One of the problems with our small business SEO clients is that their existing company websites frequently have content that Google will never rank highly in its results. At least, not for search phrases that will bring any significant traffic to their site. Many small business owners will create a website, or hire someone to create their website. This site will tell, generally, about their business, products or services.
Most web development firms that service small businesses do not create search engine friendly, optimized content sites. It’s not practical to do for the amount they are paid. Many don’t have the skill because it’s not what they do. Consequently, the small business now has a site that no one knows about.
Why is Optimized Content Necessary?
Search optimized content is important for multiple reasons. The most important reason is relevance. If a searcher clicks on a result and lands on a website page that provides exactly what they’re looking for, everybody wins. The search engine company has satisfied the searcher, the searcher has the useful information, and the website owner has a good lead. This lead may well become a paying customer or subscriber. Another, perhaps less obvious, reason is that a non-optimized web page will not likely rank highly [1st page]. Content needs to deliver compliant text to the search engine algorithm, while emphasizing its relevance. This is optimized content. Without it, your website has almost no ability to make it to the top of the search results for competitive search terms.
How to Create Content to Satisfy Search Engines
The first step in creating search optimized content is keyword analysis. There are, most likely, many aspects to your business, product or service. What you choose to write about will determine who [how many] responses you can get. For example, suppose you sell helium-filled balloons for birthday parties. You could write an article about just how strong your balloons are. Suppose this article brings in little or no traffic. The problem is [speculation] that no one cares about balloon strength. The searcher’s party is over in a couple of hours and the balloons float away.
Since no one cares about this aspect of party balloons, few people are searching Bing or Google for helium balloon strength. Article creation opportunity wasted. Your keyword research and analysis will reveal good, relevant search terms. These are the terms that many searchers use to find businesses like yours. It will tell you (approximately) how many people are searching for these terms every month. You will observe the relative competitiveness of a given search term in the keyword report.
In the above scenario, the analysis reveals that thousands of people are searching for birthday balloon images or birthday balloon pictures; however, nobody is searching for birthday balloon strength. Therefore, you should create content about the beauty of your balloons. Write about the colors, the imprinted images, the balloon shapes.
Search Optimized Content Quality
To bring in organic traffic over an extended period, your articles must be of high quality. In this context, the articles need to be well-written, factually accurate and reasonably interesting. What does this mean? If your written content doesn’t remotely resemble the Queen’s English, it’s not optimized. When your content contains false or inaccurate statements, it’s not optimized. Content that is so boring and self-serving that no one can make it through the first paragraph is non-optimal. Poorly written or boring content will not attract links from other sites. It will not be cited. Such content will not receive much social media engagement. As a result, content with these characteristics suffer lower search ranking.
Good search optimized content has elements of valuable content, highly searched keywords and moderate competition. Most noteworthy, however, is that few of your competitors will produce any quality, search optimized content. Thus, you can out-do them with a little extra effort. This makes it easier to promote your web pages on the Internet and in social media.
Bottom Line on SEO and Content
Optimized content is not an afterthought. So, your web development team should have knowledge and experience in this area. Otherwise, you will probably require an SEO team to rewrite your beautiful website from the ground up. Your budget may endure considerable expense if this happens. If you are planning to create and manage your own small business website, we suggest that you get a copy of Marco Palmero’s DIY SEO 2018: Search Engine Optimisation Fundamentals before you start.
Key Takeaways on This Subject
- Keyword Focus
- Relevant Content
- Medium to High Search Count
- Moderate Competition
- Quality Content
- Hire Skilled SEO Talent if Necessary.