Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfupoleasercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimize your content for traffic and authority. I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge, hints and tips I've amassed over that time. Hello and welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, hosting, as always, and today I'm on to well, part two of the growth framework update that I promised as part of my accountability process that I'm using you guys listening on this podcast to keep me accountable. I'm telling you what I'm going to produce stuff and then I produce it, and a couple of weeks ago I said I'd produce two sections and I split it into two podcast episodes. So last Friday I did step two, the refined part of the process, and today we're going to do step three, the optimized part of the process. Now, this process is the growth framework process and the growth is acronym and it covers the six steps of the framework. So that's gather, refine, optimize, watch, tune, hone and repeat. So if you haven't listened to the other episodes. It's very much worth going and listening to them. Just search for growth framework in your podcast app of choice and it will bring up all the ones I've done so far in your podcast app of choice, and it will bring up all the ones I've done so far. So we'll now crack on with the optimize section of the process. Oh, by the way, all this is in a shared word, google doc, that there's a link to in the show notes. You can go and see this as a work in progress and you can. There's details in there how to contact me, how to give feedback on this, any suggestions you've got, and it's great to hear from you. So here we go now with step three optimize, creating and enhancing content. Once you've gathered a wealth of questions and organize them into clear clusters, the next stage is optimization. This phase is all about transforming transforming those clusters into high quality, engaging content that satisfies both search engines and your audience. In this chapter, we cover four critical aspects of optimization Choosing the right medium, creating or updating content, on-page best practices and ensuring an excellent user experience.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Choose the right medium. Content isn't one-size-fits-all. Different topics and audiences may respond better to different formats. Choosing the right medium is key to effectively answering the questions your audience is asking. Understanding your audience. Start by identifying how your target audience prefers to consume information. Some audiences favour detailed written guides, while others may engage more with videos, podcasts or interactive tools. For instance, technical audiences might appreciate step-by-step written tutorials accompanied by screenshots, whereas a broader consumer base might engage more with a short, dynamic video, matching the topic to the format. Consider the nature of the question. Complex how-to guides, written articles or downloadable PDFs that break down complex processes can work best here. Visual explanations, explanations, infographics or explaining videos can simplify data, making it easier to digest intricate ideas. Interactive content tools like calculators or quizzes can actively involve users and personalize their experience, experimentation and data. Don't be afraid to test different media on similar clusters and measure performance. Remember, a successful content strategy often involves a mix of formats that complement one another, helping you reach a broader audience.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Create or update content. With your clusters mapped out and the appropriate medium chosen. The next step is content creation. This phase involves crafting fresh, high-quality content or updating existing content to better answer the questions your audience is asking. Developing a content blueprint For each cluster. Start by outlining the key questions that need to be answered. Develop a content blueprint that details the structure of your piece, what sections will cover which questions and how they will flow together. A detailed blueprint ensures that every sub-question is addressed and helps make a logical narrative throughout your content.

Speaker 1: 4:57

Writing fresh content when creating new content, focus on clarity, depth and engagement. Your goal is to provide comprehensive answers that leave no question unanswered. Engage with storytelling. Integrate personal stories, anecdotes or case studies where relevant. This not only builds credibility, but also makes the content relatable. Actionable insights provide clear, actionable steps that readers can implement immediately. The more practical your advice, the more likely your audience will trust and share your content.

Speaker 1: 5:27

Updating existing content If you already have content available that matches the intent of the questions and clusters you've identified, review it through the lens of your newly defined clusters. Content refresh Add new information. Update updated statistics or restructure the article to align with current best practices. Integrate new keywords. Incorporate questions and phrases from your gathered data that may have emerged as trends since the original content was published. Enhance visuals and calls to actions. Refresh images, infographics and calls to action to improve engagement and conversion rates, balancing depth with accessibility. While it's important to be thorough, ensure your content remains accessible. Break up large blocks of text with subheadings, bullet points and visuals to maintain reader interest and improve comprehension.

Speaker 1: 6:13

On-page best practices Optimizing your content isn't just about what you write. It's also how you present it. On-page SEO best practices help search engines understand your content and they play a crucial role in achieving higher rankings. While this book isn't designed to be a comprehensive on-page SEO guide, here are some of the key areas to consider Headings and structure Use clear descriptive headings h1s, h2s, h3s, etc. To structure your content. Your primary keywords should appear naturally in your H1 and subheadings should further break down the topics. This not only aids in SEO, but also improves readability for your users.

Speaker 1: 6:49

Meta titles and descriptions Craft compelling meta titles and descriptions that accurately reflect your content and include relevant keywords. These elements can serve as the first impression in search results and can significantly impact click-through rates. Url structure Keep URLs concise and descriptive. A well-structured URL that can include your target keyword can improve both user understanding and search engine indexing. Internal linking Use internal links to connect related content. This practice not only helps distribute page rank throughout your site, also guides users to additional relevant information. Ensure the anchor text is descriptive, giving context to the linked content.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Image optimization Include relevant images with descriptive file names and alt text. Compress images to ensure fast load times without sacrificing quality, and consider using schema markup if applicable. Mobile optimization With a majority of users browsing on mobile devices, ensure your site is fully responsive. Mobile-friendly design is a critical ranking factor and essential for a positive user experience. Content readability Break your content into manageable paragraphs. Use bullet points and numbered lists where appropriate, and choose fonts and colours that are easy to read. Accessibility is not only good for SEO, it's also good for your audience. If you are looking for more in-depth SEO content, then a good place to start is my podcast. Seo is Not that Hard, available on all popular podcast networks.

Speaker 1: 8:10

Enhancing user experience UX Great content must be paired with a superior user experience. Ux encompasses everything from page load speed to intuitive navigation and overall visual appeal. A seamless user experience keeps visitors engaged and encourages them to explore your site further. Page speed Fast load times are critical. Optimise images, leverage browser caching and consider using a content delivery network to reduce latency. Remember, both search engines and users favour fast loading pages.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Responsive design your website should look and function flawlessly across all devices. Responsive design ensures that your content is easily accessible wherever your audience is, whether it's on a desktop, tablet or a smartphone. Clear navigation Simplify your site's navigation by ensuring that menus are intuitive and that users can easily find the content they're looking for. Well-organised site structure not only helps with UX, but also aids search engine understanding your site's hierarchy. Engaging layout and visuals Use white space effectively to create a clean layout. High-quality visuals, infographics and interactive elements can enhance engagement. Visual cues, such as images, icons and videos, break up the text and keep readers interested. Accessibility Design your content to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Use alt texture images. Ensure that your colour contrast is sufficient and follow best practices for web accessibility, such as those outlined by the WCAG guidelines.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Call to actions CTAs Guide your users with clear and compelling call to actions, whether it's subscribing to a newsletter, reading a related article or exploring a product page. Effective call to actions help drive conversions and keep users interacting with your content. User feedback integration Lastly, continuously gather and analyse user feedback. Use tools like surveys, comment sections and analytics to understand how visitors interact with your content. This feedback is invaluable for making iterative improvements that enhance the overall user experience. Bringing it all together, strategic planning takes shape into actionable content that both satisfies user intent and meets search engine criteria. By choosing the right medium, you can ensure that your content resonates with your target audience in a format that they love. Creating or updating content with thorough research and actionable insights turns raw question clusters into comprehensive resources. Adhering to on-page best practices ensures that your content is discoverable and well-structured, while a focus on user experience guarantees that visitors remain engaged and are more likely to convert. Together, these elements form a robust content creation strategy that not only drives organic traffic, but also builds lasting authority in your niche.

Speaker 1: 10:49

As you move forward, remember that optimization is an iterative process, one that benefits from continuous testing, feedback and refinement. In the next chapter, we'll delve into the watch phase, where you learn how to monitor performance and gather insights to inform future improvements. So that's the step three optimized part of the framework. Hopefully that gives you an idea of you know we're taking those, we've got our clusters and we're now going to turn that into actual content, how we decide what content, what format it's going to be in, and the process for doing that, and also the best practices for making sure a you know it's readable, people are going to engage with it, it's done in formats, it's good for the search engines, all the things you need to do to get that, those clusters, into content that people can then actually consume. So that brings us up, as I said in the next thing is the watch phase next. So I, as part of my accountability process now, I'm going to get that watch phase out within.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Let's have a look. We've got watch and tune. I think I'm going to try and get watch and tune done four weeks. What was last friday? So let's see what date that will be. So that will be the 21st of march. So, yeah, I'll make sure that those next two sections are ready. Um, for the 21st of march. Um, so yeah, do go and check out the full document in work in progress. It's getting much bigger now. Um, you may have noticed, at the moment it's just text.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Obviously, when I come through this is the first draft that we're creating. So once I've got this first draft done and the whole thinking and the process down in words, that's when I'm going to go back through it again. We'll obviously edit it again based on feedback I've been given, and I'll also be putting in lots of images and lots of examples and more case studies, that kind of thing in there. But in this first instance I'm just trying to get the process out in order. So, yeah, again, with all these things like producing a big piece of content like this, which is essentially looking like it's going to be a book or a small book sized amount of content is to, yeah, do a first draft out and then go through and refine. So that's it for today.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Um, do look, comments welcome. Please get in touch. Love hearing from you all and so until next time, keep optimizing, stay curious and remember seo is not that hard when you understand the basics. Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me. This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my SEO tools and services.

Speaker 1: 13:23

You can find links to all the links I mention here in the show notes. Just remember, with all these places where I use my name, that Ed is spelled with two Ds. You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. Just search for Ed Dawson on both. You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast. The link is in the show notes. You can try our seo intelligence platform keywords people use at keywords people usecom, where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online. Post those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority. And, finally, connect your google search console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content, find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize, continually refine your content and targeted, personalized advice to keep your traffic growing. If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice, then visit wwweddawsoncom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO. That Is Not that Hard.