How to Create Content That Ranks in Search

As you can probably tell by now, just because you write something great, doesn’t mean you’ll find yourself at the top of the search results.

However, there are several steps that can be taken to improve your chances of hitting it big with organic search, and most of them need to happen before you even put one finger to a keyboard.

The following are a list of techniques that you can use to increase your chances of having your blog articles rank near the top of the search results.

Pillar Posts and Topic Clusters

If you really want qualified candidates to find your website from organic search, before you do anything, you need to determine which subjects you are an expert on and which subjects relate most closely to your core business offer, and create a plan to own these topics.

To do this, you need to create content that broadly addresses each of your core topics, and then create other pieces of content that dig deep into every sub-topic contained under the umbrella of each of your core topics.

This is known as the Pillar Post and Topic Cluster Strategy. You need to be seen as an authority on a subject if you want your content to rank well, which is why executing your content in this manner is so effective.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is an important function of any good SEO strategy, and even though it is talked about a lot, many publishers do not spend enough time researching keyword opportunities before they start writing.

To do this, consider these 4 elements:

• Search Volume
• Competition 
• Search Intent
• Value

As a basic overview, search volume helps you determine how much traffic you can anticipate if you begin to rank for a certain term.

The level of competition helps you understand how difficult that term or phrase will be to rank for – if you are just starting out, you will have a much more challenging time rising to the top for highly competitive keywords.

And, search intent is based on the ultimate goal of the searcher.

For instance, someone looking up “plumbing tips” vs someone searching for “plumber near me” is going to have very different expectations about they will find on the landing page.

Lastly, high-value keywords are ones that are most closely related to your core revenue-driving offerings.

Keyword research should be performed when crafting your initial content strategy, and then again for each individual article. The goal is to write content in a way that naturally and clearly addresses many of the keywords and phrases related to the topic of the content, while focusing on one core search term, which is what your content is about.

Topic Modeling

Now that you’ve completed your keyword research and have a better idea of what questions people are asking and which desirable terms you have the highest chances of ranking for, you can create a keyword-optimized outline for your content.

This is called topic modeling. Topic modeling is actually a phrase used to describe the way an AI (in this case, the search engine algorithm) analyzes a group of words and identifies relationships between them. Uncovering the contextual relationships between a group of words is how the search engine knows what a piece of content is about.

Your topic model should be a blueprint for a piece of content that has one focus topic identified (your main keyword or phrase) in the title, and has headlines and sub-heads that incorporate related topics – preferably the ones that have the highest search volume – mapped out into supporting sections.

You may also want to make note of additional keywords that address secondarily related topics so that you remember to include these throughout the text as well.

This step in the content creation process is extremely important for ranking well because empowers the writer to think like a search engine, while still writing for a human.

Internal Linking and Site Structure

Another thing to consider when building out a piece of content with the goal of ranking in search is what pages you should link to from within the content, which pages should link back to the new piece of content once published.

According to Yoast, “Taxonomies, like categories and tags, but also internal links, your navigation and breadcrumbs are the tools to structure your site.”

Having a logical and balanced site structure is the core of good SEO.

Internal links help web crawlers navigate your website, as well as signal to these crawlers which pages on your site are the most important. Content that doesn’t have a lot of internal links is harder for crawlers to discover and therefore is deemed as less significant than other pages.

The beauty of the topic cluster strategy is that your Pillar page can link out to each individual sub-topic page, and vice versa.

Your subtopic pages might link to each other as well, which creates an easy-to-navigate web from one topically related post to another.

And, if your site is structured properly, you’ll be less likely to compete with yourself for a high ranking in the search engines because your website will be architected in a way that denotes which pages are the most important.

Once your post is published, remember to add links to your new post from all of your other related content using relevant anchor text.

Over time, your content web will grow and strengthen, thus boosting your authority on that category, improving your chances of ranking for your desired keywords, and moving your article up the search results.

Optimizing for Rich Results

In June 2019, “zero-click” searches occurred more often than searches with organic clicks.

This fact is surprising, considering the amount of effort being put toward moving content up to the top of the results page.

However, zero-click searches are not the end of SEO as we know it.

Ultimately, the reason for this rise is as a result of the new(ish) SERP elements known as rich results.

According to Google, rich results can include carousels, images, or other non-textual elements. Optimizing your content to be featured in the rich results is the new name of the game, and one way to do this is to code your content using structured data.

While not all structured data leads to inclusion in the rich results, applying schema markup to your content can improve your chances.

Not super technical? That’s okay.

You can use this tool from Merkle to help generate schema markup for your content, and you can test your page after adding the structured data to make sure your page is eligible by using this rich results test here.

Auditing and Updating Old Content

If you’ve taken all the actions to help your content rank, and if after a considerable amount of time – six months at a minimum, but probably after a year – you are not seeing the results you want, it might be time to audit your content and decide whether you need to update it, consolidate it, or delete it.

Auditing and updating older posts should be a routine process that happens every couple of months to ensure the relevance of your site.

Especially when it comes to time-sensitive materials that aren’t evergreen in nature (like that post all about industry trends you published three years ago), it pays to regularly update your posts so that search engines can see you are actively “tending” your content and making sure that things are fresh and up-to-date.

In the event that you discover certain posts aren’t generating a lot of search impressions, you can start by looking at the keywords it is ranking for (if there are any).

Maybe you have another article that ranks better for the same words and consolidating the two articles into one post might eliminate this instance of keyword cannibalism.

Or maybe the post is ranking for unintended keywords that aren’t super relevant to your business or aren’t searched a lot. You may choose to restructure the article to focus more specifically on the intended subject.

Or maybe it’s not the keywords but the article itself – check the page speed load time and make sure all of your images are optimized and see if these updates help boost the rankings for the page.

If the post is generating a lot of impressions, but not a lot of clicks, your headline or meta description might be to blame. Getting people to click on your article is a whole other ballgame, but these problems can be fixed if identified by doing a little digging in your Google search console and analytics.

Understanding Your Goals: A Note of Advice

This should go without saying, but content that doesn’t have a place within your buyer’s journey isn’t going to deliver on financial goals. Period.

Even if you do find that you’ve snagged yourself one of the coveted top placements for a high-volume keyword, the traffic will be practically worthless if the searcher’s intentions aren’t aligned with what you offer.

Make sure you spend some time mapping your personas and customer’s journey and identify areas within this process where you can nurture them with content. Being strategic about what you produce and at which stage of the journey it should be consumed is the first step to creating a successful content marketing machine.

Then you can apply the aforementioned tactics to help that content catch fire.

Looking for more on this topic? Read the SEO Types, Tools, and Techniques guide on Hearst Bay Area here.