Teach yourself how to apply SEO to every article.
From the cost to do do it yourself.
Now the part that I wish I was told about when I engaged an SEO guy. EVERY ARTICLE HAS TO BE OPTIMISED BEFORE BEING PUBLISHED. This includes the headline, sub
headings and text content. When I began on-line misadventures, I was told that I just had write lots of articles on relevant topics. This we did with much gusto but varying results. Some went straight to the top of google and became quite popular whilst others died without a trace. When I asked why I was told “it was always a mystery” or “It’s really complicated algorithms. In other words, you should need to worry about it, leave it to us experts.” Words like that tend to get my ire.
Teach yourself SEO and social media skills.
After having a squizz at the backend of WordPress and reading a 38 page booklet on Yoast, it all came together. SEO is just a giant word game. If you have a topic that people are interested, and there is not much written on it already, then it more likely to get to the top of Google rankings. The more specific the rat tails (descriptions added to the header), then it gets to your target audience. Ever noticed that when you type a
query into Google it comes up with suggested topics and filters to become more specific, so you choose the one that is closest to what you are after. The Google algorithms are pre-empting your query based on previous examples that other people have put in and the most popular get to the front of the que. I’m not going to explain all the ins and outs here as there are better resources than myself to explain this, but in simple rules of marketing, you have to word the article (Headers, sub headings and meta data descriptions) to the same search words that your potential customers are looking for. Notice that I use the words “potential customers” not visitors. Getting a visitor may help the rankings but if they live in Bangalore, and you trade in the UK, they are not likely to buy from you. Be clear about your end goals rather than playing the “let’s keep google happy” game.
Take ownership of your social media.
That is why it is essential the business owner (or an expert in that field), should be heavily involved with the development of contents as it becomes a two way street. You learn to listen to the queries and concerns of your customer base and respond accordingly. That may lead to picking up on a trend before your competitors which makes you provide a whole new range to pick up on the curve. All because you are listening to your customers needs in an immediate digital format. The best example of this is a company that had their technical department provide reviews during their downtime. Each did an article a week, in between repairs and with 15 engineers they had ample volume to populate their site and become a trusted brand. The potential customers get the advice they require, and they begin to forge a trust for that business that may lead to trade. If you outsource content blogging to an outside agency you will lose that instant insight. These little gems help to make wider decisions relating judging demand, discounts and pricing.
Social media back to basics.
You must choose words that distinguish your offering from those of your competitors’ articles and meet customers expectation. In other words establish the “Gap in the market” or “Strike where the enemy is not”. There is nothing new in any of this, it’s the same as all your existing activities, just on a different format. If I had known that at the start, then articles could have been more targeted rather than just throwing paint at the wall. Now that I know how that works that helps my keyword research for the entire article which lifts the relevance and ranking of the whole site. But all of this takes time (at least an hour before the article is finally put up). Not everything is going to hit as there maybe too much competition or not enough people searching for those terms but now, we have around 10% go straight to the first page, which for a technical area isn’t too bad. Instead of getting bogged down in dishing out content just concentrate on quality and being distinctive.
This all leads to the last in our series “how to write a good article”.
