How to Create and Optimize Content PROPERLY

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Excuse the tone but I’m tired of seeing brilliant Content wasted because it has not been optimized properly – and so today I hope to stop this trend (unless you are my niche competition in which case – please continue as you were )

Let’s start with the basics and work our way up… the Content itself.

Ok so there is nothing new here, and certainly I would imagine – nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know, but for the sake of a good post, I’ll share it anyway…

What Makes Good Content?

There are three main ingredients to good content and they are;

1. Originality (uniqueness)
2. Relevance
3. Links

and that’s it! Seriously – it’s not rocket science (unless you are trying to rank for NASA or something)

Let’s take a look at these three elements in more detail:

Originality (uniqueness)

I won’t spend too much time on this point – mainly because I think we have all had it drilled into us enough. Your Content needs to be unique! BUT let me clarify what unique is.
Unique is NOT taking an article and spinning it. I don’t care that you’ve got ‘The Best Spinner’ available – by the time you’ve wasted your energy replacing synonyms and then making sure the spun content actually makes sense you could have written an entirely new article!

Lesson: Forget spinning and just write a 500 word article from scratch (trust me – it’s quicker in the long run and Google will reward you accordingly)

TOP TIP: Take your topic and break it down into 10 sub topics – then instead of covering all these in an article focus each article around one sub topic. Much easier way to produce unique content quickly.

Relevance

The MOST important element when creating content  is the relevance of it to the overall topic of your niche site/blog, (and this is where the above TOP TIP can really help you to create a myriad of relevant articles)

Relevance is also one of the most important factors when it comes to backlinks – something Google always looks for when indexing new pages, but we’ll get to that…

Define Relevant please Alex?
OK, sure thing…

Relevance is what Google tells you – ie: doing a basic Keyword Search using the Free Google Tool and asking the results to be sorted by relevance. This may seem obvious but sometimes we as marketers tend to unknowingly put on our ‘consumer hat’ and make the assumption that we know what is relevant – without EVER doing any keyword research.

BUT keep that consumer hat handy – because we are going to need it now…

No matter how good the Keyword tool you have is – it cannot get into the mind of a consumer and think logically like a human being does – and that is where you and your ‘hat’ comes in.

Think about your product (I am assuming we are selling physical products for this example) and then think about what it is used for.
You may be selling dog training aids (why?) and your Keyword research has given you a myriad of related phrases to write about – but think outside the square for a minute and you will come up with even more relevant topics -

• Guide Dogs – Not-for-Profit Organisations- Living without eyesight – companionship
• Dogs vs. Cats – which is better for who? and why? Opinions-Polls-Statistics
• Dog Health – Diet – Veterinary requirements – how to cope with the loss of a ‘friend’ – when is it time for a new one?

As you can see I have just quickly rattled off a few related ideas and then let that idea flow  to others. Here you can see that I have come up with at least 10 potential new articles on related topics.

TOP TIP: Just because a phrase only has 5 monthly searches does not mean its not worth ranking for/writing about. The more topics you can cover that are relevant to your product the better Google will rank you – simple.

 Links (Google’s Language)

Now PAY ATTENTION because this is the most important aspect to your blog content creation and optimization -and where most people tend to fall flat on their faces.

Google loves relevance – that much we have established, but the actual content on your page is only part of the equation that Google looks at – the other part is the links.

You Need to Give in Order to Receive.

If you want your content to rank then you need to really get Google’s attention, and the best way to do this is to fill your relevant content with even more relevant outbound links!

Writing a Review of a Product?

This is where you have to be selfless and forget about your affiliate links for one second. (at most you should have 1 call to action with your affiliate link attached – the rest of the links should contain even more valuable content for would be readers)

To go back to the Dog Training niche example (I use this because I HOPE none of my readers choose this saturated market).
If you are writing a review of a dog training product and all the links on the page are either self serving links to other sites/pages or they are affiliate links then I don’t care how relevant and unique that content is, Google will slap you silly.

BUT if you write that review and in it you link to say ‘Guide Dogs Australia‘ and talk about the work they do, then you link to maybe a high ranking ezine article that highlights a point you are making (etc etc) then you are telling Google that not only is your content unique and relevant, but it is also helping readers to learn more – expand their knowledge on related topics and (generally speaking) stay on your page that little bit longer. (which also factors into your overall rank)

Conclusion

Creating new and relevant content is a straight forward process of using both the Keyword tools provided and the common logic that you as a consumer and human possess.

Optimising that content is simply a matter of being selfless and thinking about the readers NOT the Search Engines. Create outbound links to quality pages and forget about your own affiliate sales for a moment and YOU WILL do better in the long run.

Tagged as: blog content, create content, optimize content, SEO content