07 Dec Upgrade Your Online Ranking: 6 Ways To Improve Your Content

Did you know that 55% of marketers are creating more content and posting more often? In fact, this came out on top of all of the other ranking tactics, including improving technical SEO (30%) and link building (21%). 

This statistic alone highlights why it’s vital for businesses of all sizes to focus on improving their content, which is what we’re going to take a look at below. Continue reading to find out more about how you can create killer content for your next campaign. 

1. Understand your audience

If you don’t take the time to understand the people you’re trying to reach, how are you going to write in a way that compels them and encourages them to take action?

So, let’s begin with the basics:

• Who is your audience?

• Are they busy professionals, young tech enthusiasts, or health-conscious individuals?

• How old are they?
• How do they like to spend their spare time?

By answering questions like this, you can effectively tailor your content’s style, tone, and subject matter. 

Don’t simply use guesswork, though! You can send surveys to people to get feedback, as well as making the most of social media tools and Google Analytics. 

2. Up your SEO game

Now that you understand your audience, it’s time to take it up a notch. Of course, it’s so important to write for humans nowadays. In the past, companies would craft the most dreadful content, which was jam-packed with keywords. Those days are long, long gone! However, that doesn’t mean SEO should be an afterthought. You still need to craft content with SEO in mind. However, a much more thoughtful and considered approach is needed. 

So, how can you leve up when it comes to SEO?

Find your primary and secondary keywords

Before you put pen to paper (or should we say finger to keyboard!), you need to determine your primary and secondary keywords. 

• A primary keyword is the main phrase or term you want to optimise your content around. 
• Secondary keywords are closely related to your primary keyword. They include long-tail variations, related subtopics, or synonyms of your primary keyword. 

Your primary keyword needs to achieve the following:

• Be within your ranking capabilities ✅
• Have a decent search volume ✅
• Be relevant to your content ✅

There are lots of great tools that can help you with finding your primary keyword, such as Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool and Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. 

Secondary keywords will then enhance your content further, as they boost your chances of ranking for even more keywords. Plus, they’re comparatively easier to rank for, whereas primary keywords tend to have more competition. 

Satisfy search intent

Great, you’ve got your keywords ready! What’s next? Well, you need to create content that satisfied search intent. 

What is search intent? This is the reason why someone would search for your keyword. 

Think about: when you type a query into Google, you’re doing it for a reason. You want to find out about something, right? And, the best possible way you can teach someone about a topic is to use the best content format. 

Some of the most common and impactful content formats include:

• Comparison posts
• Definition posts
• Step-by-step tutorials
• List posts
• How-to guides

To find out what sort of content format works best for your topic, simply head to the pages on Google that rank to the top. Find out what they’re doing! After all, it’s working for a reason, right? 

Incorporate keywords organically

Once you’ve selected your keywords, the hard work is not over. You need to use them, wisely! Your keywords need to fit into your content so seamlessly that no one realises they are keywords to begin with!

This means a BIG NO to keyword stuffing ❌ 

Structure content with subheadings

You may have noticed that we’ve used a mixture of H2 and H3 subheadings in this blog post. 

Why? Well subheadings organize your content, letting Google and your readers understand and navigate your post.

3. Convert videos to text

An innovative way of improving your online ranking is to convert video to text. This will not only feed into crucial aspects of SEO but it ensures your content is more inclusive too, which is, of course, vital. 

What are the SEO benefits of converting your videos to text?

• Transcripts ensure a wider audience can access your video content, including those who are hard of hearing or deaf. Or what about those who simply prefer to watch videos with the sound down, such as commuters?
• Search engines can also crawl this text, which will provide context to the information you’re sharing. 
• Readers can utilize transcripts to scan through content and understand the key points if they don’t wish to watch the entire video. 
• Transcripts will provide valuable phrases and keywords that you can use to optimize your videos and enhance your ranking in the Google search engine result pages. 
• You can use transcripts for internal link-building opportunities on your site. If you have content that compliments your transactions and gives extra value to the reader, link to it! This keeps visitors on your website for longer.

4. Consistency is key

Next, we cannot overlook the importance of “consistency.” You may think this is just a buzzword, but think again! In fact, consistency is imperative when building an effective content creation strategy. 

When you’re consistent, it means you show up day after day, week after week, with unique, interesting, and high-quality content that your audience can depend on. 

It’s also about delivering content that aligns with your messaging and brand voice. 

Consistent content creation:

• Builds brand recognition ✅
• Improves SEO ✅
• Establishes thought leadership ✅
• Increases audience engagement ✅ 
• Builds credibility and trust ✅

5. Use multimedia

As alluded to earlier in the blog, SEO has evolved massively in recent times. Nowadays, huge emphasis is placed on user experience, and this is something that increasingly impacts your search ranking.

It’s also why multimedia is vital. It enables you to exhibit your business’s personality, values, and voice via different mediums, such as infographics, podcasts, videos, and images. 

This provides a much better experience for the viewer. 

Answer honestly: Would you rather watch a video or read a long article if you’re looking for a solution? The vast majority of people will say they would rather watch a video. Furthermore, engagement rates are a lot higher when watching a video instead of reading. 

At the same time, people are bound to be drawn in by other mediums of gathering information, such as podcasts, infographics, and images.

This doesn’t mean that you should say goodbye to the written word – far from it! But it does mean that you need to look at ways of enhancing your content with different forms of media.

6. Use content creation services

Last but not least, if you’re looking for a guaranteed way of improving your content efforts, there is only one real answer: using content creation services. After all, if you get an expert to handle something, the chances are they’re going to do a great job, right? 

Hiring a content creation company can deliver a number of important benefits:

• You’ll be able to scale up quickly – When you outsource, you’re not limited to just one writer. Instead, a pool of talented writers can handle your content means, meaning you can scale up rapidly. 

• Increase content diversity – To create premium SEO content that ranks well, your content needs to be engaging and useful. When you outsource, you can be sure of interesting, diverse content that pulls your target audience in. 

• Enjoy better quality – Content creation companies are experts in SEO. They never miss a beat! They know what Google is looking for, and they know how to provide it. This helps to ensure that you always stay ahead of the game, which can be incredibly hard to do if you handle content in-house and it’s not your core service or area of expertise.

Take your content to new heights on Google

So there you have it: six tips on how you can improve your content and take your Google presence to new heights. However, it’s important to remember that the online landscape is changing all of the time, so keeping in the loop is a must. Make sure you read those vital Google algorithm changes and stay ahead of any trends so that you can adapt and keep your top spot.

Author bio:

Kerry Leigh Harrison has over 11+ years of experience as a content writer. She graduated from university with a First Class Hons Degree in Multimedia Journalism. In her spare time, she enjoys attending sports and music events.