How to Maximise Your Content as SEO Changes
Search optimisation is a constantly changing medium, with multiple areas to consider when building your website, producing content and keeping ahead of the latest trends. Maintaining the status quo when you’re trying to run a business and other responsibilities can be difficult to juggle, so how can you maximise the time you have?
Content is still seen as one of the most beneficial ways to rank for new keywords, improve internal linking across your site and increase the likelihood of gaining backlinks to your content, as well as increasing views to your site. We can also go back to older blogs and look to optimise them, keeping them fresh and exciting.
As SEO changes we should aim to keep on top of the content we produce and what improves rankings, as sticking to the same methods each time can cause you to lose rankings in favour of regularly updated blogs.
Here are a few ways to keep on top of your content optimising as digital marketing methods change.
Produce content that can be easily featured
One of the big things Google is especially pushing is featured snippets. These are small pieces of text that appear at the top of a search result that answers a user’s question. They appear in many forms – as a list, a small snippet of text or an image – for easy access and to minimise users needing to access multiple webpages.
But there’s also other features that Google uses: knowledge graphs, maps, recipes and shopping to name a few. Businesses are having to work harder to gain results from their content.
To increase your chances of becoming a featured snippet, aim to vary your content as much as possible. You can use lists, extending your content to over 1000 words or adding data into a formatted table. Do some keyword research and see what common queries appear and add them to your content for improved rankings.
Add structured data to your content
Structured data is a string of code that can be added to important pieces of your content. So for example, if you had an exclusive recipe you want to share, you should add structured data around this content to improve its chances of becoming a featured snippet.
To add structured data, you should use Schema.org. It’s a great resource that shows you how to add this type of data to a variety of content and has multiple guides on how to add the code correctly to your site.
Using structured data increases your chances of your content appearing in light boxes at the top of the SERPs as shown below.
Feed into the Passage Ranking formula
Passage ranking is the new way Google is ranking its featured snippets and now appears to favour blog posts with longer content and deeper explanations on subjects. The best way for businesses to produce content in this way is by researching long tail keywords and adding them into your guides, blog posts and news stories.
Writing more comprehensive content is seen to be the way forward for improved rankings as search engines continue to experiment with how best to display content for users. With a number of different options to rank in the SERPs through imagery, featured snippets and local listings.
Above all else, keep abreast of current SEO ranking factors, especially when it comes to your content. A number of updates have been released in the past 18 months that have a heavy focus on our content, and is something businesses should keep an eye on as it develops.
