Why should you use Squirrly’s Live Assistant?
To answer this question, we need to look at what this feature from Squirrly SEO actually does.
The Live Assistant checks your article in real-time to make sure it’s optimized for SEO and therefore has the best chances to rank on Google.
So, basically, it acts like an evolved on-page SEO Checklist, checking your writing, and guiding your steps towards 100% Optimization.
So, why should you use it?
Here’s a pretty good reason to start with:
“On the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks.” (source)
If you want to be among those first results that get most of the clicks, you should make sure you are checking all the boxes that help you achieve that goal.
And optimizing your articles is one of those checkboxes.
We’re not the only ones stressing how important it is to optimize your content if you want to rank on Google.
Top SEO experts have their own SEO Checklists where they talk about essential things you should focus on to achieve better rankings. And content optimization is almost always at the top of their list.
Now, when they talk about content optimization, SEO experts will often break this process down into smaller actions, like adding the keyword in your titles, adding your keywords in the first part of your post, and so on.
The reason I’m telling you this is that the majority of those must-do tasks suggested by them are actually covered by Squirrly’s Live Assistant feature.
The rest of them are either covered by our Focus Pages feature or the Audit feature.
I don’t know about you, but I would much rather have a computer keep tabs of everything I need to do to rank higher on Google – than try to make sense of everything on my own.
So, without further ado, let’s see what today’s renowned SEO experts have included in their SEO Checklists when it comes to content optimization – and how all those checks are covered by Squirrly’s Live Assistant.
✔️Keyword Present in the URL Check
Statistics
First, we will take a look at some statistics, as there is no better confirmation that you should be working on something than some good ol’ stats.
Here’s one that speaks volumes about the importance of keywords being present in the URL when it comes to ranking higher on Google:
A study of 1 Million Pages revealed that Webpages with their target keyword in their URL tend to rank higher in Google than pages that don’t have the keyword in the URL. (source)
Let’s also take a look at what top SEO experts are saying about having the Keyword in the URL:
“Write an SEO-friendly URL that includes the primary keyword.” – Alexa
“Before anything else, your URL has to be descriptive and meaningful (please avoid weird number and random letter combinations!). And of course the URL is a very good place for your keywords.” – SEMrush
“In all, both long and short, keyword-rich, generic URLs do well in the search engine results pages (SERPs), especially when the content is useful and easy to implement.” – Neil Patel
“Google likes URLs that contain your title and or keywords in the post, but shorter URLs are generally better.” – Kinsta
” …the URL is an opportunity to present a clean directory structure that includes keywords and context as to what the page is about.” – Search Engine Journal
” …another benefit of using descriptive URLs: They tend to include your target keyword.” – Ahrefs
“Your URL helps Google understand what your page is all about. And a keyword-rich URL can improve your organic CTR.” – Backlinko
As you can see, we are not the only ones that highlight the importance of having the keyword present in the URL.
📢 You can make sure you are checking this key content optimization box by turning the corresponding element green in Squirrly’s Live Assistant.
✔️Keyword Present in the Title Check
Statistics
We are now taking a look at the title. The title should be Google Friendly and should also contain the keyword. Just like before, we’ll check out some statistics first:
See SEO masters back this up with the following statements:
“It’s no secret that you should use your keyword in your title tag. But not as many people know that WHERE you put your keyword matters. Specifically, you want to put your keyword in the front of your title tag.” – Backlinko
“Be mindful of best practices for length and the keywords that are most relevant to the page topic and write and implement static tags or ensure that you have dynamic formulas in place to populate the title.” – Search Engine Journal
“It is important that you have your main “focus keyword” that you want to rank for in your blog post or page title tag.” – Kinsta
“Title tags: Title tags define the title of your web page or document. They’re mostly used to display preview snippets of your web pages. When you’re writing your title tag, it should be short, clear and descriptive but don’t duplicate content from the page content.” – Neil Patel
“Write a title that is appealing to both search engines and audiences. Serve search engines by including the primary keyword near the beginning of the headline, and serve audiences by writing a descriptive yet concise title that tells readers why the content is valuable.” – Alexa
“It is at the top of our on page SEO checklist and is critical for attracting the user’s attention and increasing the page CTR.” – SEMrush
📢 Ensure that your titles are rank-ready by turning the corresponding elements green in Squirrly’s Live Assistant.
✔️Content is Google Friendly Check
Statistics
What industry experts are saying:
“…it’s important to optimize for long-tail variations too.
Doing this is easy. Sprinkle them throughout your content wherever they make sense. Just don’t overdo it or shoehorn keywords where they don’t belong—the readability of your content should always take priority.” – Ahrefs
“While much of the old school focus on latent semantic indexing, keyword density, and formulas for how many times words need to appear in a page are obsolete, you can’t ignore the fact that body copy on the page often accounts for the biggest block of indexable content.” – Search Engine Journal
“And, over the years, Clark and his prolific team have produced some of the best blog posts and articles around. Through consistent and proper use of keyword phrase content marketing techniques, Brian Clark turned a blog (copyblogger.com) into a $7 million digital company.” – Neil Patel
📢Using the Live Assistant feature, you can easily see if your content is Google friendly by taking a look at the proper box.
If it’s green, then you are good to go. If not, you should still work on your content.
✔️The Over-Optimization Check
See what renowned industry experts are saying about this.
“…don’t obsess over using a keyword 37 times. Do what’s natural and focus on the bigger picture and you’ll be in good shape.” – Search Engine Journal
“As a best practice, use the term two to three times per 100 words to create a 2-3% keyword density. Try to avoid going over this limit to avoid keyword stuffing issues.” – Alexa
📢 Don’t step into the over-optimization land. Avoid keyword stuffing issues by following the Live Assistant’s guidance.
✔️Human-Friendly Check
Let’s hear it from praised SEO experts.
“Fail to convince readers that your page offers what they want within a few seconds and they’ll hit that back button faster than you can say “dwell time.”” – Ahrefs
“Even when you create SEO content for the purpose of ranking, always remember that your number one focus should be your readers. Create high-quality content that is valuable, useful, and well-written.” – Alexa
“But it is not just Google who decides if your content deserves a higher position – it is your readers as well. Google doesn’t read your work and grade you with an “A” for excellent wording or exclusiveness of insights; it estimates a level of interest for your article by taking into account users’ behavior and your text’s availability.” – SEMrush
📢Making your content Human Friendly is not hard when you can follow the simple instructions provided by Squirrly’s Live Assistant.
✔️Title Checks
Statistics
Let’s see what the experts are saying about titles:
“Be mindful of best practices for length and the keywords that are most relevant to the page topic and write and implement static tags or ensure that you have dynamic formulas in place to populate the title.” – Search Engine Journal
“…remember that title tags not only affect SEO but also your clickthrough rate (CTR). Some have reported seeing 20% increases in CTR simply by making small tweaks to their titles.” – Kinsta
“When you’re writing your title tag, it should be short, clear and descriptive but don’t duplicate content from the page content.” – Neil Patel
One of the first things a possible customer will see when searching for something on Google is the Title of a post.
📢Use Squirrly’s Live Assistant to optimize your titles so that you’re the one who gets the click.
✔️Keywords are used in Content Check
You might be tired of hearing about keywords all the time.
But the reason we keep bringing them up is that they are extremely important to your SEO success. And we’re not the only ones who say it.
“Don’t skip out on including your focus keywords in the body copy as you need to tie into the context you’re building in the other areas up to this point.” – Search Engine Journal
“The first paragraph of your post and pages content in WordPress is very important! It is always recommended to add your focus keyword within the first paragraph if possible. The reason is that Google crawls content from top to bottom, and if it finds your keyword there it can help deem your article as more relevant to the topic.” – Kinsta
“You’ll also notice that when you start creating in-depth content, you’ll see a corresponding increase in traffic from long-tail searches, a very specific keyword phrase indicating buyer positioning and urgency.” – Neil Patel
“To provide users with the most relevant results for their particular search terms, use your target keywords within the first 100-150 words of your text and add some additional weight by placing semantically related words.” – SEMrush
Making sure that keywords are included not only in the URL and the title but also within the content can and will make the difference in terms of whether a page ranks on Google or not.
Make sure you don’t just include your keyword in the introduction but throughout the article/page as well.
📢The Live Assistant will let you know how many times you should use your keyword based on how long your content is overall.
✔️Bold One of the Keywords Check
Many SEO experts agree that bolding your keywords is a content optimization practice that can improve your chances of ranking.
“When you make pages easier to read, you’ll be raising the user’s level of expertise and so increasing the chance that many will be linking back to your page. This indirect technique will increase search engine rankings (SEO) and is the solely method I feel bold and italics can have an effect on your page.” – SEO Clerk
“But, that has changed (as all things do in SEO) and we are glad to report that bolding your primary keyword in article content does give a small bump. Pretty Cool huh!” – SEO Intelligence Agency
📢When working with the Live Assistant to optimize content, you will always be notified to bold at least one of your keywords.
✔️Keywords Used in Headline Check
You should use your keywords in the headline as well but don’t overdo it. Don’t use your keyword in all your headlines, as it will not help you get better SEO results.
You can see what experts are saying about this as well:
“Make sure to include your keyword in H1, H2 or H3 tags.” – Backlinko
“Scannability. Having your keyword in the H1 helps to reinforce that the visitor is in the right place. It makes it clear that your content tackles the topic they likely Googled before arriving on your page.” – Ahrefs
“If you can use heading tags, do so in an organized fashion and make sure they use keywords that are relevant. Try to use just one H1 tag and have it be the first.” – Search Engine Journal
“The H1 tag is one of your most important header and should contain your focus keyword. Additional headers could also include your keyword or long-tail variations of your keyword.” – Kinsta
“H1, H2, and H3 header tags are still super important. You want to make sure that the title of your page is the H1 and so forth. But just to check on all of that would be good.” – Moz
“Tie your content back to the main keyword by using the primary keyword in at least one of your subheadings. Use it in more than one subheading if it is natural and makes sense.” – Alexa
“In technical SEO language – don’t forget to use H1…H6 tags for your subheads (and place your target keywords in the subheads, of course).” – SEMrush
📢By using the Live Assistant, you can rest assured knowing you’ll never forget about this essential on-page SEO check.
✔️ Image Checks
Statistics
Using images in your blog articles can help you get 94% more views.
However, it’s not only important that you use images in your content. You also need to make sure that you use keywords in the alt text of the image to help search engines better understand your content.
The best SEO experts all agree on this one.
“The images you use say a lot about your content.
Unfortunately, Google is really bad at reading images.
So to help them understand your images, you want to optimize your image alt tags and filenames.” – Backlinko
“The purpose of alt tags is to offer some context to the reader should the image fail to load (or if the visitor is using a screen reader).
For that reason, you should make sure alt tags are descriptive—this will often result in the natural inclusion of your target keywords.
Alt text is also helpful for ranking in Google Images.” – Ahrefs
“One of the biggest red flags I get in results from accessibility and on-page auditing reporting tools is missing alt text. Alt text is helpful for the search engines to understand what an image is about.” – Search Engine Journal
“ALT tags are used by Google to see how relevant your image is to the content around it. […] You should always add ALT text to your images. And if you haven’t been, go back and do it now.” – Kinsta
“Make the content more interesting to readers and show search engines that the content is valuable by adding at least one image to the page.” – Ahrefs
“…add the primary keyword to the image alt tag for the graphic.” – Ahrefs
“Descriptive image file names and the use of ALT tags can help images from your page appear in Google image search results and help those that are visually impaired understand the page better.” – SEMrush
📢Yup, Squirrly’s Live Assistant checks for this as well! Again, all you have to do is follow its guidance.
As you saw from this article, Squirrly’s Live Assistant makes it easy to follow expert-approved best practices for optimizing content – so that you can do SEO like a PRO and give your content the best chances to succeed out there.
How often do you use this feature from Squirrly?
