You’ve heard it from almost everywhere; when it comes to SEO and marketing in general, there’s no better investment than content. Content helps us get found on Google in a myriad of ways. Whether we incorporate specific keywords and phrases, answer highly asked questions, or even tell the story of your brand.
However, with all this enthusiasm for content, it is easy to get to the point where we are producing without taking the time to ask ourselves why. This is where strategy is important. While most people don’t think of SEO as a targeted form of marketing, in reality we are always targeting a wide range of specific searches. More content is not always better, but doing the proper research and finding the right range of specificity is important. Continue reading below to discover how to best optimize your content.
How Targeted Should My Content Be?
When starting off with content strategy, the more targeted you can get the better. One important step to take is to test the search volume of each keyword or phrase. Longer tail key phrases are great to use because they often contain within them shorter keywords. Since long-tail keywords are very descriptive to the user’s wants or needs, they can positively affect the ranking. They allow more specific results than simplistic or shorter keywords, since website owners can edit and create content that is tailored to these results. To drive higher organic traffic, targeting your content with specific keywords that benefit your rank can achieve many of your goals.
How Can I Test My Content?
There are many tools out there that claim to test how your content is performing, but we always recommend Google Search Console. Not only is it completely free but it’s data straight from the source. GSC will not only show you how many impressions and clicks each page is receiving, but which search phrases they are showing up. This data will help you decide if you need to broaden your content or specify it to a smaller audience. It will also show you what’s working and what isn’t so you can continue to improve your pages. You can use Google Search Console to check things like:
- Sitemap submission
- Crawl and index errors
- Page performance
- Page speed issues
- High traffic organic keywords
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- & much more
Can Irrelevant Content Hurt My Rankings?
Content that doesn’t exactly match your target keywords won’t hurt your rankings, but you should still make sure that you are keeping consistent with content that is generally relevant to your products and audience. The more informative and professional your blog content is, the more likely you are to build trust with Google. Since it’s apparent that conversions are the number of visitors that go to the website and complete a goal, using irrelevant keywords can negatively impact your conversion rate. Since long-tail keywords have a very specific search intent, queries that don’t align with the products or services you’re offering can result in users leaving your site as soon as they arrive. This is called a poor bounce rate, which ultimately hurts your rank overall.
Contact Boston Web Marketing
For help with content marketing, keyword research, blog articles and social media, Boston Web Marketing is here to help. We work with companies of all sizes to help them grow their business and optimize their presence across web and social media. To get started on your journey to optimize your content, give our experts a call at 857-526-0096, or contact us here for more information. We look forward to assisting you!