How Quality Content Impacts SEO and Business Success

 

Love to see your website on the first page of Google but don’t have a budget for SEO? Here’s how to get it to rank without paying a penny.

As of January 2020, there were 1,295,973,827 websites in the world, making it a lot of content for Google to crawl and rank. If you want to be found by the billions of people searching on Google every day, you need to ensure that your SEO game is strong.

Of course, the quickest and easiest way to get your site to rank on the first page of Google is to hire an SEO agency or expert to do it for you. However, if you're a small business or freelancer, you may not have the budget for that. Nor can you afford ads to do the job for you.

So, to give you a head start in getting found by Google, here are five of the best ways to rank first on Google without paying a penny:

Use better targeting with long-tail keywords

Every SEO journey begins with keyword research and analysis. The big question is: why would you choose more obscure long-tail terms when you can target with common keywords?

The logic is simple. The higher the competition of a keyword, the lesser the probability of you actually getting conversions from it, and vice versa. Long-tail keywords are easier to target and rank. So much so, that the eCommerce giant Amazon makes 57% of their sales using long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords target the user’s specific intent, leading to a higher probability of conversions. So, rather than going for a more popular (and, therefore, competitive) short-tail keyword, you're more likely to rank AND convert on a specific long-tail term.

Ultimately the point of SEO is not just to drive traffic to your site, but to actually generate business out of it. So, if you want to attract the RIGHT traffic to your site using SEO, be more like Amazon and compete for long-tail keywords.

Write blogs consistently

Using long-tail keywords means creating a lot more content - various content types to feed your keywords. If you want to index more, you need to write more. When you compare yourself to industry leaders and experts who tend to push out more than 15 blogs a month, you can see that four or five a month is just not enough if you're serious about competing for the same keywords.

It's not just the quantity of your blogs that matter, but the length of your blogs is important too. Google LOVES long content. So, let’s say you are publishing guides of around 3000 words. If so, between five and 10 more than enough.

A pro tip is to try to make your blogs engaging too, by using GIFs, videos, podcasts, quotes, images, or even infographics.

Create content for humans

Anything that is out there on the internet has different purposes, goals, and business objectives. But ultimately, everything you create needs to be found by, shared by, talked about, and bought by humans.

It doesn’t matter how precise your keyword analysis turns out to be, or other technical aspects you may have in place, all your efforts will be in vain if your content doesn’t appeal to your end consumer or target audience. Yes, you might end up on the first page of Google, but you won’t win any hearts – or business.

That’s probably one of the main reasons why Google’s algorithm updates emphasize producing quality content that can educate or motivate people to take action. An easy-to-read, value-oriented, and insightful piece of content is worth a thousand times more in SEO terms (and business value) than poorly drafted and meant-for-bots content.

However, producing quality content is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO. To rank well on search engines, websites need to follow certain technical requirements and guidelines to ensure that their content is easily crawlable and indexable by search engine bots. Here are some of the most important technical aspects of SEO:

Website architecture and structure: The website architecture and structure should be easy to navigate, and the URLs should be simple, descriptive, and user-friendly. The website should also have a sitemap and robots.txt file to help search engines crawl and index the site more effectively.

On-page optimization: On-page optimization involves optimizing the content, title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and images of each page on the website. These elements should be optimized using relevant keywords and phrases to make it easier for search engines to understand what the page is about.

Page speed and mobile-friendliness: Page speed and mobile-friendliness are important ranking factors. Websites that load quickly and provide a good user experience on mobile devices are more likely to rank higher on search engines.

Backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. Search engines use backlinks as a way to measure the authority and relevance of a website. Having high-quality, relevant backlinks from reputable websites can help improve your website’s ranking on search engines.

Technical SEO: Technical SEO involves optimizing the website’s code and server settings to make it more easily crawlable and indexable by search engines. This includes optimizing the website’s XML sitemap, minimizing HTTP requests, optimizing images and videos, and fixing broken links.

In summary, SEO is a multifaceted process that involves both technical and creative elements. To rank well on search engines, websites need to produce quality content that can educate or motivate people to take action, while also following technical requirements and guidelines to ensure that their content is easily crawlable and indexable by search engine bots.