Content marketing, the cornerstone of any effective digital strategy, consists of designing and publishing relevant, useful and high added value content. One of the objectives of this is to legitimize the expertise of the company in its field and to establish its positioning in the search engines.
Many possible forms
If we think first of all about the conception of articles, the content can also be presented in many forms, among which:
- blog posts
- product testing, especially for e-commerce
- background files
- infographics
- videos
An essential lever of visibility and notoriety
If content marketing has established itself in recent years as an essential lever of visibility and notoriety, it is because it has many advantages:
- differentiation from the competition by highlighting what makes the identity, originality and creativity of your company, your brand
- generation of interactions with your target heart. This can result, for example, in blog comments, subscriptions to your newsletter or even sharing on social networks.
- strengthening your brand image (e-reputation) and your legitimacy in your field with consumers
- improving the popularity of your site and its positioning in search engines (SEO) through the generation of content and obtaining spontaneous backlinks (external links)
Why content marketing and SEO are linked?
If the generation of quality editorial content is primarily intended to allow the company to communicate, it also contributes to strengthening its presence in search engines or even appearing on the first Google page.
Using a lexical field to identify your pages
The place allocated by the American search giant to this or that page of a site is a function of a host of SEO criteria including loading speed, ergonomics on mobile and tablet, the https certificate or the quality of the profile of external links.
But, for Google to identify and position your web portal on a particular keyword directly related to your activity, it must find the same term in your pages. In this, the regular and recurring conception of quality editorial content gives you the possibility of using the entire lexical field relating to your theme or your activity. It is a positive signal sent to Google which will then be more inclined to put you at the top of its ranking.
The long train to establish your presence
In natural referencing, the expression “long tail”, “long tail” designates queries made up of at least four keywords with low search volume typed by Internet users in Google for example.
The main characteristic of the long tail is to be less sought after but also less competitive. If the resulting traffic is lower than that of a generic request, it is also much more targeted and therefore easier to transform. The long tail generally offers a very attractive return on investment (ROI).
The regular production of relevant editorial content allows the use of the entire lexical field relating to your activity and to facilitate the positioning of your pages on the long tail.
Netlinking, SEO and awareness
Originally, the Google algorithm was based on net linking, that is to say, external links pointing to the same site. The more it had, the more it appeared as a reference to display in the best results.
If thousands of other criteria are now taken into account, net linking still occupies a prominent place in the final score assigned to a page or a site by the number 1 of the search. It is therefore easy to understand the whole issue of obtaining it spontaneously, in particular from other quality sites.
The publication of content with real and high added value contributes to making your structure a reference. As such, you can spontaneously benefit from external links or sharing via social networks. In either case, this strengthens your notoriety and your visibility, especially in Google.
An audit for your content strategy and your semantic cocoon
For Google to identify your pages on a particular keyword directly related to your activity, they must have quality texts and high added value. In addition, the organization of content across the site as a whole must be structured to enhance the target pages. These are the most likely to generate actions such as subscribing to a newsletter, requesting a quote, making an appointment or even sales.
How to find these keywords? What is their ideal density in a text, a page or an article? How to develop your semantic cocoon?
What is the purpose of a semantic audit?
The semantic audit aims to determine all the keywords to target for your activity, these terms likely to be entered by users of search engines. These are the expressions on which your site already appears in the results, but also the queries on which you would be beneficial to appear.
Performing a semantic SEO audit therefore allows:
- prioritize the keywords on which it is essential to be present, in particular, according to the expected ROI (return on investment) and the positioning of the competition
- developing a real content strategy for each page
- the hierarchy of this same content at the scale of a site
- an estimate of the potential targeted traffic that can be generated by editorial content
A semantic audit alone is not sufficient in itself to obtain subscriptions to a newsletter, to make sales for e-commerce or simply to attract a larger targeted audience. On the other hand, it helps to maximize your visibility in Google results for example, and therefore, as part of a visibility strategy, to increase your traffic in a sustainable way. In other words, the semantic audit aims to formalize the content that will attract prospects and, ultimately, convert them.
What is the SEO technique for the semantic cocoon for?
A semantic audit allows you to identify the terms and expressions that must appear in the editorial content of your showcase site or your online store to hope to be better positioned in the search engines. But you still need to know how to best organize this information on the scale of an entire site. By placing the user at the centre of this SEO strategy, the semantic cocoon aims to push a “target” page using the pages placed at a lower level in the organization chart of the site. This architect, therefore, relies on:
- content that is semantically close and has high added value. This, therefore, implies having previously identified the key expressions related to your activity (semantic audit) and designed relevant editorial content.
- an internal network (internal links) that makes sense for the prospect or the future client
This organization is based in particular on semantic continuity, the target pages benefiting from the power of the intermediate pages themselves linked with the deep pages. It allows Google robots to more easily understand each universe of a merchant site for example and promotes its ranking in the results. In other words, the semantic cocoon helps to strengthen your positioning on the most competitive expressions.
The ideal keyword density for Google
To take advantage of the SEO impact resulting from quality editorial content and a semantic cocoon, it is, therefore, necessary that the keywords linked to the site’s theme appear in this same content. However, there is a question of optimization. From what density is the impact significant? What are the limits not to cross? Clearly, is there an ideal density of keywords for Google?
The response of the principal concerned is unequivocal, there is no ideal percentage. Logically, any content conceived in a natural way spontaneously integrates a broad lexical field and numerous key expressions. There is, therefore, no point in trying to make sure that such and such a word appears up to 4%, 5% or 6% for example. On the other hand, there is indeed a limit not to be crossed. Over-optimizing and stuffing keywords systematically in H1, H2 or H3 may resemble an attempt to manipulate SERPs, punishable by a penalty.
Indeed, Google does not rely on the repetition of a single keyword to assess the authority of a page. Its analysis is more global and relates to the entire vocabulary used, in particular the presence of co-occurrences, a large lexical field (associated terms) relating to the theme of the page and meta-words. The meta-word is a complex concept which brings together many terms which make sense in relation to the main subject treated and which makes it exhaustive. This may include synonyms and words from the associated lexical field. But the concept is much broader than that and for a page dealing for example with football, we can find names of competitions, trophies, famous players, the equipment used by a footballer or names of rules. Meta-words make it possible in particular to create sets of complementary pages (semantic cocoon), each with specific subjects, but intrinsically linked to a page and to a more general main subject (depth of content).
It is the richness of your text and your site that will make sense in the eyes of Google. The latter always favours quality content and its algorithm knows precisely how to distinguish between rich optimization and basic optimization.
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