How Do I Optimize My Content?
Ah, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Unfortunately, there’s no secret magic formula that will tell you exactly how to optimize your content. SEO takes experimentation, trial and error, and a lot of practice. But combining your skills with some optimization best practices, you can get a pretty decent start.
These are the elements you need to consider when optimizing content on any page:
- Title tag
- Meta description
- H1 headings
- H2 headings
- Paragraph content
- Calls-to-actions (CTAs)
Figuring out exactly where keywords should go within these elements is both a science and an art, but the following example will help you start to get the hang of things.
Optimized Page Example
To see how these elements look in action, check out this example real estate page that our team optimized:
Keep that page open while you read along, so you can make note of the key elements as we discuss them.
Title Tag – “Mount Juliet Real Estate & Homes | Mt Juliet, TN”
The title tag is actually coded in your website’s CMS, but you can see it in the browser tab at the very top of the page. A title tag is one of the best ways to tell search engines what a page is about. Try to incorporate your top one or two keywords, but keep the total tag under 60 characters—anything longer and your tag is likely to be truncated when it appears in the SERPs.
Meta Description
This is the second element that is coded within the CMS, and isn’t immediately visible on the page, but it plays a very important role in optimization. The meta description is the preview text you see in the SERPs, and an enticing meta description will drive traffic to your site. In addition, search engines automatically bold words that appeared in the original search, making this a good place to incorporate a keyword. Just ensure you keep your meta descriptions under 160 characters.
H1 – “Mount Juliet Real Estate”
The H1 is your first and most important heading on every page. Every great page starts with an H1 that closely incorporates the main target keyword. You should only use one H1 per page. Opening Paragraph See how the opening paragraph naturally includes our primary keyword, as well as a secondary variation? This seamless integration is exactly what you’re going for when adding your keywords into your text.
First H2 – “Mount Juliet Real Estate Listings”
Note how the second heading incorporates the major keyword, but expands on it while still accurately describing the content that follows.
Second H2 – “Explore Mount Juliet Homes For Sale”
Again, the keyword is naturally incorporated into a heading, which describes the content on the page.
Additional Text Content
It’s incredibly important to note that all of the text content is relevant to real estate in the Mount Juliet area. Keywords and their variations are incorporated throughout the text, but it reads well and flows naturally. (If a reader notices your keywords, you’ve probably over-optimized and need to scale back.)
Closing Call-To-Action
We love to wrap up every page with a CTA, because it’s another natural place to reinforce a keyword, and the CTA gives your users somewhere else to go.
Next Section: How Do I Optimize My Images?