You’ve heard it before: “Content is king.” Well, that’s never been more true than now. Google has made some big changes to the SEO game, and content plays a bigger role than ever in helping you secure that #1 ranking.
With that in mind, here are four tips for optimizing your website content.
1: Spread Your Content Across Multiple Pages
One metric Google looks at when determining where to rank your website is pages/view. If people view multiple pages of your website when they visit, it tells Google you have valuable content — and that will help you score a good spot in the search results.
An easy way to encourage visitors to view more than one page of your site is to break up your content into multiple pages.
Let’s say you have a new article to publish on your website. Instead of sticking your whole article on one page, spread it out across five or six pages instead. That way, when people want to read your article, they’ll actually be visiting multiple pages of your website instead of just one.
2. Add a Clickable Table of Contents
People don’t like to visit a website and see a huge block of text. It’s intimidating to readers, and it’s a great way to make sure no one ever makes it all the way through your content.
To help readers out (and make the search engines happy), include a simple table of contents at the top of your content pages that will let users skip ahead to the information they want with one click.
3. Your Sidebar Is Prime Real Estate
You may think throwing an interesting, well-written article up on your site is enough when it comes to content, but you’re wrong. Google and the other search engines want to see a lot more engagement than that!
One way to up the engagement factor on your content pages is to add a dynamic sidebar that includes other relevant content.
Things like related links, images, videos, recent comments, and related articles are perfect sidebar fodder. Not only will they make your content more engaging for your readers, but they’ll earn you brownie points with the search engines too.
4. Add Media at the Fold
Another easy way to “trick” readers into engaging more with your content is to add things like videos and graphics right at the fold. (The first fold of a website is the portion that is viewable without scrolling down.)
If you position your media so that it’s just poking up above the fold, it will catch readers’ attention, spark their curiosity, and encourage them to scroll down on the page. In Google’s eyes, that means your readers are consuming more of your content, and that’s great for your SEO.
With Google’s new emphasis on visitor engagement, it’s more important than ever to optimize your website content. Hopefully, these four tips will give you a great starting point for your on-page efforts!
