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4 Tested and Proven Ways to Improve Your SEO Content Strategy Today

CopySmiths December 14, 2021

The biggest mistake that SEOs make is considering only one site user—their target audience—in their SEO content strategy.

Contrary to what many people think, search engines are much more than random algorithms that you need to manipulate.

They’re key site users. And ignoring their preferences when optimizing your content can have unfavorable results.

Search engines require seamless interactions between their crawlers and your website.

Information that the search engine can understand and present easily will rank fast. Similarly, information that the search engine’s clients’—your target audience—like, will rank well.

That said, the most crucial question is, how can you create an SEO strategy that includes both categories of users?

To answer that, we will look at four effective, little-known techniques that experts use to rank their sites:

Site siloing
Creating content that is audience-based
Integrating Mobile SEO into the overall strategy
Conducting audience-based keyword research

But first, what does the term SEO strategy mean to you?

SEO Content Marketing Strategy

Your SEO content strategy details the process you’ll follow to optimize your content and drive traffic from search engines.

Some of the information that it should contain include:

Your KPIs
Your content goals
Your target audience
The content that will be produced
The content forms like videos, texts, and audio
The mediums that will be used for content distribution
How content will align with your brand’s voice, goals, and audience

A great SEO content strategy will increase your organic traffic and improve your site ranking.

So, what are the benchmarks of a great SEO content strategy?

Use of a Silo System

If you want to rank well, your SEO strategy must have a clear conceptual page hierarchy.

But before we discuss why proper structure is essential, here’s how to determine your site’s layout in one step.

Check whether URLs of related content have unique or similar URLs.

Related posts with similar URLs	Related posts with unique URLs
writers.com/seo/ copywriting/ writers.com/seo/ landing-page/ writers.com/seo/ keywords/	writers.com/copywriting/ writers.com/landing-page/ writers.com/keywords/

If your URLs look like the examples in the first column, your page is well-structured. But if they look like the URLs in the second column, you have a flat website structure.

A flat structure makes it more difficult for the search engine to navigate and understand what your site is all about.

It also tells the search engine that you’re not an expert in the field. Thus, your page is less likely to establish domain authority and rank well.

Silo systems enable you to organize your content in layers, from general topics to more specific topics.

They also allow you to organize your content according to your audience’s search behaviours and user needs. Therefore, you can maximize your brand reach and organic traffic.

Similarly, by organizing your ideas, silos allow you to detect content gaps and create better editorial calendars.

Google is also better able to analyse the amount of related content on your website and establish your domain authority.

How to Silo Your Site in 3 Easy Steps

Build top-notch landing pages. These are a vital part of a sound silo system because they provide your site’s page heads.
Create more specific lower-level pages.
Provide quality internal links. Your internal link-building practices should mirror people’s natural search behaviour and reinforce the silo structure.

Low-level pages shouldn’t cross-link to other low-level pages in different categories.

Using the previous example, “wide shoes for men” shouldn’t cross-link to “stylish high heels for women”. However, it can cross-link to “designer shoes for men”.

To help your clients move from one silo to another, link the low-level pages to high-level landing pages.

That way, human readers can navigate down through the pieces of content that they find interesting.

Creation of Audience-Based Content

Search engines like Google advocate for audience-based SEO content marketing strategies.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, their algorithms reward sites that create content for users and penalize those that make content primarily for search engines.

So, what is an audience-based strategy, and how does the search engine measure it?

Audience-based strategies aim at providing customers with unique, educative, entertaining, and engaging information. They prevent website owners from viewing their visitors as a mere means to an end.

Google uses two main techniques to determine the extent that your content is customer-focused: user behaviour and the amount of relevant content.

How User Behaviour Influences Your Site’s Search Traffic

To improve user experience, search engine algorithms are constantly monitoring how users interact with your site.

Some of the data they analyse include:

Bounce rates
Conversion rates
Click-through rates
Site visit frequencies
Channels of navigation
Time spent on your page

Each user interaction can be a thumbs up or thumbs down vote.

For instance, when people spend a lot of time on your website, it tells Google they find your site useful, and it should be made more visible.

A high bounce rate communicates that your page didn’t answer their question and your content was unhelpful.

As a result, to stay on top of the search engine rankings, you need to understand your clients’ behavior and their search intent.

Relationship Between the Amount of Content Satisfying User’s Intent and Your Search Traffic

Google algorithms are always looking for content that provides the best solution to its clients’ queries.

When a person enters a search query, the search engine checks for sites and pages related to the question.

The algorithm then ranks those pages based on several factors including:

The authority of the content
The freshness of the content
The search history of the user
The user’s geographical location

Pages that have the most relevant content are made more visible to the client.

Improve Search Engines’ Results by Making Your SEO Strategy More Audience-Focused

To build an audience-focused SEO content strategy, you need to know your audience.

So, the first step of this process is to create buyer personas by selecting 1–3 distinct customer segments.

Next, you need to outline their goals, beliefs, fears, challenges, opinions, lifestyles, and values.

It’s also necessary to analyse their demographics, like age, gender, income, and preferred media.

Finally, learn how to create quality content.

Creation of Mobile-Friendly Sites

According to Google, 94% of people use their mobiles to search for information. Of these people, 77% will still use their smartphones even when they have access to a computer.

Evidently, integrating mobile SEO into your SEO content strategy is key.

In fact, Google’s ranking algorithms have been configured to rank mobile-friendly pages more highly than the rest.

This ensures that visitors enjoy the same value regardless of the devices that they are using.

The easiest way to gauge the mobile readiness of your site is to use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

While the report can help you fix mobile usability issues, implementing a mobile strategy from the start can save you time and effort. It will also increase your visibility in organic search results.

Integrating Mobile SEO Into Your Overall SEO Content Strategy

Using a responsive web design is one of the most popular ways of making websites mobile-ready.

Responsive web designs allow your visitors’ browsers to adjust the site’s dimensions according to the device. Thus, your site’s elements appear in a mobile-friendly way, and your content is high-quality irrespective of the device.

Responsive designs are highly recommended by Google because:

They ensure that the page font size is legible
They make it easy for you to maintain multiple pages
They reduce the risks of faulty redirects and slow mobile pages
They reduce lead-time as site users aren’t redirected to device-optimized URLs
They ensure that content that isn’t supported on a mobile device isn’t displayed
They make sure that your banners don’t block the main content and disrupt the user
They lessen the time needed to index your site as the Google bot user agents don’t need to retrieve different versions of your content

You can also use dynamic serving or separate URLs for mobile pages. However, the two are harder to maintain and more difficult to implement.

Audience-Focused Keyword Research

In the past, using keywords that matched users’ searches increased your chances of appearing in their search results. Therefore, keyword stuffing was an effective content marketing strategy.

With more sites to choose from and better algorithms, this search engine optimization strategy is no longer effective.

Yes, keywords help search engines to determine a page’s relevance, making them a primary ranking factor.

But that doesn’t mean that you can write about any topic and tuck in a few keywords.

Currently, Google focuses more on the intent behind a particular keyword than the word itself.

Therefore, matching your keywords with your users’ search without meeting their search intent will lead to negative user-site interaction and poor ranking. Besides, poor-quality content will not help you convert clients.

Audience-focused keyword research ensures that you focus on the topics that interest your audience and answer their questions.

Effective keyword research techniques should increase organic traffic by:

Helping you create the right content for your audience
Creating opportunities for internal linking and keyword layering
Enabling you to land keywords with high search volumes and low difficulties

Establishing a good keyword strategy can also help you create more entry points for potential clients.

Conducting Audience-Focused Keyword Research

Begin by asking yourself what your potential clients want to know about your product.

If you’re unsure, think about the topics that come up during sales conversations or significant industry trends.

Then imagine some broad phrases your typical client would search to find that information.

For instance, if you sell baby clothes, your typical client may search “cute onesies”. Using your preferred SEO tools, analyse the phrase’s search volume and associated keywords.

Select keywords that are most relevant and have high potential.

With that out of the way, you can begin to create content that mirrors your brand and fulfils user search intent.

Let a Second Pair of Eyes Review Your SEO Strategy Today

Creating an effective SEO strategy can be a daunting process, especially when you don’t have prior experience.

Sure, the above techniques will increase your site traffic. But it takes much more to appear in the search results of your target audience.

You need to create great content, develop great KPIs, use the right SEO tools, stick to the search engines’ quality guidelines, and so forth.

If you’re in doubt, it’s best to hire an expert. Agencies like CopySmiths assist site owners with:

Technical SEO
Keyword research
Content creation and optimization
Development of proper website structures

CopySmiths

I'm Katrina McKinnon, founder of CopySmiths and Small Revolution. In my 20 years of experience, I have helped online businesses create high-performing content specifically on an eCommerce store's blog. Find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.