$ 0 0 Every week we select and summarize five content marketing articles for easy skimming.This week we bring you five articles on the importance of SEO in today’s content marketing landscape.1. Future-Proof Your Content Rankings With These SEO Tips [Content Marketing Institute] Soon smart search engines will be able to reward content that is getting more clicks than results that appear above it on the SERP. Every click is a vote for relevance so make sure you’re URLs seem compelling, meta descriptions are accurate and interesting, and titles match what users might be looking for.Make sure users aren’t jumping right back to the search page. Ensure your page loads quickly and completely, provide a good user experience for all platforms, compel users to explore your site more deeply, and minimize distractions. Predictive modeling means the highest rankings will be for content that provides lasting value. Make sure you find ways to include terms that are related to the competitive landscape, have semantic relation, and indicate community membership. Next-gen engines will start to emphasize engagement. Make sure your viewers are sharing and linking back to your content. Search engines will soon notice if your averages are consistently increasing.Search engines will reward site that helps users to complete transactions quickly and conveniently. Conduct surveys and usability studies to streamline experiences, and include customization tools in our content offerings.2. 5 Real SEO Strategies Your Company Should Be Looking At Now [Inc.]Curate old blogs to boost traffic. Aggregate a few shorter blog posts on a single topic into one giant post or ultimate guide. The resulting long form content will rank better and drive more traffic. Switch to https protocol. This will not only protect your site and make it more secure for visitors but will also improve your ranking in Google.Generate links to your main page. Feature UGC to increase links and social shares to gain more traffic and improve your SERP ranking. Fix broken links. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to locate broken links and spend time redirecting them to top-level pages. This will transfer authority to the page you are redirecting traffic to. Tip: consider irrelevant or outdated pages to be “broken” and improve them with updated content. Translate your site into a new language and optimize for a new country. Maximizing your international reach by offering your site in multiple languages will have positive effects for your SEO. 3. How to Amplify Your Visual Content Strategy with SEO [Visually]Start by using search data to position your visual content. Google’s AdWords Keyword tool gives you meaningful insights into what topics people are interested in and can help you find new ideas for content creation. After you find a keyword, do a search in Google and review some of the current listings on the first page so you can position your content. Search engine spiders can’t crawl text embedded in an image (or any rich media). Help search engines analyze your page by placing a transcript of your visual content on the page. Remind people who repost your visual content to include a backlink (as opposed to using an embed code, which might be discounted by search engines). Infographics have a bad rap when it comes to presenting factual information due to the obfuscation of sources. Include URLs of your sources directly on the actual webpage, allowing skeptical readers to fact check and provide relevance flags to search engines.4. How to Optimize for Competitor’s Branded Keywords [MOZ]Use AdWords to bid on some of the keywords and get a sense of how much traffic is really being driven. Can you draw any traffic away? Will consumers consider alternatives?Find out what potential customers are doing to compare your products against your competitor's products. Conduct online research to see what people are saying in reviews and editorials or poll your audience directly through surveys. With self-hosted content you will have to go after the right terms and phrases. Don’t go too high or low in the funnel - target people who are looking for reviews because they’re getting ready to purchase. Craft content that will deliver a superior user experience and to pull people away from other search results. Don’t just write content about how awesome you are. It has to have editorial integrity. Talk about why your competitor might be the right choice if you’re doing X, but you might be the better choice if you’re doing Y. Deep content will rank better in Google. Get a third party or guest writer to review your product. Use this content to target users who have gone through your signup flow or used your product briefly but then left. This si a great chance to earn their business back and show them that you are becoming a competitor in the space. 5. SEO Doesn’t Have To Be A Shot In The Dark [TechCrunch]Backlinko teamed up with SEO software companies and analyzed 1 million Google search results. They discovered that the most important ranking factor for SEO was the number of different websites linking to your page. This means that mentions from small sites are also beneficial for startups. Every mention doesn’t have to be from an industry heavy-hitter to add value to your website. Slow loading sites will hurt your SEO. Try upgrading your hosting, cutting image file sizes, installing a Wordpress plugin, or hiring a pro to analyze your code and improve your load time. Long-form content is still relevant. Long content has the ability to give users a more thorough answer and is more likely to get more social shares (according to BuzzSumo) which will increase page ranking! Google prefers comprehensive content and is moving away from simply looking at the words on your page to actually understanding the content. The average article on Google’s first page is 1,890 words!Bounce rates are a proxy measure of content quality. Though it’s impossible to say whether Google directly measures or uses bounce rate as a ranking signal, it is clear that sites with lower bounce rates have better content and perform well in Google. The post 5 Can’t-Miss SEO Marketing Articles appeared first on ScribbleLive - Your Content Marketing Software.