The Content Marketer’s Ultimate Guide toSearch Engine Optimization

In the world of SEO, there are marketers who use black hat tactics and those who use white hat tactics. The approach you decide to take makes a world of difference in how your content ranks.

Simply put, if you adopt black hat tactics, you’re going to be penalized by the big G. But if you play by the rules using white hat SEO tactics, your website will rank higher and you will reach your content marketing goals.

Let’s take a look at both of these hats:

Black Hat SEO

The black hat is often associated with villains and antagonists in many forms of storytelling. And that evil association translates to the SEO world.

Those who practice black hat techniques are working around rules to earn SEO results.

Black hat tactics are bad practices that could provide ranking boosts in the short term, but these tactics can get your site banned or penalized by search engines. They violate important webmaster guidelines.

Here are some common black hat tactics you want to avoid:

1. Hidden Links and Text 

Add illegible text and formatted images that are not visually detectable as links. For example:  

2. Cloaking

Show site visitors another set of content that is different from what search engines see. This is common in various forms.

Source: CatchUpdates

3. Keyword Stuffing and Stacking

Use keywords excessively that reads like nonsense. For example, your content would repeat words to the point of it being nonsense. If you wanted to rank for employee wellness app, your content would include something like:

“Our employee wellness app is a great employee wellness app. When you’re looking for an employee wellness app, you can find our employee wellness app by visiting our employee wellness app page and asking about the employee wellness app from our employee wellness app experts.”

As you can see, this content is low quality.

4. Spam Blogs

Use a software that creates distorted text using keyword phrases just to get visitors to come. For example, a website would rank high for a specific keyword, like employee wellness app. But when the visitor arrives, they don’t see any relevant content. 

5. Page Swap

Your page gets indexed for a specific keyword, then the page is changed for visitors.

Obviously, thanks to the advancements of search engine technology, these techniques are less and less common. Plus, the benefits are short lived. 

Your black hat website will anger visitors, your credibility will suffer, and Google will stop ranking you. 

But these black hat tactics aren’t just used by small operations striving to dupe visitors or shady pornographic websites trying to boost traffic. 

There are several reputable organizations committing these bad practices. Here are some high profile examples:

Forbes

Back in 2011, Forbes got busted by Google for link spamming. They hosted a resources section of a page about e-business that included links.

However, these links led to paid ads.

And they also suffered Google penalties in 2007. They were caught selling paid links. When Google released the PageRank update, they were among the biggest publishers who took a hit. Other notable publications included Washington Post, Copyblogger, and SFGate.

Groupon

A bus tour company in San Francisco accused the digital coupon giant of using a bait and switch technique in 2011.

Groupon ran text ads that mentioned tour discounts in San Francisco. The problem: they didn’t actually have tour discounts to offer. 

Viewers who clicked the ads found no landing page offering such discounts. This ultimately hurt the San Francisco bus tour company’s rankings.

Sprint

In 2013, Google found user-generated spam on Sprint’s website. Their offense was similar to both BBC’s and Mozilla’s previous penalties.

A portion of Sprint’s site was open to the public for anyone to post links and content. But the problem was that visitors were spamming the site with links.

So it’s obvious that you as a marketer and content creator should not adopt black hat tactics. But what if you are looking to partner with SEO professionals and agencies?

You might not know how they are “optimizing” your website. If they use these black hat tactics, you might not notice. Then, you’re stuck with Google penalties and struggling to re-establish your credibility and boost your rankings.

Here are a few warning signs to look out for to avoid working with black hat SEO agencies:

• They make unrealistic promises, like guaranteeing high page ranks in minimal time.
• You see an influx in hundreds or thousands of links to your site.
• They promote super low prices – SEO requires a lot of time and ongoing support, so it should be costly.
• They claim to know “secrets” or say they know someone who is on the inside of Google.

White Hat SEO

Contrary to black hat SEO, white hat SEO techniques are actually in line with search engine terms and conditions. These practices improve your rankings and deliver long-term success without the anxiety of getting penalized by Google.

Check out these six white hat SEO tactics:

1. Add Keyword-Rich Meta Tags

Meta tags are snippets that describe the content on your webpage. They appear in the page’s code and tell search engines exactly what the webpage is about, which improves your SEO.

There are several types of meta tags, including:

• Meta Description – a concise explanation of the page.

• Title Tag –the text you see at the top of your browser, and what search engines see as your page title.

• Meta Keywords – a list of keywords relevant to your webpage.

For the most SEO value, pay close attention to all these types. While aspects like meta keywords don’t directly factor into Google’s ranking algorithm, most of these meta tag types benefit the overall visitor experience.

A strong meta description that includes relevant keywords can entice searchers to select your webpage when they read the preview in SERPs.

Meta keywords are also not a factor impacting Google’s algorithm. Thanks to keyword stuffers and other black hat practitioners, Google gives no SEO value to them. Simply put, they’re far too easy to abuse and cheat.

Title tags, on the other hand, directly impact your rankings. They are visible to searchers in the browser and to search engines as well. Your title tags can both inform your audience and show search engines that your content matters to specific search queries.

2. Design an Easy-to-Navigate Website

The user experience plays a vital role in your SEO efforts. Google looks at many aspects of your website, including how long visitors spend on your site.

If you deliver a poor user experience, your bounce rate can skyrocket, which will hurt your rankings. Navigation and visual appeal play big roles in the overall user experience.

When it comes to visitors perceiving your site visually, they assess visual appeal as quickly as 50 milliseconds, according to a 2011 study published in Behaviour & Information Technology.  This is why the blink test is so important to pass.

Your website design should be both visually appealing and intuitive. This way, visitors like being on your site and know exactly where to find relevant content.

KoMarketing’s 2015 B2B Web Usability Report shed light on what visitors want when they land on your website. Here’s a quick overview of what the research found:

• Products and services, content information, and company information are the top information people want to see available on a vendor website homepage.

• Poor design and navigation are among the top website elements that annoy buyers and cause them to leave.

• Poor design and navigation are also among the top reasons for reducing a vendor’s credibility.

One of the best examples of excellent navigation design comes from HubSpot’s homepage.

As you can see, visitors can easily find their way to areas of information relevant to their needs and interests. When you hover over the dropdown menus, you get an expanded look at related areas.

For example, if you’re interested in features of the software, you simply hover over the software option and access five options – the free CRM, marketing hub, sales hub, service hub, and integrations. Plus, if you need direct access to the organization, you can use both the HubBot on the bottom right and the contact us page in the top left.

There are several types of navigation you can choose from. When you’re deciding on how to design navigation, consider both the visitor and search engines. Obviously, you want search engine crawlers to easily find your links, but you also don’t want to sacrifice the user experience.

A common best practice is providing global website navigation.

Why global?

Global website navigation shows the top pages and sections of your website on each page, often listing the main content sections of your website. This simplifies the user experience because no matter where the visitor is on your website, they can find other content sections in a snap.

The global navigation links tell search engine crawlers exactly what pages you consider the most important. These links make it easy for both visitors and search bots to get to each page. So it’s a win-win for everyone.

Here are different types of navigation to consider:

click to expand

• Single Bar Navigation ↓

   

  One plain bar that houses all important navigation links in one row.

  Moz does a great job of using a single bar navigation:

  

  As you can see, all the pages are clearly identified for visitors.

  Best option for: websites that include a handful of important pages.  

   

• Double Bar Navigation ↓

   

  Similar to single bar, this option contains a primary navigation bar as well as a secondary bar, which shows additional options. This gives you the chance of adding even more internal links for your visitors to find without over-cluttering your homepage.

  Best option for: websites that have several important pages that won’t fit on a single bar.

   

• Drop-Down Navigation ↓

   

  Drop-downs allow visitors to hover navigation items to access a secondary list of links. Some websites use double bar drop-downs.

  For example, MarketingProfs’ homepage from early 2018 nails this style.

  

  As you can see, the top bar includes links to their social media platforms, a search bar, member login, and much more. What’s nice is this bar disappears as you scroll so it doesn’t feel crowded as you look for content down the page.

  The drop-down style is perfect because they have so many content areas within each section. The topics drop-down helps you easily find formats and topics to dig deeper quickly. 

  

  Best option for: websites that need more links than what can fit on double-bar formats.

   

• Drop-Down With Flyouts ↓

   

  One of the most complex structures, this design includes flyout menus that can be accessed like a drop-down menu.

  Arguably the most recognizable and prominent drop-down flyout navigation comes from Walmart.

  

  You simply hover over a department, then a flyout gives you plenty of other subcategories in a huge menu.

  Best option for: ecommerce sites and other websites that include a huge selection of links with nested categories.

   

3. Optimize for Mobile Experience

Back in 2015, Google announced that more searches took place on mobile as compared to desktop search. According to 2018 Statista research, a whopping 52% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones.

To put it simply, a poorly optimized mobile experience will significantly hurt your reach. If your visitors struggle to navigate and engage with your content through a mobile device, you’re going to see a huge portion of your audience fall off.

Bounce rates will soar. Mobile traffic will stagnate. And your brand could lose authority and credibility.

So what are the best practices for building an SEO-friendly mobile experience?

Google and AnswerLab conducted a study in 2014 and found the following insights:

• Mobile visitors are goal oriented, and they want to find what they need quickly and easily.
• Build menus that are short and concise.
• If you’re building forms, only ask for a few bits of relevant information.
• Make your primary CTAs front and center in prominent space with a big button. 
  
  

4. Build High-Quality Links

Link building is where you should invest most of your time and resources. The value of building high-quality links is immense. In fact, Google themselves have made this value clear, saying the following:

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

When authoritative sites are linking to your content, search engines recognize you as a credible source, which will eventually help you rank higher. These backlinks act as a vote of confidence from other sites.

But not all links are created equal. You want backlinks from high-quality resources, not spammy sites.

Here’s an overview of some link building best practices:

Create awesome content.

Perhaps the easiest, most straightforward approach to earning backlinks, this always works. If your content is unique, informative, and high value for your audience, others in your industry will link to you and reference your content (more on this later).

Submit contributions to other sites.

Guest blogging at reputable sources is still super valuable. The more you educate your audience through high-quality websites, the more recognizable you and your brand become.

But also, when you guest blog, you typically include links to your website within your content and your contributor bio. Even if the link back is a nofollow, you earn SEO value indirectly through driving traffic and building brand awareness.

Work with influencers.

Influencer marketing helps you promote your services and ideas through popular social media figures and content creators. When you connect with influencers who have huge followings, you can expand your reach immensely when they share your content or if you collaborate on content with them.

Find relevant link directories.

Once you identify directories that are high value, you can connect with them and earn backlinks. For example, the Better Business Bureau is one of the most reputable, impactful directories.  

5. Create High-Quality Content

As mentioned above, this is the most obvious (and overlooked) white hat SEO practice. You need content, but if you’re just adding filler to your site, you’re not going to see better rankings.

Content is NOT king. If you’re just publishing for the sake of content, you’re wasting a lot of resources on low-value content.

Unique, insightful, relevant content is actually the real king. And here are a few dos and don’ts to consider when you build high-quality content:

Don’t cut corners during your planning and ideation process.
Do always start with your buyer persona in mind. 

Don’t copy what others are doing.
Do research your competitors and differentiate yourself. 

Don’t dilute your tone to a dull, faceless corporate entity. 
Do develop an engaging, personable voice and share your unique perspective.

6. Check All the Boxes of Your On-Page SEO

On-page SEO involves everything you can do as a content marketer to make the most out of each individual webpage. This includes both the source code and the content itself on each page.

Your on-page SEO should be your prized possession because as content marketers, you have control over all of the on-page aspects.

Make sure you hit all your marks by following the on-page SEO checklist:

Every SEO experience can differ, depending on your goals and strategies. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn about common obstacles and situations content creators and marketers face.

Here are your most common situations you’ll face and step by step instructions on how to succeed.

Finding the Right Keywords and Topics to Address

Keywords and topics are vital to keep in mind as you develop your SEO strategy. While search engines are changing the way we approach keywords, your target keywords still matter. But it’s not just about keyword stuffing and ranking each piece for one particular keyword.

You need to think in topic clusters. Here’s a step by step guide on building your topic cluster strategy:

Step 1:

Using your buyer persona research, focus on your ideal reader’s top challenges and pain points they’re looking to address.

Step 2:

Start with five to 10 core problems you want to address. Then, list general topics that align with their problems. These should be broad topics.

Step 3:

Break down each broad topic into a list of subtopics that have a semantic relationship. Use keyword research and content ideation tools to spark some inspiration.

Step 4:

Map out your content strategy to show how core topics and associated subtopics align.

Step 5:

Audit your current content assets to find gaps. Whatever you didn’t cover, list out content ideas and prioritize them.

Step 6:

Build a spreadsheet to track your topic clusters, associated pillar page, and your linking strategy. Use the following columns:

• Pillar page topic – Identify what topic is covered in your pillar page.
• URL – Link to the cluster content (blog article, video, tool, etc.)
• Cluster topic – Show what general topic the cluster content is associated with.
• Subcluster – Describe what subcluster the cluster content relates to (if applicable).
• Keyword – List what keyword the cluster content is optimized for.
• Pillar Link (Y/N) – Show if the cluster content has been linked to the pillar page.
• Re-linked (Y/N) – Write if the pillar page has been linked back to the cluster content.
• Other Action – Describe if you need to take another action with the cluster content. If not, leave this blank.
• Other Action Taken (Y/N) – Write “yes” or “no” to show the other action is complete.
• Links to pages – Add four columns here and include links to each live page.
  
  

Confirming On-Page SEO

Your on-page SEO refers to the practice of optimizing each webpage. For every blog article or webpage, you should check off all the boxes to ensure you get the most SEO mileage out of every piece.

Here’s what you need to do for every aspect of  your on-page SEO:

Title Tags: 

You need to include your keyword in it, preferably at the beginning of the title tag. But also make the title compelling so when searchers see your result, they actually click it.

H Tags:

Your h tags play a big role in your SEO strategy. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which is a common language used in creating webpages.

An HTML tag is a snippet of code showing web browsers how to display content. There are six different heading tags used in HTML (e.g., h1 through h6)

• H1 – Use this for the headline. Only include one h1 tag per webpage. It should be used to describe the topic of your page, usually within 20 to 70 characters. It will be similar to your title tag and your title of your blog article.
• Use the other h tags with keywords naturally.

URLs

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is commonly known as a web address, specifying the location of a resource on the internet. It also includes information on how to retrieve that resource through the protocol (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, etc.).

They are readable by humans. The text within URLs replaces the numbers (IP addresses) that computers use to communicate with servers.

With your URL, you want to accomplish two things:

1. Demonstrate what the page is about. This delivers a great user experience because it describes exactly what the webpage is about.
2. Include keywords naturally. While URLs are a minor ranking factor for search engines, they’re still a factor to consider. Keywords can provide a small benefit to ranking.

Moz provides this awesome URL cheatsheet to help you better understand SEO and user-friendly URLs.

Meta Description

These are HTML attributes providing summaries of webpages. They appear underneath the clickable blue links in SERPs.

While meta descriptions aren’t tied directly to search engine rankings, they do have a major influence on clickthrough rates. They can encourage or deter searchers from clicking your webpage. The more clickthrough your webpage gets, the better your page can rank.

Here are a few dos and don'ts of writing meta descriptions:

Keep in mind, if your meta description is not adequate in the eyes of Google, the search engine could find a snippet on the target page that better matches the query and use that instead.

Links

Internal links are hyperlinks that target the same domain as the one that the link exists on. They serve a few key purposes:

User experience – When you’re strategic about internal linking, you can guide your visitors through several pages on your website.

Link equity (aka link juice) – This is a ranking factor that relies on this concept – between each page, you can pass value and authority through links. You can build link equity in internal and external linking, but you need to follow these rules:

• Make the link followed: No-followed links tell search engine crawlers to ignore it.
• Include links in the body of your webpage: If you bury it in the footer or sidebar, they don’t carry as much value.
• Ensure relevancy: If you’re linking to other webpages that don’t make sense, search engines will learn, and you won’t earn link juice.
• Don’t overthink anchor text: Use naturally occurring words and phrases to hyperlink. No need to optimize anchors.

Content

Keyword stuffing be damned. In 2018, delivering value to your readers is the most important area of focus. Here are a few quick SEO tips on on-page content:

• Mix keywords with natural variants (synonyms and related phrases). Search engines can understand relationships between variants and your keywords.
• Rename images with descriptors, and optimize your alt text for images so Google can learn about the relevant image.
• High-quality content matters because if your metrics (like bookmarks, repeat visitors, and shares) are good, search engines will acknowledge you as an authority.
• Add social share buttons so readers can distribute your content across multiple platforms. When your content is shared, search engines notice your content is valuable to many and worth ranking higher.

User Experience

Put simply, if your users have a pleasant experience on your website and enjoy your content, you’re going to see major results. There are a couple important factors to consider with UX:

Analyzing Your SEO Efforts

This is arguably the most important aspect of your SEO strategy. If you’re not measuring and analyzing SEO metrics regularly, you don’t know what’s working, what’s not working, and how you can improve your efforts.

Follow the NAP approach – numbers, analysis, practice. 

Numbers

Start with your numbers. Here are a few SEO metrics you need to pay attention to:

• Pageviews – number of views each particular webpage earns.
  
  
• Average time on page – shows how visitors consume content, either glancing at it or reading it through to the end.
  
  

• Unique visitors – how many visitors your content is attracting, which shows a good size of your audience.

• New and returning users – how your content attracts and retains new audiences.

• Bounce rate – how many users left a page without visiting other website pages.

• Pages per session – average number of pages viewed in one session (shows interlinking)

You should also look at engagement (social shares, comments, mentions, etc.) to see what users do with your content.

But numbers are just numbers without context.

Analysis

Read through your metrics, then connect them to actionable takeaways. Each metric tells a story.

For example, if a particular blog article has a high bounce rate, that means when visitors land on that page, they’re not satisfied with the content they see.

Look at every aspect of the content. Does the title align with the body of the article? Is the content well organized and high value?

Practice

At this stage, with your data and takeaways handy, you’re ready to take action. Start putting what you learned into practice.

For example, if your analysis shows that your blog articles that are over 1,000 words generate more leads than your shorter articles, adjust your content strategy to account for more long-form articles.

As you experiment, continue measuring your SEO metrics and adjust accordingly. But remember, SEO results take time. So give your experiments time so you can gauge your results accurately.

Boosting SEO Via Social Media

Social shares can ultimately pay off big in both expanding your brand awareness and potentially improve your search rankings. While social signals are not a ranking factor, search engines do crawl social sites like they do any other site.

When your content is shared, it’s being promoted, which can lead to more engagement and traffic. It can also lead to link building, which builds your link equity and improves your ranking.  

Don’t overlook the power of social media profiles. Not only do they rank, but they can also be an extension of your brand. It delivers a fun, unique experience for your readers.  

Historically Optimizing Your Old Blog Posts

The process of historical optimization is essential to your SEO strategy. Essentially, historically optimizing entails dusting off your old content and adding fresh, updated content.

The main goal of historical optimization is to ensure accuracy and comprehensive. This way, you’re delivering the most value with every piece of content.

The benefit is that you can generate more traffic and more leads.

But don’t just jump into any blog article and started updating the content. Follow these steps:

1. Run reports to find blog articles that are outdated or can be improved and have the potential to rank higher for keywords.

2. Update the content enough so the article has noticeable improvements.

3. Without changing the URL, simply unpublish then republish the content so it appears as a new, featured article on your blog.