In this day and age, having an internet presence for your business is practically a must, whether it is just a website, or also a blog and possibly a Social Media presence. But there is more to having an online presence for your business than just being there. You need to make yourself seen to really make it worthwhile, and one key way to do that is by making sure the content you post online (information on your website, blog posts, social media posts) are optimised for SEO, so that search engines will be more likely to find you and rank you higher in their results when someone does an internet search. How can this be done effectively so you can get the best results possible for your business? Here are a few key tips to optimise your content.

1. Keywords ✍️

When optimising content for SEO, one of the main things to make use of are Keywords. These are words search engines will use to find your content and determine what it is about. You may be using some keywords naturally in your content, but you will want to research for related keywords that you can also use to better your chances. Also, research to see what keywords are most popular to use so you can decide whether to use them or not; popular keywords may not be that great to use, since they are popular and so you may not rank that high with them. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool and semrush.com are two good tools to help with your keyword research. You can also use them to spy on your competition and see what keywords they are using to get traffic to their sites.

Once you have keywords figured out, place the strategically in your content so they will have maximum impact on both readers and search engines. Try to include them in the title of your posts, the headings, and subheadings, the introductory sentence, the concluding paragraph, any anchor text (text used to hyperlink to other related pages on your site), and in title tags and meta descriptions. Just be careful to avoid keyword stuffing, since filling your content with keywords can make it difficult to read, irritate your followers, and get you penalised by Google.

2. Images & Video  

You might not think about this, but images and videos are also greatly favored by search engines when they are indexing for results, so be sure you optimise any images or video in your content. You will want to use keywords here as well. Use them in the file names, and fill out the alternate text field for images with a brief, keyword rich description.

3. Content

Make sure you use quality content instead of worrying about search engine algorithms. Google prefers content that is valuable to people over content created primarily for ranking. Quality content, according to Google: contains information that is trustworthy; is written by an expert in or an enthusiast of the field; is not a duplicate of other articles with slightly different keyword variations; is a site someone would be comfortable giving their credit card info to; does not have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors; has content that is driven by a genuine interest of readers to the site and is not just trying to guess what might rank; provides original content; provides substantial value compared to other pages; content has quality control; article describes both sides of a story; the site is a recognized authority on its topic.

4. Links

If you have a blog, if you reference another blogger or an article in your blog post, include a link to it. This is not only good etiquette but a great way to receive a link back. Links are very valuable for SEO, so make use of them also on your site, linking back and forth to other pages on it. And also be sure to make use of your links on social media posts.

5. Social Media

If you are using social media to connect with current and potential customers, use it also to promote your blog and site updates for more exposure. Share your blog posts on your social media sites, and post when you make updates on your website. Remember, search engines also look at social media sites for indexing, as well, so make use of it.

There are a variety of tools available as well to help with SEO, so don’t be afraid to look at them and see which ones will help you.