10 types of content your website needs to boost SEO rankings
Without good content, it’s impossible for your website to rank in search engines at all. It is crucial, therefore, to carefully consider what goes onto your website, and to make sure that you have well-written and well-structured quality content!
You may have heard people speak about SEO generally and SEO Content specifically, some will understand what this means, but for those who don’t, here is a simple breakdown:
- SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, meaning the process of achieving maximum efficiency of a website, so that people can easily find it when using search engines like Google.
- Content – in this instance – is any information that exists on the internet. This could be written, pictorial, video or data.
SEO Content, therefore, refers to content that is designed specifically to help your website rank higher in search engines, with the goal of attracting more traffic – visits or ‘hits’ – to your website.
There is, of course, more to SEO than just content - your website needs to be well-designed, with fast load speeds and a user-friendly layout, an intuitive interface, along with all the other clever technical specifications your web developer should have employed from the outset. However, as fantastic as your website may appear, without good content, it won’t stand a chance against its competitors.
Before you begin to devise your content, there are three things you need to think about:
- Keyword strategy: do some keyword research before you start writing. Make a list of relevant words that people are already searching for information about in your industry. Also, find out where and how to use these keywords in your content for maximum searchability.
- Site structure: The content you add to your site needs to be organized in a logical way. This will help visitors to your site find what they are looking for and then link to other relevant, related content efficiently. Search engines like this!
- Copywriting: make sure that the content you are providing for your site is not just a tick box exercise including all the keywords you can find. It needs to be genuine and the more interesting and informative it is the better it will rank.
10 most effective types of SEO Content
- Blog Posts – Blogging is one of the simplest ways to create a regular stream of effective SEO content. They are also more likely to attract external links than product pages, so are a great way to build authority for your website and can be a great platform for any of the below forms of content.
- Articles – Informative articles are the main type of content you’ll find on newspaper or magazine websites. However, they can work on almost any type of site. News, interviews or feature-based content always goes down well with the online readership and search engines appreciate this.
- Lists – This does exactly what it says on the tin. Another kind of informative article broken down into a list. They are easy to read quickly and get the point across efficiently.
- Product Pages – Essential on all retail e-commerce sites. Ensuring your product page is SEO friendly is vital for getting people to find your products and services and it can act as a PPC landing page.
- Guides – Generally, longer pieces of content, explaining in greater detail how to do something. They require more work and will usually need to be broken down into several small bite-size chunks with efficient navigation between them. Though they may seem like you’re giving the game away, they are excellent at attracting visitors to the site.
- Videos – One of the most in vogue ways to present content. There are still currently fewer videos on the internet than pages of text. As a result, it is easier to rank on the first page of search engines for a competitive keyword by creating a video instead of an article. They are also popular with internet users because they are so easy to digest.
- Slideshows – Use these to display a series of related images. As the old saying goes: a picture speaks a thousand words. Many internet users tend to skim through websites, spending little time reading lengthy articles, so this is a good way to grab their attention. Again, make sure you optimise your title, captions and image file so that search engines are aware of them.
- Infographics – Images that contain a lot of data in an easy to read way are very popular and may well get shared around. However, because the content is embedded in the image it isn’t readable as text by search engines, so you must ensure that it is labelled correctly and the rest of the page in which it sits in optimised correctly as well.
- Glossaries – These days, more people use Google to look up words and terms than a dictionary. Specialised industry terms are particularly good, meaning that when people are searching for niche products or services within your industry, they are likely to come across your site.
- Directories – These provide links to other sites or resources about a given topic. This is a good way of developing reciprocal links with other associated businesses, therefore, building your website’s authority.
A well-designed SEO friendly website should have most (if not all) of these elements within its pages. As has been said, good content is the key to ensuring your website gets visitors and you, ultimately, get sales, so it is worth investing time and money in making sure your website doesn’t get left behind in the google rankings.
For more information and advice about creating SEO content, get in touch with Seren Global Media on 01792 293 333 or email info@serenglobalmedia.com