Regardless of your business size or the industry your business is in, content optimization plays a pivotal role in your ability to compete and convert online. Everyone is creating content, which makes the online world very crowded. Every social feed is inundated with articles, videos, and shared media that it makes it hard to sort through and find the real gems. So, for your content to stand out, it must be optimized appropriately. Unfortunately, optimization isn’t always as straightforward as it may seem.

If you’re struggling to get more traction online, here are a few expert tips for leveraging content to achieve better ranking, engagement, and conversion.

How To Optimize Your Content

Stay On Top of Trends

The key to winning the marketing game is to figure out what your target audience wants and delivering on that. This is why market research is so important. Every industry has its trends, events, and buzzworthy topics. By staying on top of these things, you’ll give your prospects and customers what they’re looking for and also improve your performance online, since search engines favor trending topics.

Write First, Optimize Later

One of the biggest stumbling blocks business owners encounter when it comes to creating top-quality content is trying to optimize as they create. This kind of stop-and-go writing isn’t a productive use of your time, nor is it going to get you the results you’re looking for. Instead, focus on getting the message right in terms of quality and authenticity first, then optimize it after the fact.

Pay Attention to Headings and Subheadings

While nobody has completely cracked the code for how Google’s algorithm analyzes content, there are some things experts have determined play a critical role. To get your content to rank on Google, two things to pay attention to are your headings and subheadings. In particular, these components should be clear and accurate, as this helps search engines to understand and properly index your content. They should also contain the keywords you’re targeting whenever possible.

Be Careful with Multimedia

While images and video content can certainly enhance your content strategy, you must be mindful of how you use these mediums. For instance, slow-loading multimedia housed on your website can negatively impact visitor experience and also cause a drop in ranking on the search engines. It may be wiser to use third-party platforms, such as YouTube, to host your multimedia content and then link back to your site. This will ensure optimal website performance and a diverse content plan.

Be Strategic About Backlinks

Backlinks are links placed off-site that link back to your on-site content. They add credibility to your strategy, and they help drive valuable traffic to your website. While it’s important to incorporate this strategy within your content, it’s more important that you focus on quality and getting backlinks ethically. Backlinks should be something you earn, and they should be related in some way to the content that’s linking to them. Make sure if you’re pitching your content and specific links to a site, it’s a site of good quality and reputation. If not, placing a link there can actually hurt your search engine performance. It’s also a good rule of thumb to only link to high-quality sites in your content, routinely review your site to make sure all links are active, and focus on building an internal linking strategy as well.    

Producing content that your audience will find to be of value is the key to success in the digital age. Further optimizing that content so that it performs well in the search engines will help to ensure that you continue to attract attention for your brand and improve the chances of converting more of that traffic into paying customers.