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Jun 02 2018

Why Link Building Strategy?

Why do you need link building?

Many ask why link building still is one of the most important skills in the SEO industry. If you keep reading, you’ll understand it soon enough.

If you’ve been doing SEO the old fashioned way – probably something that looks like this:

  • You’ve done your on-page SEO, i.e. changed your title tags.
  • Interlinked your pages correctly.
  • Inserted keywords in the proportions in the page.

And many other technical aspects directly to do with your website. Well, but then…. what do you do next? I mean, you can only optimize your pages for SEO so far.

You just need to build more authority right?

So the question is – How are you going to do this and get more traffic?

The answer is simple: link building.

What is link building anyway?

Think of high quality links almost as a “vote” for your site. Site owners will be most keen to add your page url to their site if it’s relevant to them. And the more of these votes that Search engines see linking to a site, the more likely it is that the site will rank for a particular query.

Link-building-steps

And therefore, the higher your pages rank, the more organic traffic you will get.

But note, I did say high quality, that means you need to emphasise quality rather than quantity.
Not every link is equal. That is why you can rank a page at the top with a handful links, above a site which has thousands of (low quality) links.

You can #rank a page in Google's top results with just a handful links, above a 
site that has thousands of (low quality) links. Click To Tweet

The subject of assessing low and high quality content is a discussion for another article but, put simply, you just need to adopt the basic principle that you want a link from a page which is relevant to your site and is likely to have an audience who would also be interested in your content. It’s that simple!

I would add this – as it gives the reader a (sentence) obvious continuity.

So, follow this S.M.A.R.T framework that will allow you to quick-off a high quality link building strategy. Whether you work on a new project or existing ones, here’s how to go about:

Here are a few items you need to integrate/prioritise when choosing link building techniques. At the beginning of your process revise and ask the following:

  • What are the goals of the business?
  • What types of links you need? (based on your profile)
  • Which relevant links will you need in order to compete, based on the link profile of your competitors?
  • What are the resources you have available to you?
  • Who is doing it and/or am I capable of implementing this on my own?
  • When can you do it?
  • How much time do you have? (do you do it yourself or delegate)

Tip: At this point, you should prioritise your techniques based on time and resources, as it isn’t practical or sensible to try and implement them all at once.

These questions will help you filter out the main techniques that you can and can’t use – but also will help you prioritise your list of techniques. And that’s what you need in the end.

The great benefits of links

Yes, so let’s have a quick look to the benefits when you build up on high quality and relevant backlinks:

1. A higher rank on search engines

Naturally, these search engines will want to rank the most authoritative among the niche group and push it up to the top of the search results list.

When Google’s crawl bots find your site, they will try to assess whether you have contextual backlinks linking to it. If it does, then the rest should fall into place and you will get higher rankings,resulting in more traffic to your website.

2. Direct traffic from the links

Good backlinks is a very effective way of driving traffic, not just indirectly by improving rankings, but sometimes even more useful if the direct traffic comes to the site via these particular (quality) links.

3. Brand awareness

Not much of a major concern especially at the start of your link building campaign, but as time goes on and you build relationships, your reputation enhances within the industry, brand awareness comes into play and this will be an important factor in becoming an authority.

How to build links properly?

The first stage to building links, is to understand them.

The next step, is to actually understand that it’s not an overnight process. And in order to build a truly natural and high quality link profile – you will need to build relationships within your industry..

In a nutshell, here is the process behind a solid white hat link building strategy:

  1. Create great quality content, that isn’t an advertorial or too “salesy”. It needs to address the unique problems faced by your audience and above all – be useful and interesting.
  2. Build relationships with bloggers, website owners and/or editors and show them this epic content you’ve created. The aim here is to get a link from them or to collaborate in some way, so you can drive traffic to your site.
  3. Follow up! Especially if you’re contacting website owners via Social media or email, you won’t always get a reply the first time. It always pays off to be persistent – but, if someone keeps ignoring you, – then, it’s time to move on.
  4. Rinse and repeat. Not all the content you create will hit the right mark. It’s a case of testing and seeing what content works best. But with enough patience and persistence, you will begin to get an idea of exactly the type of content you should be creating.

The key thing is, don’t overcomplicate it.

SEO is about so much more than just the technical aspects of on-page. It is about how you create and deliver content to your audience, not search engines. The more value you provide throughout your content, the more they’ll consume.

But also, it will pay off in dividends when you start to build professional relationships whilst doing link building.

These links will then start to bring in effective and relevant traffic, which is so much more efficient than just doing on-page SEO alone.

Remember that for your website to rank and/or be considered by Google ( to be found), it has to offer:

  • High quality and/or up-to-date content. (Trust)
  • Good internal and external links (Diversity)
  • Authoritative links (Authority)
  • Relevant and credible sources. (Relevancy)
To rank well above everyone else you need: a) high quality #content ; b) link diversity; c) #authoritative links and relevant sources. Click To Tweet

With an effective link building planning to organise and structure your links, it’s easier to convince and get third-party web pages to link to your site.

Revise and/or apply the above and feel free to ask us any question you may have.

This post was put together by Amit and Paul.  Amit is a freelance SEO/link builder expert. He has this ability to delve into the specifics.

Thanks for reading.

Related Posts

  • Vertical Search Hacks to Rank Quicker
  • 13 Reasons Why Your Content Strategy is Failing
  • How to Create Content with a Top Tip List?
  • 5 SMART Ways to Create Content Marketing
  • Which Seo Techniques Should You Use

Written by Paul Alves · Categorized: SEO Content Strategy · Tagged: Search Engine Optimisation, SEO tactics, Strategy Content

Mar 31 2018

Vertical Search Hacks to Rank Quicker

Vertical search – what does it mean?

Person-searchingVertical search is pretty much similar to universal search, except that vertical search engine focuses on a specific category, media type or genre of content, according to Wikipedia.

Vertical Search hacks will be presented further down.

There is however, a combination of vertical search engines and big data platforms or both (all-in-one) covering a specific range of niche industries.

These include niche industry sites such as traveling, comparison, reviews, etc. In other words, vertical content search focusses on unique, specific categories and it may touch any of these: niche site topic or any content marketing genre.

But also includes online searches related to different vertical industry sectors – we’ll get there in a moment.
I hope this helps you understand vertical and other type of search.

Credit: Above photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash

Content, my research and search engines

We often read that great content is vital to support our SEO strategy and this is now more true than ever before. If you get your content marketing right you are on the high-way to give your business a solid chance to appear on multiple horizontal and vertical searches.

But let’s first see some importants factors to help you do that.

SEO/Content factors to get you there:

Cq: Content quality
Cr: Content research/Keyword research
Cf: Content freshness
Cv: Vertical search
Ca: Direct answers

You can study the topic further at search engine land

As we all know Google deliver page results based upon specific algorithms behavior. They also continue to test new terminologies, queries in order to deliver and class them properly.

Why?

Well, one of the reasons is, their algorithms (bots) are constanly collecting and learning how users search, interact, click-behave, thus analysing what types/topics of content work best in different contexts to give people more precise and/or relevant search results based upon terms they use or prefer.

Let’s have a quick look at some types of queries that people (myself included) will use to search for specific and important industries terms when performing a search before buying a product/service or for any other related travel search.

I rarely use Google to look for travel destinations – I’d rather research travel review sites such as Tripadvisor or airline sites. Because I get to see quick results through vertical listings/sites. I start by reading their reviews, comments, check photos, videos etc. This works for me and gives me direct and better personal insight when it comes to research a particular destination.

For the purpose of this post, I searched (Google) & DuckDuckGo for:

What is the cheapest city to travel to in Europe?

 

Vertical-search-for-European-cites

From the top three results:

I spotted “Cheapest cities in Europe in 2018” from Price of Travel, (third position). I picked these guys because it offers informative and relevant keywords. The website is managed by founder Roger Wade – by the way, congrats to Roger as he’s competing with the big boys.

But as I am curious, I went and tried to find a pattern here.

So, I then typed “Best traveling prices in Europe’s most popular cities” and Price of Travel (POT) show up again, and again… above Skyscanner and Tripadvisor – in top three with two results.

The 13 best-value cities in Europe for budget travelers in 2017

Best-city-values-in-Europe

 

By the way, Price of Travel is a database (niche travel website) of travel costs in every major destination around the world. You should try it.

Okay, we know that search engines such as Google will consider (in a few seconds) several hundred factors before showing you the most relevant ones (depending if you are searching from a desktop or mobile) and we noticed (I hope) PoT come out in first and third position again, because they have simply have a great navigational structure, title relevancy, tag description, accessibility, images etc.

For the page title “Cheapest cities in Europe in 2018” we can read its meta-description and a much closer term relevancy with my initial query:

– ” prices for tourists in Europe’s most popular cities”
– ” designed to help you sort out the cheapest European cities”
– ” budget for when you visit Europe”.

That’s a winner for me, it has told me in two sentences what the post is all about. Very helpful and relevant! What else.

I am hoping you now understand how important it is to get Cq, Cr, and Cf right.

 

Vertical search hacks, Business directories and other

Did you know that Google has its own vertical search features? Yes, these include: local search, Google maps, video, and images.

Although your initial search may originate in the Google search field, it may happen that you and I click on some vertical searches results links or – “specific searches” – shifting to vertical and topical sites. It is important that people can find you when searching for your company through Google or a business directory. Make sure your business is listed in the following local directories.

Note: this specific searches are also becoming more popular with the rise of smartphones.

Many search engines have realised the gain in popularity and sought to increase their advertising features by providing local directory information. Google come out with “Google My Business” and Bing Places for Business. They have added powerful A.I technology behind (to local directory ) to provide clever maps with directory listings, local citations, local reviews and ratings, images, 3D etc – all tied up together with keyword relevancy and geo-targeting.

 

Here below you’ll find 20 ish directories you should use starting with:

Google My Business – In my view this is (surely) the easiest SEO hack on this list, but also the most important one.

Just follow the steps below to make sure your listing will be ready and optimised:

  • Ensure you’ve claimed your business listing
  • Verify your account (email)
  • Add or update your business profile with as much detail as possible – For example: enter and display correct business hours, phone, email address and add 5+photos. Populate your listing with high-quality images only – Google loves and prioritises images of your indoor office, team, etc.
  • Enter your main url website [www.domain.com] Good tip idea: add utm tag to track clicks
  • Then verify your listing.
  • Start collecting customer reviews – This part called local SEO really help your business.

Also to improve your business chances further you should check local businesses quality guidelines. For all GMB related questions such as “How do I verify my business” read business FAQ’s.

 

Bing Places for Business – Repeat the same on Bing platform.

You can do the same on Yellow Pages platform.

I have listed some of the best directories sites that you still can go and list your business.

You should also add/list your business details on sites below:

PR7 Websites

www.yelp.co.uk
www.yell.com
www.opendi.co.uk/
www.opendi.us or add any other country extension in the World

Yelp is a typical vertical search engine that crowd-sources reviews on local businesses such as: hotels, restaurants, bars, and more.

PR6

www.192.com
www.scoot.co.uk
www.ukinternetdirectory.net

PR5

www.touchlocal.com
www.freeindex.co.uk
www.britaine.co.uk
http://scrubtheweb.com/
www.2findlocal.com
www.locallife.co.uk
www.cityvisitor.co.uk
http://businessmagnet.co.uk/
www.business-directory-uk.co.uk
http://directory.independent.co.uk/

PR4

www.citylocal.co.uk
www.hotfrog.co.uk
www.b2bindex.co.uk
www.4ni.co.uk
www.ukdirectory.co.uk

 

When linking to these sites you are creating backlinks (majority to your site – these act as a content mention/referal to your site/blog. Many will help you get found in many search results. Thus, this still is a good PR strategy for your business as these directories are often tapped by Google (and others) due to their relevancy and trust, and high-page rank (PR) . A very positive boost to your off-page SEO.

Niche sites

Niche site or blog is a platform that informs and serves a smaller niche of people as a small segment of a larger industry. For example, travel is a huge industry and its perfect to start a niche site – this might be a blog that offers unique insights, reviews or city destinations data prices [PoT] as mentioned above.

Vertical search and its benefits

When using multiple vertical search/platform sites you will be offered the chance to show your business and benefit from these potential extra traffic. Here are some of the benefits you can get:

  • greater precision due to specific scope
  • leverage domain knowledge to include taxonomies (SEO)
  • support and increase speed/specific unique user tasks.

 

Conclusion:

Focus and grab these big opportunities that are hidden within the local search, as these are hundred times more powerful than any other form of vertical search. Local listings submissions for example are of the essence and you’ll need to the make sure its most important elements (business name, address, phone number, website url, and categories, etc) are consistently typed.

In my opinion, we’ll see new types/ variations of vertical search engines emerge (A.I), offering online users a much reliable source of information/ data with one clear goal – improve their experience, decision-making and shorten online search.

Following from the above steps – the idea is to make you aware of its full business traffic potential. Before creating and publishing well crafted content you must first research and plan your topics well ahead. This is also called “deep work” and you’ll need to include:

  • knowing your audience (whom),
  • the reason you’re talking to them (why) and/or purpose,
  • its relevancy (how to)
  • and the channels (where) you’ll promote them for the pre-analysed users so they can find and read it.

A long-term strategy is needed on building unique brand values and also requires multiple touch points (Google maps, videos, directories etc). To drive traffic, engage and convert users into sales, one needs to understand the mindset and actions of searchers in order to structure a website and blog accordingly.

So, to do that start answering one of the most important and primary questions which is:

“Why and How do people search?” (always think mobile vs desktop).

You then need to experiment (via a persona or actual customer) to understand from the people’s mindset and/or point of view on what are they typing. Basicly, you’ll need to create a buyer behavior model and/or a customer journey mapping.

Also, it’s good to know that Google lab is experimenting with:

– Micro term (random) fluctuations within pre-defined geo-locations and magnitude.
– Automatic detection & adjustment, based on language and change in external data and behavior patterns.

In today’s online search people (myself included) ask more precise questions and/or explore long variations in their search. Some are ready and will type directly transactional searches to compare prices or buy, others will browse just for informational purpose to collect insight or explore the topic and options available to them.

Whatever it is Google, Bing or DuckDuckgo search, each will provide you with more or less relevant results on the first page that are selected and based upon best key-phrases written in the title, meta descriptions and onpage body text.

Remember, you only get out what you put in! So, now your turn – are you in or out?

If you like or found this post relevant, please share it around you. Feel free to add your own search experience or make a comment below.

Thanks 🙂

Related Posts

  • Why Link Building Strategy?
  • 13 Reasons Why Your Content Strategy is Failing
  • How to Create Content with a Top Tip List?
  • 5 SMART Ways to Create Content Marketing
  • How Can Small Businesses Create Content and Faster?

 

Written by Paul Alves · Categorized: SEO Content Strategy · Tagged: Content Creation Steps, Search Engine Optimisation

Jul 20 2017

13 Reasons Why Your Content Strategy is Failing

[updated: 06.03.19]  Reading time: 6–7 minutes

Reasons to Why Content Strategy Fails?
Do you accept Content strategy checkmate?

Did you ever ask yourself why your content fails?

You should.

Writing content that will attract and keep people coming back for more, can be daunting and exhausting.

Here is a little framework (reminder for some) for you the reader, before we go into details.

In order to develop a solid content strategy you’ll first need to start with a SMART research.

These can be put into four tabs:

  • Industry/market research
  • Client/customer research
  • New disruptors or business innovators research
  • Competitor research

From here you’ll need to scrutinise your data not once but at all times! I repeat – you need a person almost full-time to check out your best content, topic, keywords etc.

Analyse your industry: a) Seek for alternative industries? (less competition)  b) what is your business/ company strategicly good at? c) what do you stand for?

Client/customer research: Analyse the three types:  a) the buyers b) your users and c) the influencers (the ones who read and share).

New disruptors: These are the newly made (innovative) startups who come, hit hard and take a small slice of your market share.

Competitor research: it’s useful to understand the wants, and needs – but you need to do it under a blue ocean angle.

Here you need to figure out which content delivery your competitors are using but also and/ or the content they are not good at.

Hint: Perform a deep research looking into the buying/commercial terms and then seek to find educational/informative.

Then analyse and create epic content that wows people over and over and include a combination of:

a) creative copywriting skills (which you can learn)

b) Based upon your research discovery (no-competing and relevant)

c) Keep analysing data and analytics.

Now let’s dive in and see the top reasons to why content fails.

Top 13 reasons why content strategy fails

1. You are not updating your content marketing plan

It’s hard to row in the dark, unless you have some NVG (night vision goggles).

It’s pretty much the same thing with content – if you don’t have a content plan, you don’t know why and to whom you are writing for. To squeeze the best out of your published content you need a solid plan of action.

Be meticulous, have your personas next to you, be consistent, and test what is working for you. Then test, test and improve upon – restart all over again. You still have to research and analyse your tactics.

When you have a clear picture of what is and isn’t working, you can scale up the strategies that work, and stop wasting time on those that don’t.

Tip: content audit is your starting point.

Example: A successful lead generation campaign will depend on specific content you created. So, you would check your analytics to see which pages are most read – and ask yourself “ Where am I providing value to my readers?”

From here you could use and replicate it over to the other pages in order to attract more viewers. These will share it, which in return can lead to more sales, right.

2. You don’t know your audience

Prime time niche audience
[ Your audience will follow and love you ]
If you’re writing content for the web, apps do not pack it for all the trades – as you’ll never know exactly what your readers need, which will translate in zero comments, links or shares.

Listening to your audience (tip):  feedly.com is perfect to listen to multiple blogs, or Websites, but also find out what is going on on your industry.

You also have: SocialBro, tweriod, tweetreach and Twilert can send you daily alerts each time your search keywords are mentioned on Twitter are also useful.

But to find out your audience’s needs/wants you must setup your “ customer journey mapping” worksheet.

Try this:

Step one: elaborate 5-6 related topic questions.

Step 2: then be active on social networks, listen, engage, ask them and/or participate in relevant online conversations with your audience whenever possible.

Step 3: Then prioritise your phases based on those answers, continue to listen to their conversations, then translate it into a simple solution and send it back to them.

The aim here, is two fold, first you seek to build meaningful relationships with those who might need your help and secondly you’re giving your valuable expertise free, which will later on (likely) be shared with their peers/followers.

Job half done.

Tip 2: Do attend whenever possible conferences/networking events in your industry as this can lead to online connections that will help enlarge your audience but also authority.

Keep this alive and keep asking or figuring out what they like or need, so you can elaborate your content messages accordingly – perfect to improve a failing content strategy.

3. You haven’t set SMART goals

Do you need SMART goals? Oh yes. Put it this way – If you plan clever goals/objectives ahead you are simply structuring what needs to be done but also saving time and of course money.

Hint: If you’re stuck for ideas: draft the all thing backwards from the closing stages to the top of the funnel.

4. You don’t position yourself as an expert

You have to show some sort of business expertise – whether it is through case-studies, content writing, podcast, video. If you’re going to choose the publishing arena you better of getting some help. Find and hire an expert who will write or help you write your content, this will put your expertise out there while writing your blog.

5. You’re not identifying relevant industry topics

Before even trying to attract and/or convert readers try to find out what is it they need. It’s easy to assume that all readers like X or Y topic because others are writing it. Never assume that what is good for others is good for your audience. Big mistake. Go find a different angle so you can alert them, engage and solve what their problems may be ― by offering valuable and digestible content.
The smartest strategy is to ensure you’re offering instant useful content first, so they get to remember you, so you can start and/or add extra steps within the sales funnel.

6. You haven’t done page content optimisation

When was the last time you optimised your website’s content? Believe it or not, Google actually would like you to have quality pages, so in return they can list you higher in their pages. That is why is important to follow their guidelines – so, you know what to do next. Let’s move on. You probably know by now that there are over 230 factors or indicators to rate your website. Search engines base themselves on these factors to help users find relevant content in organic search results.

You can tackle most of these factors yourself.
Example: Start improving your content by adding H2, H3 tags to your sub-headings. Also your website page will not be considered if you do not write a meta tag description.

To improve and fix your on-page SEO content – I recommend that you focus on one single topic per page. Help the reader navigate your content at a glance. Revisit your main headings, keywords, image Alt text,  synonyms you use in your content, links and the anchor text of those links.

Get some extra help with these free tools:

SEO Spider by screaming frog  download and install it on PC, Mac or Linux in 3-4 clicks. This is a great desktop program to crawl websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps but also to test your onsite SEO.

Second option: Use onpage optimisation tool by internet marketing ninjas to check your SEO content.  Also a great tool to help analyse your existing onpage SEO content.

7. You are not promoting your content [enough]

If you don’t have enough fans or online followers to get you out there, it’s going to be even harder.
Start by searching who your influencers are. Take the time to study what they share or like to talk about. Then create epic content, offer them to read it, or share your case-studies, and/or best post. Check and go see them speak at industry events.

8. You are not building momentum

Start by communicating with your primary audience on a regular-basis. Offer your help, share a thought, downloadable e-books, case studies, white papers. At later stage share other great content behind opt-in mechanism.

If they like it they’ll tell you. Believe it or not this is one of the most efficient ways to provide valuable information in return for contact details.
Here is an idea – Nurture them with: tools, processes, or invite them to share their ideas re a rich-topic you are about to write. spot and follow them on social media, make online mentions, retweets, etc.

9. You are not inviting (real) influencers on-board

There are several ways to get influencers on your side.
One of them is: find where they hangout and which topics they like reading. Then start adding comments under their most recent post/comment.

Tip:

Try buzzsumo and search for your favourite topic. Select your industry influencers and entice them with valuable content.
Example: Send them a (“10 most interesting people in last..”) post or ask if they would be keen to help answer some questions re a topic you’re about to write.

10. You’re not analysing your keyword topics

Lack of keyword analysis is a deadly sin specially when drafting content. See also item #6. that is the most important part of your content strategy for the web.

11. You’re not studying industry figures/stats.

Create primary research about their industry, most relevant topics, searchable terms – such as best headline topics this year – worst performing …etc.

12. You’re not producing educational content about specific business issues

Get your educational content backed by case studies and/or interview an expert to get his opinion. Grab the expert’s attention by delivering a free downloadable white-paper report.

13. You do not have calls-to-action on your page

Why did you not include a call to action in your content? Seriously, that is so wrong.

Why are publishing it? What is your goal in sharing that content? etc. Always ask yourself this: what is the main purpose of my content.

Content strategy formula [Solution]

Regardless your level, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to do it yourself or bring someone in. Either way, you’ll need a content creation strategy plan, ideas and time.

If you opted to engage good freelance people, that’s great, it will be the best option as they can help you quickly gain momentum.

If you’ve decided to tackle it in-house then stick with this formula:

  • Grab your 10 % of common sense,
  • 30% collecting and/or analysing data
  • 60% of creative skills .

Oops, almost forgot – Add (your) SMARTER Goals, scanning your checklist of do’s and dont’s to lay down your foundation .

I keep learning how to write creative and attractive content – and I’m not embarrassed to say that it can be very hard and time consuming. I’ve found some great techniques, not so much where to get the relevant content ideas I need.

From experience, I’ve learnt that writing content that sells is like mastering the art of performing magic tricks.

You need to learn the mechanics first.

We humans are wired for stories – as kids, we would dream of being a pilot, doctor, nurse, actor based on stories I read.

Where am I going with this?

What I am trying to say is that when reading content it will play or changes people’s ideas, emotional states etc.

Would you agree that reading meaningful stories help us forget life’s complex social problems and/or get us emotional about something?

Take the film War horse – by Steven Spielberg for example (based on the great book by Michael Morpurgo)

It narrates the relationship between a young man and a horse living in rural Britain in around 1915. The boy’s idyllic childhood comes to a sudden end when his best friend is sold to the army by his father. From here, we’ll see a dramatic turn in his life.

This film shares several emotional stages with the viewers.

Starting with the relationship between a boy and his taught, cold, stubborn father. Followed by the painful, sensitive and cruel wide shots of his horse’s engagement during the First World War to the moment where he’ll …

well, watch the film or read the book. It has all the ingredients for a great story.

For the film to exist – the team (writers, producers…) go through a long content planning session before it can finally become a film script. For the record, they also needed a script writer, director, editors and scenarist.

The bottom line is – write to engage and get people involved.

Why? Because they’ll remember it and share it – for the right reasons.

13 reasons your content is failingContent creation strategy framework to use

The key to great and successful content is – data collection, brainstorm your ideas first, plan and implement it.

Secondly, list the top five topics you think would make a winner. Thirdly, select a draft post’s main sections (like a synopsis) by jotting-down a sentence or two.
Then outline main idea with a beginning, middle and end sentence. Fourth step, would be amending or changing sentence order. And the fifth step is the editing part.

These are important steps, tools and processes you need to have (not optional):

  • Review your business model (important)
  • Audit Webiste/ Existing Content /worksheet (if Website is up)
  • Identify your online objectives (priorities)
  • Content gap analysis (Taking over a project – i.e: In-house Agency)
  • Project summary worksheet (When starting the project)
  • Create a “ Content matrix” (Starts @Design phase)
  • Editorial processes (Before writing Web content)
  • Identify market & competitor GAP’s (diferentiate yourself)
  • Ask/discover your audience “Audience mapping”
  • Master keyword/SEO worksheet
  • Promotion/Distribution channels plan.

Conclusion:

Kristina Halvorson from Brain traffic once explained that Content strategy is the way of:

Planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.

I agree with the well described sentence.

Why should you create high-quality, deliver and update unique and useful content?

I’d say that is because we already have huge amounts of material on the Web. You’ll find bags of poor content for almost any topic – so what’s the point in adding more if your content is not going to wow me?

A recent Google study tell us that 80% of online content is far behind the recommended Google guidelines. To win them over, be yourself and help them. They’ll be your best advocate when you create, share valuable and well-researched content.

If you’re looking to refresh and/or need to build an effective, structured content strategy then get in touch.  Small steps today lead you to big results tomorrow.

Written by Paul Alves · Categorized: SEO Content Strategy · Tagged: Auditing sites, Digital Marketing Strategy, Keyword Strategy, On-page Optimisation, Search Engine Optimisation

Jan 21 2015

How to Create Content with a Top Tip List?

Write Top Tips List
Writing Top Tips List
Writing interesting content that’s good enough to attract the key audience is what any responsible business owner should do to keep their business going.

But we want more. We want first time customers to be involved, astonished, hungry, always coming back for more.

Here’s an example:
You own a small restaurant and the first thing you’d do to attract clients is to produce a list of quality wines and a delicious food menu with a genuine friendly customer service, right – making everyone feel like at home, and as a result people will come for more. Don’t you agree?

Well, that’s exactly what you need to do with your business – create astonishing content, provide great customer service and they’ll come for more – no, there is no magic in this, just hard work. Some will say its a perceptual form of art, and I agree, but it’s one where the images are created or take shape in people’s heads by the use of words.

It is therefore imperative to become aware of how you will communicate with people, how will you open their senses to ways of grasping the main essence of what you’re trying to achieve and not send them running to your competitor’s page.

Where do you start? Well, first off you need attractive headings, describing main features , include how to write top ten tips to achieve success, add colour to it, whilst enticing the reader to scroll down the page, leading them to read (your service,story..) further and take some form of action at the end of it.

Yes, thats the purpose of online writing – remember the restaurant’s metaphor?

Describe your product, service with flavours and colours, open their senses to new flavors/ways, the ones that they’re looking for, ways that maybe only a few of your competitors have managed to do. Never take people around you for granted, get out of your daily routine, test, test and test again and get rid-off your silly habits by making a list!

How to write a top list?

Did you ever ask yourself why human beings love lists?

I did, that’s why I am still wondering how anyone can work without one. How can you make or determine your choices? I cannot work without a list, can you? I always do a web search for similar title topics (so I make sure I never copy, even If I had same idea) and found Sir Richard Branson’s article top 10 tips for making lists – It all makes sense they way he describes it.

What should you include in it?

Whether, you’re writing a blog post, brochure or case study you’ll be listing anything from 5 -12 items, telling your audience how to implement or do something they need – you should be asking yourself this – How can you solve a problem? I remember many times my teachers saying build your top 5 list of whetever we were supposed to work on. Everybody likes list, as it shows the ideas and quickly gets you to the point.

When writing your tip list, follow these guidelines:

  • Keep it to the point and short
  • Make them useful and punchy
  • Use actionable and attractive headlines
  • Bold main action or features
  • Use numbers, how to, Get Free..
  • Insert one compelling image
  • Include, explain things based on figures, percentage (if talking financial stuff)
  • Add a subscription link/box to your main newsletter
  • Always include your website url, social media icons for twitter, LinkedIn, G+..
  • You can also include email with topics you’re actively looking for or to discuss.

When should you create a tip list?

I am writing about top tip list because I didn’t find (didnt search long) any complete article about the subject and I think they’re a great way to help you plan how to promote your business.

Here is how I approach it – I started 2015 with a list of articles ideas that I considered vital going forward. I list a sequence of themes, topics, things I need to focus or talk about; then break it down into top 5 priority list, whether you’re organising an event or a project you have to log phases, people and so on.. so here is why it is so important to have a list..

Make a tip list to:

  • Promote your new venture
  • Check on your competitors
  • What will you’ll create for next 12-18 months
  • Include personal goals in your lists not just work see Sir Richard’s article
  • New product/service offer with its key benefits
  • Announce a special event/ customer acquisition
  • Reveal survey or market study results
  • Emphasise “added value” to customers when buying from you
  • Offer freebie and entice prospects to subscribe to your e-newsletter
  • Organise main phases and objectives when working on client’s project.
  • In practice, you can create a top tip list that will empower your content marketing strategy, without complicating your life. Get quickly to the point, simplify how you’ll create your content with top tip lists at the top middle section. After, you can develop or extend the one above to any extra relevant idea you find effective to build your business.

    So, In 2015 do not limit yourself, create, prosper and list,list, list and list again.

Written by Paul Alves · Categorized: SEO Content Strategy · Tagged: Search Engine Optimisation

Oct 31 2013

How To Craft Great Content Marketing in 11 Steps

How to craft great content marketingContent marketing is more important than ever, according to a recent study, 56% of B2B find it an effective way to deliver return on investment (ROI).

So the common question is :

How do you create personalised and engaging content marketing?

Why do you think big brands call on advertising agencies to help build their content marketing? The answer’s simple, because these people are specialists, who spend weeks manipulating tonnes of data and surveys (on behalf of the brand) in order to have insight into what the customer wants and needs when launching a new product.

The other obvious reason is that they can afford to pay someone else to do the research for them, thus saving them time, and time is money.

What can we learn from their content marketing?

Think for a minute and allocate an hour of your time. The aim here is to analyse and understand their way of communicating with their customers. So here’s the challenge.

Pick up one of your preferred brands and ask yourself these questions:

  • How they built and maintained their brand reputation?
  • Which channels are they using to share their content and get the consumer’s attention?
  • Why and when are their customers coming back for more?
  • What titles and catchy phrases are they using to attract their audience?

 

So, have you got the idea. Not yet? You’re probably thinking – they have got a much bigger budget than we do, making it easier to hire people to create their content marketing. Well that’s true, but let me ask you this question.

Would you be interested to learn how to craft content marketing yourself ?

If the answer is yes, start by collecting your thoughts, gather some material and we’ll provide the framework for how to create your own content marketing.

Here is the 11 steps to follow:

1. Do market research – collect, analyse customer information, identify which digital channels they are using and build specific keyword groups.

2. Know your audience – based on your customer analysis identify your ideal customer’s world, for each persona groups. Remember always address a pre-identified segment of your audience with positive trigger words that push people to have a reaction whether that’s physical or emotional. We suggest to create and populate a buyer persona spreadsheet with details. This the most important part in your journey. We call it the audience and/or buyer’s journey.

3. Talk expertise – A decent copywriter looks to apply a concentrated number of high-power words and phrases that will deliver results starting with engaging business themes that will resonate with different types of reader. If you’re just starting emphasise your belief and go for an authority blog. The main aim here is to nurture your prospect’s soul with your expertise – that is your very own content.

4. Create killer headlines – Turn your headline into a magnetic title – make sure your main keyword is near the beginning of the title. Create attractive, controversial, informative headers. The idea is to capture attention and invite content focusing on reader’s needs, problems or opportunities.

Above all, ask yourself what added value can your business offer ?

5. Create great content marketing – Not only helps readers benefit from your knowledge and experience, but also makes them more likely to want to share it. So, remember this, any content you produce needs to be highly relevant and delivered with the right tone, otherwise they will ignore it – or fall asleep!

6. Keep body text simple and direct – Re-formulate your headline and clearly develop what the benefits are – make use of bullets points to show it. Also do not promote your brand name throughout the whole page.  If you want online readers to love your products and engage you’ll have to change your pitch and make it something engaging, subtile style which grab people’s interest – What’s in it for them“.

7. Include an image or two – Visual content empowers and grab readers’ attention. When possible, use images that include human expressions to maximize the impact. Consider mini-infographics, they work well in all aspects.

8. Use case studies – You could sit there and write brilliant marketing copy stating how great your product or service is, but unless your audience can see how it has benefited someone like them, they’ll probably think it’s just PR. So where possible use “real case studies” to enhance your content selling power.

9. Link content pages – To further support your SEO goals, include links to other relevant content you’ve created, both on and off of your site. Also link product features / benefits on third-party sites with specific keywords within your content. When writing your articles, do it with content marketing optimisation in mind, look for one main keyword only, but you also can and should use multiple synonyms within your phrases.

10. Write content strategy with style – One of the major challenges digital copywriters must understand is that copy or content must be intriguing, strategically developed and if you want to really engage your target audience you must tell the story about your brand, and not a load of blurb about your strategy, or product features they’re not interested. See example below.

Remember, your audience want to know and will ask: “What’s in it for me?“.

 Content marketing Whiteboard Friday -

Image source: Moz – From Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fish

 

You also must include a call-to-action on your landing pages and blog articles.

Here’s how:

First and foremost before sticking to a single Call To Action (CTA) you must test it two to three times and see which works better.

Example: create a CTA in the middle and the bottom of the page, then another one with single CTA on the top hand-right corner. For B2C sites you can go for a sale directly as the person may not return to your site. For B2B, the sales funnel will be divided into phases. You need to start by offering something free behind your e-newsletters so you can collect email addresses in return.

Secondly, after a month or so you should take a look at how many conversions you’ve made. If you’ve only converted a few, look at your sign-up form and landing page – and ask yourself this?

Do I offer any added value or benefits? Have I promised to respect their privacy?

Thirdly, think how and when you need to keep nurturing the conversions you made.  So, you should follow up with one or two emails that offer added value or an unexpected report or case-study with a call to action. Personalise the email including short content with link for conversion . Some businesses follow up with some courtesy calls, great opportunity to get to know your subscriber, don’t you think?.

If you write a company newsletter you need to think about your long-term commitment otherwise your content will have no genuine impact.

11. Control and listen the crowd– Set measurable objectives from the start. Example: Site or blog pages unique views with newsletter subscriptions – you must target these with simple processes allowing you to track things like: click-through rate (CTR), time spent on page, bounce rate, unique visitors, city or country, keywords etc. Without these in place, it will be like navigating in the dark, becoming harder to measure and unable to tell how effective your content marketing is.

For total beginners, we suggest reading two essential elements from CMI marketing experts. I’ve followed Content Marketing Institute for over five years and I will recommend you to do the same. Joe Pulizzi and his team have helped marketers how to become real publishers – created hundreds of concise material, guides that you can read, use and download. They explain you how to quickly learn, lay out the steps to start your own blog. After all, you always go quicker with a step-by-step guide.

 

Conclusion:

All the steps above will deliver great results if blended with the right attitude. It will motivate you even further, when seeing comments or likes, inspiring you to write and continue this journey until you become a serious and respected copywriter. Hard to believe? Maybe, you’ll never know if you don’t give a try.

Research and listening are the first steps to succeed in your content strategy #Contentmarketing #Bigdata Click To Tweet

Remember that any content marketing starts with a clear strategic mapping plan that should include everything from listening, keywords, search volume and customer relevancy to blog posting, linking (internally and externally) and of course integration of social networks. All the above need to be planned from scratch in order to know what areas or content marketing topics you should be creating or improving. But first, analyse and measure your actions in order to see how effective your content marketing is.

 

Does your business need some extra help? Contact us today – 01252 679885 for an informal chat.

Post updated:16.11.16

 

Written by Paul Alves · Categorized: Online Marketing Strategy · Tagged: Content Marketing Examples, Digital Marketing Strategy, On-page Optimisation, Search Engine Optimisation

Aug 27 2013

Which Seo Techniques Should You Use

Which SEO strategies should your business use?

Which SEO techniques to use?SEO has become fully integrate in any digital marketing strategy. Many would not use it as such, however, do not take SEO as wild card technique to promote your site.

Recent Google-Panda , Hummingbird and Penguins updates have scared and steered people towards a pool of mixed techniques often ignored by many but that are now at the forefront of SEO world.

A quick question:

Did you never thought about focusing on R.A.I.D.A.R instead of AIDA?

This technique will allow us to perform a much more focus strategic Inbound Marketing. These not only will help you see how to build and/or improve your site’ positioning in the search engines but also built a more structured content marketing strategy for your target audience/market.

Which SEO Strategy?

 

Which SEO strategies and skills do you need to improve conversion rates?

An efficient SEO strategy is simply the result of a continual hard work to include analytical skills and processes which are responsible for bringing traffic and conversions. More recently, SEO or Search Engine Optimization relies essentially upon
content creation, social media and web development. It also integrates various technical and analytical tools that will help access valuable insight (data) necessary for ongoing SEO,  website  and overall user experience improvement.

We will show here how this simple frame of work can bring results based on pre-identified goals, along with voice of the customer (V.O.C) analysis.

But beforehand we have to combine SMART methodology with clever tools and vision to accomplish a successful online project.

We’re talking about:

  • Data analysis and Project management
  • Copywriting skills
  • Online PR
  • Blogging
  • Social media

Thus, we’ll explain (High-level) how to plan an overall SEO digital strategy and put it together in order to help you increase customer satisfaction and more conversions.

Data analysis & Project management – We strongly suggest and encourage business sites and blog owner’s to begin  and end with analytics data research. Retrieve and analyse periodic data from GA. Analyse your main keywords and label accordingly for future campaigns using spreadsheets or Keyword management tools. This aspect must be part of your plan of action.

Online strategy poll results

SEO Copywriting – Do you really think people would read or link to blogs packed full of boring content? Copywriting is regarded as quintessence art of writing, to captivate information that people will enjoy reading and share with others.

Three essentials in copy:

  • Attractive or funny headlines presenting offers, benefits or special offers.
  • In body text(copy) reveal facts and any evidence to support your claims or promises.
  • Middle and end – Call-to-action (C.T.A) – this will increase response. i.e: Click here and download our report.

Its an endless process for any business site that wants to get decent traffic. On top of that make sure you allow space on your page to include, images, videos or infographics. The bottom line is don’t be a bore! Write interesting or useful  content that people will want to read and talk about.. Otherwise hire someone who can do the job for you.

Online PR – Is reborn believe me. It’s become the trustworthy online messenger that feeds Google’s interests such as: visibility, relevance and brand reputation. By providing your site with substantial and relevant content, you give search engines the first level of trust, then when sharing well optimised content with media, your brand name is actually propelling itself to red carpet in a matter of weeks, generating massive attention and tonnes of traffic.

Blogging – You know you have a great product or service, but you don’t know how to promote it. You should  blog articles at least 3-4 times a month. Make sure you ask for comments and make an effort to reply back, it creates engaging interaction with potential customers or partners. Go where key influencers are – engage, share it.

Social media – Will become more powerful every day and is growing stronger. Get your brand or departments out there by engaging with your audience on a daily basis. Include relevant and engaging content from your blog post adding #tags; follow your future clients, give freebies, advice, support and always respect your customers / audience as they are your ticket to success.

Search engine ranking factors
Ranking factors according to Moz – Previously (Seomoz)

 

In Conclusion:

When hiring a digital marketing agency/expert, you’ll need to sit down and write a content brief to make sure that all the areas listed above are part of the total marketing approach. If you speak to someone who does not cover these basic points, politely thank them for their time and call someone else.

This proven strategy will help improve your site for online users and search engines alike. All of this is included in our services.

Join in and share your thoughts about which SEO techniques you’re using.

 

This article was originally published on ExploreB2b

 

Article updated: 28.08.16

Written by Paul Alves · Categorized: SEO Content Strategy · Tagged: Affordable Seo Services, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO

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