So, you’ve decided to Improve your local search rankings by writing your own content. That’s awesome. How’s it working for you? How close are you to the top of Page 1 for local search results? Wait. Are you even on Page 1? Page 2? Worse? Well, we have ‘Just the Tip’ for you.
Like our CEO always says, “When it comes to SEO, Content is King”. It’s a big part of why Kelsea spent the last few weeks covering (i)‘Types of Content Your Dealership Needs’, (ii) ’Local Content’ and (iii) ’Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Content’. But no matter how good your content is, if it isn’t properly optimized for SEO, it’s never going to reach its potential. Now, there’s no way we could cover everything you need to know in this one episode. That’s why we have this weekly series (and why we get paid to do what we do – so dealers like you don’t have to worry about all these nuances). But for those DIY-ers out there, here are some facets of your content that you might want to pay attention to.
The evolving priorities of today’s digital publishers were well-defined in a 2019 study by Ezoic Research, where it was determined that over half of the publishers out there considered ‘SEO’ and ‘Audience Growth Marketing’ to be their top two areas of focus. Well, yeah. No surprise there. Hell, the importance of both of these things have only increased in 2020, especially with all the curveballs this year has thrown us. It’s a big part of why we spend so much time talking about the importance of creating quality content designed specifically for your audience.
Properly-optimized high-quality content can organically improve your Click Through Rate as well as your Search Engine Ranking Position – eliminating dependency on low-yield Pay Per Click services. That’s right, I said “Low Yield”. According to a study by MOZ, content optimized for SEO can deliver up to 20x more traffic than the same content could with PPC. Now, that’s not an isolated result, trust us. We see those kind of huge disparities every day. Fortunately, as a leading Automotive SEO provider, we’re standing on the right side of that upswing.
When it comes to SEO, a lot of what we talk about boils down to one of two facets (i) ways that we can optimize content to have a direct effect on a dealership’s SERP and (ii) ways that we can capture the attention of Google users, or organically influence their behavior. So, if you’re trying to do it all on your own, here are “4 Important Steps to Help Optimize Your Content”.
TITLE TAGS
Admit it. You perform a Google search, and there’s a superficial element behind your decision of which link to click on. It’s not just Ranking Position, it’s the vibe you get from a link. Well, that first impression comes from a site’s Title Tags. It’s what communicates what the page is about, making it valuable in the eyes of Google. But title tags can also help to entice a user to click that link. Here are some ways to optimize your title tags:
- Make sure that every piece of content has a unique title.
- Choose your title tag to fit potential search queries.
- Avoid the “dreaded ellipses”. Keep your title tags under 60 characters to ensure they display in their entirety on-screen.
- Incorporate your primary keywords, but…
- Don’t stuff your title tags full of keywords, or variations of the same keyword.
Following these steps will help you to make your Title Tags more appealing, and more likely to grab that click.
META DESCRIPTIONS
Below the title tag is the page’s meta description. While it may not have the direct effect on SERP that Title Tags do, a meta description should be designed to attract the attention of the user. Ask yourself, what your audience is searching for? Then let them know that your content answers their need.
HEADERS
Pop quiz: does anyone remember how many words each piece of your content should have? That’s right, no less than 1,000 words for each piece of content. Hell, we don’t even write a piece of content with less than 1,200. But here’s the problem. That’s a lot to read, especially for someone who’s casually researching their options, so it’s important to break up that giant “wall of text”. Use of intentional headers can be helpful in this regard, giving the casual visitor an easy understanding of what each block of text is about, and compelling them to read more of any section that’s of particular interest to them.
BACKLINKS
We’ve told you about E-A-T. That’s Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, also known as the Three Pillars of SEO. These are three metrics by which Google assesses your content, to determine how high to rank you. Well, you get Google points whenever a relevant website links to your content, helping to establish you as an authority on a particular topic.
What do we mean by ‘relevant’? Well, your dealership’s content is most likely automotive in nature. If your content is collecting links to unrelated sites that have nothing to do with the automotive arena, you start losing credibility in the eyes of Google. And once Google decides it can’t trust your content, it’ll get yanked from their indexing and you might find your site devalued.
That said, tools like Google Search Console can help you to troubleshoot your content and clean up any harmful, unrelated backlinks that could be working against you.
So, there you have it: Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Headers and Backlinks…4 Important Steps to Help Optimize Your Content for better results.