To optimize a site, you need to improve ranking factors in three areas — technical website setup, content, and links.
With so many factors to consider, how do you ensure each piece of content is optimized for success? What makes it to the top of your SEO checklist when creating a piece of content?
Bonus: How does your team ensure SEO remains top-of-mind throughout the content creation process?
My main focus is on technical SEO, while the rest of the marketing team focuses on content. For me, I find accessibility to be an important part of technical SEO, so I’ve taken the time to learn about web accessibility first. It also aligns with our mission, that every child is capable of greatness. I use Google Lighthouse audits, SEM Rush reports, and HubSpot’s SEO Optimization tool to identify areas for improvement.
We are still getting started with SEO and have yet to move our exisiting webpage and blog to Hubspot. I would guess that technical SEO must work as a starting point and that the actual content needs to follow on that basis.
I’m used to CMSs that make it hard to mess up a lot of the SEO basics. A lot of the technical SEO baseline best practices are already established, and any enhancements are usually worked in parallel with other SEO efforts, as it’s typically completely different team resources who will be addressing these things. When it comes to content, we think through what topic cluster our piece best aligns with -- of course, after establishing in the first place that this is content that our target audience is seeking out and will find valuable -- and then we make sure that we craft the piece to use language that clearly adheres to the topical theme and that takes advantage of opportunities to cross-link to other blog posts or content elsewhere on the website. Since we’ve already established that the content is something the audience will find valuable, then it’s not tremendously difficult from there to earn backlinks. This can be done by merely amplifying the content and garnering pickups that way, or else through the standard sales-like process of identifying good candidates for backlinking to our content, establishing and nurturing that relationship, and subsequently securing the link.
Basically, anyone in-house or externally chartered to write content is given the SEO requirements directly within the request. The job isn’t done until those requirements are confirmed as being met.
We are still getting started with SEO and have yet to move our exisiting webpage and blog to Hubspot. I would guess that technical SEO must work as a starting point and that the actual content needs to follow on that basis.
SEO is for us, one of the columns that hold your complete digital strategy. Playing the long-term strategy of SEO for us is indeed divided between Authority and Relevance. The CMS of Hubspot has great tools to help finding the right content and using strategies like Topic Cluster. Indeed there are other tools you can use like Answerthepublic, Google Trends, Google keywords in Adsense, Semrush Topic Research and more , all with one goal in mind to get the lead on the right keywords for your Relevance. When it comes to Authority, I think Ubersuggest and Semrush together with the tools of Hubspot can get you on the right path. At our agency Serendipia we are constantly making audits of companies and learning to balance organic and paid growth and always open for a good catch with other leaders. check out my calendly if interested to meet.