Lead generation is at the top of every marketer’s and business owner’s mind. After all, having more leads means better opportunities for making sales. Over the years, many gurus and experts have come forward with different strategies and tactics to increase leads – from social media marketing tips, pay-per-click advertising, SEO strategies, email marketing hacks and, of course, content marketing.

Many tactics boast different results for just about every other business, but in this blog post, we want to show you one of the most effective ways to generate more leads organically, all while building up your brand and taking customers through the Know-Like-Trust cycle.

This method is called the topic cluster method, one of the newest ways to optimize your content strategy. So what exactly are topic clusters, and how can you use the topic cluster method to generate more leads? Let’s take a look.

What are topic clusters?

In 2017, HubSpot revealed the topic cluster method, explaining that it is “where a single ‘pillar’ page acts as the main hub of content for an overarching topic and multiple content pages that are related to that same topic link back to the pillar page and to each other.”

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The model came as a result of multiple changes in Google’s algorithm, which has swayed marketers to focus on high-quality content if they want to be rewarded with higher rankings on search engines.

How exactly do topic clusters help boost your SEO efforts? Here’s a quick rundown.

Why use topic clusters?

• It increases web traffic organically. One of the biggest reasons topic clusters work well for content marketers is that you can increase your traffic using an internal linking system. When readers land on a specific page, they can find links to related content on your site. This reduces bounce rates and increases the time visitors spend on your website, thus boosting SEO.
• It helps search engine crawlers prioritize and rank content. When you use topic clusters, you’re linking what’s called “cluster content” to a main pillar page that contains comprehensive information about a certain topic. This allows search engine crawlers to properly organize and prioritize content when ranking your pages.

7 Ways to Use the Topic Cluster Method to Get More Leads

If you’re ready to take your content marketing efforts to the next level, topic clusters are not only easy to execute but provide long-term results. Here are 7 ways you can start using the topic cluster method in your business to get more leads and make more sales – without doubling your marketing budget.

1. Decide on keywords you want to rank for

The first thing you want to do when planning out your topic cluster model is choosing keywords you want to rank for. First choose a main keyword you’ll want to rank. This is the keyword you’ll be using for your pillar article.

As best practice, choose a long tail keyword that’s broad enough to cover multiple topics but still specific enough to allow you to create high-value content clusters. For example, “social media marketing” is a good example of a long tail keyword for your pillar article.

Use a keyword finder like WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions to choose the phrases and terms for your campaign.

2. Plan out your topic clusters and cluster content

Once you know what keywords you want to rank for, it’s time to plan out your topic clusters and the specific cluster content you’ll be putting up on your site.

Cluster content are individual content pieces you can publish separately as a deep-dive into specific aspects of your pillar article. Calling back our example from before: if you chose “social media marketing” as your pillar article keyword, you can then create cluster content such as “Facebook marketing,” “Instagram marketing,” or even “optimizing social media profiles.”

Pro-tip: you’ll want to create cluster content before building out your pillar article.

3. Create a pillar article

A pillar article will typically have between 3,000 to 5,000 words and is meant to be comprehensive. This is why it’s best to create and publish your cluster content first: afterwards, you can use these to outline, build up, then link to a brand new pillar article page.

Example of how content clusters can build up pillar content using “gum disease” as the overarching topic. (Image source)

4. Do a complete content audit

Just because you’re switching your content marketing model to the topic cluster model doesn’t mean your old content and posts are moot. Chances are you’ve already created several content pieces for your niche, so look through what you’ve already done to see how you can build a topic cluster from this.

Determine whether you have blog posts that can be expanded to become pillar content. Or if you have some highly specific content about a broad topic, you can use that to start building up a brand new pillar page.

Content that used to rank high, but dropped in rankings with time is a good starting option – with a little improvement, it can return to its former glory. Find such pages on your site in the Detailed report in WebCEO’s My Site Rankings tool.

(Click on the image to view it in full size.)

Simply choose Depreciated positions in the Filters and sort the table by the Position column like in the image above. The Web page column will have the pages you might want to update.

5. Sprinkle relevant high-value opt-ins within cluster content

Consider every piece of content in your cluster as a golden opportunity to bring in new leads. So not only are you giving readers a better web experience by linking out towards related content on your site, but you can also offer them added value by letting them opt-in in to receive a free resource, be it a whitepaper, checklist, or eBook.

And because much of your content relates to one another, you can easily increase exposure for the same lead magnet over and over. In advertising, one popular thought is that you ought to expose your ad to consumers multiple times before they take any desired action.

Make your lead magnets visually attractive, and sprinkle them across multiple cluster content. (Image source)

6. Interlink all content together

The most crucial part in the topic cluster method is linking your cluster content to your pillar article and vice versa. You can use your pillar article’s main keyword as the anchor across your cluster content. You can do the same from your pillar articles, or create compelling CTAs to link out to cluster content, i.e. “Click here to read more about the [cluster content topic].”

It’s where the magic happens that allows site crawlers to prioritize your posts and get you ranking higher on Google. That’s why you need to make sure all internal links on your site have descriptive, SEO-friendly anchor texts. Find all your anchor texts in WebCEO’s Link Text Analysis report.

Bonus tip: make sure to try and get as many backlinks to your pillar content as possible to boost your rankings even faster.

7. Consider content gating for certain cluster content

For added measure, you can get more leads to opt-in to your email list using content gating. Several sites and publications make use of this, either as a paywall or a free article you can access after signing up for an account.

This can be particularly helpful for businesses who do step-by-step tutorials or in-depth studies, for example. While we don’t recommend gating all your content – especially as it might leave a bad impression on first-time visitors – consider gating certain cluster content that has highly detailed information that users wouldn’t mind exchanging their emails for. As a litmus test for which content you can gate, ask yourself whether the information you’re giving away is valuable enough that some people may even pay for it. You’ll also want to map out gated and non-gated content with your marketing funnel in mind.

Conclusion

The topic cluster model is one of the best ways to streamline and optimize your current content marketing strategy. And by using the steps above, you can start implementing this method on your own website. Over time, you’ll see your content ranking higher on search engines, all while giving your site visitors better experiences and even added value. Start seeing your rankings rise in in no time!

The post Lead Generation: How to Get More Leads with Content Topic Clusters appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Given that 95% of search engine traffic goes all to the first page of search results, maintaining high site rankings is key to promoting awareness to your brand, establishing credibility, and generating more leads and customers for your business.

However, there are instances when you’ll see your site rankings begin to drop. When that happens, so too will your ability to reach your business goals.

In this article, you’ll learn 15 different reasons why your site rankings are dropping and tips on boosting them – by improving your SEO.

1. Monitor Changes in Google’s Algorithm

Google released its latest core algorithm update in November 2024. This update will affect how Google will rank websites based on safe-browsing, HTTPS, mobile-friendliness, site loading speed, interactivity, and most importantly, whether their content is up-to-date.

Updates like these are meant to ensure Google lives up to its mission of providing its users with relevant and useful information.

However, this also means that some SEO techniques that helped improve your site rankings in the past may no longer work. In some cases, it may even cause your rankings to drop.

Conducting an SEO Analysis on your website can help prevent this from happening. WebCEO’s SEO Analysis tool, for instance, is regularly updating its system each time that Google updates its algorithm.

That way, you can find the areas that you’ll need to address and promptly fix them.

A perfect example of how SEO can help your business is Agnew Group, a leading European motor group in Northern Ireland. By adjusting how they optimized their website and content, the Irish motor company achieved a record month of website visits, users, and customer inquiries in January 2019, which led to a 65% boost in leads.

2. Double-Check the Keywords You Are Targeting

It’s not enough that you target long-tail keyword phrases that match your products and services. You also need to check the competition level of each keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for.

If all the keywords you’re trying to rank for are incredibly competitive, it’s going to be more challenging to boost your site rankings.

When choosing the keywords to optimize your content and website, you’d want to make sure that you choose those with a high Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI. That’s because these are keyword phrases that have a high volume of traffic and low competition level.

Find the most effective keywords for your site with WebCEO’s Keyword Research tool.

3. Fill Out Your Meta Information

Meta tags matter because they provide more context to a web page and give you extra opportunity to improve keywords rankings.

To prevent your site rankings from dropping, make sure that you fill out the following essential meta tags and include your targeted keyword in them:

• Title tag
• Meta description
• Image ALT text
• Heading tags (H1-H4)

There is a way to quickly find all pages where the meta information is lacking: scan your site with the On-Site Issues Overview tool. And then just add the necessary bits of information.

4. Find Your Broken and Inactive Links

Since the quality of your inbound and outbound links are among those that Google considers when ranking websites, it pays to regularly check if any of your links are broken and fix them.

WebCEO’s Technical Audit allows you to run an audit of your internal links so that you can find which ones are broken and fix them.

5. Give Public Relations a Try

Building quality backlinks is not as simple as sending out pitches and landing guest posts to random sites. They have to be established websites, preferably with high domain authority.

Publishing a press release is an effective way to build quality backlinks to your website on highly-reputable websites. In turn, you’ll prevent your site rankings from dropping and may even help improve them.

This is precisely what happened to Shane Barker. By delving into various PR techniques, he was able to generate quality backlinks that drove more traffic and boost his site’s rankings and establish him as a reputable resource in his industry.

6. Purge Backlinks From Poor Quality Sites

Writing guest blogs will help you build backlinks. But that doesn’t mean that you just submit a guest post to any website.

The reason is that Google and other search engines also consider the quality of the sites your backlinks are located. Backlinks coming from low-quality websites can cause your site rankings to drop.

One way to make sure that you’re submitting a guest post to a quality site is by checking its Domain Authority (DA) and Spam scores. Targeting sites with a high DA score and a low Spam score increase the likelihood you’re submitting your guest post and create a backlink in a high-quality site.

What about the backlinks you’ve already collected? Sniff out the low-quality ones with WebCEO’s Backlink Profile tools. All the potentially harmful backlinks will be in the Toxic Pages report where you can decide what to do with them.

7. Know How Your Target Customers Search for Content

Another reason why your site rankings are dropping is because your content is not matching your customers’ search intent.

You see, people go online for three specific reasons. They’re looking to:

• Find solutions to the problem they’re currently facing.
• Learn more about a specific brand, product or service.
• Make a purchase.

That said, the best way to improve your site’s rankings is to update—even revise—blog posts and guides you’ve previously published so that they match any of these purposes.

This is what Brian Dean of Backlinko did. By revising a case study he previously published into an in-depth SEO strategy guide, he successfully boosted its rankings from the second page of Google’s SERP to number three on the first page.

8. Get Rid of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is harmful to SEO because Google views it as an attempt to manipulate its search algorithms so that your website can rank higher.

The best to prevent this from happening is by organizing your website’s content using the Topic Cluster model.

It’ll be easier for you to find and eliminate duplicate content on your website by organizing content into clusters. 

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9. Double Down on Privacy and Security

Keeping your business’ website safe and secure from cyberattacks is vital to prevent your site rankings from dropping and avoid legal trouble and revenue loss.

While most brands have taken steps to that traffic visiting their website using their desktops or laptops safe and secure, the same can’t be said about those visiting their website using their mobile devices.

One study reports that 40% of website data breaches because their websites were accessed using a mobile device.

This is perplexing, especially since over half of the website traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices.

Investing in biometric authentication technology like face ID and fingerprint recognition is one way to keep your website visitors’ data secure and minimize—if not eliminate—vulnerabilities to your website while they’re accessing it on their mobile devices.

10. Monitor Your Competitors

If your competitors’ site rankings keep going up, then it’s a good idea to find out what they’re doing so that you can replicate it for your site.

Conducting a competitor analysis will give you vital information like the keywords they’re targeting, what types of content they’re publishing, where they’re promoting their content, and what sites they’re building their backlinks.

More importantly, a competitor analysis can also show you the areas where your competitors are struggling or falling short. You can then take this information and use it to optimize and improve your site rankings.

11. Check the Manual Actions Done By Google

If you violate one or more of Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines, your website will be slapped with a Manual Action report, and you’ll be promptly notified on your Google’s Search Console or via email.

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Websites that receive this notification won’t just see their site rankings drop. They can also have their content—or even their website—taken out from Google’s search results.

Google’s Search Advocate, Daniel Waisberg, has explained in-depth the steps you can take to discover that your website was penalized.

12. Refine Your Website UX

Even if you publish quality content and your website looks attractive, if your visitors can’t easily find what they’re looking for, they’ll opt-out and go elsewhere.

Implementing website UX best practices can help prevent this from happening. Here are some suggestions:

• Simplify your website’s navigation
• Utilize a responsive website design
• Create and upload a sitemap
• Make your headers and labels easy to understand
• Conduct usability testing when you update your website

IWillTeachYouToBeRich is an excellent example of a website that observes these best practices.

As you can see, the call-to-action buttons are a different color than the rest of the website, which instantly draws the user’s attention. The navigation has short, descriptive menu titles. The minimal color palette, especially the white background, enables the user to focus more on the copy than the design.

13. Check How Long Your Visitors Stay

If you want to boost your site rankings, you need to ensure that you get your visitors to stay as long as possible.

That’s because the length of time people spend on your website affects its bounce rate: the higher your bounce rate, the lower your site rankings.

Publishing quality long-form content is one way to get your visitors to stay longer on your site and lower your bounce rate.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can just ramble on and on in your article. It needs to be carefully written, especially since 8 of 10 readers only read headlines and most site visitors only consume 20% of content on a page.

More importantly, it should provide practical solutions to your readers and promises to deliver what you’ve written in your title.

This SEO Optimization Guide by WebCEO is a perfect example. It teaches you the steps on how to write a blog post that will rank on Google’s SERPs.

14. Check for Issues With Your Web Hosting Server 

If your website goes down quite frequently, this can cause your site rankings to drop. Not only does this increase your site’s bounce rate, but it also prevents Google bots from crawling and fetching your content each time someone searches for information online.

Switching to a more reliable web hosting provider can help solve this.

One of the most important things to check when choosing a new web hosting provider is carefully checking reviews about the web hosting company you’re considering. Sites like TechRadar are great resources for this.

15. After Redesigning, Evaluate Your Website

Whether you’ve updated some parts of your website or gave it a total makeover, this can cause your site rankings to drop if you’re not careful.

For starters, redesigning your website could cause it to partially or entirely go offline.

Another reason is that redesigning your website can affect the way how your content’s organized. How your website was coded will be altered during the process, especially if the web developer redesigning your website is different from the one who initially created it.

Setting up a staging site is the most effective way to prevent all of these from happening.

That’s because a staging site is a clone of your website, except that it’s not yet live. As such, any changes that can be made to the design and structure of your website won’t affect your current site rankings.

It also allows you to test every single update made to your website to ensure it’s free from errors and bugs before it goes live.

Key Takeaways

In this article, I’ve listed 15 of the easiest ways to improve your SEO and give your rankings a boost. Review each point and see which ones resonate with you the most. Then, apply the strategies and tips shared here to bring your ranking back up.

Remember that Google’s primary objective is to ensure it provides the most relevant and useful information to its users. By ensuring each content you publish matches your target audience’s search intent and present it on an easy-to-navigate website, you’ll not only prevent your site rankings from dropping, but even cause your site to rank higher.

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The post 15 Quick Ways to Improve Your SEO & Rankings appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

There’s no shortage of how beneficial content marketing can be for a brand and business. Up to 96% of surveyed marketers claim that creating content has been successful at building their credibility and trust among their customers, especially when they prioritized creating high-value informational content over promotional ones.

Regardless, there’s no denying that not every content marketing effort pays off. Many types of content—like long form pillar blog posts—may stand the test of time and get great results. These are often the types of content we invest the most in because if top-performing content can get us more traffic, that also helps us gain more leads, and eventually more sales endlessly at no extra cost.

Is your content underperforming?

It’s great if your brand is able to churn out high-performing content every single time, but we know that that’s not always a realistic goal. So what can you do if you constantly have underperforming content on your blog?

One option is to keep going at it and hope your next published blog posts will perform better. But we know this option can be costly to marketers and doesn’t make the most of any existing content.

There are better ways. Keep reading because we’ll show you 10 effective tips that will actually help you get better results from your underperforming content. Soon, you’ll see better search results and traffic coming from even your older posts.

1. Ensure That Your Site Can Be Searched and Indexed

First of all, one reason you might not be seeing any results from your content is because of a site indexing issue. There can be a few reasons your site hasn’t been indexed, i.e. can be discovered and read by search engine crawlers, or the special agents Google and other search engines use to discover, browse, and understand your content.

Having a website that isn’t indexed means you’re invisible to Google—and that means you’re invisible to potential customers too.

Make sure all your content stands a chance to perform by ensuring your site is indexed. There are quick ways to check this too. Here’s the simplest way to make sure your site is actually indexed, especially on Google:

1. Go to Google and type in site:yourwebsite.com.
2. You’ll see how many pages on your site Google has actually indexed.
3. To search for a specific blog post, type in site:yourwebsite.com/slug where the slug is the actual slug of the content you’re checking.
4. Don’t get any search results? That means this specific page or content is not currently indexed by Google.

An easy fix for ensuring your site is indexed is by submitting an indexing request via Google Search Console. You simply need to log in to the app, navigate to the URL Inspection Tool and hit the “Request indexing” button.

(Image source)

2. Improve Your Content’s Headline

The power of an effective headline can do wonders for boosting content performance. Among all of the factors Google uses as a basis for ranking content, one of them is your click-through rate (CTR).

This refers to how often people are clicking through to your blog post or page after seeing it as a search query result. The higher you can raise your CTR, the higher your content will rank.

To apply this to underperforming content, change up your posts’ or pages’ headlines. Optimize for SEO as best as you can, but experiment with different headline formulas that might drastically improve those click-throughs.

Of course, give your headline tests enough time to gather data. You may only notice changes weeks and months down the line, so make it a habit to do regular SEO audits on your content to see how new headlines are performing or not performing.

3. Match Your Keywords and Your Content with Search Intent

Another tip to get better results from underperforming content is to see how the search engine result pages of your chosen keywords look like. By understanding what users were looking for when making their search—or search intent—you can edit your content or adjust your keywords accordingly.

When a user finds your page from a search result page then clicks through and finds that your content doesn’t help them with their search, they’re most likely to bounce right away. This can hurt your page’s performance. So a quick remedy to save your content ranking is adjusting your content to match users’ search intent.

You might do a quick skim of the top-performing content for your keywords and see what search engines are picking up from their content. Are they answering your users’ questions better? Is there a section that would help match your content to people’s search intent?

Small tweaks can bring great results, so review top performers to see how you can be the go-to post or page for your users.

4. Implement the Topic Cluster Model

The topic cluster model might be one of the best content marketing strategies you can use to boost the SEO performance of all your content overall. A topic cluster is essentially a group of blog posts centered around a broad topic, then tied together with a comprehensive pillar page that links between these cluster posts.

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Boost your underperforming content by linking them to an existing pillar page you might have about the topic. If you don’t have one yet, this is the perfect opportunity to write one. Make sure your main pillar content is broad enough to create several sub-sections and cluster content but without being too general.

If you have several blog posts on your site as is, using the topic cluster model can be a great way to get these posts organized. Plus, they play a big role in boosting your SEO since they help organize and prioritize your most important content pieces.

5. Incorporate Videos into Your Existing Content

When Google acquired YouTube in 2006, it slowly began introducing subtle changes to its search engine result pages. You might notice that many search queries render video results as well—this is no coincidence.

Some users do Google searches while being agnostic about the delivery of their query. So whether it’s a long blog post or a video, your content might just be able to perform better if you explore another medium of delivery.

See which of your underperforming content might fare better if supplemented with a valuable video. To make the video creation process faster than it might otherwise be, use a tool like Boosted to create better videos faster, especially with templates and a stock library for footage and music.

6. Don’t Discount Your Content’s Meta Data

Metadata can go a long way for improving those underperforming posts. After all, title tags are still a valuable ranking factor to search engines, so make sure those headings contain your chosen keywords.

On the other hand, meta descriptions might not necessarily bear any weight for on-page ranking anymore. However, many users read the meta descriptions to get a taste of what to expect from your content. Optimize this copy accordingly; convince your users that your page has the information they’re looking for so that your CTR gets better too.

Because you have limited room to optimize your metadata copy, use a robust keyword research tool so you can cover them in your blog posts and headings as needed.

7. Make Your Content More Comprehensive

Finally, one way to really make those underperforming content pieces shine is by updating these old blogs and making them more valuable to readers. If your blog post is looking a little thin and doesn’t contain enough information, readers might bounce and look for another site that could help.

It’s a little-known strategy for promoting your content but it works so well because of how easy it can be to refresh an old post with new or more information. Use more updated examples and sources, look for better modern photos and images, and remove any information that might now be outdated.

Try to check what the top performers in your search query have, then aim to make your blog post better than theirs. Fill in the gaps of their content, then use all the other tips you’ve learned above to really pack a powerful punch.

This step is helpful in that you don’t need to constantly create new posts about the same topic from scratch. You can simply repurpose old and underperforming content and make it better than it was before.

8. Get Rid of Low-Quality Backlinks

There can be no SEO content strategy without backlinks. But they are like food: more isn’t always better. Do your link building right, and you will have sites with authority vouching for yours and boosting your rankings. But if you collect backlinks with no care about where they come from, Google will have a hard time seeing value in your site.

Run a check of your website’s backlink profile with WebCEO’s My Backlinks tool.

Specifically, look inside the Toxic Pages report. It will have a list of potentially harmful backlinks from sites of low authority – and if you disagree with how the tool defines “low authority”, you can tweak the settings to your own liking.

Find the backlinks coming from web pages that are not relevant to your content at all – those are the ones hurting your rankings. Get rid of those backlinks by any means you prefer (by changing the linking pages directly or through Google Disavow).

9. Fix the Technical Issues on Your Site

Perhaps the most obvious reason behind your content’s poor performance could be its, well, poor performance. In a technical sense. Maybe something on the page doesn’t load. Have you checked?

Site errors can be really sneaky if you neglect tracking them with SEO tools. If you haven’t scanned your site for errors lately, now is the best time to do it.

This is what you will see after scanning your site with WebCEO’s Website Audit tool: a list of issues currently present on your site with tips for fixing them. Tend to everything you can, then see later if it helped your rankings rise. Unfortunately, Google offers no fixed time frame for when it takes effect.

10. Strengthen Your Internal Linking Structure

When a page links to another page, it shares some of its authority. Does it mean that pages with high authority have more of it to share? Correct.

It applies both to pages from other sites and to your own site’s pages. So what happens to a page when no high-authority pages link to it? Its own authority stays low and it doesn’t rank high. There you have another potential reason why your SEO content strategy suffers.

Scan your site’s internal linking structure with WebCEO and see how you can improve it.

Specifically, here’s what you can do:

• Check the Page Authority Analysis report to find out which of your site’s pages have the most authority. Try linking from those to your content (but only when such links make sense).
• See the Landing Page Analysis report to analyze individual pages. In this report, you can check which pages link to your content and which do not.

Key Takeaways

Getting better results from underperforming content is one of the best ways to boost your engagement and get more meaningful conversions from existing pages on your site.

Remember that perfecting your SEO strategy is an ongoing process and can be tedious—however, what sets the best SEO players apart is how they’re able to play the long game of ranking content, and that includes putting in the work to make even underperforming content on their site perform better.

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The post 10 Ways You Could Improve Your SEO Content Strategy Right Now appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

I remember when SEO software was built for desktops and they all had a tool to send bulk emails to site owners asking to link to your site. It never worked. You were ignored at best or even blacklisted for spam. However, if done right, cold emails are a powerful tool to get more relevant traffic and improve your ranking positions.

A quick recipe for a successful outreach would be the following:

1. Identify your “hit list”
2. Make initial contact
3. Grow a relationship

In order for your content marketing strategy to succeed, you will need to increase your promotion efforts. Let’s dive deeper and get you some great new links and a ton of relevant traffic!

When do you need to reach out to popular bloggers & media?

1. You’ve just launched a new service or product. If you’ve investigated how to market a product, you must have been advised to ask some niche authority to write about you. Getting some publicity in relevant media is a great start for every new product.
2. You want to attract new readers. One of the most effective ways is to get an authoritative blogger or niche expert as a guest blogger on your site. You may think of an interview format.
3. You want to expose yourself as a niche expert. Try to publish some great content in a popular industry media outlet.
4. You need some good links from authoritative sites. Sometimes 1-2 links from a good relevant source can drastically improve your ranking and help you outrank your competitors. For this, WebCEO’s Backlink Quality Checker is an invaluable tool. It helps you analyze the quality of your existing backlinks and identify new, authoritative sites to target for link-building efforts.

5 tips for reaching out and getting results

1. Write about them, not about you

Templates that were massively used to spam popular bloggers and media all started with “Hello, I am XXXX from YYY”. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work today. Instead of writing about you, start with their work: “Your post …. really caught my eye.” And then tell them who you are.

Example:

“Hello Jane!

You article on the keto-diet is great and I just retweeted it as @memyself! Your wit combined with thorough scientific approach makes your writing fascinating and useful. Our portal about healthy food could really use an article written by you.”

Ensure you have genuinely engaged with their content on social media. This builds a connection even before you make direct contact. To track the performance of your social media activities and understand which influencers are most engaged with your content, consider using WebCEO’s Social Engagement Tool. This can help you identify key influencers who are already interacting with your brand.

2. Make it easy to speak with you

It’s highly important that you make it really easy to speak with you. Say that you are happy to work on your respondent’s schedule and will be available when they are free. Provide every which way for someone to contact you. Remember, that you are the one who needs something.

3. Get social proof

After your email is read, it is very likely that your respondent will take a few seconds to find something about you and your business. Create trust with social proof: embed it into your initial email. Tell for how long your business has been operating, who has written content for you and where your own articles were published.

4. Send follow-ups

Quite often people don’t respond, not because they don’t want to but because they forgot to. On the image below, you can see the number of follow-ups we tested. As you can see, the third email has a rather high response rate. I would recommend that you send an initial email + 2 polite follow-ups. When you are smart and polite, your follow-ups will not look “pushy”.

My advice for every follow-up is: share something valuable, share an exciting update on your achievement, repeat your ask in different words or from a different angle on why it’s so important that you speak with them.

5. Grow the relationship

Now when you’ve reached out to a blogger and gotten their articles on your site or you’ve gotten your content promoted on theirs, it’s time to strengthen your relationship. Follow them on more social media and keep sharing and commenting on their publications. Try to develop friendly win-win relations.

How to find bloggers to reach out to

1. Search for blogs in your niche

Create your hit list – find bloggers in your niche with whom you want to build relationships and whose networks you’d love to tap into.

I usually create a spreadsheet where I keep all the information found. First of all, search for bloggers who write on relevant topics. You may use the WebCEO Web Buzz monitoring tool. In the tool’s settings enter keywords that describe your niche (try broad terms first), and see the latest posts with them.

Add blogs you’ve found to your spreadsheet and move to the next step. The next step is to find a maximum information about them, especially their contact information.

2. See who links to other niche blogs

When someone links to other sites in your niche, there is a really high chance they will link to your site too. Use the WebCEO Backlink Checker Tool to see who links to your competitors but not yet to you.

Add sites and blogs, that do not link to yours, to the spreadsheet. Now, when you’ve used these three tools you should have a massive hit list.

Investigate each of them carefully: find who the author is, what are his/her favorite topics, think of content you can provide to them. When all the preparation is done, reach out to them with PERSONAL emails and lots of likes and shares of their previous articles and do not forget the tips I’ve given.

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The post How to Reach Out to Popular Bloggers and Always Get Replies appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Believe it or not, some SEO copywriters still write copy like it’s 2009!

Big mistake!

You’ve got to adapt your copywriting style to meet all the changes happening in the SEO realm.

That sounds uncomfortable. However, if you’re serious about becoming a copywriter, you will have to get rid of mistakes you’re probably making. Counter them with these helpful SEO copywriting tips.

SEO copywriting mistake #1: Not customizing your strategy

Your clients come from different industries and have a specific type of customer they want to target. More importantly, each has its own culture that influences how they communicate with their prospects and customers.

Solution:

Don’t let your copy stick out like a sore thumb. Not only will it be evident that someone else wrote it, but also cause readers to question your client’s credibility.

Go through your client’s published content. Look for a specific copywriting technique or model they use when writing them, and use this as a guide when you write your copy.

SEO copywriting mistake #2: Not doing your research

If you want your copy to effectively attract and convert your client’s prospects, you must know as much about them as possible.

And because 93% of people begin their search for a product or service on Google (or another search engine), you must also know what keywords they use when they do a search query.

Solution:

Find out who your client’s competitors are and review their copy. Take note of what they highlight about their products or services.

Investing in an excellent keyword planning tool will also come in handy. It’ll quickly show you what keywords your readers use when searching on Google so you can use these in your copy.

SEO copywriting mistake #3: Going overboard with keywords

The right keywords will get your copy in front of your target readers. However, stuffing your text with keywords like a turkey on Thanksgiving or using black-hat and grey-hat SEO techniques is going to cause Google to slap you with a penalty.

Solution:

Target people, not machines. When you write your copy, imagine you’re sharing to a friend about a fantastic product or service you’ve found. This will help stop you from going overboard with your keywords.

SEO copywriting mistake #4: Ignoring of a user’s intent

Understanding and implementing of a user’s intent is crucial for successful SEO copywriting.

Many writers focus on incorporating specific keywords into their content, inadvertently overlooking the fundamental purpose behind user searches.

Solution: Take the time to research and analyze the primary intent behind the keywords you plan to include in your content. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and ask yourself: “What information or solution are they seeking with this search?”

Tailor your copy to directly address these user queries, providing valuable and relevant content that fulfills their needs. By aligning your writing with user intent, you enhance your SEO and build trust and authority with your audience.

SEO copywriting mistake #5: Using writing tools like a crutch

Writing tools like Grammarly and Hemingway are extremely helpful in catching embarrassing spelling and grammar mistakes. They can even find phrases that might cause your text to be flagged for plagiarism so that you can rewrite them before publishing.

But they’re not perfect. Now and then, they’ll miss a word that’s misused or misplaced. Other times, they’ll fix your sentences so that they’re grammatically correct, but sound weird when you read them.

Solution:

Read your copy out loud while you’re proofreading it. This will help you fix errors that these tools may have overlooked. You’ll also see whether or not the edits will make your copy easier to read and understand. In addition to this, using a tool like the SEO Content Assistant from WebCEO can further refine your content, ensuring it’s not only grammatically correct but also optimized for search engines.

SEO copywriting mistake #6: Not linking to reliable sources

Millions of blog posts get published daily. So the niche or topic you’re writing about may already be saturated with content.

People are now more skeptical about what they read online. They no longer take in any content at face value. Failing to support your copy by linking it to credible sources means that you’re missing out an excellent opportunity to increase your copy’s ranking on Google.

When you have reliable sources to back up your claims, your readers are more likely to take the time to read and digest your copy. Google will take note of this, and will reward your copy with a higher ranking.

Solution:

Make sure that you back up statements by linking them to what Google will consider credible and reliable online sources. Buzzsumo is a great tool to help you find these.

Screenshot from Buzzsumo

SEO copywriting mistake #7: Not adding internal links

Conversely, some copywriters do an excellent job linking parts of their copy to outside sources, but completely forget to add internal links aka links that go to other content published by your client.

There are two reasons to include internal links to your copy.

First, it feeds your readers with more valuable information. That means they don’t only stay on your client’s website longer, but these links help cement your client’s credibility and authority with them.

Second, it makes it easier for search bots to find relevant content they can index and include in their SERPs.

Solution:

Check your client’s website for previously published content that will support what you have written in your copy.

Also, make sure that you link relevant web pages. For example, if you’re writing to promote your client’s products, you can link their product pages to your copy.

SEO copywriting mistake #8: Sounding too “salesy”

The reason why content is now the king of the online marketing universe is that people don’t want to be sold to. So if your copy sounds like an infomercial script, you’re giving your readers a perfect reason to ignore it.

Solution:

Understand that people who find your copy are those looking for a solution to their problems.

Your job as an SEO copywriter is to feed them this through your copy. Only when you’ve satisfied readers that you can solve their problems, should you then begin talking about the features of the product or service you’re promoting.

Also, go easy on the adjectives. Having too many adjectives before a noun screams “SALES PITCH!” to your readers.

SEO copywriting mistake #9: Being too wordy

A predominant characteristic exhibited by novice wordsmiths is the exuberant use of intricate verbiage and statements to convey to those that peruse what they have inscribed despite the fact that such statements could otherwise be transmitted in a manner that is unpretentious and terms that are uncomplicated to comprehend.

Translation: A common habit among amateur writers is using too many complicated words and sentences when they write, when simple and easy to understand phrases would have sufficed.

The first sentence might make you sound smart. But using big, fancy words in your copy makes it difficult for your readers to understand what the heck you’re saying. They won’t even bother trying. They’ll just hit the back button and check out.

Solution:

According to a Neilsen Norman Group study, copy that’s easily understood by 8^thgraders works best.

When writing your copy, use simple words and short sentences. The simpler, the better.

Get a friend or someone you trust to read your copy. If there are some parts in your text that are confusing them, simplify these areas further.

SEO copywriting mistake #10: Overusing ChatGPT in articles

When writers heavily depend on ChatGPT to generate most of their content, it can result in articles that sound generic and fail to resonate with the audience on a personal level. 

The content may lack the human touch and emotional connection that is essential for engaging readers.

Solution: 

Use ChatGPT as a supplementary tool, not a replacement for your creativity. While ChatGPT is a valuable asset that can help with brainstorming ideas, generating outlines, and providing relevant information, it’s crucial to maintain your unique perspective and writing style. 

After using ChatGPT to assist with content creation, take the time to review and revise the text, infusing it with your personal touch and expertise.

As Google says, if your content is useful, helpful, original, and satisfies aspects of Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trust, it might do well in Search, even though you used AI.

By striking the right balance between AI assistance and human creativity, you can create informative and well-structured articles that carry your distinctive voice. 

SEO copywriting mistake #11: Not including a Call-to-Action (CTA).

This is a mortal sin, and yet lots of SEO copywriters still make this mistake.

What makes copywriting different from all other forms of online writing is its ability to convince people to take the desired action. If there’s no CTA in your copy, how on earth will your readers know what to do next?

No CTA also means no conversions for your client, which is the numero uno reason why they hired you.

Solution:

Make it a point to always include a CTA in your copy!

Moreover, make sure it tells your readers what they should do next. This should be based on the goal that your client wants to achieve.

For example, if your client’s goal is to get more qualified leads, a good CTA would be to get the readers to schedule a demo or get a free trial.

SEO copywriting mistake #12: Making titles an after-thought.

NEWSFLASH: Your copy’s title is as important—if not more important—than the text you’ve written, and even more critical than your CTA.

Why?

Because the only thing that people will see is your copy’s title in SERPs. If your title doesn’t grab their attention, nothing else matters.

Solution:

Give as much care and attention as possible to your copy’s title so that it piques your reader’s interest.

Some ways you can do this include:

• Adding numbers,
• Directly saying what problem you’re solving, and
• Whetting their curiosity.

Take this title from one of Copyblogger’s most successful posts as an example:

It blends all the three suggestions I mentioned. It includes a specific number. It tells what problem reading this blog post will solve (getting more subscribers). They made people curious about how they did it.

SEO copywriting mistake #13: Confusing opinions for facts

Many SEO copywriters (especially those starting out), will take information their clients give them to use in their copy as facts. They don’t bother to verify these details.

The problem here’s that if you don’t take the time to check the data you present in your copy, your readers will. If they find that the data presented isn’t accurate, they’ll become apprehensive about doing business with your client.

This will also damage your reputation as an SEO copywriter. It’ll be reason enough for your clients to end their contract with you, and more difficult to get new ones.

Solution:

Always do your research to verify that the details you’ve been given to use in your copy are accurate. If they’re not, make it a point to explain to your client why you can’t use them in your text.

SEO copywriting mistake #14: Quantity over quality

Several studies have encouraged copywriters to write long-form content because they do a better job of increasing page rankings.

As a result, some SEO copywriters have resorted to writing as much as they can so they can meet the “ideal” word count.

Solution:

If your final copy is only 800 words, but it’s packed with valuable info, then keep it at that. It’ll be more effective in converting your readers than a 2,000+ word text full of rambling and useless information.

SEO copywriting mistake #15: Thin content

Thin content doesn’t just mean writing short blog posts and articles with very little value. As Matt Cutts of Google explains in this video, there are several other types, such as:

• Doorway pages
• Thin affiliates
• Plagiarized content

All of them will prompt Google to take action against your site.

Solution:

As Matt Cutts said in the video, make sure you make it a top priority to provide quality to your readers when writing your copy.

Additionally, check your client’s website for similar content you can build upon rather than starting from scratch. That way, you increase that content’s value. You’ll also prevent Google from penalizing your copy as a duplicate content.

SEO copywriting mistake #16: Ignoring Brand Tone of Voice

The brand’s tone of voice encompasses its core values, philosophy, and attitude toward its audience. 

It plays a pivotal role in determining the choice of words and sentence structure used in copies to communicate the brand’s message effectively. 

Solution:

When working on copy for a client, it is imperative to either have access to the brand’s style guide or meticulously study their previously published content. 

By embracing the brand’s tone of voice, you establish a genuine connection with the target audience, enhancing brand recognition and loyalty. Your words can be a powerful tool to evoke emotions, foster trust, and inspire action, ultimately bolstering the brand’s identity and market presence.

SEO copywriting mistake #17: Writing like a robot.

Your readers are emotional buyers, and they want to connect with your client’s business on a personal level. Bombarding them with facts using ultra-formal language in your copy isn’t going to help.

Solution:

Writing how you would talk to a friend asking for advice and telling stories… this is an effective way to humanize your copy.

Just make sure that your tone and choice of words match what your client uses. For example, if your client’s content doesn’t include slang, it’s best not to include these words in your copy even if that’s how you speak.

SEO copywriters are human and prone to making mistakes. Remembering who your target readers are, what they want to know, and how they’d like to be approached will help you lessen the chances of making blunders. To be on the safe side, be sure to check your articles for SEO mistakes – your rankings will be grateful.

The post 17 Mistakes SEO Copywriters Still Make (And Tips for Avoiding Them) appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

“You need backlinks and organic visitors searching for the answers, products, and services you provide. Guest blogging is the best way to do all that…” © Neil Patel.

Each SEO professional knows or should know that the hardest and the greatest part of the SEO process is to create decent content. No SEO tool will help here. Content will lead you through all SERP positions and become a business card of your website. However, you can’t get the highest positions immediately, because people don’t know about you at the beginning. In addition, your competitors already have their places and will not give you a crown for no reason at all. So, how do you make a website visible on the Internet and stand out in the crowd?

The answer is pretty simple and, at the same time, difficult enough: attract more people and increase traffic.

How can you do this? Create content of high quality and in detail. This will definitely attract visitors to your place.

Look at Google. Even though we are angry because of all those Algorithms, penalties, and rank drops, at the same time we are always ready to admit that Google seeks to algorithmically present its idea of quality and tries to give this quality to the users. This has brought Google a lot of customers.

How can other websites make their field of customers big enough and show that they have needed quality? What do webmasters try to do besides keyword research in order to get the highest positions on the SERPs? The most common answer: they do link building. It is hard but future success requires this.

And guest blogging for a long time has been one of those ideas which come to mind almost immediately when we talk about backlinks. Today we are going to focus on this.

Table of Contents

1. Get Started with Guest Blogging
2. Pros of Guest Blogging
3. Cons of Guest Blogging
4. How to Identify Your Target Audience
5. Where to Publish Guest Posts
6. How to Introduce Yourself for Guest Posting
7. How to Promote Your Guest Posts

Guest blogging is a great opportunity to show the audience of a well trafficked site with a high domain authority that you are worth their attention and they can bravely come to your website. People trust websites that are already quite authoritative and sometimes don’t want to miss any material they present. From those interested people you can get more traffic: they may share your post, advise their friends, and they may also come to your website looking for more good material. If they are satisfied with the stuff you provide, you can wait for backlinks, because great content is always worth sharing.

Here we encounter the quality content problem. Guest blogging is not just about interesting things you want to share with others; this is your business card for potential visitors. You should use all your talent and power and conduct a lot of research on a chosen topic to prove that you are competent enough for people to want to visit your site.

However, you should think carefully about guest blogging. As well as any other strategy this one has its pros and cons, and we definitely should consider them in detail.

We have chosen to sort out a huge amount of advantages and make a simple and short list for you with little descriptions.

1. Website Popularity

By posting on another website with a large audience with a well done article, you can extend the borders of your own site’s popularity, which means:

• A lot of traffic comes to your place with people who have read your words, liked them, and decided to explore more material you offer. They may come and go or stay for a little longer, sharing your content and linking to you, which is really great for your rankings;
• You can welcome a bunch of new interests and goals at your place. Such people are a breath of fresh air: they may enter your website and a bit later become your permanent subscribers who wait for new content from you or even offer some interesting topics to cover;
• Social media followers: social media has become hugely popular. People try to develop their social media accounts, and attract more people, by posting a lot of related material – this provokes comments, shares, likes, a lot of new followers, which leads to an extension of your popularity far beyond social media, which means more backlinks. Just don’t forget to communicate with your audience;
• Feedback is the golden apple in your pocket: feedback from ordinary people about how great your content is on your website or others, especially from those who have some authority…all this makes you more reliable and interesting. People like to read a comments section first and then build up their opinion about your product. Bad feedback about you can spread faster than you can even imagine, so be on the ball.

2. Reputation

With a well written article, you will build up a reputation as a writer, a good one or bad one. Accordingly, you will create a definite impression of your website throughout the Internet. Google is also watching you.

• By providing readers with great, fresh, and relevant content you will build your own authority and heighten the level of credibility among them and specifically in the niche you perform in. People perceive you as a professional concerning the sphere you are writing your posts about, which actually influences your traffic as well. We go directly to the most clued in people, because we believe them and their content;
• Remember that an earned reputation always works for you. Guest blogging is not a single article. You can guest publish on a regular basis, so be sure to provide quality and meet deadlines. Webmasters will not ever give you any opportunity to write anything for them once again if you can’t reassure them that you are a writer they need and who follows their rules.

3. Guest Blogging Opportunities and Business Benefits

Guest blogging provides you not only with people who come to your website, it gives you much more than you can think about at the moment. Let’s dive into this deeper:

• By posting your article on other websites besides yours, you extend your circle of acquaintance. They can be your potential partners, webmasters for other sites on which you can post your articles, and even candidates for ad hoc link exchanges. This is a widespread fact that your friends can give you more than you think. They are happy to be your accountants as well;
• Guest blogging gives you a chance to spread the word about your products. In your guest posts you can easily present your products, showing their benefits and importance to users. However, be careful, please: people don’t like direct advertisements. Even if they are not going to buy your products as soon as they read your article, people will be informed that such products exist. They can spread this information further, share this, and keep it all in mind. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll come to your website and become your customers;
• Such alink building strategy opens some new business opportunities. This could be a business collaboration with other website owners. With a greater amount of traffic which comes after a successful guest post, you can get the chance to offer webinars, teaching courses, new products and much more.

4. Better Search Engine Rankings

Google likes quality, and when it sees quality it works for you. So, this is one more chance to work on your SEO, for instance, to heighten your domain and page authority. In addition, if there are a lot of backlinks to your website and those are from trustworthy sites, Google can reward you with some extra points. Apart from this, with guest posts you can find an extra opportunity to promote other related articles in the form of anchor links.

5. Personal Benefits

There are a lot of benefits of guest blogging. With this you not only bring success to your website, you can also receive something for yourself:

• Guest blogging for someone who has never done this before is a new and useful experience. While writing for a new source, you will put all your knowledge and talent into each word you use. Creating content for new people always means new ways of writing, because the audience of big sites will be wider, more complex and more diverse than on your site. You should take into account each of these details and write something that fits everybody;
• You will improve your writing skills. When writing a new article, you will put all your talent into the process and make yourself a better writer. The more qualitative content you create, using new words, phrases, sentence structures, etc., the more experience and tips for writing you obtain. In each sentence you will use something new and “communicate” with the audience on a new level. Just compare your first articles and last ones and you will see what I’m talking about;
• You create unique content. Guest blogging is not only posting your material on a popular website. You still compete with people who are already popular in your niche and have some authority which is bigger than yours is. It is a real struggle to write something unique and catchy about topics that have already been mentioned. Outline yourself among competitors and offer something new for even old topics. Once you’ve done this, you can be proud of yourself and get traffic;
• Self-promotion comes with guest blogging. In guest posts you advertise not only your content and company, but also You “sell” your knowledge, skills, products, if they exist, and your name which is given in a bio after or before the post. You create your portfolio as well.

As well as other link building ideas, guest blogging, despite such juicy pros, also has its cons and they should be explored. Again we have a short list that includes a lot.

1. You Depend on Other People

If you write for websites, you should follow the rules and you may encounter not so pleasant consequences sometimes. This means:

• Somebody else may build their own authority using your name and material. If your article is well done, people will read it and spread it with the link to the website that contains the needed article, and this is not yours. People will visit your site only if they read your content till the end, so a significant part of the backlinks your post receives will go to the benefit of the website you wrote for;
• Your article can be rejected. This depends on you and a website owner. If the content you’ve written is pretty poor and boring for a webmaster, he or she can reject your post and next time “look” at you with suspicion and disbelief;
• Editing can eliminate your uniqueness. Webmasters have a right to “clean” your content, change it a little bit, or give it to a professional editor and proofreader, who will investigate your material from A to Z. They can erase a part that sounds great for you and or change things to fit their opinion or business more. This happens more when you are a newcomer and don’t have a name and the needed experience.

2. No Guarantees

Link building ideas can’t guarantee you success, so you should not rely on one strategy. Here are the main reasons why guest blogging can pass you by:

• Because of the popularity of guest blogging, you may not be chosen to write something for websites with, for example, a high domain authority. This can happen because of the low popularity of your name, i.e. an article from an unknown author may not be OK with a big site. However, you can start with websites which are not so widespread and, by a step by step process, reach those you’ve been dreaming about;
• It takes a lot of time to see some results of guest blogging. If you want to see them right away, you should write as a guest more However, it’s unlikely for this to work, because writing of great articles is a long process, as everything should be unique. Great content demands great effort.

3. Harmful Impact

• Harmful associations can’t be avoided on the Internet, where surroundings are not so clean. They appear when you post your articles on untrustworthy or toxic websites, when people who share them have already lost their reputation, or if you decide to go for plagiarism. To protect yourself and your website from a Google penalty you should always check websites you are going to write for and present only unique material;
• Never go to spammy websites or those which are of low quality, if you don’t want to lose link quality, because this may damage your website’s rankings. You can check the quality of backlinks with the help of the WebCEO Backlink Quality Check Tool, which gives full information regarding the parameters and the level of reliability of all your backlinks;
• Spammers are everywhere. No-one will ever beat them. They come to every house and make it dirty. Be aware of this and clean the territory of your website and the post’s comment section after posting your guest post.

4. Great Risks

Nowadays risks are everywhere. However, forewarned is forearmed!

• One of the greatest risks is to not understand your target audience. Make time to analyze deeply who you will write an article for as well as the website itself – whether if fits your niche or not. If you write an article for basketball lovers and put this into the table sports section, this will be your greatest failure: you will never get even a single reader;
• With bad writing you can just forget about guest blogging at all. We don’t even need more words here;
• Content syndication is when your content is published on multiple websites. So the place of your content will not be unique anymore and your article will be spread all over the Internet. For SEO this means duplicate content which Google doesn’t like, but if this is tagged (rel=canonical) and indexed (content=”noindex,follow”) properly, everything will be okay.

5. Personal Losses

Everybody values their resources and people who do guest blogging are not an exception.

• Guest blogging always means unpaid work. This doesn’t matter if your material is great enough to even be published for money in papers or magazines: in this case you will get no money – only web benefits;
• You will spend a lot of time and effort for a single article, making unique and interesting content, and this can be really sad if you don’t get anything in the end;
• Too much time for guest blogging and too little time for your own website. It is always vitally important to find balance between guest blogging and your own website updates. You can be popular enough to guest blog more often, but there is no sense in this if you can’t offer fresh content to your own site’s audience. They will bounce more often this way.

LET’S GET STARTED!

Your target audience will be your potential clients; people who are interested in content you create. Those can be representatives of different ages, locations, and spheres of interest. It is rather important to properly identify a circle of people who can be interested in your further content. Even a single guest post should be prepared carefully and be focused on the needed audience.

There are a few steps you should take to find relevant new readers:

1. Analyze your current audience to understand who is already interested in content you provide. This is rather important because with the help of this step you can find out ways to extend your audience. Learn who they are: age, gender, location, educational level, income level, and their occupation (through fast surveys on your website or during sign up). Then go into personal things like personality, hobbies, and lifestyle.

2. This will come in handy if you conduct such research concerning your competitors’ audiences as well in order to understand who is interested in them and, of course, what they offer to their readers. Why should you do this? Because a competitor’s audience is also your potential audience as both of you provide material/products of the same niche. Learn why people go to their websites instead of yours, do better, and welcome people at your place.

3. Analyze the topic you are going to write about and analyze the statistics regarding its demand among different layers of population, ages and locations. Maybe you should spend more time on research and then think carefully about following a certain writing style and type of presenting information – how exactly you can attract people who are interested in your niche and have them fully satisfied with your content.

4. Write an article, taking into account everything that has been mentioned.

A tool which you can use to get necessary data: Google Analytics, which will disclose both types of data: demographic (age, gender, location) and physiographic (people’s lifestyle). In addition, this will show you information regarding sessions, bounce rate, transactions, and revenue on your website.

There are a lot of guest blogging sites where you can post your material, but the problem is to find the one or several that fit you best. This mission is not so simple, but you are definitely able to do this.

• The first thing you should do is to identify your niche – what you will write about and which topics you can cover as a After this you can bravely look for sites which are of your niche and where you can be useful. The simplest way to do this is to use Google. Type keywords related to your field in a search box and some of the best search results will be your candidates to choose from. Go to those websites’ blog sections if they have them, and start the investigation process: what they write about, who writes for them (businessmen, freelancers, or journalists), which topics are the most popular, etc. Maybe, some of them are looking for guest blogging writers.
• The next way is pretty widespread among those who often go for guest blogging. You just need to type your keywords with the next phrases or similar to them: “accepting guest posts”, “submit content”, “guest post”, etc. in a search box, and you will receive data on more sites for guest blogging. This is pretty simple and a little bit similar to the first variant, because further actions are alike: investigate everything, starting from available material and
• You yourself may be a frequent visitor of a website, where webmasters sometimes allow others to post articles. Then take this chance! This can obviously help you because you already know the audience of the website and, maybe, you even know some users who may be interested in your content/products.
• The next great source is Connectively, a website which provides journalists with new contacts for content they want to write about. This is not a guest blogging opportunity per se, but close to it. You can write a decent text and image outline for a journalist to officially write an article with their own byline, but with a link to your website. You should remember that your content in this case should be of the highest quality, relevant and compelling enough for the journalist to want to put their name on it and link to you.
• Apart from this, you can always try to knock on the doors of the most popular websites which are known to almost every blogger, for example, HubSpot, Marketing Land, Entrepreneur, Alltop.com, and many others. However, take into account your popularity and the direction you want to choose for your article! Small websites are also a valuable source if you are just a beginner and don’t have any experience in this sphere.
• Don’t forget that you can use your competitors to find new places where your content will be a perfect match. WebCEO’s Competitor Backlink Spy Tool will show you detailed information on your competitors’ backlink profiles. The data will let you know which websites are relevant to your type of content. These sites, which link to your competitors now, can potentially link to your site in the near future. With this insight, you will open new paths for promoting your material and new topics to work on, proving that you are a great representative of your niche. Analyze the content of your competitors, learn their good and bad aspects, create great copy that will stand out, and then offer it to webmasters who previously thought that your competitors were worth linking to.

• In addition, you can check a list of 200+ websites which are accepting guest posts in 2022 or a huge list of 5000+ guest posting sites, and another one with about 54 guest posting websites, in order to find the best place!

An important thing to remember before you go to the next step: ALWAYS check the quality of websites you’ve chosen to write an article for: domain authority, number of backlinks, security, website’s traffic through Alexa, and even people’s words about those websites, if this is possible.

Once you’ve found a website which looks like a good fit for you, negotiations begin. You want a backlink in exchange for your piece, but there’s more than one option to consider. What kind of backlink is the best?

Ideally, of course, you want to shoot for dofollow links in your guest posts. However, most websites which accept contributions have a “nofollow links only” policy for their guest authors. It’s not as bad as it sounds; nofollow links are only slightly less powerful than dofollow. Despite the name, sometimes Google may actually follow and crawl those links (which is what they mean by treating “nofollow” as a hint signal) to evaluate content on the linked pages.

Let’s also not forget about rel=”sponsored” links. As the name implies, the rel=”sponsored” attribute is reserved for paid links (e.g. sponsored posts). You may remember that Google doesn’t approve of the practice of buying backlinks, but it’s fair game if a link is openly declared as such by using this attribute. That way, nobody will be penalized, though it does tell Google about the insentive behind placing such a link, and it will be evaluated accordingly.

But don’t let it get to you. Dofollow, nofollow and sponsored links look all the same to users, so you won’t be missing out on user traffic. That comes down solely to the website’s popularity and your own post’s quality.

We have come to the most important part.

After you’ve found a website you want to write for, the next thing to do is to contact its owner in order to get permission for your article to be posted on the website. It is better to choose several topics and then offer them altogether. This will give a webmaster an opportunity to choose from and see that you can master more than one topic. Accordingly, you get more chances to be chosen or at least to be kept in mind. However, as this was mentioned a bit earlier, there is no 100% guarantee that you will be approved immediately, so don’t wait for instant results.

The way you contact a webmaster is pretty simple – through email or social media messaging systems, the most important of which is LinkedIn. However, this also demands some effort. Nowadays there are a lot of writers who want their material to be published, so you should be outstanding starting from the subject of your letter. You have to raise some interest from the very first words in order to be noticed among thousands of similar letters; choose something unusual and catchy, something that will definitely attract some attention to you.

After that you should work on the body of your letter. The same conditions: catchy, interesting, and beneficial for a website owner, not for you. We prefer to communicate with polite people who know something about etiquette, don’t we? So, don’t be cheap on politeness and complements and describe why their website got your attention and which posts particularly, and then write about things you want to give to their benefit. Be direct, short, and present two or three ideas, cogently describing their filling: topic, headline, and word count. If you have some great material on your website, you can leave some links in order to show that you are talented and professional enough to write for somebody. Here is a simple example, which is not obligatory to use:

To: webmaster@gmail.com

From: iwillwriteforyou@gmail.com

Subject: Do you have an article about baking fruit into pies and cakes?

Hello Jenny!

I’ve been reading you for a long time, realizing day by day that you provide, undoubtedly, the best material in your niche. However, I’ve noticed that you haven’t published any article concerning baking fruit into pies. I would be really glad to provide you with a great article about this and offer you some other variants:

#1

Topic: Bakery.

Headline: “Donuts and Cakes with Fruit Are All You Need”.

Word count: 1500 – 2000.

#2

Topic: Science.

Headline: “Lemons for Science or How to Start Liking Lemons”.

Word count: 1500 – 2000.

#3

Topic: SEO.

Headline: “WebCEO gives you the best fruit related keywords”.

Word count: 1500 – 2000.

 

You’d get a lot of traffic with one of these articles. I have a lot of experience in writing, with such articles as you can find here and here: *links*

Thank you! I will wait for your response.

 

Best regards,

Sally.

However, remember, that some serious and authoritative websites will ignore you. Let’s take The New York Times as an example here. They accept Op-Ed essays but mostly only from their favored contacts. In this case you should be polite, formal, direct, and cogent, especially in your subject line. It is also better to have a widespread name and high authority in terms of your sphere to have a chance of writing for them.

You can learn some other details about essay submission to The New York Times.

The next step is to wait. An answer to a good proposal can come after a whole week, if not longer, so don’t give up hope the next day. After you have received an approval message, it’s high time to start writing AND send a “Thank you” letter to the webmaster for the given opportunity.

Here are also some inspiring pieces of advice of How to Never Run Out of Blog Post Ideas. Check this out in order to always be ahead of your competitors and not undergo “freezing periods”.

First things first: make sure you can attach your guest writer’s bio to your posts wherever possible – and, fortunately, it is possible almost everywhere. Aside from introducing yourself in your bio, make sure to link to your social media profiles as well: that’s what Google uses to establish that different pieces of content were written by the same author.

SEO and Google search are entering an age of entities, an age that’s expected to revolutionize or even replace link building as we know it. Becoming one such entity will definitely make your name carry a lot of weight – and, if you can become famous, so will your website.

What about the more proactive ways of boosting your popularity?

The first option is to use your own website: leave a link to your guest post, so your visitors will be able to enjoy your content more and may become your constant readers.

The second option is to use social media. Leave a short and challenging description with a link and your post picture on all your accounts with appropriate hashtags. Going through hashtags, people can notice your post, read it, like it, and share it with others in the end, which means more traffic, followers, and subscribers on your website via the guest post on the other site. In other words, you can increase your traffic via social media, even if you are directly linking only to the other website.

In your social media post, you can tag people who will be alerted to your post automatically. This is a sneaky but effective way to gain attention from such people.

Performance Tracking.

Be sure to use the WebCEO Chosen Link Watch Tool in order to keep track of the backlinks to the guest post on the other website – those ones which you strived to get with guest blogging. This tool is extremely useful to monitor your links and be aware if:

1. a webmaster changed the anchor text of your link;
2. a webmaster tagged your link as nofollow:
3. a webmaster eliminated your link entirely;
4. a webmaster applied user-agent cloaking.

If you encounter these violations you can take appropriate measures. Never give anybody an opportunity to deprive you of an award for hard work!

TO SUMMARIZE: guest blogging has a lot to offer. First, this is a great opportunity to present your content to a new audience interested in your niche and converting people into your readers. Second, this is a rather successful method of building backlinks and getting traffic for your website. Of course, this is not perfect, but in capable hands, guest blogging can bring a lot of benefits. WebCEO is always by your side to help you. Find real link opportunities with WebCEO right away:

The post An Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging That Works appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

What new bloggers and site owners might not know is user experience is one of the factors of ranking a website on Google search results.

And especially now that most of the world is going online for all their needs, ranking higher on search results is a must. This means businesses are faced with the challenge of creating a user-friendly website and achieving their short- and long-term marketing goals.

Seasoned marketers know that becoming an SEO specialist involves more than writing long-tail keywords and meta tags. So how can you make sure user experience on your site actually helps boost your rankings? Read on to learn 10 essential tips to create an SEO-friendly website with easy site navigation for users.

1. Check the Site Health of Your Website Regularly

Conduct an assessment of analytics on your site before you overhaul it completely—this way you’ll see what’s doing well and then only focus on what needs improvement. Measuring product analytics in this case involves analyzing how users find, engage, and interact with your website.

You can start by identifying traffic trends and pain points in the customer journey throughout your website in order to optimize the user experience. There are several free tools you can use to measure your site health, including GTmetrix, Google Pagespeed, and WebCEO’s Website Auditor.

The great part about these tools is that they even point out which elements may be causing your site navigation and performance to be acting poorly than average, as well as your next steps to solving them.

(Source: Woopra)

2. Map Out Your Site Structure

There is an absolutely essential step in creating a good (both for users and SEO) site navigation: planning out your content hierarchy. What makes it so? Because organizing your site’s content into a logical structure makes it easy to navigate for humans and crawlers alike. It greatly improves the user experience, and you can imagine what the opposite does to UX.

You wouldn’t want your visitors to click out immediately just because they can’t find their way around your site. A standard horizontal navigation menu on the top or a vertical navigation menu on the left side of the webpage can do wonders for making your website easier to use.

Consider structuring your website according to group topics of content. This way, search engines will easily find and identify the ranking and importance of pages on your site.

Aside from content groupings, consider adding main pages like sales pages or service pages as top pages for your menu, so they’re easily available on your header or your footer. This will also be easier for you to keep track of website performance if your content is structured.

Before you start building or reorganizing your site, lay out a plan of the site structure first. This way, you can place and add content anytime without worrying about missing or breaking something or changing the site drastically.

(Standard horizontal navigation bar on the top of WebCEO’s home page.)

Another way to improve your content hierarchy is to express it in the pages’ URLs. For example, let’s say you run an online store. Your products will be sorted into categories, and so a product page’s URL will be structured like this: https://onlinestore.com/category/product. Naming your site’s pages and subdirectories in this manner makes them descriptive and easy to understand, whether you are a human or a robot.

Lastly, don’t make your hierarchal website structure too deep. A flat URL structure ensures all content on a site can be found quickly, so a three-step hierarchy like home page -> category -> product is usually the most efficient and optimal for SEO. However, a deeper structure can be just as good when it’s done right. Adding more steps can result in longer, but more descriptive URLs. This approach is recommended for sites with complex content (for example, related to science or medicine) where having more context is helpful.

3. Create a Schema Markup

Simply put, schema markup is a form of data added to a webpage so that search engines are able to better understand the content of this particular page. A rich snippet shows up on search engine results pages (SERPs) when you add schema markup on a webpage.

Rich snippets can feature descriptions, photos, reviews, ratings, contact details, and other content about the webpage based on the search result.

Aside from having organized data, having schema markup is an effective way to ensure that Google can read the content on your site and rank you higher in search results. Plus, you can improve click through rates on your site as well.

You can see average ratings as schema markup.

4. Prioritize Your Users, Not Search Engines

As a marketer, your priority is to create content that is valuable to the user. Ranking high on search engine results comes afterwards. Search queries are usually classified as the following:

• Transactional. Users want to do something on your site (book a flight, purchase an item, etc.)
• Navigational. Users want to go to a particular web page
• Informational. Users want to know something on your site (contact details, shop hours, FAQs, etc.)

When users value your content, your search ranking will also increase and your website will be visible to more visitors. Remember that search engines reward websites that show they understand their users—so focus first on how your users are using your site, and then search engines will reward you later.

5. Reduce Your Page Load Time

Marketers are competing for the customer’s attention. The average attention span of a visitor on your website is at 8 seconds, and 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or faster. If the website takes more than 3 seconds to load, chances are 33% of visitors have left by then.

You can reduce load time on your web pages by optimizing images and media, prioritizing visible content, enabling browser caching, and minimizing redirects on your site. Investing in a cloud storage service is also an advisable way to reduce page load times. Cloudwards evaluated that half of the top 12 services take only 25% longer to upload data and 27% longer to download data than expected.

6. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

You can’t underestimate the importance of optimizing your website for mobile users. People are spending a lot of time on their smartphones and tables. At least 52.6% of web traffic is generated through mobile devices and 51% of internet users already use their mobile devices to shop online.

Optimizing your website for mobile provides users with an easier way to navigate your site. You should design your mobile website with touch devices in mind. Avoid adding small click through links and opt for visual icons so users will know where each click will take them. Remember, always add a visible Call to Action on the pages.

(Glossier’s mobile website features visual cues and organized categories.)

7. Apply the Topic Cluster Model for Your Content

Topic clusters use hyperlinks to group different pieces of content which are related to a general topic on your website. By organizing topic clusters, your target audience will easily see your posts on your website. That way, you can also increase traffic and engagement on your site.

But long-tail keyword density isn’t just the key to ranking high on search results. Google prioritizes the quality of information provided by your content. The more relevant and informative your content is to users, the higher it appears on search results.

Topic clusters help solve that exact need. By focusing your content around broad topics and creating highly detailed posts on specific things under said topic, you can cover as much relevant information as possible. You also allow users to stay on your site and find other posts around the same topic—which in turn boosts your user experience and ultimately rankings.

8. Make Your Labels Clear and Specific

Navigation labels should be clear and descriptive. Every business has a product page or a page for their mission.

Be direct and keep the customer interested by using descriptive navigation labels. If your website is easy to navigate, customers will be more engaged and bounce rates will reduce. You can use online SEO tools to help you track your rankings and choose the right keywords for your website labels.

(Source: Databox)

9. Avoid Dropdown Menus

You should avoid dropdown menus if you want to optimize your website for SEO. Search engines find it difficult to crawl through dropdowns, and frankly, users don’t like clicking through lots of links.

Dropdowns can also decrease visits on top level pages since users often skip to the options in the sub pages. 

If you must use them on your site, make sure they are activated by touch for mobile users or by hovering your mouse for desktop users. Keep the multilevel navigation simple with no more than two layers of dropdown options.

10. Include Breadcrumbs

Like Hansel and Gretel in the woods, you should leave breadcrumbs—or short navigation menus—for your visitors so they can easily navigate around your site if they’re on a page that’s already far from the homepage.

Breadcrumbs make your website SEO structure cleaner and much more efficient to navigate. They usually appear at the top of your content, right beneath the header. Users can easily discover related content by clicking through the previous breadcrumb, and these can show off your site’s easy navigation.

(Source: UserSnap)

Key Takeaways

It takes more than just a keyword strategy to start ranking higher up on search engines. A well-designed and SEO-optimized website leads to a better user experience, and eventually more conversions for your business. After all, when Google sees your users love your site, they’ll reward you for it. Sign up for WebCEO to access the only tools you need to optimize the user experience for your customers.

The post 10 Tips for Building an SEO-Friendly Site Navigation appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Well-written content sells. The good thing about the harsh modern world is that there are tools to help you make your writing more interesting – and therefore lead to more conversions. They are SEO copywriting tools, and they can make a world of difference to your writing. Better yet, some of them do it completely for free.

The SEO content writing tools mentioned in this article serve a wide range of purposes, from improving your writing to making the writing experience more enjoyable for you. Here’s a list of 13 useful online writing tools that we recommend.

1. Grammarly

You may not get great praise because your content is grammatically correct, but you will definitely get choice words from grammar police when your grammar is lacking.

Let’s say you have found an excellent write my essay for me service and are now leveraging this content to create articles for your readers. Do your writing as you typically would without worrying about grammar and sentence structure, then run your content through Grammarly. It will highlight all your grammar mistakes, misspelling, tell you which words you have overused, and even check for plagiarism for you.

Grammarly takes it a step further when you add the extension to your browser. It will also edit your Facebook posts and your emails, so you never send an embarrassing typo again. With the free version, you will get a light grammar and spell checker. However, with the paid version, you get so much more, including checking for the use of passive voice and your sentence structure and voice.

2. Hemingway Editor

This app is another favorite among many writers.

Unless you are writing for a very knowledgeable reader base, you often want your content to be readable to many people. Hemingway will help you reduce wordiness in your content so that you can grab the readers’ attention and make a good impression.

One way it does this is by scoring the readability of your article. The higher the score, the more complex your writing is. It will show you which words you should omit and which sentences need shortening, revising, or splitting so that reading your work is not a chore to your readers.

3. HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator

If you are churning out article after article every week, you may find yourself in that uncomfortable position where you don’t know what to write about. This is different from writer’s block as you aren’t stuck in the middle of a piece. If the creative well is currently running dry, proceed to HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator and get writing prompts and content topics to kick start your writing process. 

Using the app is pretty straightforward. Simply give the app five different nouns of your choice, and it will spit out some title ideas to try. With the free version of the app, you can be able to find good topic ideas to write on every week so that your readers aren’t left wondering where you went off to.

4. WordCounter

If you use most word processors, you may be wondering why you would need an app that counts your words. This application does so much more. For example, it can count how many sentences and paragraphs are in your content. Additionally, it will also tell you the reading level of the article as well as how many times you used specific words.

Lastly, it will estimate your articles’ reading and speaking time, which is excellent if you are writing a speech or if you want to provide the approximate reading time to your readers.

5. ProWritingAid

This AI-powered writing tool will help you become a better writer. First, it will help you correct those silly spelling and grammar mistakes that make readers cringe when they find them. Second, it will analyze your content’s strength, clarity, vocabulary, and style so that your content is more engaging and persuasive.

You can get more than 15 reports focusing on different aspects of your writing, and they have features that make all the editing fun and interactive.

6. Diffchecker

Let’s say you ran your content through Hemingway Editor and Grammarly, and now, you feel that the article is very different from the article you had to begin with. Maybe you feel like some elements of the original piece were lost in all the editing. This is where Diffchecker comes in.

Simply copy the first draft of your article into the ‘Original text’ box. Next, copy the current version into the ‘Changed text’ box. Diffchecker will work its magic and highlight the differences between the articles. You can do this with images and PDFs too.

Store the differences checked for future use by creating a free account.

7. OneLook Reverse Dictionary

Sometimes, you will find that Grammarly or WordCounter will indicate that you used a specific word too many times in the process of editing your documents. You may get suggestions for alternative words in some cases, but this isn’t always the case. Sometimes you aren’t pleased with the options offered – cue in OneLook Reverse Dictionary. Key in the offending repeated word, and it will spit out lists of similar words to pick from.

Ever had that moment when you know the meaning of the word you want but not the word itself? This dictionary can help with that too. Simply type in the description, and the dictionary will give you several suggestions for what you might be looking for. You will be positively surprised at how many options you have to pick from in some cases.

8. Draft

Thought that Microsoft Word and Google Docs are the only reasonable writing applications to pick from, think again. Draft is a word processor with a difference.

Like Google Docs, you can write and edit online, and your work will be automatically saved to the cloud. However, here is one feature Google Docs definitely does not have. Draft has a particular feature called Hemingway Mode, which disables the Delete key. If you have a problem with editing your work while writing it and all those articles that have warned you against it haven’t worked, this is the solution.

It also allows you to compare old work and collaborate with others to make the best final document possible. It has other features like commenting and markup and image hosting that make it a stiff competitor against the two writing staples.

You can quickly sign up for a free account and get access to all the nifty features this word processor has to offer.

9. Cliché Finder

There is something endearing about using clichés every once in a while. However, your readers will quickly become disgruntled if every other line in your work is a cliché.

That’s where Cliché Finder comes in.

It will go through your work and point out the clichés you may have used in your work so that you have the chance to edit them before submitting your final work. You will be forgiven for having one or two clichés but don’t let your work be overburdened by them.

10. Freedom

Everyone suffers from procrastination. Creatives sometimes suffer the brunt of it. You may start off by researching one tiny aspect of your work, and three hours later, you are neck-deep on Reddit, trying to understand what black holes are. Now, you have wasted precious hours you would have spent writing being unproductive.

Freedom will help you stay focused on the task at hand by blocking your ability to browse all together or only allowing you a select few websites to browse. You may even decide to block specific websites like Pinterest because deep down, you know that what you need to be doing is writing that article, not learning how to make that Rubix cube rotating drawer.

11. Copyscape

There may be nothing more offending as a content creator than someone taking your work and publishing it as their own. You most probably put in hours of time and effort into curating work that is unique and engaging. In the same vein, you would not want to commit the heinous crime of publishing something that has already been posted by someone else. If nothing else, you need a plagiarism checker to avoid getting Google penalties.

Copyscape will allow you to check your work for plagiarism against millions of published work online so that you are churning out original pieces each time.

12. The Most Dangerous Writing App

This app may be aptly named for what it will do to you if you stop for too long. Those who are faint of heart beware.

It’s simple. Decide how much writing time you want to achieve, be it three minutes or sixty minutes, or anywhere in between. Start writing. If you pause for too long between sentences, you will lose your draft.

This app is excellent for those plagued by that rude inner critic and want to learn to ignore the offending character.

13. WebCEO

And of course, SEO copywriting is impossible without SEO. It’s in the name, duh.

Before you can sell users on your content, they must be able to find it in search first. That requires optimizing your text with keywords that attract the largest number of users. Every keyword has a different search volume that doesn’t stay the same for long – that’s why you must use SEO tools to analyze the keywords in your copy.

Have you got an idea for a keyword already? Enter it into WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions. It will give you a list of similar keywords along with their metrics, such as search volume and how its value has fluctuated over the past year.

Or perhaps your texts might already be ranking for some really powerful keywords, with you nonethewiser. Yes, it can happen, too. In this case, you need to look into WebCEO’s other tab: Keywords from Google Search Console. It will show you how many impressions and clicks you have been getting for all the keywords that have brought you traffic – and perhaps help you discover something you should use in your texts more often.

Afterword

Words have power. If you know how to write inspiring texts, you can influence people to do anything. The Internet is all about using this power, which is why there are so many high quality tools to help you use it for good. Choose the tools which suit you best and create money-making content with the power of SEO copywriting.

The post 13 Essential Tools for SEO Content Writing appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

How many times have you heard praises about content marketing as a powerful marketing channel? You surely cannot count it on one hand.

There’s no denying its power to educate people and generate leads, but without an SEO strategy focused on bringing organic traffic, content marketing is just an extra element on your website, waiting to be found and used.

SEO is the best complement that content marketing has, and as such, you can’t ignore it. If you already have a content marketing strategy in place and haven’t developed an SEO plan to go along with it, you need to get started today.

Here’s how you can ensure that your content marketing strategy is SEO-oriented.

1. Analyze your current SEO performance

Start by analyzing your content marketing’s SEO performance, and to do that, you need to carry out an SEO analysis of your entire content operations.

An SEO analysis will show you how your current content performance in Google, what you are doing, and what you need to improve to boost your rankings. The analysis involves:

• Checking where you currently rank in search engines
• Checking your current crawling and indexing performance (i.e., what pages Google can crawl and index, and whether it’s ignoring key pages that you want to rank for)
• Auditing your site for technical and SEO errors
• Finding the backlinks your content has received and their authority
• Comparing how your content performs against its competitors

You can categorize each of the points mentioned above into two groups:

• On-site SEO analysis, which focuses on the way you optimize your pages to provide evidence to Google about the nature of your content.
• Off-site SEO analysis, which covers the backlinks your pages have acquired, their authority, and their nature (i.e., whether they come from natural linking, guest posts, partnerships, etc.).

To take your content marketing analysis even further, you can carry out a SWOT analysis that measures what you are doing right, what you could do to increase your rankings, and what could hinder your future results.

(Source)

2. Organize your keywords strategically

To carry out a successful SEO strategy, you need to implement keyword research—that is, the process of discovering the queries Google’s users use to search in the search engine.

You can put a keyword research process in place with the help of a keyword research tool such as WebCEO, which measures the number of monthly searches, CPC, and trends for each keyword in its database.

You can start your keyword research by adding your website to WebCEO and exporting all the keywords that your website is currently ranking for.

Then, make a list of your top competitors and export the list of keywords they rank for. With all this data, you want to:

• Create categories for your keywords by topic—e.g., all keywords about “tennis shoes” should go within one category, while the ones about “basketball shoes” go in another one.
• Create a backlog of keywords to target those that your competitors are ranking for and your website isn’t—in the future, you want to create content to target these keywords.
• Organize them by volume and CPC—you can create separate tabs for keywords with high volume and low CPC, and vice-versa.

A common mistake you want to avoid making is obsessing about volume exclusively. Intent is as important as volume because you should prioritize conversions (and growing your revenue) over driving traffic.

All keywords can be categorized in three ways:

• Commercial keywords: These keywords have a direct connection with buying—e.g., “buy tennis shoes.”
• Informational keywords: These are keywords where the user wants to find information about a topic—e.g., “what are tennis shoes.”
• Navigational keywords: These are keywords connected to specific brands, locations, and products—e.g., “nike tennis shoes.”

You can create separate tabs for each category or add a column in your keyword plan. In either case, your job is to uncover their hidden intent, which you can do by:

1. Analyzing their nature: Keywords with words like “buy” or “coupon” are commercial in nature; keywords that include words like “how to” or “tutorial” are informational; keywords with specific brands, locations, or products are navigational.
2. Check their CPC: Keywords with high CPC are often commercial in nature, as they convert better, while keywords with low CPC are informational or navigational.

After you have developed your keyword plan, you can start optimizing your pages according to their nature—i.e., adding commercial keywords to commercial pages, and so on.

3. Optimizing your content for SEO

After you have done your entire analysis and keyword research plan, you need to optimize your content both for SEO and quality. This last word is crucial, as marketers often end up over-optimizing their content, which alienates their readers, and this disgusts Google.

According to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, quality content is:

• Unique, valuable, or engaging
• Made for people, not search engine’s bots
• Honest; it doesn’t deceive its readers
• Within Google’s guidelines—i.e., it doesn’t use tricks to manipulate search engine rankings

When you optimize your content for SEO, you want to make sure your content respects these guidelines. Think of your on-site optimization as the act of naturally adding keywords around your page, so Google understands what it’s about while still serving your reader.

Writing with SEO in mind is important, but only if the quality is there. If you feel that the content you produce isn’t clear, valuable, or honest, you need to rethink your content strategy altogether.

Assuming this isn’t the case, you can start carrying out your on-site optimization. Since this process is relatively simple and mechanical, you want to use a checklist that guides your marketers into optimizing the pages the right way.

At the minimum, your checklist should indicate the optimization of the following elements:

• Page Title: These are the titles that show up on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Add your keyword in your title pages.
• Density: This is the number of times a keyword shows up in your content divided by the total amount of words on the page. A good rule of thumb is showing your keyword once every 100 words; more is too much, less can be accepted, especially if you use variations of it (e.g., “buy tennis shoes,” “buy great tennis shoes”).
• Images Alt-Tags: This is a tag you use within your HTML to indicate Google the nature of your images. Add your keyword and their variations in your images’ alt-tag.
• URLs and Internal Links: Add your keywords in your URLs and internal links. If a page is already published, you can create a new page with the keyword in its URL and redirect the old “incorrect” one to the new “correct” one.

Some tools can help you with your on-site optimization, like TextOptimizer, which optimizes your content by adding or removing content from your text to improve your search engine optimization.

4. Develop a content marketing process

Content marketing is a complex process that involves several teams, stakeholders, and tasks. Your SEO optimization shouldn’t be an ad-hoc task you do every few months; it should be part of an on-going process.

The implementation of content marketing requires consistency. You want to balance your content creation and promotion with your SEO plan. For that reason, you need to have a content development process in place.

A content development process explains the steps your team takes to research ideas, prioritize, create, and promote them. It outlines the system your team uses to carry out your content marketing efforts. The one you see below represents the process I use to create content on my site; similarly, your process will show the different steps you take to do the same.

Consider developing a content calendar where you add the keywords you will target in the future with your content, who’s responsible for it, and the goals you set up. Add your keywords before the writer starts writing content; by the time they get to work on their content piece, they will have embedded your SEO in it naturally.

Your content development process will vary greatly depending on your goals, resources, and priorities. To give you an example, your process could look like this:

1. Define a list of keywords to target for the next quarter.
2. Assign content topics to each keyword—alternatively, ask your writers to pitch you topics for each one.
3. Pick a keyword and assign it to the writer. Add a brief that explains what it should be about and the way the piece should be optimized.
4. Set a deadline and ask the writer to start the article.
5. Edit the content for quality and SEO—use the checklist from above.
6. Publish the content and implement your marketing plan, which can include link building and outreach.

5. Leverage the power of guest posting

SEO is straightforward: to attract organic traffic from Google, you need to rank your pages. And from the hundreds of ranking factors Google uses to do so, backlinks continue to be one of the most important.

There are countless link building tactics, but one that continues to work is guest posting—the act of publishing content on third-party sites and getting links from it.

To start your guest posting, take the list of the keywords you came up with previously, and analyze each one in your SEO tool of choice.

Nico Prins explains in his thorough guide on guest posting that you can review the backlink profiles of each keyword using Ahrefs and focus on:

1. The number of referring domains each page in the top result has
2. The number of the referring domains that have a DR 50+ (DR is a metric Ahrefs uses to measure the authority of a domain)

According to Nico Prins, you want to pitch to sites that meet the following criteria:

• It has DR 50+
• It has 3,000+ organic visitors a month
• It has a Trust Flow over 20 (use Majestic SEO TK to measure this)
• It’s niche-relevant

Alternatively, you can use any of the following footprints to find opportunities in your niche:

• “keyword” + “become a contributor”
• “keyword” + “contribute”
• “keyword” + “guest post by”
• “keyword” + “guest post guidelines”
• “keyword” + “submission guidelines”
• “keyword” + “this guest post is from”
• “keyword” + “this guest post was written”
• “keyword” + “this is a guest article”
• “keyword” + “this is a guest post by”
• “keyword” + “write for us”
• “keyword” + inurl:guest-posts
• “keyword” + inurl:write-for-us

Add your chosen keyword where it says “keyword” (including the quotes) and make a list of all the sites you find.

Then, find the editors responsible for managing the content. You can search within each site or use LinkedIn. Before sending a pitch, find their emails with the help of a tool like Hunter.

Your pitch should be simple yet clear; send some ideas that you think their audience will like while showing respect to the editor. Here’s a framework Nico Prins recommends using:

(Source)

When you start writing your guest post, do it as if you were writing for your own site. High-domain authority sites tend to ask for high-quality content, thus to guarantee your content will be published, put quality above links.

One final tip is to use a URL shortener to track your results. With this data, you can analyze the number of visitors you drove from each site. If one site drives lots of referral visitors, you can post more than once and get not only links, but traffic.

Summary

Content marketing will continue to be one of the prime ways companies grow their online presence. When you are designing your content marketing strategy, make sure to optimize it for SEO.

• Start by analyzing your current performance.
• Create a thorough keyword research plan.
• Simultaneously, create a content development process that simplifies the entire content creation and SEO optimization tasks.
• Edit your content for SEO and quality.
• Write guest posts to attract high-quality, relevant links, and rank your pages.

Ensure your content marketing is SEO-focused. Begin by checking how your content ranks in Google.

The post 5 Steps to Befriend Your Content Marketing with SEO appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Are you keeping up with Google’s updates?

In early May 2020, Google announced that, by 2021, they would be implementing Web Vitals. It’s a new program that will guide website owners to focus on “quality signals” that will deliver the best user experience on the web.

Google has always prioritized the user experience in its search engine algorithm – this is not groundbreaking news. They are now defining new on-page elements. These elements will inform and influence SEO with the introduction of Web Vitals initiative, including Core Web Vitals.

What are Google’s new Core Web Vitals, and how will this affect your SEO? How can you prepare for this shift in Google’s search algorithm? Let’s answer these questions.

What are Google’s new Core Web Vitals and how do they affect me?

So what exactly are Google’s Core Web Vitals? In a nutshell, they are a group of signals that make up a great user experience on the web. They consist of three main things: page loading speed, page responsiveness (interactivity), and visual stability.

We asked Dan Fries from Blue Tree PR, an SEO and PR agency, what this means for site owners looking to rise up the ranks of Google Search, and he says:

“These Core Web Vitals are just essentially Google telling us that, if your site provides a great user experience, then it will rank better. And while it’s obviously hard to truly measure user experience – the true test would likely be conducting customer surveys or gathering feedback about user experience on your website – Google has just made it easier by identifying these actual, measurable metrics that could point to good or bad user experience.”

Here are the new Core Web Vitals and what they point to, according to Google:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Because Google will be implementing improvements in their search algorithm, we can expect that, as always, websites that perform well in their ranking factors will be rewarded with better site rankings overall.

These words might not mean anything to you right now, but they will soon be a, well, vital part of your SEO strategy. In the next section, we’ll break down what each Core Web Vital tries to measure, so you will know what to improve and focus on with your own site and SEO.

What do the Core Web Vitals measure?

Let’s take a look at each Core Web Vital signal and what that means for your site. For each of these, you can use Google’s built-in tools like PageSpeed Insights to get your site’s current scores.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• 2-second summary: LCP measures your page’s perceived loading performance.
• Ideal measurement: 2.5 seconds or faster
• What this means: Perceived loading performance indicates how fast your page can load the most important elements that are important to the user.

While overall page loading time does still matter, there will in fact be a difference.

LCP focuses instead on the first thing that users will see on your page, showing them the most interesting parts of your page that will convince them to stay.

So, for example, if users click through to a news article from a Google search, the first elements they might want to see are the article title, or a featured photo, or the first paragraph of the article.

First Input Delay (FID)

• 2-second summary: FID measures responsiveness of a page.
• Ideal measurement: 100ms or less
• What this means: FID measures the time between users taking action or interacting on your page (e.g. clicking a link or a button) and the time it actually takes for the browser to deliver the expected result from that interaction.

Google wants to pay attention to this because a slow FID can indicate user frustration. After all, if it takes a long time for a site to take them to a new page, open a pop-up form, or jump to another section, then users will likely not be happy.

If your FID score is close to zero, then this means your page responsiveness is performing well, and users are able to interact with each element on your site without much delay.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

• 2-second summary: CLS measures the visual stability of your page as users scroll through.
• Ideal measurement: 0.1 or 0
• What this means: Imagine you’re reading a blog post and are about halfway through. All of a sudden, the page appears to reload, and then the paragraph you were on has disappeared, replaced by a button or content box.

You realize that you need to scroll down to get back to that paragraph you were previously reading, and this might cause some frustration.

This is exactly what CLS aims to measure: how often these layout shifts happen to your reader while on your page.

A CLS score of zero is the ultimate ideal because it means users aren’t experiencing much, if any, layout shifts in the middle of their experience on your site.

How can I optimize my website for SEO when Core Web Vitals is live?

While Google will be implementing these priority shifts reportedly by 2021, it would still be good practice to prepare as much as you can.

Here are some simple steps to help you be on your way to optimizing for Core Web Vitals.

1. Measure your loading speed

Since these metrics are largely centered around a website’s loading speed, you can view them using SEO tools which measure this speed. For instance, Core Web Vitals have recently been incorporated in WebCEO’s Page Speed tool.

Here’s what they look like (marked with a blue flag):

One other WebCEO report displays this data: Mobile Optimization. And here’s the fun thing: the two reports may show completely different data for the same page!

However, when you think about it, the reason for this discrepancy is obvious. The Mobile Optimization report measures the loading speed only for mobile devices (duh). Focus on your mobile SEO as well if you want good numbers!

Also, if your Field Data is blank, don’t panic. First, it displays data from the last 30 days; and second, Google obtains the Core Web Vitals data by analyzing user activity on pages. The more users visit the page, the more accurate data will be in the report. This means the opposite is also true: low user activity will result in a lack of information, and Field Data may be missing some of the metrics or even appear completely blank.

Of course, there’s still plenty of time before 2021. Google may yet start using less data for composing these reports.

2. Prioritize site fixes

If these metrics signal to you that there are problems, what are the solutions?

Good news: you won’t be stumbling in the dark. Instead of trying to find and fix every single issue on your site yourself, you can count on high-quality SEO tools to point you in the right direction. The two WebCEO reports mentioned above can do just that.

They won’t just detect problematic pages – they can even tell you which files are causing your site to perform poorly. Don’t be alarmed if you’re seeing a lot of issues on your site when you first check. It’s completely normal, especially if you’re paying attention to these issues just now.

3. Resolve site issues based on your data and insights

The last and final step is to now address the issues of your site, based on what you’ve seen in the Page Speed and Mobile Optimization reports, as well as their recommendations for fixing issues.

The good news for CMS users is that, when you fix the problems on one page, you can fix the problems for everything else.

For example: if you’re on WordPress, you can customize your WordPress site to compress images, enable Lazy Load, use a CDN, and implement an AMP framework all from one dashboard.

If you’re not using a CMS, you’ll need to talk to your developer about implementing these changes and fixes.

Get ready for Core Web Vitals!

Google’s updates can send some people into panic. However, the changes to its algorithm are always meant to make search a better experience for everyone. The new Core Web Vitals are the same: they will help you deliver a better user experience on your website, as well as keep your visitors happier and more engaged.

And this update actually lets you see the difference with your own eyes, which is uncommon for Google. You can check the new metrics with SEO tools any time and use them to improve your site’s performance. Loading speed is one of the major factors in UX. Tend to it now!

The post Google Update: New Tips to Improve User Experience appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.