I Can't Find You! Content Creation and SEO

Your content is incredible. Your blog posts are informative, valuable and original. Your social media posts are filled with innovative writing and amazing imagery.

Yet you still are not seeing results.

What's going on?

It doesn't matter how wonderful your content is, if no one can find it. That's why SEO is so very important in your content marketing strategy. SEO has to be proactive, fully implemented and utilized consistently in order to see your content reach the audiences you are hoping for.

Personal brands and individual entrepreneurs do not usually have the resources to be able to implement a full scale SEO strategy. In larger companies, SEO can take full teams of people, with powerful keyword research tools. One person alone cannot do that work. However, one personal brand or individual can do some very targeted SEO that should provide significant results.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And the go to search engine is typically Google. Which basically means your content has to make the Google bots happy.

Google Bots Are Hard At Work Indexing Your Content

Four Targeted SEO Activities:

keywords

Keywords are still useful within SEO, but the keywords have to meet some criteria in order to be effective. Keywords need to be relevant to your content. It's critical that you do not stuff your content with keywords, just for the sake of incorporating keywords for SEO purposes. The keywords you leverage have to be directly connected to the content you are providing. Keywords need to be specific. There are "long-tail" keywords that capture 70% of searches, but these keyword searches are very specific. Long-tail keywords consider the specific search phrase that people use to locate information using a search engine.

Keyword tools:

• Google's keyword planner: http://adwords.google.com/keywordplanner
• Wordtracker: https://www.wordtracker.com/
• Keyword Tool: http://keywordtool.io/

Keyword Word Cloud

optimize blog posts

Anytime you write a blog post, that blog post should be thoroughly optimized. Blogs that you write should be, above all else, valuable and original content. Your written content should also be evergreen as much as possible. Evergreen content stands the test of time, and it will continue to be relevant in the future. The writing should be good writing, and the blog post needs to be readable. (Test your readability with this neat tool: https://readability-score.com/text/)

• Title: Your blog post title should be short, but keyword rich. 6 words is ideal, and the words should explicitly say exactly what the content of the blog post is.
• Headings: Use headings thoughtfully and judiciously. The better you organize your content, and then use headings to identify how it is organized, the happier your readers and the search engines will be. Don't just change the font manually; utilize the blog's internal settings for headings, to make sure the text is coded h1, h2, h3 and so on.
• Labels/Tags: Take advantage of the labels (Blogger) and tags (WordPress) tools and do include keywords that are relevant to the content of that blog post, as well as keywords you uncovered during keyword research. 
• Search Description/ Slug: The search description (Blogger) or slug (WordPress) is the short, high impact description that shows up when you share or in a search result, after the title. This 150-200 character description should be carefully crafted, should summarize the content of your article, and should be appealing enough for readers to want to click into and read your blog post.

Example Google Search Result with Title, URL, and Search Description

optimize images

Anytime you use an image within your content, and you have the ability to add additional information to your image, DO IT! Images are also indexed in search engines, and they contribute to your statistics.

• USE IMAGES! Many blog posts do not even contain images. In order to increase value of every blog post, make sure you include at least one image. Quality, original, storytelling type images will not only make your blog post more attractive for SEO purposes, it will also make your reader more directly engaged with your content! Try desperately hard to use your very own images, that you take with your camera or that you create yourself. Try desperately hard to avoid using stock photos, or taking images from Google image search. Be cautious about file sizes, and optimize the file size before you upload the image. Fast load times are valuable for SEO.
• Name Your Images Prior To Upload: Images should be named using descriptive keywords, with dashes in between each keyword. For example, if you have a photograph you took of roses, like I do here, name the image using keywords that describe the content of the image. Mine is called 'red-pink-white-roses.jpg'. These file names matter.
• Caption: Add a descriptive caption to every image you use. The description should be short, should explain what the image is about and should supplement your written content.
• Title Text and Alt Text: You can safely use the exact same text for your Title Text and Alt Text for your image, but make sure you DO use descriptive text for the Title Text and Alt Text. This does two things: it increases value of the image for SEO purposes, and it gives certain users a better experience. Specifically, it can show up as tip text in some browsers, and more importantly, is read as the description for images for blind or visually impaired users using screen readers. Use plain English; you can simply re purpose the file name for your Title and Alt Text, to make the process easier for you. red-pink-white-roses.jpg can simply become Red, pink, and white roses.

Beautiful images, like these roses, can communicate stories and show symbolism.

linking

Your content should include links. Links can lead readers to a drill down for more detailed information, can provide avenues to buy, and can establish additional credibility through curation. Links are useful and should be included; however, be thoughtful about the number of links used and the application. Content should not be link fests, but links that are embedded should be directly related to the content and should provide additional value and options for your reader.

• Internal Links: Link to your own, original content. An internal link is any link that refers to another page within the same domain. Internal linking is valued for SEO.
• External Links: Backlink to selectively curated sources of valuable information, that is directly relevant to your content. Backlink carefully to sources where readers can purchase products.
• Image Links: Link images to related, internal content, or backlink to external links that are directly relevant, or backlink to the location where your reader can purchase the specific product pictured in the image.

Use Internal, External and Image Links

If you are an individual or a personal brand, you can use these four easy to implement SEO techniques to amp up your SEO efforts: keywords, optimize blog posts, optimize images, and linking.