Table of Contents
Search engine optimization practices are to online content what water is to a thriving, lush landscape. You can’t grow your business through digital content without optimizing it for search engines. SEO practices, however, are constantly on the move. Keeping up with — let alone taking best advantage of — all the changes isn’t an easy feat.
As an industry driven by technology, SEO can move at a breathtaking pace. Suddenly, the tactics you’re used to don’t apply anymore. And new tools to help you fine-tune your digital content seem to emerge faster than you can count. Still, being aware of emerging SEO technologies that will get your content to rank is part of the job. Here are four ways tech can simplify your SEO efforts.
1. Take the Guesswork Out of Keyword Research
You realize targeted keyword research is vital. Without it, you can only assume what your audience is searching for online. You might have an inkling based on internal research and customer conversations. But search engines aren’t going to rank your content if it doesn’t fulfill your audience members’ true search intent.
Targeted keyword research shines a light on what that intent might be. It sparks topic ideas and allows you to flesh out various pieces with the information your audience wants to find. On the other hand, there’s still a ton of guesswork involved in keyword research if you don’t have a strategy. Manually typing phrases into Google to see what comes up, including competing content, isn’t efficient or always accurate. Keyword research tools with the ability to analyze multiple data points are better.
With these tools, you can create strategies involving content pillars, which help increase your online visibility. A pillar strategy takes a core topic you want your business to be known for and builds on it. You can create general overview pages while drilling down into various specifics in different blog posts. You’re answering your audience’s search intent, but at multiple stages in the buyer’s journey. Simultaneously, a pillar strategy demonstrates your topical authority, helping to boost organic traffic and backlinks.
2. Automate Short-Form Content
Blog posts over 1,000 words aren’t the only way to engage your audience. There’s also short-form content, which includes social media posts, video shorts, and product descriptions. These pieces also need to take SEO into account in order to rank.
After creating lengthier blogs, short-form content might seem like a breeze for a content team. However, the shorter space can make satisfying search intent trickier. It’s also challenging for creatives to constantly produce a higher volume of short-form pieces on top of the longer ones. Tools with natural language generation capabilities lift some of the burden. Natural language generation technology can automatically generate blog intros, meta descriptions, social media posts, and even landing page copy.
Natural language generation tools can also produce overlay text for short-form videos, which audiences are twice as likely to share. For blog posts under 1,000 words, natural language generation technology will create outlines or first drafts. Titles and headlines are additional examples of low-hanging fruit that natural language generation tools can handle.
3. Optimize Keyword Use
OK, so you have a piece of content with a specific keyword you’re targeting. You did your research, so you’re confident what you’ve published satisfies your audience’s search intent. Months later, you’re still not seeing the rankings you want. While you might be using the targeted keyword in your content, it doesn’t mean you’ve optimized your on-page SEO strategy.
Tools that measure keyword importance and frequency help do this. The technology shows whether you’re also using other related keywords and phrases. In addition, these tools will recommend what phrases to remove to boost your rankings.
Say you’re targeting a phrase like “how to prevent chapped lips in the winter.” A tool measuring keyword importance and frequency across the internet might suggest including “dry, cracked lips.” The technology gives you additional insight into what phrases match specific intent according to search engine algorithms. Incorporating these related words can make your content more relevant.
4. A/B Test SEO Elements
Need help determining what parts of your content are dragging your ranking down? It may not be the meat of the page but other items like the meta description and title tag. However, it’s difficult to pinpoint these optimization opportunities with the human eye.
In this case, the search engine bots can reveal what content creators might not be able to see. With SEO A/B testing tools, search engine bots become your test audience. The difference is the technology analyzes one version of your content to determine what’s working. For example, you could test a different version of a meta description.
The tool will reveal whether those variations are going to bring you closer to your goals. If you get a boost in traffic from the changes, it’s a step in the right direction. Besides meta descriptions, you can test anchor text, schema markups, and H1 copy. With SEO A/B testing tools, you’ll optimize all elements of the page, even if they’re hidden from view.
Simplifying SEO
Trying to decipher the “minds” of search engine algorithms isn’t always clear-cut. You’ve got to consider changes in technologies as well as shifts in how consumers use them. Staying ahead of the game means incorporating tech tools into your SEO processes and strategies. Doing so will remove most of the uncertainty behind optimizing your online content for search intent.
