In a world of changing algorithms and content trends, it’s important to prioritize search engine optimization (SEO) to keep up with competitors and let your audience find you. When creating content, you’ll want to appeal to current trends so that you’re actually able to reach your target audience. Following proven best practices that give your content staying power is also important, however, no matter how many times search algorithms are updated.
To help, members of the Young Entrepreneur Council shared tips for creating long-lasting, SEO-friendly content. Follow their advice to publish pieces that stand the test of time.
14 Strategies for Creating SEO Content That Lasts
- Be authentic.
- Create a landing page with core searchable phrases.
- Make your content relevant to your site.
- Focus on the customer journey.
- Balance quantity and quality.
- Create long-form content.
- Publish useful content.
- Invest in what your target audience is already reading.
- Prioritize helping your customers.
- Have a plan to recirculate your content.
- Maximize the value you provide.
- Keep up with consumer behavior.
- Add visuals to written content.
- Get to know your local audience.
1. Be Authentic
Make authentic content. This will go a long way toward getting backlinks and establishing your domain knowledge. It will also open up opportunities for content collaboration, which can be very powerful from an SEO perspective. —Saurabh Shah, InstaLend Corporation
2. Create a Landing Page With Core Searchable Phrases
A good landing page with the right keywords and research will always rank well. This is the most effective way to include core phrases and questions people search for, as well as to highlight information that is always relevant. If you have a solid landing page, you should only need to do an update once per year rather than constant maintenance. —Ryan D. Matzner, Fueled
3. Make Your Content Relevant to Your Site
Always create SEO-friendly content that’s relevant to your site. Your blog, for instance, should have a specialization that targets a specific group of people. Don’t create content that’s too broad, as doing so will stifle your ability to attract the right customers. Another tip is to choose a niche that has enough topics or subtopics to write about so that you can routinely create blog posts. —Kyle Goguen, Pawstruck
4. Focus on the Customer Journey
Stop thinking about SEO and start thinking about the customer journey. Who is this content for? Be extremely specific. What problem do they have? Describe it for them. What am I going to solve for them? How am I going to solve it for them? What do they need to do next? Building content this way is a lot of work, but it will allow you to achieve the best SEO today and into the future. —Ryan Meghdies, Tastic Marketing Inc.
5. Balance Quantity and Quality
There’s no quick fix to ranking your content. It comes down to a combination of quantity and quality. You need to post fresh content consistently to give Google plenty of material to index. Working in several different formats also helps: blogs, videos, infographics and so on. Posting on trending topics is also important for SEO and makes your content relevant to your audience’s immediate needs and interests. —Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting
6. Create Long-Form Content
Producing long-form blog content (over 2,000 words) works well for us. We include a 1 to 2 percent keyword density with internal linking. —Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
7. Publish Useful Content
Post content that is legitimately useful: an instructional guide, a product comparison, domain-specific content that people in your industry always need. Make it as human-friendly as possible, and the SEO will take care of itself. We all know what optimized content that isn’t human-friendly looks like. —Tyler Bray, TK Trailer Parts
8. Invest in What Your Target Audience Is Already Reading
Research what your target audience is reading about and invest in content that is similar. There are a number of platforms that tell you what the most-read articles in your industry and demographic are. Do this research and create content that your audience finds useful and informative, then properly optimize it based on best practices. Give your audience what they want, authentically. —Matthew Capala, Alphametic
9. Prioritize Helping Your Customers
Your focus should always be on what kind of content helps your customer the best. Answer your customer’s question. Make your content easy to read and understand. Add images and graphics that help them out. The more you consider whether your content is useful for your customers or not, the better it will be. Search engines will automatically reward you for doing so. —Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
10. Have a Plan to Recirculate Your Content
Write content that you can recirculate. SEO won’t always be a thing, so you have to be creative about where you release things to capture your audience. If you can pull in readers to a newsletter and then recirculate over social media, your content will be helpful and valuable for you and your followers. —Kaitlyn Witman, Rainfactory
11. Maximize the Value You Provide
Make your content king, as they say. Your goal should always be to maximize the value you provide. Always cite plenty of sources, keep your language clear and straightforward and write honestly. This way, your audience will naturally share your content and engage with it in a way that organically boosts your SEO metrics. —Amine Rahal, IronMonk Solutions
12. Keep Up With Consumer Behavior
Concentrate on the consumer. Honestly, this is the only constant in the content creation process. Algorithms are basically trying to figure out what your audience wants, and trends are unpredictable. You want the algorithms to catch up with your content and not the other way around, and the only way to do that is to be at the edge of consumer behavior and create content with that insight. —Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS
13. Add Visuals to Written Content
Visuals can come in the form of infographics, checklists, images or even videos. This will never go away because it’s simply a more popular and engaging way for your readers to digest your content, which results in better SEO. —Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
14. Get to Know Your Local Audience
The best way to write SEO-friendly content is to know your local audience. Local search queries like “where to buy” and “near me” are up 200 percent. If you can merge more local-based keywords in your content, you can expect a steady increase of interested consumers. —John Turner, SeedProd LLC
