Optimising Articles for Websites

Web pages, blog posts, articles, news – there’s plenty of content online, but how do you get your pages to rank in Google? This is something that SEOs struggle with on a daily basis, and as Google carries out regular algorithm updates, the playing field is constantly changing. What doesn’t change, however, is that Google likes good content. Relevant, accurate and well-presented content that answers users search queries, is what the search engines like best.

How do you achieve this? It takes hard work and also requires you to have the right tools, a good keyword research tool, as well as web optimisation software, are essential items in any content marketer’s toolkit.

Creative Insight have proven experience optimising articles for websites and we have consistently got content we have written ranked highly in search engine results, many on the first page of Google taking the top position! This is no easy feat with over 30 trillion pages in Google’s indexes, competition is high and only those with the know-how can lay claim to the prized top spot.

So, here’s what you need to know…

Understanding your Audience

The first step is always understanding your audience. When any piece of content is written, it needs to serve a purpose. Content for the sake of content is pointless and will simply fill your site with clutter, and maybe even duplicate content! Content must be targeted to your audience, that way the traffic you gain from a properly optimised piece will be relevant and useful to you. There is no point in gaining irrelevant traffic as this will increase your bounce rate as users quickly realise this is not what they were searching for. User experience is increasingly important in modern SEO.

User searches can be interactional or transactional, a user may be looking for a specific product or information. Based on that search, they will want to see content that matches their search intent, whether that’s a product landing page, informative blog post or ‘how-to’ video.

Your targeted piece of content should be written with your audience in mind, focusing specifically on their search intent and fulfilling their query.

Research

The next step is research. Content marketers and SEOs know that content must be focused around a central keyword (or phrase) and that it is good practice to include this keyword or phrase throughout your content. However, as Google bots have become more sophisticated, keyword stuffing has become a major faux pas. It could even result in your site getting penalised and blacklisted. Gone are the days when filling your content with references to your chosen keyword could earn you your place in the SERPs.

The answer is research using a good keyword research tool and web optimisation software.

Content Theming

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is something we have spoken about before and it’s a fantastic way to improve your ranking. LSI is how Google collates meaning to words, it is part of the algorithm that allows Google to understand semantics rather than just a bunch of letters and words strung together at random. Moz has declared topic modelling and semantics to be one of the most important SEO trends in 2020 and beyond and it’s something all digital marketing professionals should be aware of.

Essentially, LSI allows search engines to understand synonyms or other related words to a chosen topic. Rather than focusing solely on one short or long-tail keyword phrase, content should be topic-based. For example, if a page is about “tea”, you may expect to also see references to “mugs”, “teapots”, “sugar” and “milk”, these keywords are associated with the topic that is “tea”. You may also expect to see synonyms such as “brew”. These theme words give your content meaning to bots and allow Google to understand the purpose of your content more accurately.

It is important however, that all content appears natural and is legible. Google always values content that is correct and knowledgeable about the topic. Using LSI keywords shows Google that you are an expert on the subject matter and have authority within the field.

Optimisation Software

So, how do you harvest LSI theme words from Google? This is where a web optimisation tool comes in. Using our specially developed content creation and optimisation software tool based on Google’s own latent semantic indexing algorithms, we can create a list of what Google considers important theme words for any keyword or phrase. The advanced software uses bots to crawl the web and source the most popular words and phrases surrounding your focus topic.

With this information under our belt, all that’s left to do is write our web page, carefully weaving in our LSI phrases and words to create an expert article on our chosen subject-matter.

Content Architecture

As well as the body text, it is important to include theme words within your content architecture. Page elements including the meta page title, meta description, header tags as well as image names and alt text all need to include the relevant search term you are focussing on.

The Top Result in Google

Using this method we have continuously achieved the number 1 result in Google for a plethora of different clients including holiday parks, foster care agencies, air compressor manufacturers and distributors, jewellers, software houses and more. Whatever the industry, properly optimised content will pay dividends, it doesn’t matter how ‘mundane’ or ‘boring’ the business may be.

For example, we successfully increased organic traffic with website visitor numbers increasing from around 12,500 per annum to nearly 50,000 per annum in as little as three years for an independent foster care client. Plus, as the content we wrote was properly optimised for the audience we wanted to target, the traffic we gained was relevant and useful to our client. We delivered an average of 130 quality leads per month and decreased the bound rate from 44% down to just 6%. This is the power of optimised content.

The Experiment

But, how do you prove that these fantastic results were down to optimised content? It can be a hard thing to narrow down as there are many ranking factors. That’s why our team of SEOs at Creative Insight have decided to do a little experiment of our own.

Last week you may have seen our blog on the same topic, you can check it out here. This was a short form piece that did not use the techniques we have laid out in this article. In comparison, this piece is long-form and is a comprehensive discussion of the subject matter at hand. It has been thoroughly optimised using theme words harvested by our optimisation software and ticks all the right boxes SEO-wise.

Now we have two similar articles, one optimised correctly and one not, we can accurately measure the results of our optimisation. We hope that this test will provide definitive proof about the value of well-written, researched, targeted and optimised copy!

Let’s wait and see…