Is your website organized and easy to navigate?
    • Duplicated Content: Do you have duplicated pages and content that affects your website negatively?
    • Paginated Content: Are your pages self canonized?
    • Meta Data: Is your metadata unique, keyword rich and the right size?
    • Contextual and Copywriting: Is your content original, unique and SEO optimized?
    • Structured Data: Is your content suitable and optimized to appear on structured data?

4. Links Audit

Internal Links, External Links and Backlinks are key to drive qualified traffic to your website. As such, it is crucial to pay attention to them when conducting an SEO Audit. Here are some topics to have in mind:

    • Internal Linking: Is your website rich in internal links?
    • Link Errors: Is your website free of URL errors and broken links?
    • Backlinks: Do you have quality backlinks to your website?

Now that you’re aware of what you should pay attention to in an SEO Audit, you can find extra tips to solve your website’s problems in the complete free PDF below.

Download your Free PDF

As promised, here you can download the PDF used for Grégoire’s TES conference on How to Run an Easy SEO Audit.

Have you got any questions about this article? Please feel free to contact us! We would be happy to clarify any doubts regarding this or any other content of ours.