11 Reasons Your Website Needs Content Optimization for Solid SEO
Last update: 27 April 2023 at 01:11 pm
3.00/5As much as 80% of all purchases start online, so it’s easy to see the importance of ranking high in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
However, you’ve just done a website audit and found a bunch of old content that doesn’t rank. Since you know that quality content plays a huge role in your overall ranking, you’re already planning the next new piece to publish. But what if we told you there’s a simpler way towards higher conversions and more traffic?
The secret is in an often overlooked, but valuable SEO tactic: existing content optimization.
Besides being less time-consuming than creating content from scratch, updates to your stale pages also deliver faster results. If you’re not convinced, take a look at the largest benefits content optimization brings to your website.
Greater Information Accuracy
One of the most obvious reasons to update old content is accuracy. Think about it: if you published a blog post with some statistics five years ago, chances are it’s no longer relevant information. So, to make sure your post still contains all the essential data, simply add links to the newest statistics.
This kind of content optimization brings in a lot of potential, especially if there’s high search intent. For example, if your team of content creators makes a list of marketing statistics at the end of each year, you can copy the template and simply add in new figures.
With a minimal amount of effort, you can post it on social media sites and encourage content marketers to share it.
More Internal Linking
While you’re optimizing content, it’s also a good idea to check for other potential internal links you can add. Besides giving crawlers an idea of what your website structure looks like, they also enhance the user journey.
Essentially, you’re pointing visitors to more high-quality content while improving your page authority at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.
Speaking of links, you’ll also want to check if all of them are still live. Broken links are one of the factors that negatively impact your SEO efforts, not to mention how frustrating they can be for the user. Whether it’s an external or internal link, make sure to replace it with a new one.
It may be hard to know the best practices for internal linking, so why not take a look at some qualified SEO agencies to help your business reorganize your content?
Higher Click-Through Rate
What’s one thing that all website owners have in common? You guessed it – they all want to be on the first page in search.
However, most people also forget that the rank doesn’t matter if nobody actually clicks on the page. What’s more, search engines see low user engagement as a signal of non-valuable content.
As a result, your website gets demoted, and you have to put in more effort in getting your rank back up.
Seeing that your click-through rate is closely connected to search rankings, improving it is worth investing time in. You can do that by:
- Improving your title tags
- Adding relevant keywords to your URLs
- Setting a custom meta description for every post
- Boosting your page speed
4. Better readability score
To paraphrase Bing’s Duane Forrester, grammatical and spelling mistakes will cost you. In fact, research shows that poorly written content negatively impacts user experience. That’s because it:
- Interferes with reading flow
- Jeopardizes your website’s credibility
- Focuses the reader’s attention on trying to find more errors
So, while you’re updating content, keep an eye out for typos. Once you’ve corrected them, you’ll have also improved your website’s user experience. At the end of the day, you want your visitors to keep coming back – and frustrating them with bad grammar isn’t a way to achieve it.
Fresh Content
Imagine searching for a list of the best content marketing strategies online. When the search results come up, you will click on the most recent result. After all, marketing evolves constantly, so there’s no reason to look at articles from years ago.
In general, recently published content ranks higher, especially when it comes to topics that frequently change. So, if you don’t want your existing content to get buried in the depths of the internet, you have to show search engines it’s fresh. The best way to do that? Keep it up to date.
And if you’re wondering about that piece of evergreen content you spent hours creating, don’t worry. You can easily refresh it by adding relevant internal links or simply changing the publication date.
Consistent Indexing
The frequency of indexing your website depends on how often you publish updates. And since search engines need to index your entire website to track changes, content optimization benefits more than just the most recent post you’ve tweaked.
The more your site is crawled, the more likely it is that your most recent piece will appear in search results. Seeing that every change you make is seen as an update, you don’t have to publish tons of new content. Instead, simply posting what you already have with a few modifications will do the trick.
Higher Search Engine Rankings
To increase your chances of ranking higher in search engines, add different types of media to your content. Besides making it easier to skim as the user scrolls, visual media adds more SEO opportunities.
For example, if you use somebody else’s infographic and link it back to them, chances are they’re going to visit your website. And if you’ve also produced an image or video content that can be useful for them, they’ll return the favor by linking to your website.
Since backlinks work like votes of confidence, they will send a quality website signal to search engines. Be careful, though: trying to use shortcuts in link building never has a good outcome in the long run. Make sure you exchange links only with credible websites that are close to your industry.
That said, don’t forget about content optimization while adding visuals to your site. To make the best out of your content, include your target keyword in:
- Alt tags
- Meta tags
- Meta descriptions
- Image and video titles
More Conversions
Regular content optimization not only improves your website SEO, but also lets you adapt your brand messaging. Since you need to run an audit to check your performance anyway, use it as an opportunity to:
- Analyze your calls to action
- Remove obsolete data
- Make sure all the content is fulfilling its intended purpose
With the use of content optimization tools, you can ensure your website sees a regular stream of updates. Besides refreshing your old content, those updates also show current and potential customers that your business is active. So, if you haven’t made changes to your website for a year, a few updates might be just the trick to get your conversion rate up.
Improved Search Engine Optimization Practices
Not many things can make you want to change your ways like having to edit your own content. From duplicate title tags and irrelevant topics to unintentional keyword stuffing, not having an optimization process can result in your website being penalized. In order to avoid that in the future, prioritize:
- Older content with SEO potential
- Content research
- Adding more value, not more length
- Improving internal and external links
- Optimizing images and other media
To make sure you reach your target audience, keep SEO best practices in mind while developing your content marketing strategy. That way, you can increase traffic to your website by making informed choices about the posts you share.
Better Keyword Optimization
If a few of your posts are doing worse than the others in rankings, chances are you have a keyword issue. Maybe you didn’t do enough research the first time around or didn’t do it correctly. No matter the case, consider optimizing your content with appropriate keywords.
To see which pages aren’t performing well, go to Google Search Console and look for content that isn’t ranking well. Then, you can use a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs or Moz to check:
- Which keywords would be the best fit for your page
- The estimated search volume for each keyword
- Your current ranking for each keyword
Once you have this information, it will be easier to plan for content optimization and get higher rankings. And the best part is, you won’t have to spend hours doing everything from scratch.
Good ROI
With the amount of new content being created every day, getting a high rank is difficult, no matter how search engine friendly your post is. But, if you have a piece of older content that’s already performed well in the past, it may be your ticket to more organic traffic.
As opposed to new ones, older pages, and posts that ranked high don’t have to make such a long way up there again. Not to mention the fact that content optimization takes less time and effort than starting from ground zero.
Final thoughts
If you’re looking to improve your SEO results, content optimization is the right place to start. Besides helping you increase traffic to your website, it will also help you start creating more compelling content.
Start freshening up your existing pages by including descriptive information in your metadata. It’s important to accurately describe what your pages are about. Also, if you haven’t already, optimize images in your posts.
And if you don’t have the time to do the work yourself, it might be time to look into an SEO proposal or two. Hiring a professional to optimize your content isn’t a bad idea, especially if you’re struggling to keep up with all the newest Google updates.
