Tackling search engine optimisation without a trusted partner can be a daunting prospect, with every element requiring its own unique set of processes and best practices in order to be effective within the larger holistic SEO process.
We covered the start of the process in our The Importance of Keyword Research guide, which we advise you delve into in detail first.
In this guide, we’ll cover the next stages in the process, content optimisation, where you begin to implement your keywords, and page optimisation, to help you optimise further elements to support your website’s visibility and drive organic traffic.
Let’s get stuck in, shall we?
Content Optimisation 101
Content Length & What Really Matters
We’re regularly asked how long optimised website pages should be. And while we understand the question, it is in many ways the wrong one.
The important thing to know when tackling content optimisation, is that your content is assessed by search engine crawlers and ranked based on its:
- Quality and how useful it is to users
- How competitive it is in the search landscape
- How well optimised it is for your chosen keywords
- Other page-related factors and SEO-driven website credentials like your website’s page and domain authority. We’ll cover this in the page optimisation section later in this guide.
In short, it’s the quality and “content” of your page copy that really matters, rather than word count.
However, you can’t cram a ton of keyword placements into 300 words of copy and hope for the best – those days are long gone, and these practises are penalised.
Due to rabid search competition, content optimisation requires you to dig deep, write copy that converts, and optimise it properly and effectively.
Therefore, you’re going to be looking at 700+ words a page. You can exceed this too (and depending on the competitiveness of your keyword, you perhaps should), but at The Marketing Optimist, we consider the ceiling to be 1500 words.
Assess your competitors’ content practises, as copy style and length tends to change sector to sector and between B2B and B2C businesses, but remember the idea is to beat the competition, not meet it.
How to Optimise Content
If you haven’t been through your keyword research process yet, pause here, and take care of this first, using our Importance of Keyword Research guide to help you. Everything from this point hinges on your keyword strategy and selection being in place.
It’s also critical to establish your chosen voice before you start. If you don’t already have brand guidelines to assist you, explore point 3 in this blog to help you establish the perfect voice and tone with which to write in.
The very first step of the content process is: become Sartre. For this project, you’re a writer, whether you’re the CEO, director of marketing or the social intern. Therefore, your copy should be crafted in documents, not in website back-ends.
Here’s a content optimisation process for you:
1. Identify the website page you’re going to be writing and the keyword(s) you’ve mapped to this page (having done all the research already).
2. If you’re using a tool like Moz, as we do, we recommend re-exploring the results of each page’s keyword to assess the competition’s content. You can use google manually to do this too.
3. Start by noting down the topics your competitors are covering, and then add to your planning document additional content you feel is key. Viola! You have a plan/discovery to fill in, or send around the business to collect notes on each topic/part of your product/service/customer offering.
4. With a filled-in discovery, you can now begin the writing, the part that really feels like content optimisation.
Your website page copy should be between 700-1500 words, and should contain an even, consistent spread of your keyword(s) throughout the copy.
In around 800 words, we’d use between 10 and 11 keyword placements, and this would increase with word count. Keywords should be used throughout the page copy, in some of your subheadings (H2’s) and in your page title (H1). It’s very important that you adhere to this for effective keyword optimisation.
If you’re optimising for multiple terms, higher numbers of keyword placements should be given to primary, higher value key terms.
Out of 5 subheadings (H2’s) we’d recommend optimising 2 with the primary keyword. There should only be a single page title (H1) in the page, and this should similarly be keyword optimised.
Remember, quality, credibility and usefulness is key to content optimisation, so be sure to add value at every keyboard click, and leave no question unanswered. You can lean on optimised FAQ sections on each page to further answer user questions, and help achieve SERP features above organic results in the SERPS.
5. Proof, Proof and proof again.
6. This is where you’d put your copy into the website back-end, and conduct page optimisation practises. More on this below.
7. Think you’re finished when you eventually click “publish”? Live, optimised content needs to be adjusted and adapted over time to remain relevant and to maintain and improve optimisation (accounting for search landscape changes in competition). Learn more about this here. This is why it’s key for your website content to be written, and adapted in document form, not in the page’s back-end.
Page Optimisation Best Practices
So, you’re at point 6 in our above content optimisation process, you’re ready to get your new, optimised content into the page and conduct page optimisation. Take a breath and let’s jump in.
Web Page Optimisation
1. Populate – Go ahead and paste your content into your page’s back-end, being sure to paste without formatting. This is important.
2. Title & Headings – With content in the page, the first main step of the page optimisation process is to add your optimised title to your page’s H1 element, and format your subheadings to H2’s in the back-end (utilising and optimising H3’s where you need a subheading under your H2’s can also be effective). We went into heading keyword count in the content optimisation section above.
3. Alt-Text – Images across the website page need to be “alt-tagged” with your keyword. Note that on many websites, header images won’t be considered “alt-tagged” by search engines. Focus on alt-tagging on-page images, and the page’s featured image. Out of, for example, 5 total on-page images, 3 should be alt tagged with the keyword. Try and maintain this ratio.
4. Links – Links, both internal and outbound, are a central factor of page optimisation. If you’re starting from scratch, writing new page copy and optimising all core pages of your website, it’s best to do internal linking when your pages are populated, live and URL’s are established.
You should be considering internal links as part of the content optimisation process, considering how you can link to relevant service, product, branded pages or blogs across the website. These internal links provide search engines with a clear path through the website, help to establish connected content clusters, increase your domain authority and visibility, and ultimately aid your optimisation.
We haven’t found a situation where we’ve had “too many” internal links (perhaps other than on ecommerce websites with hundreds of products per page), so don’t hold back. If it’s fitting to do so, linking to one of your service/product LP’s 4 or 5 times in a 1000 page word page, for example, would be acceptable and beneficial. Link to as many internal pages and blogs, especially those which are optimised, as you can (without overkill), as this will increase the optimisation of the whole website, and content relevant to the content and keyword of the page you’re optimising.
Outbound links are also important, especially when linking to authoritative websites/content, as this signals credibility and helps to increase your optimisation. You might link out to the professional bodies you belong to, or those which govern your industry, to the websites of big clients, to credible sources providing further definitions to industry specific terms you cover etc. Use these more sparingly, 2 or 3 per page is fine (as is having more), but remember you want to keep people on site.
Links coming into the website from credible external sources are also highly impactful, and help to build your page authority, which is a signal to google that you’re a trusted source, and will enhance your optimisation. Today, these kinds of links are typically built via digital PR services, as it provides a more effective and efficient route to this goal than the outdated methods of old.
5. Page URL – This might be the simplest stage in the page optimisation process. Effectively optimised pages have optimised URL’s. Assuming you’ve chosen your keywords appropriately, your keywords should broadly cover the content/topic of the page. Therefore, make your page’s URL: /your-keyword-here (where each word is broken up with a hyphen). Note, if you’re changing the URL of a live website page, you’ll need to add redirection after changing it on the page’s back-end.
6. SEO Title & Meta Description – Depending on the CRM you use, you’ll find the SEO title and meta description in different places. For WordPress websites, we use the Yoast plugin to support this. Use your chosen SEO tool, or google, to re-explore your page’s keyword, and note how competitors are using the keyword in the SEO title. Typically, your H1 page title should work as this should be effectively optimised already, but using a more click-able, keyword optimised title, is always better.
Your Meta description should be between 120 to 156 characters, and should sell the page to search engine users, telling them what they can expect from the page. This is your big chance to get those clicks, and is not a stage of the page optimisation process to sleep on. Go sell that content!
Need Some Help?
If you’ve gotten to the end of this blog, and now understand both the content optimisation and page optimisation process, but feel they’re too large a project to tackle alone, contact our team today.
We offer a full SEO service covering strategy, keyword research, copywriting, content optimisation, page optimisation, SEO for AI search, reporting and technical SEO.
Beyond SEO, we can all support you with marketing strategy, social media marketing, website design, and digital PR.
