Content should be your top priority when you think about SEO. Quality content is how you engage your visitors, give them information, win their trust, and show that you know what you are talking about. Creating authentic and valuable content is also critical for being visible in search results. Content optimisation is not just about SEO - it is a general improvement process for websites and covers three main areas:
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the quality of your HTML code (modern, correct HTML)
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the quality and freshness of your content
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the quality and completeness of the HTML metadata used by search engines
When you improve these three areas, your site benefits in several ways:
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better performance (your site becomes faster and more efficient)
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clearly better user experience for your visitors
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clearly better ranking in the search results
In general, content optimisation should not be done only with SEO in mind. But every general improvement still happens in an SEO context. The following sections look at practical techniques you can use to improve your website - with a special focus on making its pages easier to find on the internet.
30 Minutes to read
All Chapters
Find here an overview on all chapters this tutorial:
What SEO Is
Factors of Success
Structured Data
You are here · Content Optimizations
Lighthouse Analysis of a Website
While you work on the content of your website, it is a good idea to check the quality of your code now and then with a special tool. A free but very powerful one is called Lighthouse. Lighthouse is built right into the Google Chrome web browser, so you do not have to install anything extra to use it.
Lighthouse is a content analysis tool: it loads your page like a real visitor would, and then gives you a score in several categories (such as performance, accessibility, and SEO).
To open Lighthouse:
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Open your website’s home page in Google Chrome.
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Press Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows/Linux, or Cmd+Option+J on macOS. The Developer Tools will open at the bottom or the side of the window.
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In the top tab bar of the Developer Tools, click Lighthouse.
Once you choose the categories you want to check, click Analyze page load to start. The results are shown in detail, with a "traffic light" colour (green, orange, red) for each category.
Getting a green score in every category takes a lot of work, and in practice it is hard to score top marks in all of them. As a rule of thumb, the Desktop score for each category should be at least 70% to be acceptable.
| If you measure a desktop site with Lighthouse using the Mobile setting, the scores will be lower than the Desktop scores. The J1 Template is optimised for mobile devices, but, as just said, the mobile ratings are still lower in general. |
Below are Lighthouse scores for the J1 Starter Homepage on both Desktop and Mobile devices.
Article page for Desktop devices
Article page for Mobile devices
Under each category, Lighthouse lists every test it ran. The list is split into two groups: Opportunities (tests with problems and tips on how to fix them) and Passed audits (tests that went well). The Opportunities section is where most of your improvement work will happen - each item there comes with suggestions.
| In late 2022, the Lighthouse scoring became stricter, so scores dropped for many sites without any actual change to the site itself. See Lighthouse performance scores for more details. |
The categories Accessibility and Best Practices give you a long list of points that improve the overall quality of your HTML. The SEO category looks at HTML too, but from an SEO point of view. It mainly checks the metadata in the page (more on metadata below).
Quality and Completeness of HTML Metadata
Every HTML page is split into two main parts: the <head> and the <body>. The <body> is the part you see in the browser window (the text, images, and so on). The <head> is not shown directly to the visitor. Instead, it holds metadata - "data about data" - which describes the page: its title, the language it is written in, which CSS and JavaScript files it needs, who the author is, and many other things.
The browser uses the data in the <head> to build the page in the right way. Among other things, it loads the CSS files (the rules that say how the page looks) and the JavaScript files (the small programs that make the page interactive). Other readers of the page - mostly search engines - use the metadata to understand the page better.
In other words, metadata are HTML tags that add extra information about a page for the browser, search engines, and other clients. Clients read the meta tags they understand and quietly ignore the ones they do not.
Meta tags live inside the <head> section of an HTML page. For a page based on the J1 Theme, the <head> usually looks something like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Learning SEO | Jekyll One</title> (1)
<meta name="generator" content="Jekyll v4.3.1" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Learning SEO" />
<meta name="author" content="Juergen Adams" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" />
<meta name="description" content="Content should be your ..." />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2022-12-12T01:00:00+01:00" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<meta property="twitter:image" content="<url>" />
<meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="J1 Theme" />
<meta property="twitter:title" content="Learning SEO" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@" />
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@Juergen Adams" />
<script type="application/ld+json">
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting",".."}
</script>
...
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> (2)
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
<meta name="template version" content="2024.3.8" />
<meta name="robots" content="index" />
<meta name="robots" content="follow" />
<meta name="analytics" content="false" />
<meta name="comments" content="false" />
<meta name="advertising" content="false" />
<meta name="translation" content="false" />
<meta name="youtube" content="true" />
<meta name="vimeo" content="true" />
<meta name="personalization" content="false" />
...
<link rel="preload" as="script" href="/assets/theme/j1/core/js/template.min.js" /> (3)
<link rel="preload" as="script" href="/assets/theme/j1/adapter/js/attic.js" />
<link rel="preload" as="script" href="/assets/theme/j1/adapter/js/logger.js" />
<link rel="preload" as="script" href="/assets/theme/j1/adapter/js/bmd.js" />
<link rel="preload" as="script" href="/assets/theme/j1/adapter/js/navigator.js" />
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://bootswatch.com" />
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://bootswatch.com" />
...
<link rel="icon" type="image/ico" href="/assets/image/icon/j1/j1-32x32.ico" /> (4)
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/assets/image/icon/j1/j1-32x32.ico" />
...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://localhost:29000/pages/public/learn/kickstart/learning_seo/content_optimization/" /> (5)
...
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/assets/theme/j1/modules/spinner/css/spin.min.css" /> (6)
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/assets/theme/j1/core/css/icon-fonts/mdi.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/assets/theme/j1/core/css/icon-fonts/mdil.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/assets/theme/j1/core/css/icon-fonts/fontawesome.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/assets/theme/j1/core/css/themes/unolight/bootstrap.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/assets/theme/j1/core/css/vendor.min.css" />
...
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/adapter/js/j1.js"></script> (7)
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/spinner/js/spin.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/jquery/js/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/jquery/js/extensions/hasClass.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/jquery/js/extensions/removeClass.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/popper/js/popper.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/core/js/template.min.js"></script>
<script defer src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/gtag-opt-in/js/gtag-opt-in.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/adapter/js/logger.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/log4javascript/js/log4javascript.min.js"></script>
<script sync src="/assets/theme/j1/modules/backstretch/js/backstretch.min.js"></script>
...
</head>
</html>| 1 | SEO |
| 2 | Page control |
| 3 | HTML optimizing (file load) |
| 4 | loading the page icon |
| 5 | canonical URL |
| 6 | loading CSS files |
| 7 | loading Javascript (JS) files |
The Template System J1 supports website developers with the most important general HTML meta tags:
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title and description
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content type
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canonical url
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robots
Meta tag <title>
The <title> tag tells the browser what to write on the browser tab. There are no strict rules for its length. As a guideline, the title should be around 60 to 70 characters (including spaces).
| Title tag length in 2023 You no longer have to stick strictly to a 60-70 character limit. Titles can be - and sometimes should be - as long as needed within reason. Titles up to 140 characters can be used without a negative effect (at least for Google). |
Optimising the <title> tag is very important for boosting your visibility in Google’s search results. It can have a big effect on your rankings. For SEO, it is highly recommended to use the front matter property title_extention. This property adds extra text to the <title> in the <head> section, which is useful when you want every page title to share a common ending (such as your site name). For more on how titles influence your pages in search results, see the article Title links at Google Search Central.
Meta tag <description>
The description tag tells search engines what your page is about, so they can decide which search queries it is a good match for. The description is only a suggestion: a search engine may also use a different part of the page if it thinks that fits the query better.
A typical meta description is between 150 and 160 characters (including spaces). Shorter descriptions also work well, if they read nicely and are clear. Do not write very long descriptions just to fill space - if your description is over 160 characters, the search engine will cut it off.
Meta tag <meta name="author" />
The meta tag does what its name suggests: it states the name of the author of the page.
Meta tag <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" />
This tag tells the browser which character set (in plain English, which alphabet plus punctuation) the page is written in. If this is missing, characters such as the German umlauts ("ä", "ü", "ö") or other special characters may show up as gibberish in the browser.
Meta tag <link rel="canonical" />
A canonical URL tells the search engine: "this is the master copy of this page". Setting it correctly is crucial when your site contains duplicate content - that is, the same or very similar content on more than one URL. If a search engine finds duplicate content and you have not pointed it to the master copy, both pages may be ranked lower.
Pages count as duplicate content when part of their content appears on more than one URL. This can happen when:
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the same text is copied 1:1 from another website
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the same product page is shown under several URLs (for example, one URL per colour in an online shop)
Because the URLs are different but the content is almost the same, the search engine cannot tell on its own which one is the original. By setting the canonical tag on each variant, you tell the search engine that those pages are not spam duplicates and which URL should be treated as the main one.
Meta tag <meta name="robots" />
The robots meta tag tells the search engine bots what they are allowed to do with your page. Indexing means adding a page (or a link) to the search engine’s database so that it can later show up in the search results. With the robots tag, you can ask the search engine not to index a page, or not to follow the links on it.
Search engines use two main options here:
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Follow links on the page (
<a>tags)-
follow- all links are followed (this is the default) -
nofollow- none of the links are followed
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Index the current page
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index- the current page is added to the index (the default) -
noindex- the current page is not added to the index
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| For the full list of possible values, see the specification for the robots meta tag at Google Search Central. |
Content Optimizations for SEO
Content quality should be your first priority when thinking about SEO. Quality content is how you engage and delight your visitors. Creating authentic and useful page content is also critical for being visible in search results. As mentioned in the Quality and Completeness of HTML Metadata section, copying content 1:1 from other pages (duplicate content) hurts your rankings if a search engine detects it.
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Content Quality — Imagine being in the search engine’s shoes. Would you be comfortable sending users to your website?
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Research and Strategic Use of Keywords — Keywords are the words your visitors type into a search engine. By finding out which keywords your audience actually uses, you can write content that gives the right answers to their questions. Include those keywords naturally in your content, headings and titles. Used well, this helps search engines rank your articles above your competitors' content.
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Relevance (Freshness) — Visitors and search engines both prefer up-to-date information. You can make small updates to your pages from time to time, or publish new short posts, to keep your site fresh.
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Giving Answers — A great way to add value is to answer your readers' questions directly on your pages. If you write with a visitor’s question in mind, you create content that meets their needs. Search engines may then show your answers in knowledge panels or other rich results on the SERPs.
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Complexity — The depth of your content should be enough to fully answer the user’s question - not deeper, not shallower.
Content Quality
Imagine being in the search engine’s shoes. Would you happily send users to your website? If the answer is a clear yes, you are in good shape - the more technical SEO work then has something solid to build on. If the answer is a hesitant no, that is a sign that you need to improve the value of your content before you spend time on technical SEO.
Substantive, useful, and unique content is what makes visitors stay on your pages. The longer they stay, the more they trust you. What counts as "high quality" depends on the type of content and the industry.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines describe high-quality content by type:
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Informational content should be accurate, comprehensive, original and professionally presented.
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Artistic content should be original, unique and show a high level of skill.
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News content should be in-depth, well sourced, accurate, and contain original reporting.
If your website is meant to earn money - for example, an online shop or a business site - it is especially important to follow these guidelines, because Google’s algorithms put more weight on signals of expertise, authority and trustworthiness for such sites.
Content is the cornerstone of all SEO work, and not a place where you should cut corners. A clear content strategy is critical: as with nearly every SEO factor, success depends on the quality of your content.
Research and Strategic Use of Keywords
Keywords are the search terms your target audience uses. After content quality, keyword research is the next most important factor for SEO. Good keyword research helps you write content that gives the answers people are actually searching for.
To understand which kind of pages a search engine shows for a given keyword, it helps to know how search engines classify keywords in the first place. Each keyword has an intent - the kind of thing the user is hoping to find.
You can group keywords by intent:
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Informational - the user wants information or an explanation (e.g. "what is SEO").
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Transactional - the user wants to buy, sell, or do business (e.g. "buy iPhone 15", "best price for …").
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Navigational - the user wants to reach a specific website or page (e.g. "Jekyll One homepage").
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Local - the user is looking for something nearby (e.g. "pizza near me").
Compare your candidate keywords with what actually ranks in the search results to see what Google thinks the intent of that keyword is. Google may treat a keyword differently from what you expect. For example, typing "sandwich" mostly returns local results (places to eat). Searching for "Jekyll" returns results about the software of that name - but also many results about literature and film. Change the search to "howto Jekyll" and you get mostly navigational / instructional pages about the software.
Search engine providers spend a lot of time and money on building smart algorithms to work out the user’s intent from the keywords they type. Cross-checking is important because users usually type only one to three keywords, and even those can match hundreds of thousands of pages on the internet.
Keyword research gives you:
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insights into who your audience is
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the level of competition for those search queries
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an idea of which kind of pages your audience prefers
Once you know which keywords are worth using, include them in your content, your headings, and your page titles. Used well, this helps search engines pick your pages over your competitors'.
Strategic Use of Keywords
A very easy way to find out which keywords people actually use on Google is to run Google Trends. Google Trends is a free analytics tool that shows how often a keyword has been searched on Google, and how that has changed over time. You can also compare several keywords side by side.
Without a tool like Google Trends it is hard to pick the best keyword from a group of similar ones. The example below compares the keywords Themes and Templates in a search about Jekyll. Both words mean almost the same thing in this context, but the difference in how often each is searched for is striking.
Once your keyword research is done, place those keywords in your content - in headlines, titles and body text. But: be careful not to hurt readability for the sake of more keyword mentions. Search engines should never come before your readers.
For every analysis, choose carefully which words you want your page to be found for. Always remember: you are writing for people first - and when you place keywords thoughtfully, the search engines will return much better matches for your content as a side effect.
Relevance
Visitors and search engines both prefer up-to-date information. You can keep your site feeling fresh by making small updates to existing pages (even just updating the publishing date), or by publishing new short posts on a regular basis.
Google has long used a factor called Query Deserved Freshness (QDF) for certain searches. When a search term suddenly becomes popular - for example, "hurricane" during an active hurricane - Google applies QDF and the results change to show current news about the topic. You can take advantage of QDF by writing content about popular trends, upcoming events, holidays, or breaking news.
| Keep in mind that a QDF boost is temporary. Once the topic is no longer trending, your pages may slide back down the search results. |
Giving Answers
Answering your readers' questions directly on your pages adds huge value. When you write with a possible question in mind, you naturally produce content that meets your audience’s needs. As a bonus, search engines may then show your answers in knowledge panels or other rich results on the SERPs.
As a rule of thumb, about half of all searches end without the user clicking on any link - the user gets the answer right on the results page itself. Rich results and knowledge panels can answer many simple questions before the visitor ever leaves Google.
Whenever you write an article that relates to a specific question, try to make the answer easy to spot for the reader - for example, by putting it under its own H2 heading (a level-2 heading, written ## … in Markdown or <h2>…</h2> in HTML). Accessibility matters, but the real goal is to keep the reader on the page.
| Optimising your content for featured snippets and direct answers can give you more visibility than a standard organic search result. As a bonus, the same kind of content has a better chance of being returned by voice search and other modern multimedia features on the SERPs. |
Complexity
The complexity of your content should be deep enough to fully answer the user’s question - but no deeper. The tricky part is working out how specific your content needs to be.
If you want to give more value than your competitors, do not simply add more words to hit some arbitrary word count. Some queries - for example, "what is the fastest land mammal" - have a short, simple answer. Other questions - such as "why is the cheetah the fastest land mammal" - need a more detailed explanation.
Keyword research can also tell you which topics deserve more depth. By looking at the keyword data, you can learn about your audience’s preferences and your competitors' offerings, and then decide how deep to go on each page.
Summarized
A lot you’ve learned. Time to summarize what is behind you has worked on. The last chapter should help with that. Summarize section offers some handy sections to remember what has been presented in this chapter. And gives an outlook of what could be done next, an overview of all chapters of this tutorial, and useful links to learn more.
See all sections below:
Recap · What has been done, what’s explored in current section
What Next · Find to go further, what’s planned next
All Chapters · The full chain, all chapters
Further Reading · List of helpful links to get more
Recap
All the heavy work to learn how to manage a full chain for content optimizations is behind you; congratulations on what you achieved! The process of content optimization requires experience. You can learn what counts and what tools can be used in a day. But in the end, experience is important for successful optimization work: for the content and SEO tactics.
Content optimization (and SEO) is quite complex and hard to do. Therefore it is important to break down the full chain into smaller steps to make the optimization work more manageable. Remember all the single steps starting with the improvement of the content, research on keywords, and giving answers down to scaling the complexity of your web pages.
What Next
You reached the last chapter of this tutorial, and you’re done sofar. You learned in some hours what counts and what tools can be used. But in the end, experience is important for successful optimization work; in general for the content and SEO as well.
The only (and the best) advice I can give is to set up your own website and optimize your site for SEO. You’ll see with the result pages of the search engines if your SEO was successful.
Keep in mind that optimizing a website is a long run. It will take a while as your improvements will result in a better ranking. And this is as well an important thing to know!
As already mentioned: give SEO a try, set up your web, and start the work to become more and more experienced as an successful SEO specialist.
All Chapters
Find here an overview on all chapters this tutorial:
What SEO Is
Factors of Success
Structured Data
You are here · Content Optimizations
Further Reading
Reading this chapter is not essential for working on the project first time. Additional links will be helpful to learn more. The references point to important sources of manufacturer documentation. Here you can find out all the possibilities what the products can offer. Experiences from others are extremely important when dealing with software and more complex projects. Links to other sites may answer common questions from the experience of professionals. Here you can think far outside the box of a project currently worked on.
Further links in the current section.