It is often said that content is king, in regards to search engine optimization. This is been a fact, that has been parroted by optimization professionals since search engine optimization rose to prominence. While this fact is true, it is often overlooked by many webmasters. Not only should you have content that is relevant to your niche, but you should also make sure that you are writing for the users in the end, and not the search engines. By writing for the users, you can decrease your bounce rate, increase conversions, and provide an overall better experience for your users, which in and of itself help to to achieve better rankings in the search engines. A few of the things that need to be taken into consideration as you are crafting content for your website for the purpose of search engine optimization include;
Relevance
There is not enough that can be stated about relevance. The content on your page directly reflects whether or not you will even be able to rank for a given term, and also what longtail terms your page is going to receive traffic from his well. Make sure that the content for the pages pinpoints exact phrases that you are looking to rank for, without sacrificing natural sounding content in the process. Writing solely for the search engines, may increase your relevance, but will destroy the enjoyability of your website in the eyes of the users in the process. Before crafting your content, try to find keywords that you would be interested in targeting for that specific piece of content, and then matching it up with content that is going to fit the overall scope of your website.
Write For Users Not Search Engines
With 2011's panda update, Google began to openly take more things into consideration when ranking websites. Factors outside of the content in back links, such as the bounce rate of your website, the uptime of your website, and general usability became much bigger factors in the search engine results pages. When you write content for users, you are addressing them in a different manner, and are not focusing so much on items such as keyword density. Never sacrifice the usability of your website, in order to appeal to search engines. In the end, it is the users of your website that drive the revenue and monetization, and the search engines just provide the traffic.
Provide Media
Another way to increase the relevance of your website in general worth of the website in the eyes of Google, is to provide related media to the topics that you are talking about. By providing pictures, and videos of the subject in which you are discussing in your content, you can provide a visualization of the topics I you were talking about, which has been known to increase the worth of the given page in the eyes of Google. Utilizing media to better the user experience is also something that should be taken into consideration, as it allows you to connect with individuals that may soak in more information from a visual representation, then simply by reading.
Encourage Discussion and User Generated Content
Another excellent method for increasing the worth of your website in the eyes of the search engines is by encouraging discussion from your users, and therefore encouraging user generated content. When you can entice your users to contribute to your website, they are creating additional content that is picked up by the search engines and attribute it to your website, helping to increase your rankings and take the content creation load off of your shoulders. Encouraging discussion and user generated content has become more popular in recent years, with the rise of social media, and is been shown to have profound effects on optimization efforts.