Earning your client a spot on the first search engine results page (SERP) is critical but challenging. About 75% of consumers never go beyond the first page of search results. If one of your client’s goals is to improve SERP rankings, here are a few things they should be doing.

Get Rid of Unhelpful Content

According to a study from Ignite Visibility, Google did most brands a huge favor with their Helpful Content Update. The update ensures “only the most helpful, high-​quality content ranks, decreasing rankings for less relevant and unhelpful content.” And it worked: 50.5% of marketers said their rankings improved and 29.6% said they stayed the same.

But there are a few marketers among the remaining 19.9% whose rankings dropped who actually have quality content. If your client is one of them, they may be asking what happened. Their unhelpful content probably set them up for failure.

Ignite points out that Google says, “Websites with large amounts of unhelpful content won’t fare well with Helpful Content Updates.” Did your client put lots of content online to see what resonated with consumers, but never deleted what didn’t stick? That could be a huge roadblock if they want to improve SERP rankings.

But don’t worry: All you have to do is delete the content that doesn’t provide real value to consumers. And make sure your client never directs consumers to that older content. Your client should also prioritize regularly updating and optimizing content as customer needs/​wants change.

Quality Over Quantity

When it comes to which factors are most important to rankings, Ignite asked marketers to rank various factors 1–10. Here were their top selections in order:

Quality Content: 7.8/10

User Experience: 7.4

Domain Authority: 6.8

Internal Links: 6.8

External Links: 6.6

And yet, with quality content being the most important, it’s not the top strategy marketers plan on using this year. Instead, the top content strategy for this year will be producing more content. Strategies like investing in high-​quality content, refreshing old content and removing thin or outdated content fall to the wayside.

Sure, producing a lot of content is a good way to improve SERP rankings. However, this tactic is only helpful if it’s all quality content. According to Ignite, that means the content is “user-​centric, helpful, unique, and adheres to E‑E-​A‑T guidelines.” EEAT is experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

And of course, your client should be focusing on producing content that their target audience prefers interacting with. Want to know for sure which content types appeal the most to your client’s target audience? Look up their profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel.

Blend Content Marketing with Technical, On-​Page SEO

Of course practicing content marketing that follows best practices is important when you want to improve SERP rankings. It’s a huge driving force behind why 49% of marketers rely on it for securing good rankings. But your client shouldn’t overlook technical, on-​page SEO to focus purely on content marketing.

Ignite recommends combining the two for the best results. “Not only should you continue creating and marketing your content across all relevant channels…but you should also optimize it with good technical SEO. Some of the key technical SEO elements that can help your content rank include:

Optimized, enticing title tags that appear in search results

Internal linking to relevant, high-​quality pages

Optimized images

Optimized headers”

Conclusion

Boosting your client’s SEO and search results rankings won’t be as challenging as you think if you follow these tips. Quality content, technical SEO and managing existing content are the keys to improve SERP rankings.

Photo by: Mimi Thian