What's the Best Content for SEO?

Are you ready to start your SEO plan and wondering what type of content is best for SEO? I bet you are, and you know what—you’re not alone. People often ask me what the best content for SEO is. Should I blog, have a podcast, or do a video show? What should I do? If you want your website to rank higher on Google and get more free organic traffic, then you need blog content, but you might be surprised how other content types can help you grow, too. 

The type of content that is best for SEO can vary based on your goals. Let's look at the options so you can choose the one that's best for your business and your life right now. 

Choose the type of SEO content you like 

From a content production perspective, the reality is you can choose what you want – it can be a blog post, a podcast, or a video show. It’s up to you. What will help you the most is the one you’re the most consistent with and you create and optimize. I always suggest my students choose a content format that they like as their primary weekly content. You don't want to commit yourself to something that is going to feel like a chore or seem overwhelming each time you sit down to work on content development.

However, from an SEO standpoint, little will help you as much as blogging. The reason blogs work so great for SEO is because you’re creating more content and thus, have more opportunities to rank in Google’s search results. When you're in a competitive niche, your blog is often your best way of getting free, organic traffic to your website. 

The reality is that a blog can have hundreds of posts working together to drive organic traffic to your website via SEO, and that adds up quickly. Your website is likely only 4-5 pages on average. By blogging, you add a lot more chances to show up in the search results and connect with potential customers who are interested in what you talk about on your blog. 

You do have to create content that's high quality, targeted, and relevant to your niche if you want to drive traffic that's going to convert (sign up for your email list, submit a lead form, buy your product, etc.); you can't just create random blog posts that don't tie to your business and expect that to work. If you're going to create SEO content, be sure you're creating content that's helpful to your ideal customer and SEO-friendly so that Google understands it and wants to show it to even more people. 

Can you use more than one type of content on a page?

You can incorporate a podcast or video show into your blog posts. That can help your SEO even more because adding video or audio files provides a more engaging user experience and makes people want to stay on your page longer, which helps your engagement time on site. Google looks to see how people interact with your website to determine if it's a good answer to the question or a good match for the keyword the person searched. 

How does Google determine if your content is good?

If someone searches a keyword and your website shows up at the top, and they visit and leave super fast because they don't like your content, Google will be less likely to show you to the next person who searches. But if they come, read your post, listen to the podcast episode, or check out the video, then Google will take note and see that, oh, this is a good answer to the question and show it to more people in the future. 

Can video work for SEO content? 

If you want to create a video show or a YouTube channel, this can be a great SEO strategy. YouTube is the second largest search engine, behind only Google. If you learn how to create content people want to watch and optimize it for the YouTube algorithm (which is different from Google's), you can find new opportunities for potential customers.

You’ll want to create blog posts that align with your YouTube videos and optimize those posts on your website to help drive traffic to them. You’ll want to incorporate your video into those blog posts so that when people find you in Google’s search and come to your site, they see both the blog post and your video. If they watch the video & read the post, their time on the page will go up (which makes Google happy).

Your YouTube video on YouTube doesn't help drive SEO traffic to your website, but when you add it to a blog post on your website, it can help your overall SEO. Just be sure you remember that you need to have a dedicated page on your blog that's optimized for an SEO keyword that's related to your YouTube video to have it help your Google SEO. 

How a podcast helps your SEO

If you’re going to create a podcast, you’ll still need to create a blog post instead of just a show notes page to see an SEO benefit for your website. You can’t just post your show notes and figure that’s good enough. Show notes aren’t high-quality content, and Google knows that. You’ll need to create a blog post, optimize that post, and link your audio files from the podcast to the blog post.

You will want to choose one keyword for your podcast episode and another for your show notes blog post. Your Google keywords aren't likely going to be the same as your podcast keywords and that's OK. You can also do SEO on your podcast if you'd like to help it grow, too. This post on podcast SEO will help you learn how to grow your show. 

What is the best content for SEO? 

From an SEO perspective, the best content for you is a blog. I know that may not be what you want to hear, but blogging provides a better opportunity for reaching more new customers than almost any other type of content. That doesn’t mean you don’t create a YouTube channel or podcast; you absolutely can, and you should incorporate them into your blog. Google needs words to read, links to click, and optimization elements to help them understand what your page is about. 

If you want to build an SEO funnel and have your business fueled by organic traffic, your blog post is the best place to start creating content. Be sure you're following Google SEO best practices and choosing keywords you can rank for so you can get more organic traffic to your website. 

If you're ready to start today, join me in Simple SEO Content. I'll walk you through creating an SEO funnel for your business so you can be found on Google and receive free website traffic each week.