Ensure your content is discoverable
What you’ll learn
- The quality of your content matters, including spelling and grammar.
- Keyword research helps you figure out the best terms to use in your content.
- Include as much metadata as possible for the best results.
- Use tools to check how your content looks when shared on social media.
The web is full of users looking for answers, entertainment, connection, and distractions - and content creators like you provide. Users request and find web content in a variety of ways, including:
- Typing a website URL into the browser’s address bar
- Clicking a shared or embedded link
- A result from a search engine query like Google or it’s proactive feed - Discover
- RSS feed aggregators, like Feedly
However, simply posting web content doesn’t ensure it will reach interested readers. The web is open, vast, and a little wild! And that’s a good thing, but keeping the web flexible and free means taking a few extra steps to properly prepare your content to thrive.
Content quality assurance
First things are, well, first. And that’s your content - if your content isn’t high quality, many platforms probably won’t show it. While we understand that “quality” can be subjective, the tips below have the numbers to back them up. Additionally, search engines have their own quality guidelines: You can read about Google’s here, designed to highlight well crafted content.
Proof read and edit
Diligently check for spelling, grammar and clarity. Spelling or grammar mistakes can lower how trustworthy readers rate your content. This can affect how it shows up as a search result.
Write an accurate and catchy headline
The headline of your post is the first thing readers see, and sometimes the only thing. A great headline is essential to getting your content read, if it doesn’t catch your audience’s attention, they’ll skip the rest. Make sure yours represents the type of content and aligns with keyword research
Research and compare keywords
Where possible, align your content to keywords potential readers are searching for. For example, let’s say you title a post “The yummiest slices in The Big Apple.” While this copy is cute and fun, it may not align with words users are searching for. Researching keywords may prove fruitful to change your language to add “pizza” in front of “slices” and update “The Big Apple” to “New York City”.
Google Trends is a great tool to begin your keyword research. You can type any keyword or topic into the Explore bar and Google will return data on its interest over time and across different regions. You can even compare multiple keywords and terms at the same time.
Include thorough metadata
Metadata is information about your website, including the type of content it contains. Relevant metadata helps with your content’s appearance when shared and helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Ensuring each page of your website has complete and accurate metadata is often the easiest way to optimize your content.
If you haven’t yet, sign up for Search Console. Search Console is a free tool, with no upgrades or paid services, that alerts you to Google Search SEO issues or unusual activity on your website. Additionally, some site builders may offer tools to help with this, such as the Site Kit plugin for WordPress.
The good news is some of the most important metadata, like the title tag, might be automatically generated by the platform or CMS you’ve built your site on! However, you may want to add additional tags. The process for expanding a page’s metadata will depend on what platform you’ve built your site on. A quick Google search, like “How do I add meta tags to a site built on X”, will likely yield step-by-step instructions.
Check for social sharing structured data
Structured data defines how your content will appear when shared across social channels. Many social sharing platforms provide tools that allow you to preview how your content will look and tell you if you’re missing any information:
-
If you haven’t yet, sign up for Search Console. Search Console is a free tool, with no upgrades or paid services, that alerts you to Google Search SEO issues or unusual activity on your website. Additionally, some site builders may offer tools to help with this, such as the Site Kit plugin for WordPress.
