6 Simple Steps to Improve Your SEO Content Score and Why You Should Care

One of the key determinants of content marketing success is the number of actual views your site generates, and the bounce rate. According to a BrightEdge Study conducted last year, “organic search drives 51 percent of all visitors to B2B and B2C websites.” This means that achieving impressive Google search engine results is one of the key drivers of significant levels of inbound traffic. Within this context, it is important to understand that there are many different parameters that can influence search engine optimization, including one’s content score. This post will briefly look at ways to improve this score in order to maximize your brand’s online presence and eventual readership.

So What Is a Content Score?

The ability for marketers to achieve impressive search engine rankings has long been a hush, hush secret. Thankfully, recent advances in online marketing have allowed us to better analyze how and to what extent certain elements in our content marketing campaigns that can deeply influence inbound traffic. One of those is known as our content score.

In the realm of organic search, content score refers to a grade given to your particular site’s or page’s content performance on search engines. This essentially is a way for search engines to match your generated content to answer the users’ query on the search engine most accurately, and as a result, expose it to the most relevant potential views. In this way, search engines can link the most relevant individuals with your content in the search results and create a more efficient process for retrieving relevant information.

So How Can it Be Improved?

The process of improving one’s content score rests on addressing various attributes related to your content. Below are 6 of our main suggestions:

(1)  Naturally weave in appropriate keywords and synonyms

While some parts of online marketing are still being explored, the world of search doesn’t work in mysterious ways. In fact, there is a deliberate attempt to connect specific search terms with their desired end results – the most relevant sites or blogs search users are looking for. If your blog post is discussing effective ways to address writer’s block, your ultimate goal should be to write in such a way that Google will ensure that those suffering from this will be able to engage with your content. The way you embed appropriate content relating to your subject throughout the post will help facilitate this linkage. Note that it is important to avoid inappropriate keyword stuffing throughout your content.

(2) Quality over Quantity

Unfortunately for the busy content marketer, improving content score extends well beyond the use of appropriate keyword usage. We also wish it could be that simple. Another key ingredient is to carefully produce quality content. While many brands spend ample resources to quickly get content online, search engines prefer to see content that has actual value for its potential viewers. While producing such content may be easier said than written, the implications are absolutely wonderful – Google will award you with improved page rankings due to your ability to engage your readers with appropriate content.

(3)  Word Count Does Matter

While we just discussed that quality is more valuable than content, in the world of word count, the consequences are quite different. To truly be optimized for SEO purposes, articles must be long enough to generate enough impact on “search visibility, site traffic, and bounce rate.” While there is no secret formula for determining the exact word count needed to meet the minimum standards required to impress Google, posts exceeding 500 words often generate the most impressive page rankings. This makes sense considering the need to generate enough meaningful content to meet the reader’s demands and expectations.

(4) Use the Sharing Power of Influencers

In some of our previous posts, we have discussed the power of sharing content can have tremendous impact on our ability to be absorbed as a brand. With this in mind, another creative way of improving content score involves the use of influences distributing your content with their loyal following. By quoting or linking to an article mentioning an influencer, you can place this individual in an optimal position to drive potential readers to your blog or site. This action will not only impress Google, but will also help optimize conversions and improve your content marketing effectiveness.

(5)  Guest Blogging and Posting on Similar Industry Sites

Have a blog and generate consistent, quality content? Great, now its time to roll up your sleeves and go ahead and share your knowledge by guest posting on external blogs and sites. This strategy, which will undoubtedly require connecting with other bloggers and resources, can help your brand expand its social reach and simultaneously improve your SEO content score. For instance, guest blogging is a great way to add external links back to your blog, thus demonstrating both the power of your industry insights as well as bringing more readers back to your own site.

(6)  Remember the Importance of Page Load Time

Readers can often get impatient when a specific post or page won’t load immediately. Google is just the same and often punishes slow sites on ranking indexes, thus affecting SEO.

Therefore, to best optimize your blog for SEO purposes, your content (including images) will need to be able to meet different levels of inbound traffic. So whether it is related to a serve malfunction or coding errors, your readers will expect to have the information they desired right away. Run different diagnostic tools such as Pingdom and Monitis to evaluate where you stand on this issue.

So Why Should We Care About SEO Content Score?

Well, if the statistic in the beginning didn’t get your heart pumping, the fact is that without improving our content score, your ability as a brand marketer to have his/her content read, seen, and absorbed will be affected. This will naturally impact your ability to convert leads and increase sales.

To Sum Up

While these are only a few ideas of how to improve content score for SEO, the significance of this topic on our potential conversion rate is rather huge. Content scoring is an important part of how our content is eventually processed by readers across the internet. As brand marketers, we need to continue stay abreast of new search engine dynamics and preferences in order to adjust our content respectively. After all, we are living in an online marketing age dominated by search engines, mainly Google, the main man we need to constantly impress.