The most important part of writing a press release, blog post, or web copy is being useful to your audience.

But just because you created great content that clearly communicates your messages doesn’t mean anyone will ever find it. If you’ve ever hit publish on a blog post only for no one to read it or issued a press release only to hear crickets, you might be overlooking some of the little pieces that go into making content searchable.

#SEO brings about 50% of demand to @Cisco #PRNews

— PR News (@PRNews) July 19, 2018

Obviously there are many factors behind ranking in search — keyphrases and backlinks chief among them — but there are a number of quick wins that can help along the way.

The time of year, your image names, the text you hyperlink, your URLs. All of these seemingly minor pieces can help surface your brand and story. So what should you be doing? Here are eight simple SEO tips that can help optimize every piece of content.

1. Use Google Trends to tap newsworthy events and topics.

The best time to surface your message is when people are looking for it. Are you a technology company attending CES? Interest spikes every January along with the show.

Have your CES-specific content written and live before the main event so that it’s ready at a time when it’s most likely to be consumed. Get your product in a news story in the first days of the show when interest is starting to peak.

Targeting back to school shoppers? Searches for “back to school” start to rise in June and July, peak in August, and drop off in September. Have your content ready to go in June to ride the crest of that wave. Note also the smaller peak in January as college students head back to class after winter break, another opportunity.

2. Write blog post headlines the way you would search.

When you get a new range and need to know how to clean the glass cooktop, what do you search? Probably something like “how to clean a glass cooktop.” Developing content based on how someone would ask a question or type a search into Google can earn your insights a higher ranking.

Features like “People also ask” and “Searches related to” on a search results page can give you plenty of ideas for how other people have phrased a search around your topic. How-tos and FAQs can be your friend here.

Since 2015, videos with “how-to” in the title had more than 1 billion hours of watch time in 2017 on YouTube ????#PRNews

— Cassie Olszewski (@cgrob513) July 19, 2018

3. Take advantage of press release headlines.

The inclination is to put your company at the front of a press release headline. But you might have more success if you don’t. The first words in a title are the most important and should be reserved for priority, non-jargon, non-branded keywords.

COMPANY X JUST RELEASED SLICED BREAD is traditional and fine. But you can get more mileage by addressing a need or a question up front with something like SLICE YOUR BREAD NO LONGER, THANKS TO COMPANY X.

4. Keep your headlines short.

Aim for no more than 60 characters (including spaces) in your title tag if you want your entire headline to appear in search results.

At the same time, try to be catchy. What headlines do influencers in your industry share on Twitter? Model yours after that.

5. Stop linking “click here.”

Be honest. Have you written “click here” and hyperlinked it? What about ending a blog post with “learn more” directing to a page with more info?

Next time try using your brand’s target keywords as the anchor text (clickable text).

For example, instead of:

“Click here to learn more about how to become a thought leader.”

Try:

“Learn more about how to become a thought leader.”

Doing so can help search engines determine if a page you’re linking to is a good resource for the keyword being linked.

Of course, do so in moderation. Instead of linking the same keyphrase every time, use natural language and related phrases to switch it up while still making clear what’s on the other side of that link.

Linking the same keyphrase every time can actually work against you. As Moz puts it in an article on linking,

“Don’t overdo it with keyword-heavy internal links. Internal linking is certainly a recommended best practice, but be careful with the anchor text you use to link your own pages together. If too many links to a page all use the same anchor text, even if they’re on your own site, Google might sense spammy behavior.”

6. Give your images a good file name.

What was the file name for the last image you embedded in a blog post? Hopefully not IMG4507.

Just like people search for answers online, they also search for images. Make sure image files have relevant, descriptive names in plain language, separated by hyphens. Instead of “IMG4507,” try “ces-robot.”

7. Keep your options open with URLs.

When you publish a blog post, a lot of time the URL is auto populated from the headline. But blog post URLs that include dates or numbers verbatim can take away a valuable opportunity: the ability to refresh content and stay relevant to readers for years to come.

Think of it this way. If a post is performing really well with your audience, but is getting a little long in the tooth, you can update it with new information, expand the number of tips, add more depth to the advice, update the visuals, and more.

But if your URL says “5-tips-on-teaching-coding-to-kids-in-2014,” it wouldn’t look right if you update the post to 8 tips, and that 2014 will haunt you as it recedes further and further into the past. Write it as “teaching-coding-to-kids,” however, and you can continually update it with more or fewer tips, and no one will get hung up on when it was published.

8. Link from YouTube.

Yes, you know that leveraging video can increase engagement and drive traffic, but did you realize that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, processing 3 billion searches per month?

Get your YouTube mojo working by including links to relevant pages in your YouTube descriptions to tell audiences where to go for more info. Be sure these links are above the fold.

Since 2015, videos with “how-to” in the title had more than 1 billion hours of watch time in 2017 on YouTube ????#PRNews

— Cassie Olszewski (@cgrob513) July 19, 2018

You’re probably taking some of these steps already, but if not, all are simple to enact and can help put your content in front of your target audiences when they’re seeking help, information, and instruction.

While there’s a lot more that goes into creating great content and improving SEO, these eight tactics can help your content be found.