How to Master Content Optimisation for SEO

At Eyekiller, we work with businesses across a wide range of industries. When discussing their content strategies, three key aims stand out. Growing their audience & engagement, developing and enhancing brand presence, and driving sales. These objectives can be achieved through paid avenues such as advertising and social media strategies, but in this blog we are going to be looking at what you can do to achieve your marketing goals without breaking the bank!

Mastering content optimisation for search engine optimisation (SEO) is one way to smash your marketing goals! This blog will outline our tried and tested methods of content optimisation, including examples of the different ways that you can optimise your content to improve its search engine performance.

Why Content Optimisation is Important for Your Business?

Let’s say that you’ve written a great top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) blog that’s related to your core product, and you want as many people as possible to read it. A couple of months after publishing, you check the performance of the post and find out that only your mum and granny have read it. You might have written the best article in the world, full of unique insights and helpful advice. But, if search engines can’t find it, it’s pitched at the wrong audience, or nobody’s interested in it, then it won’t help you achieve your content marketing goals.

To help ensure this isn’t the story for your content, we’ve compiled this step by step guide to keep you on the right content optimisation path and make sure your content marketing strategy is successful.

Step 1: Keyword Research

The cornerstone of any piece of content is the topic and keywords you choose to target. It's important to identify those before preparing and writing anything. You should begin by targeting one primary keyword. Start with a bigger topic that you'd like to focus on. Google will pay acute attention to how you are covering the topic and your primary keyword. Keywords are individual search queries that people search for online, while topics marry the semantic relationship between those keywords.

To streamline our keyword research, we use the Topic Research tool on Semrush. You can find similar tools on platforms likes of Aherfs. On Semrush you start by typing in a general idea that you think will be of significant interest to your audience.

For instance, here at Eyekiller as a digital agency we craft websites, campaigns and digital strategies for our customers. A topic area of interest for us is 'content optimisation’. When searching for this you can also select the desired geographical location: country, region or city as seen below.

Next, on your screen you will see a wide list of related subtopics that you can choose from.

For this example we will pick the 'Content creation' topic. Click on the card to see a list of the most popular headlines and questions related to this content idea. You will also see a list of related searches at the bottom of the card.

Step 2: Determine Search Intent

Now that you've decided on your topic, you can decide on the target keywords for your blog post. Depending on the size and authority of your brand, you will now need to consider if the keyword is achievable and whether it meets the search intent of your target audience.

Understanding user intent and the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), plays a pivotal role in the success of any piece of content. Google’s number one goal is to satisfy user search intent. If you want to succeed with SEO and content marketing to ensure your work doesn’t go unnoticed, search intent needs to be a big part of your approach.

The different types of search intent are informational, commercial, navigational and transactional, and it’s important to understand the difference. Many of these are part of the user journey online, meaning a user can sometimes search for more than one type and on more than one occasion before reaching their desired outcome.

Search intent is often easy to determine from the wording of the query itself, which helps while conducting your keyword research. There is an abundance of useful keyword research tools such as SEMRush, with filter options such as search intent, monthly search volume, the search trend, and the difficulty to rank highly for certain keywords.

Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool enables you to generate keyword ideas based not only on traffic volume and difficulty but on user intent as well. For instance, you can choose keywords that are informational or transactional.

Head to the tool and type in one of the keywords, for example, starting with 'content optimisation'.

When you have found the keywords/search query you want to expand upon, it’s a good idea to take a look at the highest ranking results from your competitors for an idea on how to structure your content. If they are on the first page of the Google results, their content is likely to satisfy search intent.

Select the format:

Finally, you will end up with a list of keywords that your piece will focus on, which can usually be divided into primary (most important, core keyword) and secondary (supporting and related) keywords.

To give yourself the best chance of ranking, include semantically related keywords that are conceptually connected with your target keyword. It helps search engines better understand the topic you are covering. It’s important, though, that you don’t deviate from the original intent of your article.

Step 3: Optimise Your Meta Title & Description

Writing your meta title and description is both an art and a science. This can be especially true if you are producing large volumes of content. Therefore, it’s important to know how to write them properly and have some rules in place that all your meta descriptions and titles should follow.

What Does a Good Meta Description Contain?

1. Use an active voice and make it actionable

2. Keep it up to 155 characters

3. Include a call to action

4. Use your focus keyphrase/primary keyword

5. Show specifications when needed

6. Make it unique

7. Make sure it matches the content of the page