Owning a business, whether online or offline, means that when trying to improve sales using content marketing, SEO cannot be ignored. For a business’s website to be visible and authoritative, it must rank high in the search engines for relevant keywords.

If you are looking to supercharge your content marketing with SEO, here are seven powerful tips:

Publish fresh, compelling content

According to Brendan Wilde, the marketing manager at www.umbrellar.com, “The number one content marketing rule is perhaps freshness/authenticity.” It’s even one of Google’s ranking factors. This means that for your content marketing site to rank high in search results, you need to post regularly, and the content has to be original and compelling.

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When you update your site regularly with fresh content, you reduce bounce rate, improve user experience, and receive more backlinks. These are all search engine ranking factors, and in combining these results, your site’s visibility on search is bound to increase.

Nail your headlines

Headlines stand out in search results and are a great indicator of whether or not an internet user will click your link on Google search. Your headlines have to be captivating, relevant, and easy to understand. Nail these factors, and your chances of winning search engine users’ hearts will improve.

You may also want to integrate keywords in your headlines, but be careful with this so that it doesn’t betray the meaning or value of your headlines. The goal here is not to create clickbait, but rather click-worthy headlines.

Incorporate relevant optimised images

A picture tells a thousand words, they say. It’s a cliché, but the truth of it is indisputable. In fact, statistics show that internet readers are more attentive to information that incorporates images.

Therefore, if you are looking to boost your search engine ranking, and don’t have relevant attention-grabbing images integrated into proper content on your site, then you are missing out on a very crucial SEO strategy.

Make the images on your webpages count. Use relevant captivating images to draw your visitors into the rest of your content, and minimise bounce rate, improving your search engine ranking.

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You also need to optimise the images on your site. Give them appropriate file names and tag them properly, as search engine bots recognise text but not images. In addition, find a balance between size and quality when uploading images. Extremely high-quality images will only slow down your site, and page load speed is a very important search engine ranking factor.

Conduct proper keyword research

Knowing the right keywords to target in your content can propel your web pages to search engine success. This, however, requires proper keyword research. While a highly popular keyword might be relevant to your content, you have to consider that it may expose you to a lot of competition involving very successful websites from within your niche, making it more difficult for you to rank high in search engines. Because of this, you might want to settle for relevant keywords that pull moderate levels of traffic and promise less competition.

Make your content link-worthy

When external webpages link to your website, your visibility, audience, and authority grow. Together, these growths can immensely improve your search engine ranking.

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The big question is how do you build links? The answer is simple: it’s all about value. Create regular content that is authentic, compelling, and well-researched. When people find your content valuable, they want to share it with their audience, linking new users back to your site.

Reinvent your content using other formats

No content ever really becomes obsolete. With a little retouching, adopting current trends, and you can make an old blog post fresh and viral again without risking Google flagging it as duplicate content.

In fact, with the numerous formats of presenting content available today, reinventing your old content without being redundant or without degrading its value has never been easier.

You can reinvent the content into a video, a guide, infographic, presentation, or even an e-book. The key is knowing your target audience and using a format that they will be interested in.

Aim for improved user experience

Google considers site usability a ranking factor. And poor usability can lead to a higher bounce rate, which will damage your site’s search ranking. While great content is good for SEO, you will defeat the purpose of publishing it if your visitors find it difficult to navigate your site and access the content.

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Therefore, pay attention to your site’s design and speed, and ensure that they aren’t hampering your site’s usability.

Whatever your SEO strategy is, make sure that you don’t overdo it. Your main goal should be to deliver value through your content, and SEO is about getting more people to discover that value.

Smart business owners now hire top SEO firms who understand how and where to strike a balance to give their business good online visibility and drive organic and quality traffic. Without worthy content, your SEO isn’t going anywhere. Always bear that in mind.

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