An SEO Checklist for Creative and Compelling Content Construction

Search engine optimization is a science. It requires technical skills to optimize a page for search, and a business needs a strict methodology to improve its ranking steadily over time.

However, proper SEO relies heavily on content, and content creation is nothing short of an art.
To ensure that SEOs and content marketers work well together and achieve their goals, here’s a checklist to help businesses develop the right content to boost their SEO.

1. Quality

From the beginning, Google has tried to disrupt spammy SEO techniques to elevate the quality of content available on the web. Google goes to great lengths to identify and penalize websites that attempt SEO without investing the time and effort necessary to produce valuable content that web users need and use.

As Google begins implementing sophisticated machine learning tools, it will be even better at weeding out plagiarized and recycled content as well as irrelevant and poorly written content. It is more important than ever that businesses work with SEO optimization companies that prioritize content quality, using professional, native-speaking creators who generate original, accurate content.

2. Crawlability

Crawling is the process by which Google discovers new pages and page updates. If Google’s spiders can’t efficiently crawl through a website or across content, it won’t effectively index that site or page, and the rankings will suffer.

Businesses need impeccable on-site SEO to make their content more accessible for Google to crawl. Still, increasing crawlability is an exceedingly technical task that involves increasing page load speeds, optimizing images, leveraging internal links, building HTML tables, and more. Not anyone can boost this essential element of SEO; businesses need SEO experts with hard skills to check this off their content marketing list.

3. Demanded

The only content that gets created should be content that has a willing and eager audience already looking for it. Content needs to be demand-driven for it to rank highly in search, which means businesses need to research their markets and related keywords carefully to understand better what their audience needs and likes.

It’s important to note that it isn’t enough to make the content seem in-demand by stuffing it full of competitive keywords; the content needs to have real value to a business’s online audience.

4. Intentional

Next, businesses need to take a step beyond demand to understand what web users want from the content that interests them. Intent can differ from the keyword phrase to the keyword phrase.

For example, a user who searches “what is garbage disposal” expects a different type of content from a user who searches “how to fix garbage disposal” or even a user who looks up “professional garbage disposal repair.”

The first searcher might want a text explanation; the second might need step-by-step video instructions, and the third might need a list of nearby plumbers with high customer ratings.

Businesses need to understand the optimal format for the content they produce because Google alters rankings based on user intent.

5. Credible

The web isn’t filled with reliable sources, and inaccurate information can spread quickly, causing widespread confusion and misunderstanding. Google does its best to curb falsehoods by increasing the search ranking of websites that emphasize credibility.

Thus, businesses should strive to function as authorities for the topics they cover in their content. If possible, businesses should attempt to identify a niche which as yet lacks a respected and notable expert online. Then, it is much easier to establish credibility in that field and rank higher in search results because of it.
Amplified

Finally, content marketers and SEO‘s alike often get bogged down in the content aspect, but marketing is as essential. Both marketers and SEOs need to be involved in distributing content in multiple channels across the web, perhaps placing content on different industry blogs or sharing content on social media, email newsletters, press releases, and more.

This helps build valuable backlinks and ensures that more web users see and engage with the content, increasing its rank in search.

These days, it is impossible for a website to earn a top-ranking position without putting effort into both content marketing and SEO. The better equipped content marketers and SEO pros are to work together — the more their processes intertwine, and their goals align — the faster and more efficient businesses can gain a high rank on Google’s SERPs.