Whether you own a small website in some corner of the Internet or a large and complex multi-page site with enviable page rank and domain authority, you still want to maximize the efforts and effectiveness of your content writers.  Well written, relevant content is important, of course, but the question is how to present it in a way that will improve your search engine results?  As SEO changes over the years, formats ebb and flow in popularity and in efficiency, so let’s take a look at a few of the best ways to get your site noticed.

Blog Early, Blog Often

Blogs offer a great opportunity to communicate with your target audience, so long as you keep them relevant and keep them fresh.  One of the advantages of including a blog on your website is that it will bring in good SEO results with short articles.  You don’t need thousands of words per article – 300 words or so should get your the results you want, if you publish regularly.  And that’s the key with using blogs to drive your SEO, frequency of publication.  Anywhere from three per week to one per day will not only get your newest entry the attention it deserves but it will also help keep the rankings high on older articles.

Be Authoritative and Be Right

Longer articles published as permanent pages can bring in great SEO results – so long as they are relevant, authoritative, and accurate.  If you or your writer is an expert in a field related to your site, a well researched and documented article will not only rank well today, it will also attract the kind of links that search engines love.  More links means better page rank, and that continues to weigh heavily on SERP’s.

Make it Visual

Imbedded videos, live streams, and picture galleries to illustrate your point are a great way of bringing in viewers and holding their interest, which in turn boosts your search results even more.  This is a great way to bring fresh eyes to a content page if your intent is to show a range of related products so consumers can choose the one that they like best, for example.  If you do use video or pictures, make sure they are well labeled or described in separate text.  Although the visual intelligence of web crawlers has made huge strides, text that is included as part of an image can confuse them and is never as effective as actual text.  At least for now.

Make a List, Check it Twice

Detailed and content rich lists that answer specific questions are a great way to boost your SEO efforts.  A well formulated list with a clearly identified purpose can also potential reward you with an SERP feature, dramatically increasing your visibility on the web.  The more informative your list is, the better your results will be.  This is a great way to use content to drive traffic to a web page that sells a variety of types of a product.

Interactive Tools

When I was young, I loved going to museums that had lots of buttons I could push to make things happen.  Ok, I haven’t really outgrown that and neither have most people.  Interactive tools, whether it lets someone customize a search (typical on real estate sites for example) or customize the features on a car or other product provide lots of opportunities for additional search engine results.

Whichever format you decide to use for your content, nothing beats having text that is well written, accurate, informative, and relevant.  Keep those things in mind and play with different formats until you figure out which works best for you and your website, and good luck!

No Comments »