3+ Ways to Optimize Content for Relevance in 2022

Pushing your content up search results pages can feel like a Sysyphian task.

You work so hard to increase your page rankings… only to see them fall back down again.

That’s because Google constantly ranks content based on relevance.

And it determines content relevancy in many ways, including:

Does your page mention the search query?
Does your page mention related or topical keywords?
Do searchers find it useful, and is it “fresh” enough?

If your content isn’t relevant enough, it’ll just tumble back down the SERP hill.

Stuffing your content with keywords won’t get you very far.

So let’s start ticking Google’s relevance boxes…

Think about search intent

Keywords answer the “what?” question. But you also need to find out why users are looking for a particular query. You can do this by looking at the “three Cs” on the first results page:

Content type: What’s dominating the top of the SERP? Blogs, videos, or other?
Content format: Are they guides, listicles, news articles, reviews…
Content angle: Is the content freshly updated, beginner-intended, or other?

For example, Ahrefs analyzed the three Cs for “best frying pans” and concluded they’re mostly:

blog posts (type)
listicles (format), and
2024 (freshness angle)

Cover all your bases

To remain on top, you need to cover all relevant stuff users want to know.

How do you do that?

By analyzing common subheadings, subtopics, “People also ask” boxes, and manually analyzing top-ranking pages and trying to include everything from there.

Tick the basic on-page SEO boxes

If crawlers can easily glide through your post, it sends the message that your content is easy to read.

Optimizing stuff like meta description, image alt-tags, and internal and external links can go a long way in making your content stick out in a sea of other, similar products.

There’s more to it, of course

Also consider things like content hubs (a group of articles that thoroughly covers a subject on your website to cover topical authority) and link building.