Optimized content explained, how to do it

What is optimized content? In terms of SEO optimized content means content that is “suitable” for being ranked higher. Why I’m saying “suitable” is because, just because your content is optimized doesn’t mean it will rank higher because your search engine rankings depend on many other factors.

What is Optimized Content –Optimized content explained

Optimized content is well-written content that can get better search engine rankings for the website and also improve conversion rate. Optimized content must strike a balance between using your keywords in the search terms people use, and the quality and relevance of your content. If you ask your content writer what is optimized content he or she should be convincingly able to tell you that SEO has no meaning without a higher conversion rate and no matter how good-quality your content is, unless it can draw targeted traffic from search engines, it can’t benefit you much.

When you are writing (or your content writer) content for your website you are primarily writing it for two reasons:

1. To improve your conversion rate;
2. To improve your search engine rankings

Suggested reading: How to strike a balance between SEO and quality content writing.

For an average search engine optimization expert only the second point matters – improve your search engine rankings for your chosen keywords and other search terms.

For a trained content writer or a copywriter, both the points matter. It doesn’t make sense to improve your search engine rankings if people, despite coming to your website, don’t do business with you.

So, your copy does business for you. When they come to your website, they read the information that you have published over there and then they make up their minds whether to leave your website or do business with you.

A trained copywriter knows the importance of conversion-driven content on your website. A trained content writer knows the importance of conversion-driven content as well as search engine optimized content.

This, is what optimized content is.

Optimized content means content that is search engine optimized as well as has good conversion rate.

What steps I take to write optimized content for your website

As I have mentioned above, as a content writer and as a copywriter I know the importance of both conversion rate as well as search engine optimization. In fact, I won’t even touch search engine optimization unless I’m sure your content is going to convert. So, here are a few steps I take when writing content for your website:

1. Get a total grasp of your business: It is very important to understand what is optimized content in the context of your business. Every business is unique. Unless I totally understand what you offer and what difference your offer can make to people’s lives it won’t be possible for me to write engaging content that converts. So, I spend a considerable amount of time trying to understand your business and how people benefit from it.
2. Prepare a list of keywords and search terms people may use: The search terms and keywords that people may use in order to find your business might be totally different from what you think people must be using. Again, unless I understand what is optimized content appropriate for your business, I cannot really understand what keywords and search terms people may be using to find your business on search engines. We have the think from the perspective of your customers. Personally, I believe that even the keyword tools available on the Internet to find the right keywords aren’t well-equipped. One needs to use his or her logic to prepare the list of keywords and search terms. Suggested reading: How I select and organize keywords for writing optimized content.
3. Create an optimized title with a keyword-phrase: An optimized title with your primary keyword-phrase is very important. Remember that it’s your title that people see as a hyperlink in search engine results. People click on those links more where they see the keywords that they have just used as hyperlinks. An optimized title also affects your search engine rankings. Creating a compelling title with the help of your keyword and search term is a very important part of writing optimized content.
4. Start writing content: When I start writing content for your website, as mentioned above, my first priority is to write engaging content – content with high conversion rate. Even when I work with other content writers, I train them in such a manner that before bothering with what is optimized content in the conventional sense, they simply focus on creating high-quality, well-written content. Your first priority is to get more business and this is what is to be achieved through effective, high quality content.
5. Incorporate keywords: Now I have gotten enough practice to incorporate keywords even when I’m preparing the first draft but if that is not the case, after I have created the first draft, I incorporate the keywords. When including your keywords, I make sure that I don’t use them unnecessarily. Randomly stuffing your keywords doesn’t give you optimized content, it gives you spammy content that gets you penalized by different search engines. They should appear naturally. If they need to be repeated I also use their alternatives so that your content is not over-optimized.
6. Follow an optimized content structure: When you are writing optimized content make sure that your keyword-phrase appears within the first couple of sentences. Then, at least once keyword-phrase should appear within the <h1> and <h2> tags. I also use a few of your main keywords as anchor text while linking to other content on your website or blog. The entire idea is to use an optimized content strategy to give the search engine crawlers and algorithms a fair idea of what your webpage or blog post is talking about.

These are the standard steps I follow when writing optimized content for your website or blog. There might be scores of other things that I keep in mind while trying to figure out what is optimized content according to your business needs, but they are spontaneous. Although, I follow a plan, once I have started writing, I prefer to let things roll on their own as long as I stick to the main topic and make sure the tone and the texture of my writing is engaging and trustworthy.

What is optimized content – explained in the real world sense

This is something that I have explained on my website and on my blog multiple times: your content is automatically optimized if you stick to giving appropriate information to your customers. What is optimized content after all? Content that gives solutions to people’s problems and also makes it easy for search engine crawlers to make sense of what you’re trying to communicate.

All your customers have questions before they want to make a purchase. In order to write optimized content that gets higher rankings in search engines and enjoys a higher conversion rate, you need to empathize with your customers.

The best way to empathize with your customers is to create the ideal personas of people you are trying to target. Typically, what sort of person would like to do business with you. If you provide a service, who would need it? What would be that person’s background? The following questions may help you create a persona of your ideal customer in order to write optimized content:

1. What is his/her age?
2. Is he/she married or single?
3. How much does he/she earn?
4. How many kids, if any does he/she have?
5. What is his/her educational background?
6. Where does he/she live?
7. What sort of work he/she does?

This way you can create a long list of questions to help you create the ideal persona for your content writing project.

You can formulate questions according to your specific need. For example, if you sell a food item, you would probably need to create questions regarding food habits of the person and maybe his or her lifestyle and such.

After creating the persona you need to know what are his or her troubles and how your business solves those troubles. Start talking about problems and solutions, questions and answers, issues and resolutions. When you start talking about the concerns of your target customers, you will write optimized content without much effort.