Optimizing content for search engines and users

What do search engines consider important?

Search engines have one goal: to give people the information they are looking for. The better they do that, the more likely those people are to use the search engine more often. And that generates additional advertising revenue.

The search engine that does this best is Google. This is evidenced by their market share, which has been above 90% for years. So if you want to optimize your content for search engines, you need to look primarily to Google.

SEO

Google wants to provide its users with the most valuable and relevant content. But how does the world’s largest search engine judge what is valuable and relevant? Google has an algorithm for that.

That algorithm looks at roughly three pillars: content, technology and links. If you optimize your website on these three pillars, you are more likely to get a good position in Google. You are doing Search Engine Optimization. Or SEO. Good SEO ensures that you can generate organic traffic for certain keywords.

Google BERT

Google improves its algorithm every so often. The latest major feat is called BERT. With this update, the algorithm has become even better at understanding search queries. It focuses more on the user’s search intent than before. What is the user really looking for? That’s what it’s all about.

In other words, valuable and relevant content is more important than ever since the BERT update. Even more important than the exact keywords you incorporate into your content.

What do users care about?

With the BERT update, the difference between what Google thinks is important and what users think is important has narrowed. If you make your users happy, then you make Google happy as well.

But what do your users actually care about? Yes, valuable and relevant content. But what exactly does that mean? Google has a complex, sophisticated algorithm to determine that. We’ll assume for a moment that you don’t have one. So you will have to find the needs and search intentions of your target audience yourself.

Do user research

A great way to find out the wants and needs of your target audience is audience or user research. You not only want to find out what keywords your target audience is using, but also the search intent behind the keywords.

Such research can be as simple as an online survey. Formulate a few questions that will help you better understand the search intent of your target audience. Then distribute the survey to existing and potential customers.

Suppose you rent cars. Then those questions might look like this:

With these six questions, you can already learn a lot about your target audience’s search intent. Maybe they are looking for a rental car to go on vacation with. Maybe they think rental cars are too expensive. Or maybe they think the durability of a rental car is most important.

Look at your strongest competitors

User research is not the only way to find out the wants and needs of your target audience. A competitive analysis can also help. Look over the fence at your strongest competitors. What are they writing about? What kind of articles do they write? What needs, wants and pain points do they target their content to?

You are not supposed to copy their content. That only penalizes Google. But you can look at how you can provide even better content than your competitors. Maybe they don’t offer enough depth, don’t get to the point quickly enough, or forget important topics.

Brainstorming away!

Next, it’s time for a brainstorming session. Through your user research and competitive analysis, find out your target audience’s wants, needs and pain points. Write those down. In addition, make a list of your services, unique selling points, specialties, expertise and products. And the weaknesses of your competitors.

Now that you’ve gathered all those things, you can start looking for connections. Are there pain points you can eliminate? Are there desires you can fulfill? What needs can you meet better than your competition? From such a brainstorming session flow numerous topics, angles and formats for good content.

So basically, you work the other way. Instead of starting with a list of keywords you want to rank for, start with a list of topics that are valuable and relevant to your target audience. Once you have those topics, the relevant keywords will naturally surface.

In short: by thinking from the user’s perspective, you optimize your content for users and search engines at the same time.

Offer valuable content

Next, it’s important to translate those topics into banging content. To do that, you need to provide valuable content. Google’s algorithm is tremendously good at distinguishing content from flaccid bullshit. So you have to know what you’re talking about. And you have to show it.

Come up with relevant examples, use the words commonly used by your target audience and industry, and throw in the occasional inside joke. That way users know they are dealing with an expert. Google is also getting better at noticing these kinds of details. And that gets rewarded.

Tip: Still want to create content on a topic you don’t know much about? Then hire a writer who does. You’ll be doing the user, the search engine, and ultimately yourself a favor.

Keep optimizing your content

Once your Golden Grail-worthy content is online, you can keep optimizing it. SEO knows no finish line. There are always things to improve. So keep doing that too! But how do you know where you can make gains? For that, you look at the data.

Data

The beauty of digital marketing, is that almost everything is measurable. You can see which content ranks best, which keywords you rank highest for, which articles generate the most conversions, and which blogs have the highest bounce rate .

You can supplement this quantitative data with qualitative data. Engage with your users and ask what they think of your content. Why do they like one article and not another? This allows you to discover the story behind the numbers.

Data analysis really is a profession. But you don’t always have to hire an expert to optimize your content based on data. What you do need to do is take your time. For example, schedule one day a month where you go all in on the data. Analyze and apply your learnings .

Smart tools

There are plenty of smart tools that can help you analyze your data. The most well-known is Google Analytics. If you are a little handy with this, it is a wealth of information.

But Google Analytics is not the only tool. For example, SEMrush and Hubspot also have a number of useful software programs you can use. The Google Search Console is also one of our favorites. It allows you to see how well you are scoring on specific keywords. SEranking is also a good tool for this.

Want to learn more about the different tools you can use to optimize your content? Then read more about them in our blog on SEO.

Think from the user’s point of view

Perhaps writing engaging content for both search engines and users is not so difficult at all. Since the Google BERT update, the needs of search engines and users are pretty close. We just need to work in the other direction.

The focus should not be on keywords, search engines and algorithms. But on users’ wants, needs and pain points. You can find that out through research. And based on data, you can keep improving your content. As long as you do that incredibly well, that number-one position in Google will get closer and closer.

Be found better thanks to publishers through Hulc

Content is just one of the pillars of SEO. Building a powerful and large network of links is also important for the findability of your website. Hulc can help with that. Hulc helps you find the best publishers, bloggers and influencers who want to write about your business. This will give you brand awareness and a network of valuable links. Curious about the possibilities? Take a quick look at Hulc.io