What Is Content Optimization? How to Optimize Content

According to Statista, global content marketing revenue reached 42.15 billion US in 2019. It will continue to grow each year for the foreseeable future.

With so much content being created and published, it’s more important than ever to properly optimize your content to give it the best chance of success. 

Here’s everything you need to know about content optimization.

What is content optimization?

Content optimization is the process of ensuring content is written to perform well. Optimizing content involves optimizing the writing itself, user experience, engagement, and search engine optimization (SEO). Overall, content optimization is all about helping improve the quality of content from multiple aspects to deliver the best content with the best possible experience for the right people.

Why optimize content?

Content optimization is essential because it gives your content the best chance of succeeding. Here’s an analogy. When you create a Google Ad campaign, you conduct a competitor analysis; you optimize copy, you A/B test, plus a long list of other optimizations. The same applies to content. By optimizing your content, you’re giving it a better chance of achieving your content marketing KPIs.

With around 7 million blog posts published per day (yes, you read that right), content optimization is necessary to cut through the noise.  The more you optimize your content, the more people will see it and engage with it. In return, the more revenue, brand awareness, and success it will provide.

How to optimize content

There are different aspects of content optimization.

There’s optimizing content for search engines, optimizing the content for humans, and formatting it correctly, not to mention editing and proofreading. 

Here’s some actionable advice on how to optimize content.

Optimize for on-page SEO

Content optimization for SEO is the process of ensuring your content is optimized for search engines. 

Search engines, such as Google, need to clearly understand what your content is about and correctly index and rank it for the appropriate search terms it’s aiming to target.

Here’s a checklist of on-page SEO factors that are important to consider when optimizing content for SEO.

1. Choose one precise focus keyword for each piece of content.
2. Write your content for the right search intent.
3. Increase your page speed as much as possible.
4. Optimize your images by reducing file size and using faster loading image file types.
5. Write a 50 to 60 characters meta title that includes your focus keyword.
6. Write an enticing 80 to 160 character meta description that gets people to click on your content.
7. Add internal links to other content on your site, and use keyword-rich anchor text.
8. Add external links to authoritative sites if it helps users.
9. Add alt tags, filenames, and titles to images.
10. Naturally incorporate keywords in your HTML headings.
11. Write a sufficient amount of content for the subject matter.
12. Write using concise and straightforward language at a suitable complexity for the specific target audience.
13. Aim to use active voice over passive voice where possible.

Write well-written content

Creating valuable, well-written content is an essential part of content optimization.

You can optimize for keywords, webpage speed, and other technical aspects. Still, if the content itself is of poor quality, then all other optimizations lose their value. 

Poorly written content leads to poor engagement—high bounce rates, few to no comments, no backlinks, and social shares.

Here are 10 content writing tips:

1. Keep your writing simple.
2. Write concisely. Less is more. Say the same thing and use fewer words.
3. Make sure your content is actionable. What do you want readers to do?
4. Write a compelling headline. The headline is the first point of contact with your content. It’s vital.
5. Write original content and always cite your sources.
6. Write an outline before you start.
7. Write in a digestible way, without huge paragraphs and long 8. sentences. Use short sentences and paragraphs to hold attention.
8. Have your content written by actual experts, and write with authority.
9. Understand who it is you’re writing for.
10. Focus on the reader. Write directly to them.

Edit and proofread

Content editing is vital for several reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, it’s essential to improve to user experience. People get distracted by poorly written content, especially when there are multiple basic errors. It’s distracting. 

Grammar isn’t a direct ranking factor for search engines like Google, but it affects user experience, which is.

It’s well worth hiring a professional editor or working with a content writing agency that edits and proofreads content they write for you. 

Content that is full of errors and isn’t polished also reflects poorly on your brand. Would you expect a company like Microsoft to have spelling mistakes in their press releases? Of course not. 

Editing content ensure your content is

• Error-free (spelling, grammatical, punctuation, logical inconsistencies, and fact-checking)
• Written with the right style, tone, and language for your brand and goals
• Engaging, straightforward, and easy to understand

Optimize for page experience

Google Page Experience is a set of signals that measure the experience a user has on a page. It’s an aspect of on-page SEO but deserves a dedicated section. Page experience includes “Core Web Vitals,” a set of metrics that evaluate loading performance, visual stability, and page interactivity. Page experience also includes mobile-friendliness, safe browsing (are you using HTTPS), and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

If you genuinely want the most optimized content possible, then be sure to take the time to optimize for Google Page Experience. They are doubling down on the importance of these metrics, and improving these will ensure your content performs well over the long term.

Another aspect of page experience to consider, not necessarily for Google but for the overall perception of your brand’s content, is content UX design. It’s worth taking the time to optimize font sizes, font types, and paragraph spacing to create the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing content layout possible for your users.

Content optimization software and tools

There are many helpful content optimization tools and software you can use to optimize content. Here are 5 of the best ones.

1. Writing Studio

Writing Studio is a content writing service. You can order various content types, including blog posts, press releases, and other types of content. All content you get from Writing Studio is fully optimized. It’s an excellent service to use if you don’t want to write the content yourself and instead prefer to put content creation on autopilot.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO toolset for backlinks and SEO analysis. It’s a great content optimization tool, especially for research. With Ahrefs, you can search for keywords, assess their search volume, competitiveness, you can see what content is performing well for your competitors, and much more!

3. Grammarly

Grammarly is cloud-based writing software that reviews the spelling, grammar, punctuation, engagement, and clarity of your writing to ensure that you write error-free content. Content optimization is about delivering the best possible content. Overall, Grammarly is a great tool and software to use to ensure your content is polished and publish-ready.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a web service by Google that allows you to check the performance of your content in search engines. GSC provides you with many technical tools and reports that you can use to optimize your content specifically for search. This tool is a must-have for SEO content optimization.

5. Google Docs 

Google Docs is an online word processor where you can write and edit content. Google Docs also has several add ons build into it, such as the ability to add hyperlinks to text and format headings with the appropriate HTML tags. Overall, Google Docs is an excellent tool for optimizing your content before uploading it to a CMS like WordPress.

The bottom line

Content optimization is an important part of content creation. Without optimizing your content for search engines, engagement, and user experience, it won’t reach its potential regardless of how well-written it is.

In a world where content creation is rapidly increasing, it’s necessary to optimize your content to give it the best chance of succeeding. Hopefully, this article gave you some insights on where to start.