While it’s great to have a web site optimized and performing well in the engines, you need to build out content on a consistent basis. Managing growth without upsetting your existing SEO efforts can often be a challenge. With these challenges in mind, here are my top ten tips for building site content while focusing on SEO opportunities.
Tip #1 — Identify New Keyword Markets
If you are pleased with how your existing content is performing, you need to tap popular databases and see what other markets exist. Using tools like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, you can quickly locate new areas relative to your industry or niche that also have a search history associated with them.
Tip #2 — Exploring Analytics
SEO is as much about delivering targeted traffic as it is about rankings, right? If you’re with me on that, start checking your analytics. In particular, explore site paths and conversions relative to referring search phrases. Many times you will find that what you think are your money terms, are actually just pushing in unproductive traffic.
The information available in your analytics package can make or break everything for you. Building new content is always a great idea; When you go about it blindly, your efforts are often un-concentrated. If you take the time to identify visitor trends and habits on a keyword level though — you can then focus on building new content that puts more visitors to work for your business goals.
Tip #3 — Maintain Your Approach
Have you ever been browsing a company’s web site reading up on various services, when suddenly you’re slapped in the face by content that just doesn’t “fit”?
As more content is written, it becomes critical for the tone and approach of your writing to be consistent. Managing this in groups can be difficult at best, so if your content is scaled in this manner — consider having one consistent editor.
Tip #4 — Write for People, not Engines
I hate that this tip sounds like something out of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines… But, it’s true. Imagine if I decided to write this article of Five Quick Tips for Building SEO Content methods in such a manner that you were repeatedly hit by keyword saturation levels that were through the roof. You’d probably be fed up with reading about Five Quick Tips that you would no longer care about Building SEO Content or anything else I had to say.
And don’t be an idiot with over formatting your text either… 🙂
Tip #5 — Pace Content Creation
The most important tip I would offer up here is that you need to pace yourself when adding new content to your web site. I am often guilty of taking dozens of new pages at at a time, and placing them all online at once.
As a result, my returning visitors are overwhelmed, and I can’t effectively measure or improve any one page with consistency or care.
Better still, as you begin to pace the release of new content you will also find yourself developing new patterns of work. An article will go live, it will be submitted to social networks, you’ll develop links to it, etc. Understanding and improving that process is critical if you plan to get a lot done in minimal time.
