How can you ensure your team's content is search engine optimized?

Understand the keyword and its intent. Write to fulfill its intent. Check forums to understand the questions behind the query. SERP is a great source to understand what is ranking and what the user is looking for. Include high search volume and FAQs. Tools provide data, but search engine and user-generated content show the nature of the query. Do the work manually by looking for results for the query and use tools like Keyword Planner, SEMRush, and more.

The literal "key" to keywords is learning what your competitors in the same category are doing and either do it better or fill in the cracks that they are missing. The insurance biz is one of the most competitive search engine rankings competition you will find. Geico vs. State Farm vs. Liberty vs. Progressive vs. AllState. Each of which have held the #1 spot in the search engine rankings at different times for the phrase "car insurance". So how could any other insurance company break into this elite competition? The answer is they can't. Not with "car insurance". But they can with "cheap car insurance". Simply by know that 1000s of people search this term each month, but also know that NONE of these companies use this phrase.

Placing high search volume keywords in headings is crucial, but it's essential to consider the intent. Avoid cramming keywords into headings. Short content with bold headings effectively conveys the message and aids in achieving a higher ranking.

Although it is VERY important as an SEO profession to know how and when bots crawl websites, its just as important to understand how and when humans read websites. Google Trends is a fantastic tool to use to learn what humans are currently interested in reading and figure out a way to talk about that topic on your website. After you determine the "trending topic" and the best keyword phrases that are most popular for that particular topic, then you need to re-direct your attention to what the bot emphasizes the most. From page name to meta description to H1/H2 tags to hyperlinks, alt tags & even "bolding" words. It is a fine art blending the trending keywords with readable human content, but you will be rewarded with #1 if perfected.

Another thing to consider is Google's Core Updates. Several times a year, Google makes significant, broad change to their search algorithms and systems. They refer to them as core updates, and give notice when they happen on a list of Google Search ranking updates. Core updates are designed to ensure that they are staying up-to-date on helpful and reliable search results. It's impossible to predict what they will be ahead of time. All you can do is wait until after they go through and then adapt to these updates. An example is Google's Voice translation adaptations. People speak into their phones differently then how they type. What use to be a typed search "restaurants near me" has changed to "what are the places to eat closest to me".

In order to rank in top positions sustainably with any piece of content, Google has been clear for years that creators should focus on demonstrating expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Experience is also now very important, but in terms of the original tenets, there are two main ways to demonstrate E-A-T and that is through the content you create and the citations you earn to that content. Is your content written by an expert in the niche and is that demonstrated through the writing? That usually looks like detailed, in-depth, first-hand knowledge, but it's also important to note not all queries require more than a thousand-word answers.