What is Content Relevance?
Content relevance refers to how well the information on a page relates to a search query. While keywords are important, it is important to remember that Google is looking at the intent of every search query and provides the content that will match that intent.
Why You Need To Produce Relevant Content
Today online businesses are competing with you more than ever before. Anyone, anywhere, can create content to flood the Internet and attract the attention of Google and other search engines — and they are.
The only real differentiator between websites today is their content, and great content is what gets you found in search engines and converts prospects into paying customers.
Since you want to drive qualified traffic to your website you need to make sure that your site ranks high in Google to get found while also being consumed by your audience.
This balance is not easy, but as Google continues to hire thousands of technical engineers and psychologists to understand online searches, your business needs to increase efforts to create compelling, relevant content that gets found and generates clicks.
Why Relevant Content Is More Important Than Ever Before
Your business has a lot of responsibilities, and one of the first things you'll learn when looking how to create good content for a website is that it takes time, money, and resources.
This means that each piece of content (video, blog post, infographic, social post, etc.) needs to be crafted with a purpose, and that goal should be centered on the needs of your customers.
As you build out your marketing strategy, you should put all of your efforts into making content that is aligned to the needs of your customers because this type of content has many benefits, such as:
- Generating valuable backlinks that can improve your site’s ranking and online presence.
- Answering specific questions & meeting the needs of your customers.
- Decreasing your Bounce Rate since your readers will want to see more of your site.
- Increasing Pages/Session since your readers will be consuming more content.
- Increasing Avg. Session Duration since your readers are on your site longer.
- Improving CTR since readers are taking action to learn more from your website.
- Increasing social shares as more people want to share your content with their networks.
- Capturing higher rankings on Google SERPs.
- Attracting qualified traffic, build an active community, and boost conversions.
User Intent: SEO For Your Audience
Google’s primary goal is to deliver the best content to their users quickly and easily. As competition with Google increases, their business model is moving in the direction that will best suit their bottom line.
As a result, Google is making every effort possible to provide the right information to the right person at the right time with each search query.
Here is a #ProTip for how to make great content that ranks in Google and converts your audience…
Always think about the needs of your customers. Since your customers have needs they want to solve; they need to go somewhere to ask questions and find answers…
...people ask questions when they type something into Google.
Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you went to Google to find information.
Here are some examples of what people type into Google and what they are asking.
As you create content for your website, you should consider the needs of your readers and align your content to solve their problems.
Not only will this approach help you attract more qualified traffic (since you are providing solutions to their needs), you will also increase conversions since people will see that you have terrific products or services.
Authority + Relevance = Good Online Presence
As you develop relevant content for your audience that boosts conversions, you should also consider what is needed for your website to rank higher in Google and get found by more people.
While there are many variables to consider, in a nutshell, there are two main considerations when looking at a website: Authority and Relevance.
Neither of these components is more important than the other because each of them contributes to the success of the other.
- Relevance helps you rank in Google for specific search queries, which contributes to your Authority.
- Authority helps Google trust your site, which improves rankings in SERPs and drives more traffic to your content.
Both of these concepts are entirely different and are measured in various ways, but at the end of the day, both of these elements work to contribute to the power that your website has and how well it ranks on Google.
The key is identifying how vital relevant content is for your site because it impacts both the Authority and Relevance of your site.
How To Create Relevant Content Based On Questions and Needs
As we discussed above, whenever someone goes to Google, they have a problem they need to solve. As someone searches for those answers, they ask Google specific questions through search queries.
The ultimate goal of any business owner is to have their content appear at the top of Google for key search queries and convert their readers once they come to the site. This is not easy, but with the right online small business marketing tools and some helpful tips, you will be able to invest your time and energy towards creating great content that gets ranked and boosts conversions!
There are many tools out there to help you optimize your content, but when creating content one of the best tools that you can use is the SEMrush Topic Research tool.
Let’s say that we have an SEO consulting company and we want to create a blog post about what clients should look for in an SEO Report.
The first thing we should do is go to SEMrush and enter our idea into the Topic Research tool.
Once we enter our information, this tool will provide us with a long list of potential angles that we can take on the specific subject and topic. This saves us a lot of time and helps us build a cohesive strategy around the sizeable SEMrush database.
That is pretty sweet!
For this example let’s choose the angle that most closely resembles our primary need, so let’s take a more in-depth look at results for “What To Look For In SEO Report.”
Once this box is expanded, we see sections with recent articles and the questions people are asking in real-time.
Specifically, we can see a collection of source material that we can reference, some relevant questions that people ask about our topic, and related searches that we can use in the content.
Steps to Improve Your Blog Post
Now that we have this tool open let’s take a look at how we can use this information to improve our blog post!
1. Create Headlines That Generate Traffic
Relevant content is not just about the content in the body of our blogs or web pages because for content to be excellent it has to rank in Google, get qualified clicks, and compel readers to take action.
While it is often the most overlooked elements of content, your headline should be considered the most essential part of any content that you produce. This is because it is the first thing that your readers will see in Google SERPs, so if you want customers to consume your content your headline needs to get them to click on the link in the Google results.
If no one clicks on your links, then they can't convert via your website.
One way to build a great headline is to get ideas from the top results of a given search query, and we can find some great ideas in the SEMrush Topic Research tool.
From these results, we can see a wide selection of headlines to work from.
While you should not steal headlines because it will make you look unprofessional and copying headlines will make you blend into existing Google results, you can use existing headlines to get ideas for your unique headlines.
2. Include Questions & Answers In Your Content
Since we want to answer the questions that our target audience is asking while also ranking in Google, we should think about how to include exact questions in our content.
Exact match position is an important part to optimize content for Relevance, and it impacts the Authority of your site. This approach will also show your readers that you know their problems and that they can trust you to give them the best answers and solutions.
From the above results from the SEMrush Topic Research tool, we could include the following questions in both our blog post and even an FAQ for our resource sections:
- What should your business expect from an SEO report?
- How should SEO reports be delivered to your business?
- What are the benefits of an SEO report?
Not only are these questions on the mind of clients based on these results, but these questions also provide a great point to build valuable content that will engage and connect with our readers.
3. Include Related Search Terms
The Google search algorithm is excellent at finding content based on specific search queries, but to make your content an asset to your business you will need to think of ways to expand the utility of each piece of content you produce.
This means increasing the footprint of your online presence with related keywords. Not only does this make your content easier to understand for search engines, but this approach also provides context to your readers as they consume your content.
Our Keyword Magic Tool is a useful application to use in this case, allowing you to find keywords to suit and influence your content.
From the above results, we can quickly begin integrated related keywords that SEMrush believes will help us rank in Google SERPs.
Creating Relevant Content For People & Search Engines
If you have been in business for any amount of time, then you probably know how difficult it can be to create great content that gets found by search engines and drives qualified traffic to your website.
However, by understanding and meeting the requirements of the needs of your customers alongside employing the best content writing practices for SEO you can meet the goals of your business. You can use tools like the SEMrush Topic Research tool to discover ideas to power your content to a new level!
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