Step-by-Step Guide to Defeating Thin Content

With each algorithm update, Google continues to push for better content. This means that websites with thin content will suffer in the rankings. Plenty of companies are investing heavily in content marketing – and that’s a good plan – but before you spend resources on creating social and blog content your website content should be locked down and solid.

Writing content that is SEO-friendly while being informative to customers is the key to a good website. If you’re struggling with thin content, consider this five-step plan for creating content that accomplishes your business goals:

1. Determine Purpose of Each Page

The first step to creating solid, well-performing content is to determine the purpose of every page. Take an honest look at every page on your site and determine what answers it provides to searchers. Completing this step requires you to get into the mind of your customers. What are they searching for? What answers do they need?

This gets at the idea of searcher intent. Before we talk about keyword research and actual content creation, it is important to determine searcher intent. What answers are your target customers looking for? What is the intent behind their search, regardless of keywords? Once you have some idea of searcher intent, you can identify the focus or purpose of each page on your site.

Skipping this step leads to an all-too-common problem: directionless pages. Not only is it hard to write content without a clear direction, you’ll never have a chance of performing well in Google’s rankings.

2. Keyword Research

Once you determine a purpose for each page, you can turn to keyword research. Keyword research in easily one of the most important steps in optimizing your site for search engine success. But jumping to keyword research without the clear direction of page purpose and searcher intent will leave you with a huge list of keywords and nothing to do with it.

But if you have a clear purpose for each page, you’re ready to dive into keyword research. Pull up your favorite tool and get to work – start with your searcher intent and work from there. I won’t go into the details of keyword research here, but I’ve covered it in the past here and here.

Compile a list of targeted keywords for each page. This list will provide the bare-bones outline on which you’ll create your content. At this point, you’re almost ready to start producing your content; but first, it is wise to pull together some competitor research.

3. Competitor Research

I’ll call this step optional, but I’m a firm believer in always conducting competitor research. Take your list of targeted keywords and biggest competitors, head over to Google, and start searching. See how they are ranking for your keywords and take notes on what they’re doing.

Depending on your market, these competitors could be multi-national corporations or they could be the shop around the corner. Either way, the technique is the same – see what they’re doing, what they’re ranking for, and what they’re failing at.

Armed with this knowledge, you can flesh out the basic content plan you created during keyword research. You can emulate what works, improve what isn’t performing, and find holes in your competitors’ strategies. Once you have completed your keyword and competitor research, you’re ready to sit down and actually get to work on your content!

4. Create Content

Content creation is hard – and creating informative, SEO-friendly content for your website is no exception. But if you’ve put in the hard work in the first three steps above, you can make your life a whole lot easier. Here’s the process I use:

• Create an outline to answer the searcher intent you determined in step one
• Make a plan to include target keywords naturally within your outline
• Compare your outline with your top competitors to make sure you are standing out
• Write your content based on your outline and keyword list.

5. Celebrate

That’s it! Maybe not easy, but it shouldn’t be overwhelming either. This method of creating content for your website should help you attract customers, rank well in Google, and end up on the top – and what more could you ask from your website?

Of course,  if you’re struggling with creating quality content for your website Fusion Group USA can help with that! We provide a wide range of services, including web design, SEO, social media marketing, and more! Contact us today and let us show how we can help your business!