SEO - Express Writers

How Topical Trust Flow & Alexa Ranking Has Replaced Page Rank

December 31, 2020January 1, 2017 by Adam Oakley

While PageRank was a huge thing in SEO for years, it’s recently been laid to rest. This happened in March of 2016, when Google killed off its Toolbar PageRank feature. While PageRank didn’t have a huge user base before it was axed, there were a small handful of marketers and SEOs still using it, and those people will now need to find something to fill its place. The good news is that the death of PageRank is just another indicator of Google’s ongoing commitment to a “quality over quantity” model, wherein amazing content is rewarded. The other piece of great news is that the post-PageRank world is anything but a desolate wasteland. Quite the opposite, in fact! While PageRank had its devotees, most experts agree that it was an outdated and inefficient tool that wasn’t keeping up with the trajectory of online content and user experience. As such, it’s actually a good thing that it’s fallen by the wayside and made room for newer, more intuitive tools to take its place. Alexa Ranking and Topical Trust Flow are two modern quality gauges that are the perfect candidates to restore reliable trust metrics and help both marketers and consumers interact with more reliable content. We’re here today to talk about both. Ready? The Slow Death of PageRank If you’re sad to hear about PageRank heading out, you’re not the only one. Google had been slowly killing the tool for years, though. Here’s a brief history: PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Founders of Google, at Stanford University in 1996. Originally, the tool was part of a larger research product relating to search and how it could be improved. At the time of its development, PageRank was revolutionary and heralded a whole new era, when web pages would be judged by the quality of their content rather than the concentration of their keywords. The service eventually launched, with Google as its only user. Over time, though, other search engines saw that PageRank was improving accuracy and authority, and they started adopting the system into their algorithms. The program was short-lived, though, and soon started to come under fire. Search Engine Roundtable reports that, in 2007, Google asked its webmasters to provide some feedback about the idea of axing PageRank. In 2009, Google stopped showing data from PageRank in its Webmaster Tools section. In 2013, Matt Cutts officially alluded to the death of PR: Credit MySiteAuditor By 2016, PageRank was on its way out, and SEOs and marketers everywhere were turning to the next reliable quality metric. Although some were sad about the end of PageRank, most people realized that, as good as PageRank had been, it had its drawbacks. Namely: quality could be faked, and even spammy web pages and websites could have PageRank if they knew how to game the system. These shortcomings set the stage perfectly for the next big thing, lurking just over the horizon. Topical Trust Flow: What You Need to Know The thing that first stepped up to take PageRank’s place is known as Topical Trust Flow, a tool created by Majestic SEO. Essentially, Topical Trust Flow determines how trustworthy and authoritative a URL or domain is within its niche while also determining what the topic of the content is all about. It does this by determining a site’s topical relevance based on the links it enjoys with other relevant sites. Unlike PageRank, the quality metrics within Trust Flow are difficult to fake, since it’s actually the content that links to a page that determines its Topical Trust Flow. Topical Trust Flow came at just the right time: with more than fifty million content shares every day, and 58% of consumers reporting they trust editorial content, (according to Nielsen), the web was in dire need of a more reliable trust metric than PageRank. How Does Trust Flow Work? Trust Flow is one of Majestic’s most useful tools for SEO practitioners. Flow is calculated using a set of authoritative seed websites as a base. The further away your domain lies from those seed sites, the lower the Trust Flow is. The set of authority sites measured link out to other great sites, which link out to yet more sites. The whole system works like an underground root system, relying on a complex network of connections and inbound messages to determine stability and reliability. Here’s a diagram from seoworx.net.au to demonstrate how it works: If you’re still struggling to understand Trust Flow, think of it like this: Topical Trust Flow measures the quality of inbound links based on the quality of the links pointing to the site your links come from. If every one of your inbound links come from sites that already have high Trust Flow, your domain is also going to have a high Trust Flow. This is because the sites your links come from are seen as reputable and reliable, thanks to the inbound links they’ve received. Trust Flow can be a tough metric to manipulate, making it almost impossible to fake or inflate. As such, it’s a much more reliable trust metric than PageRank, which relied on data that could easily be faked. 3 Facts to Know About Topical Trust Flow Here are three key truths about Trust Flow and how it operates in the complex online world: 1. Trust Flow Relies on Relevance A topically-matched trust flow that is high means the sites your links are coming from also have links that are topically relevant. 2. Trust Flow Rewards Trustworthy Links A high trust flow means your inbound links come from sites that have trustworthy links. 3. Trust Flow Looks for Topical Similarities A domain’s ability to rank increases when it has topically matched links that come from websites that have topically matched links, too. To help you further understand how these truths play out in the Trust Flow algorithm, here’s a diagram from Majestic SEO: How Trust Flow Supports 5 Crucial Foundations of SEO While it might be easy to write … Read more

Semantic Search: How to Optimize Your Content for Conversational SEO

June 19, 2024December 29, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you spent any time in marketing circles this year, you probably heard the phrase “semantic search” tossed around in conversation quite a bit. But what in the world is semantic search, and how does it impact SEO? If this is a question you’ve asked, you’re in the right place. Semantic search was a big trend in 2016, but it isn’t new. It did, however, rise as a content marketing trend throughout this year. And guess what? Going forward, it’s going to continue to have a major impact on the way content marketers achieve success in the SERPs. Today, I’m here to take it apart, tell you how to best use it in content creation, and how it will impact content development now and in the future. [bctt tweet=”How do #semantic search trends impact content creation? Learn in @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide” username=”ExpWriters”] What is Semantic Search? In order to fully understand semantic search, let’s back up a bit to the basics of algorithms and how they work, and then explore semantics as it relates to Google searches. First, Understanding the Different Shades (Algorithms) of Google Since the inception of our search friend known as Google, the internet know-it-all has attempted to move search results into a more natural-sounding realm. Part of that strategy falls under the idea of semantic search and machine learning algorithms like RankBrain. In machine learning, a computer basically teaches itself how to do something, and RankBrain is just one component of Google’s search algorithm program. When we use Google to search for something, there are potentially millions of webpages that can provide a solution. Algorithms are the computer formulas that take our questions and turn them into the answers we are looking for. Past algorithms that Google has used include: Panda (Source): In 2011, Google updated search filters to stop sites with poor quality content from showing up in top search results. Penguin (Source): Penguin was launched in 2012 to catch sites that appeared to be spamming its search results in order to boost Google rankings. Hummingbird (Source): Launched in 2013, Hummingbird was designed to sort through information and deliver the best results–the name came from the speed of the algorithm. After the launch of Hummingbird, users may have noticed that Google was offering more precise answers to search queries. The update was one of the biggest overhauls to its search engine and it allowed Google to provide faster answers to questions and rank them according to the index. Semantics: Did You Really Say What You Meant to Say? Now, let’s move onto semantics. Merriam-Webster defines the word “semantics” as the study of meanings. In the field of linguistics, semantics is all about the logic behind the meaning of natural and artificial words, signs, and sentence structure, whether it’s a spoken language or that of computer programming. A famous author penned the following, and I feel that it quite adequately sums up semantics: “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not, or that you feel good this morning, or that it is a morning to be good on?” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit In other words, what are you really trying to say? Check out how this works when you type a question in Google. I love how Google is smart enough to correct bad spelling (Semantics FTW!): Semantics: Going Behind the Search For online content and its goals, semantic search involves the use of quality resources (and not just keywords) to perform a search and provide the best results. Here’s just how (creepily?) knowledgable Semantics is in its inner workings. It knows your history and uses it: semantic search takes the details of a user’s history and offers back the most relevant results. It knows logic and deciphers meanings: Semantic search looks for the logic, or intent, behind what a searcher is looking for in their quest for information. It is about going beyond the traditional definition and moving towards the motivation behind a searcher’s request. Rather than searching for what someone literally types in (as in, misspelled words), Google semantics uses a complex system of algorithms and prediction to make a guess as to what we actually mean, and then looks for the most relevant content. Ever feel like the search box is reading your mind? Thank semantics. Examples of Semantic Search Whether we know it or not, semantics plays a part in every search we perform. In his post over at Crazy Egg, Neil Patel gives us some good examples of common semantic search, something we can all relate to in our everyday lives. 1. Conversational queries We ask, Google answers. In this case, rather than provide us with every website that answers the question, “how do I bake?” or the words, “Christmas cookies,” semantic search works to first give us the directions, then relevant recipes. 2. Auto-corrected misspellings As we showed in the example above, it corrects misspellings. (I think that’s pretty cool.) Here’s another example. It’s safe to assume we all have enough Christmas “cookys”. After correcting for the misspelling, we have ideas for a Christmas cookie swap and the Best Christmas Cookie Recipes for 2016. 3. Information shown as graphics Relevant images are provided as part of the answer. Now, if only my Christmas cookies turned out like those. 3 Key Ways to Create Content With Semantic Search Standards in Mind The challenge in our field comes when we sit down to create the content our readers are looking for, and we forget the importance of staying relevant and natural. All in all, it’s simple (but in reality and the work/time/skill involved, not). 1. Stay away from subpar content that isn’t readable: invest in quality. Here’s the thing… Writing with Google Semantics in mind doesn’t really mean NEW advice for us content creators. It’s simple: write more for your reader. Why? Google Semantics will now (very quickly) identify, and then disqualify, keyword-stuffed content and spammy articles. Poor keyword usage won’t rank well. And, as we showed above, grammar is checked too … Read more

The Content Creator’s Guide to Mobile-Friendly Content: AMP, Mobile-First Indexing & More

June 19, 2024December 15, 2016 by Adam Oakley

What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear words like “apps”, “data”, “contacts”, or “social media”? Now try imagining things for words like “difference engine”, “Turing machine”, “Z1”, and “point-contact transistors.” Here’s a hint about the second set of words: they have to do with the history of computers. Remember computers? With a big bulky box called a hard drive, and the screens (aka monitors), which took up more space than your mother-in-law at Christmastime. Back in ancient times, circa 1999 and prior, a thin, black square known as a floppy disk could be inserted into the big bulky box and hold teeny tiny bits of files to be accessed later. I’m 25 years old–and I’m talking about these things like they’re hints of yesteryear. LOL. Technology has advanced, fast. Fast forward to 2016, when images of a room full of computer equipment and that little thing called a “mouse” seem unfathomable to those of us who carry our whole lives in our back pocket. Today, everything from our favorite shopping sites to our bank accounts and emergency contacts to our kids’ schedules can be accessed through one convenient, tiny, handheld device: a smartphone. Guess that? That’s exactly where AMP, mobile-indexing, and being mobile friendly comes into play. Let’s discuss. (Oh, and keep scrolling for the screenshot where our site shows up as AMP verified in Google! It’s too cool to miss. ;-)) Living in a Connected World: Here’s the Proof It should come as no surprise that nearly 2/3 of Americans own a smartphone and about 10% of those have no high-speed internet service at home and no way to access the web other than a smartphone. Across every age group, income bracket, and education level, smartphones are where it’s at. Think it’s just young people? Think again. According to Pew Research, 92% of adults over the age of 50 regularly used their devices in the past year to text, browse the web, and access email. Srsly? 92% of adults OVER 50 text and email on their smartphones now? It’s time to get mobile with your content, folks. Google Experiments with Mobile-First Index In November, Google announced that it was beginning experiments on making their index mobile-first. To express it in simple terms, this change means that ranking signals will be based first on the mobile version of a website, then fall back to the desktop version if no mobile version is available. Wow! So Google will check to see if your site works well on mobile, and then on desktop. What is an index? When you perform a search in Google, their programs do a check of an index to find the search results that are most relevant before presenting them to you. This is similar to looking in the back of a very large book (remember those?) at the index section, which tells you where everything is located. This change will eliminate the “mobile-friendly” adjustments that are performed for smartphone users; whether you are accessing the internet from a phone or a laptop will not make a difference in rank results. What Google’s Move Could Mean for Site Owners Although this news may feel like the end of an era, it is not the full end of desktop ranking as we know it. This discussion has actually been going on for over a year, but with Google’s official announcement, it feels more real. And that means site owners will need to think about their own webpages and how mobile-friendly they are to visitors. If you do not currently have a mobile version of your website, Google will rank based on the desktop version instead. If your site is a dynamic serving site or a responsive site, meaning the primary content is equivalent across both mobile and desktop, you should not have to change anything. However, if you have a site configuration, where the content is different across desktop and mobile devices, you may want to consider implementing some changes in order to rank more effectively. The good news is that there are modifications you can implement now to gain an edge. For instance, if you have a separate desktop and mobile version of your page, work to make them cohesive with correct structured data on the mobile site. Test your date here. Think about the structure or your site and what that means for your visitors. Is your desktop page loaded with information, but your mobile page is bare bones? Evaluate why that is, and make some changes. Go to your own website often via a mobile device to feel what it’s like to be a visitor. Is your content engaging? Will people want to stay and hang out? Are the buttons and links easy to click through? One important key to the whole thing is AMP. Google recently told us that rankings may depend on it – we heard it straight from the horse’s mouth at this year’s SEJ Summit! What is AMP, and Why Should I Care? AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, and open-source HTML framework allowing pages to load quickly but without all the extras that tend to slow sites down. After all, who has time to wait 20 seconds for content to load? Slower page response time results in increased page abandonment, and statistics have shown that when site visitors are forced to spend 4 seconds waiting for a page to load, about 25 percent of them are going to bail. To put it in dollar figures, if an e-commerce website makes $100,000 per day, a 1-second page deal could cost $2.5 million in lost sales per year. If the year was 1980, that would equal about 2,700 Commodore computers. Ouch. There are some ways to increase the speed of a mobile page, including: Keep tracking codes simple and limit the use of video embeds. This can drag page speed down. Use smaller, lower-resolution images on your mobile site. Giant images will just get in the way and will not be as appealing. Limit third-party content as much as … Read more

Stop Writing (Only) for SEO: 5 Best Practices to Appeal to Your Direct Reader

December 31, 2020December 14, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Life as a writer may often be marked by late nights, deadlines, word counts, and an endless amount of coffee (I like mine with a hint of cream and sugar). As an online writer, we easily toss around terms like “search engine”, ‘keywords”, and “relevant content” in casual conversation, and, if we aren’t careful, our focus may turn toward SEO as if we have no audience. Ah, audience. Key term of today’s post… These are the people, the live humans, the readers who are searching for answers that you may have but may not often give in the way of quality content. Neil Patel said: “One of the biggest challenges that bloggers and content marketers face is writing content that’s optimized for search engines, yet will also appeal to people.” The challenge, even in late 2016, presents itself as writers seek to create content that is appealing to customers and clients, providing a solution to a problem, while optimizing it for keywords and Google. While black hat SEO and keyword stuffing are things of the past, there is still the temptation to provide “cheap, backlink-stuffed online content,” if you’re not careful. If you’re ready to learn best practices that will appeal to your readers, put on a pot of coffee (half and half and sugar on standby, please) and get ready to dive in. Writing for SEO: A 101 on SEO Writing & Why It’s Still Important, Within Reason “Stop writing for SEO”…does that sound arbitrary, or what? Especially coming from a content writer? Keep reading. I promise, it’ll be good. 😉 First… let’s delve into the good of SEO writing. If you were super tired, maybe you woke up this morning needing Google to help you figure out “how to make a perfect cup of coffee”. Like most of us, you would turn to your smartphone, pull up Google, and type in the phrase. Along with the featured snippet box, this is what you would see: This is not a random list or a paid ad; it is brought to you courtesy of organic SEO, or the result of “search engine optimization.” In other words, a marketer’s non-paid efforts to optimize content organically for Google. This is the good of SEO writing: when you can organically rank, and then earn organic traffic from those rankings, because of the SEO writing you’ve successfully put together. Nowadays, quality is a heavy factor in Google’s organic rankings: when people are looking for something on the web, the list that appears on Google is based on the relevance and authority of those particular pages. Relevancy is determined by content analyzation—how often and where certain words are used in the content–and the use of authoritative links. In the case of SEO, it’s about quality (of content) over quantity (of clicks and keywords). This doesn’t mean that writers should be afraid of writing content inspired by keywords. On the contrary, it remains key to understand the words your potential customers and clients would use to describe your products and services. There are a few key useful tools that can help with background research and point you in the right direction of keywords. My two top favorites: KWFinder SEMrush For more on how to use tools to find great keywords, check out my guide on optimizing your content for keywords. Writing for SEO Vs. Using SEO to Connect Here’s the absolute truth (…sit down and sip that coffee while I break it to y’all): All the keywords and catchy titles that may get you to the top of the page results will do absolutely no good if no one wants to hang around and absorb your content. Writing for SEO only will come out like content that is uninteresting, irrelevant, run-of-the-mill. You don’t want that: there’s no real ROI there today. People are smart. In contrast, using SEO to connect with your audience will deliver a people-first, high-quality answer to the questions they have. Mention the phrase “card catalog” to anyone under the age of 30 today and you might get a confused look in response. Those days of trying to find a library book by flipping through mini-index cards is synonymous with the Dewey Decimal system, which organizes books according to subject matter and makes it easier to find them on the shelf. In the same way that the system organizes books on a shelf, search engines organize and deliver content. You don’t write content just to get onto a search engine any more than you would write a book to get into Dewey’s system, which is why it remains key to deliver quality content and see SEO as a medium to connect it to people. While it used to be that we wrote only for SEO purposes, that does not remain true today, not by a long shot. Helping people is the key to creating great content; optimizing comes next. How to Focus on The Human Reading Your Crap: 5 Tips to Stop Writing for SEO 1. People First Simple, but really. Behind each smartphone, laptop, and tablet is a real person with a real need. No one searches “how to make a perfect cup of coffee” unless they are seeking to find a solution beyond their average cup-o-joe. Putting people first also means you must understand your audience. Tools like BuzzSumo can help with that. 2. Relevant Writing This ties into #1, people first. Engaging content that is well-written, attractive, and not created simply for the purpose of claiming links will lean more toward a successful reach than fluff that has no intended audience. This means that you, as the writer, must commit to thorough research so you can secure useful statistics that others will share and benefit from in their search for answers. 3. Interesting Content It’s okay to be funny, stir emotion, and use quality illustrations in your content. We are a culture of posts, tweets, and pins, so go ahead and take a light tone if the setting allows—the visually stimulated members of your … Read more

How to Create Content that Will Rank in Google’s Featured Snippet Box

December 31, 2020November 29, 2016 by Adam Oakley

By definition, a snippet is “a small piece” or “fragment”. Synonyms include “bit”, “scrap”, and “fragment.” It’s a noun derived from the word “snippety.” (Spelling the word will also earn you 11 points in the game of Scrabble.) But when it comes to online searches, Google’s featured snippet box has changed the way the search engine displays results to users. Anyone who has searched on Google lately will have noticed the box that comes up with a relevant answer to their search, especially if it’s a long-tail keyword phrase like “how to bake cookies” or “how many planets.” To tantalize you a bit, here is some of our own content that ranks in the Snippets. First, our post in the key term “influential bloggers:” Next, we rank in a snippet for “curation tools:” Add a third is actually pulling my guest post on SocialMediaToday: Had enough yet? 😉 I’ll disclose more on exactly how to optimize and prep your content to make it in the Snippets. Keep reading! Google’s Featured Snippet Box: How Important Is It? Snippets was released in 2014, after Google’s Knowledge Graph (2012) and Answer Box (2013) had already been designed. The two early models were sourced from Google’s database, while Snippets pulls results from third-party sources. Since 2014, Snippets has seen a fourfold rise in growth, with the biggest jump between 2015 and 2016. The Featured Snippet box will contain a summary of the search results from a webpage, a link to the page, and the URL. According to Google, the purpose of the Featured Snippet is to draw a user’s attention to the answer. Web users may or may not have noticed that it’s been over two years since Google first launched Featured Snippets, and yet marketers are still passing them off as a novelty. Some critics believe that Snippets only serve to provide a user with an answer, and are not effective in drawing them to a specific site. However, research from Search Engine Land found some results that may surprise the naysayers; after tracking a key page on a client’s site, which had been optimized to better match a searcher’s query, the found that: Over 4 months, no significant changes came as a result of the optimizations After 4 months, a Featured Snippet began showing for a particular keyword The client saw a 516% increase in sessions and a 6% increase in click-through rate Revenue from organic visitors landing on the page increased by 677% What is Included in a Featured Snippet? As Glenn Gabe highlights in his study (The Power of Google Featured Snippets 2016), Google’s Featured Snippets receive special SERP (search engine results pages) treatment and can serve to drive large amounts of traffic. In addition, they are designed to build credibility with users as they take the shape of: Images Charts Text Bullets After asking a questions of Google, wouldn’t you be more drawn to click on the answer in the box with a colorful graphic, rather than the plain old text underneath? How Does Google Pick Snippets? Google is not manually picking which Snippet to feature; instead, the selection is based on an algorithm. Any website is eligible to earn a Snippet, and there is no advantage for big companies versus lesser-known startups. Different experts will say that ranking position does play a role, while others have found that Google chooses Snippets from content all the way over on Page 2 of the search results. This is GREAT news for us website owners! As Larry Kim over at Moz found out when he pulled a report for his own website, Google pulled Snippets about 7 out of 10 times from as far back as Page 3, and at times, the source came from positions that went as low as 71. And to quote Kim, when it comes to Snippets, “You need them.” Here’s How to Find Out if You Rank in the Snippets (Fast) Step One: Get SEMrush! It’s my tool of choice for all things SEO analytics, as it is for many others. Step Two: In SEMrush, once you have your domain added, navigate to Domain Analytics > Organic Research > Positions. Step Three: In your organic search positions, sort by Include > SERP Feature > Featured Snippet. Now, hit Apply, and wait for results to show. Test the results by plugging in the phrases on Google and seeing if your Snippets come up. Not always are you still ranking for the snippet: a bigger site could be outranking you, as Content Marketing Institute did with us on “copywriter skills” (sniff, sniff). How Do I Create “Snipp-able” Content? 3 Ways As Glenn Gabe notes in his study, landing a Featured Snippet begins with covering your chosen topic as thoroughly and as clearly as possible. Include an eye-catching image near the answer, use bullets, and provide both the question and the answer on the page. In addition, users may benefit from featuring content (such as a graph) in a format that is “snipp-able”. Besides displaying images, there are other ways to create content that will show in Google’s box: 1. Find out what users are asking, and then find the answer General answers that can easily be found anywhere are not the best materials to include in a Snippet. For example, during a recent Google search of “How many presidents?”, the answers came up in standard list form. When compared to a more specific search of “how to write a book,”, the first result in the Featured Snippet was from a website that instructs would-be authors on how to delve into writing. 2. Create a heading using search words Notice in the above example that the author included the query “How to write a book” as the heading above the URL. Use a keyword or long-tail search query in the h1, h2, or h3 tag to increase relevancy and answer users’ questions. 3. Focus on longer, high quality keywords SEMRush sampled 100,000 keywords and found that the average length of the … Read more

Why Local Content Matters & How to Write Geo-Targeted Pages Successfully

December 31, 2020November 8, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you want to rank in local SERPs, you need to write long-form local content. This is especially true if you run a local business. In fact, it’s an absolute necessity if you run a local business. When you write local content, you fulfill two key points: First, you communicate to your readers that your business is aware of and involved in the community they’re searching for. Secondly, you show Google and other search engines that you’re a relevant local company with your thumb on the pulse of local events. This, in turn, helps you rank in local SERPs and get noticed on the phones, mobile devices, and computers of your customers. In this way, local content helps you stand out both in your community and around the web as a whole. To learn more about why local content matters, and how you can create it to improve your local presence online and dominate the SERPs, read on. Local Content by the Numbers Yes, local content is essential to help your customers understand where you’re located, what your hours are, and what you specialize in, but it’s also critical for making sales, and for drawing customers to your company in the first place. Check out these stats (created by our awesome lead designer): According to HubSpot: 72% of customers who conduct local searches visit a store within five miles of their location. What’s more, 50% of mobile users who make local searches visit a store within 24 hours, and 78% of local searches initiated on mobile phones result in an offline sale. Finally, Google reports that, today, 30% of all mobile searches are geo-specific. Massive numbers. It’s critical today for marketers with brick-and-mortar companies to dominate local content, and master the approach to geo-targeted pages. USSelfStorage.com: Local Content Dominating the SERPs (Express Writers’ Client) Local content is critical, but what exactly does successful geo-targeted copy look like? With so many components, factors, and foundations, it can be tough to identify what works as local content and what doesn’t. We’ve got a terrific example to help point you in the right direction. USSelfStorage.com USSelfStorage.com is a client of ours, here at Express Writers. When this client came to us, our team created more than 100 geo-specific landing pages for this company, and each features all of the components of a good piece of local content. A strategy they used was to build multiple search results pages, and at the bottom of the page, plug in 500-1000 words of locally optimized content that we wrote up for them. Using this strategy, they gained top positions in the SERPs for local keywords, and they dominate in the rankings with an organic search volume worth six positions per month. Check out the screenshot we pulled on their organic domination (circa November 2016): Here’s a specific example of how they rank. #3 for “nashville storage units:” The page that earned this organic position has a search result listing at the top: Below the listing of results, the ranking site page has a long-form locally optimized content piece, if you keep scrolling. More long-form content that we created for them includes this Montana landing page, for example. In addition to being conversational, this piece of material also features local keywords and helpful links. It’s a great example of what a geo-targeted page should look like, and it’s a wonderful model to base your local content on when you begin writing it. 5 Key Rules for Writing Local Content Now that you know why local content is so important, let’s talk about how to write it. Here are five rules to live by: 1. Write 1,000 words of content on each page According to Search Engine Land, geo-targeted pages should include at least 1,000 words of quality content. This is long enough to provide relevance and context for users, and also long enough to provide a home for the local keywords you use in your content. Any shorter than 1,000 words and you risk being too brief for search engines and for readers. Any longer and you risk sounding spammy by trying to make long-form content more geo-targeted than it wants to be. While you don’t have to hit 1,000 words on the head, be sure to write at least that on every geo-targeted page you create. This will give your audience more to interact with and help ensure that you’re getting the largest possible level of SEO from each of your local posts. 2. Include city-specific keywords City-specific keywords are critical for getting your local content to rank, and they can spell the difference between local content success and failure. With this in mind, use a tool like KWFinder to research local key words that you should be including in your content. By finding these and integrating them naturally throughout your copy, you can communicate to both humans and search engines that you’re relevant, local, and authoritative. If you’re looking to rank in nearby cities, as well, you may consider researching varied city-specific keywords and including them in your material, as well. This will help expand your rankings beyond your immediate zone and may serve to draw in customers from neighboring areas. 3. Keep it conversational Updates like Panda and Hummingbird have made it essential to feature conversational content on your site. This becomes all the more important as things like voice search rise to prominence. Today, conversational content is not only more attractive to your readers, but it’s also better positioned to help you rank in the world of semantic search. With this in mind, keep your local content conversational by including mention of a current event, happenings, or promotions in your given area. Don’t be afraid to write blog posts that mention specials in your city or surrounding cities, or make announcements whenever you extend service into a given area. By keeping your content conversational, friendly, and hyper-local, you can help search engines interpret your content as relevant and helpful. More importantly, however, conversational content appeals more deeply to readers, … Read more

How to Choose the Right Keywords to Optimize Your Content With

February 7, 2024November 7, 2016 by Adam Oakley

You know that keyword research is important, but it can be so hard when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of how to choose the right keywords. In addition to finding the right keyword research tool, you need to learn to integrate your keywords naturally, and locate your best, highest-opportunity keywords in the first place. Targeting keywords are some of the most critical aspects of on-page SEO, and they can go a long way toward helping your content rank where it’s supposed to. Great content that also ranks well brings about serious ROI. Fortunately, choosing the right keywords seems harder than it actually is. Let’s dive in. Knowing How to Choose the Right Keywords: Why the Right Keywords Matter So Much Think of keywords as the bones of your content. They structure your headline and meta title, give your content a direction, and help people connect with your material. In many ways, keywords and keyword research set the stage for the rest of the content creation process. The research you put into finding the correct keywords can easily influence the level of research you’ll put into the rest of the article or blog. Finally, learning which keyword phrases work and which don’t is an art form, and mastering it will help make you a better content creator. Without the right “bones” your content can’t stand on its own, so it’s critical to ensure you have the right keywords for all of your content. Because of this, it’s critical to do as much as you can to locate the right keyword phrases and learn to integrate them into your content. 5 Guidelines on How to Choose the Right Keywords for Your Content Whether you’re writing a blog post or a web page, these five steps will help you choose the right keywords for your written online content. 1. Focus on long-tail keywords first Long-tail keywords are magic. This is your most important step in knowing how to choose the right keywords. In addition to the fact that they’re much more targeted than short-tail keywords, long-tail keywords are a great way to locate highly qualified leads who are ready to purchase your product, good, or service. While it’s true that long-tail keywords often lack the search volume of their short-tail competitors, they’re a great way to weed out disinterested or accidental searchers, and leave yourself and your company with a selection of highly qualified, genuinely interested customers. As you narrow down your long-tail keywords, keep specificity in mind. Long-tails work best when they’re as targeted and specific as possible, and the more granular you can get with them, the better. 2. Don’t be romanced by massive search numbers Marketers who are new to the world of keyword research often make the mistake of getting lured in by high monthly search volume. While it may seem smart to opt for the keywords with the highest search volume, this can actually backfire. Here’s why: while an inexperienced marketer may get excited about the prospect of millions of monthly searches, it’s virtually impossible for a new, little-known company to rank on the first page of Google for the keyword “shoes,” which, according to KWFinder, has 1,220,000 monthly searches. Because “shoes” is much too broad a keyword, the small company would be smarter to target a long-tail option with a lower monthly search volume. A better option might be “boat shoes for men.” While this term only has 14,800 monthly searches, it will be much easier to rank for than the high-volume, short term. It will also be easier to make sales to these searchers, since they know exactly what they want to purchase as they begin their search. 3. Use a solid keyword research tool A high quality keyword research tool (like KWFinder or SEMrush, our favorites) is critical when it comes to locating your best keywords. In addition to the fact that a tool like this will give you several metrics – ranging from keyword difficult to PPC and SEO competition – these powerful tools will also allow you to save keywords to lists and compare them later. For the best results, consider using several tools and compiling the results in a spreadsheet. You can even make multiple tabs to group your keywords together. This allows you to compare and contrast the results of different keyword databases, and understand the unique results of each platform. It also allows you to choose more effective keywords based on various approaches and information. 4. Fit your keyword phrase into your headline Real talk: don’t fit your headline around your keyword phrase. Fit your keyword into your headline. Readability comes first. But if you want to rank well for a given keyword, it needs to feature in your headline. With this in mind, try writing a few sample headlines around your chosen target phrase. Write more than one till you come up with one that you really like. Example: for this post, our keyword was “how to choose the right keywords.” Here’s what we could have done: How to Choose the Right Keywords (a keyword as long-tail as this could stand alone, but that’s not good enough – albeit close) Your Guide on How to Choose the Right Keywords (eh, heard it before) How to Choose the Right Keywords to Optimize Your Content With The last one is a winner. Double-checking it in the AMI headline scorer, we see it ranks above 50%, which is an excellent score: So, have a goal of creating a headline that utilizes your keyword, but is first and foremost optimized for the reader. If you have a difficult time finding something that doesn’t sound awkward, you may need to reconsider your approach. Keep in mind that you can include stop words in awkward keyword phrases to make them flow more naturally. This is a much better approach than just forcing grammatically incorrect keyword phrases into content, and can help make your material more readable for your audiences. 5. Make sure the overall topic of your content is an actual … Read more

The Importance of Being Authentic in Your Online Copywriting (From an SEO Copywriter)

December 31, 2020October 6, 2016 by Ashley

As an SEO copywriter, I see what goes on behind the scenes in the world of online content. By that, I mean I see the assignment and request sheets. I even have the long phone conversations with clients who aren’t exactly sure what they want, but who know they want something. I get the jumble of keywords and the word count and the instruction to make it into something useable. It’s often creation ex nhilo, in its finest form. And the other copywriters out there know what I’m talking about. Despite the fact that it’s often difficult, though, it’s entirely worthwhile. And here’s why. Online copywriting challenges us to be one thing that we often aren’t in our daily lives: authentic. Today, more people are turning to online content than have ever done so before, and their B.S. detectors are better than they’ve ever been. Because of this, it’s critical to take all of the raw components of online copy and make them into something coherent, compelling, and, yes, authentic. If this is something that you, like so many SEO copywriters struggle with, this piece contains some tips to help you be more authentic in all of your online content, starting now. Enjoy! Authenticity: The Cornerstone of Great Online Content The best creations from any good SEO copywriter are like a puzzle meticulously assembled. It’s a little bit of SEO, a little bit of research, a little bit of skill, a lot of dedication, and some humor or insight, all rolled into one cohesive package. If any of these components are lacking, the content just does not work. And don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of this out there, but it’s not what people want to interact with. Today, brands in all industries and specialties are striving for authentic content, and readers around the globe are working harder than ever before to find it. This represents something extraordinary. While content has long since been the vehicle for various forms of marketing, it’s a recent thing that the demand for authentic content has reached such a fever pitch. Today, customers don’t want to interact with pushy, stiff content that reeks of used-car-salesman vibes. Instead, they want legitimately valuable content that helps them solve problems and, get this, develop relationships. According to an article published in the Harvard Business Review, the importance of a massive, powerful brand (think Wal-Mart) is falling, while the importance of company-customer relationships is rising. In fact, the value of customer relationships has doubled over the last decade, leaping from 9% to 18%. In addition to driving things like engagement and sales, stronger company-customer relationships also help promote brand recognition and loyalty. And what’s the best way to create these relationships? You guessed it: authentic content. 3 Brands Currently Killing It with Authentic Content To get an idea of what authentic content looks like in the world of online copywriting, it’s smart to look around at a few brands that do it well. Here are three of my favorites: 1. Dollar Shave Club I reference Dollar Shave Club often in what I write because I truly believe they’re one of the best brands out there regarding online content. I’ll confess that I became a member of their service based purely on the genius of their launch video, and the goodness just continues. For an example, consider this email I received from them just today: While this headline might not immediately strike you as “authentic” (slapstick, maybe?), it does a few things well. First of all, it’s funny. I saw it in my inbox and knew that the email would contain a pitch for some hand cream. I also knew I wouldn’t buy any, but I opened it because I wanted to see what was inside. And guess what? As a consumer, I’ll continue opening their emails until another one of their products does appeal to me, and then I’ll purchase it. Because they’re consistently funny, upfront, and authentic, I’m a devotee of the brand – even though there are similar ones out there. 2. Patagonia Patagonia is one of my favorite clothing companies, and it’s also one of my favorite brands for content. Dedicated to sustainability, recycled materials, and super high-quality outdoor clothing backed by an “ironclad guarantee,” Patagonia takes its vision into its content, and practices what it preaches every step of the way. The company’s blog, The Cleanest Line, features articles on everything from preserving the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear to profiles on great outdoorsmen (and women). While Patagonia isn’t funny like Dollar Shave Club (and, where it exists in Patagonia’s marketing, humor takes a different form), the company manages to speak directly and authentically to their clients, which is probably why they have one of the single strongest followings I know of. 3. Neil Patel Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Hello Bar, and I believe he’s one of the best marketers out there. While he does many amazing things in the way of content, one of my favorite things about his approach is his willingness to admit that he hasn’t always been awesome at this. While an influencer like Neil could feel completely inaccessible, he takes steps to break that perception down by openly sharing what he calls his “oh sh*t” moments. It’s vulnerable, honest, and authentic, and it makes people want to engage with his brand even more than they would if they knew he was one of the most successful marketers out there. 5 Steps to More Authentic Content (By Yours Truly, An SEO Copywriter) Unless you know how to approach it, striving for authentic content can have the opposite effect: it can make your content feel stiffer. Luckily, these five tips will help you get off on the right foot: 1. Write for your audience, whoever they are Obviously, the audience Dollar Shave Club is targeting is somewhat different than the audience Patagonia is targeting, so it stands to reason that the voice is different. That said, though, both brands do an excellent job of speaking to their unique audiences. To make your content more authentic, learning to … Read more

10 Great SEO Writing Tips To Help You Conquer & Rule the Content Castle

December 31, 2020August 23, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If content is King, who gets the other throne? While it’s easy to create content, it’s not easy to create stellar, highly sought-after content that readers can’t help but love. While this is bad news for most people, it’s great news for writers and marketers alike. The secret? You have to be willing to learn and adapt to great SEO writing tips. Think of it like royal decrees. These are the guidelines that will help you vanquish the dragons of poor form, and claim a rightful seat as the King or Queen of royal SEO content. Read on for the royal decrees. Defining the Art of SEO Writing SEO writing is the practice and art of writing online copy that is optimized for Google and other search engines. While this does mean doing technical things like including target keywords and ensuring that all links come from high-authority sites, it also means mastering stylistic things like spacing, format, layout, and content structure. As SEO has changed in the last several years, SEO copywriting has become more advanced, and today the practice is all about providing quality for people and search engines without sacrificing relevance, ease, or beauty. When optimized copywriting is done well, it can help a company draw readers to a page. This, in turn, results in higher numbers of leads and conversions, and can go a long way toward completely overhauling a company’s online success rates. 10 SEO Writing Tips for Conquering Content Now, time to learn our best tips for vanquishing and conquering your SEO content to be proclaimed triumphant ruler over your content empire. 1. Understand your subjects Any good ruler knows their subjects, and the same thing goes for SEO. To produce high-quality, relevant content, you need to understand who you’re writing to and why it matters. Case in point: the copywriting you do to market to teenagers will vary vastly from the kind you do to sell household products to retired middle-class women on a budget. With this in mind, understand your audience as thoroughly as possible. By researching your viewers, polling them for answers to questions, and developing outstanding target personas, it’s easy to build a solid foundation for good SEO copywriting. 2. Produce prodigious headlines If you can’t craft a royal headline, you can’t expect people to bow down to your writing. Because of this, it’s essential for any content queen or king to take the time needed to learn how to write compelling headlines. This includes things like learning to integrate target keywords, understanding how to use action language and power words, and learning about Google’s best technical standards for good headlines and meta titles. 3. Don’t be afraid to try someone else’s headline formats out Think about viral sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed. What are they doing to garner thousands of clicks, likes, and shares each day? The answer is in the headline, and it’s okay to take a hint from their formula. Great headlines are very formulaic, and one of the best things you can do to boost your SEO copywriting success is to take a look at headlines you love, and then try to emulate them. 4. Include numbers in your copywriting People love numbers, and they have since the time of olde. Because numbers communicate things like brevity, solidity, and actionability to a would-be reader, they improve the click-through rates of your content. While numbers in and of themselves may not boost your content’s SEO, the increase in clicks and conversions that including numbers creates will. With this in mind, add numbers to your content headers to make the most of your readers’ views. While there are many ways to include numbers in copywriting headers, one of the most effective is in the form of lists. By providing 5 Simple Tips for X or 10 Ways to Y, you can help your readers learn something new, solve a problem, or address a concern, all while also boosting your conversion rates and making your content more irresistible than ever before. 5. Make long-tail keywords your friends rather than your foes Long-tail keywords are some of the most powerful SEO copywriting tools available. Ideal for ranking in Google, providing targeted value to readers, and tailoring your content to be as specific and unique as possible, long-tail keywords can help you rank, help you maintain your rankings, and help you draw new readers. With this in mind, don’t shy away from long-tails because they can be confusing to get started with. Instead, take the time to learn about why you need long-tail keywords, and how best to integrate them into your content. 6. Update your content kingdom often Nobody likes a stale, stinky content kingdom, and you’ll lose followers if you let yours get stagnant. While readers love fresh content, Google loves it even more, and publishing new website, blog, and social media content on a regular basis can go a long way toward helping you rank well and stand out as a leader in your industry. Every time you publish a new piece of SEO copywriting, you give Google another page to index and your followers another page to love. Plus, writing fresh content on a regular basis allows you to hone your writing skills, learn from SEO mistakes, and become a stronger force in the world of SEO copywriting as a whole. 7. Don’t neglect your meta content Meta content often lives on the outskirts of the content kingdom – forgotten and alone. When you learn how to craft outstanding meta content, though, you grant yourself admission into a new kingdom where everyone works together to create a prosperous and highly visible content strategy. With this in mind, bring your meta content in from the cold. While meta descriptions may take some additional time to write, there’s no denying that a compelling meta description is worth its weight in gold when it comes to encouraging clicks and driving engagement for your site. 8. Use images to draw royal attention Images are a fantastic way to draw additional views to your content and boost its position … Read more

Has Google Reinvented Meta Content? New Meta Title & Description Length

December 31, 2020May 27, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you’re a writer, online publisher, or marketer, it’s likely that you know a thing or two about meta descriptions and titles. Used to improve SEO and help web pages earn more prominent Google rankings, meta titles and descriptions are short blurbs that help readers and search engines decide what content is about. While meta content may not be as exciting as Google algorithm updates or copywriting secrets, there’s been some big news in the world of meta content recently. Earlier this month, Google announced some major changes to their meta title and description standards, and these changes will influence how SEOs everywhere regard meta content. Read on to learn more. Google’s Changes to Meta Content Standards Google seldom releases news like this through loudspeakers and blow horns, so it’s not surprising that change was spotted on Twitter by a guy named Ross Hudgens. We heard about it through The SEM Post and Search Engine Journal, who reported on it later. Long title tags being tested again in the SERPs. Seeing 69 and 70 character results today. pic.twitter.com/esiKTctV96 — Ross Hudgens (@RossHudgens) May 6, 2016 As it stands right now, Google’s character limits for title tags had increased by about ten characters: from 50-60 characters to 70-71 characters, which allows for longer and more in-depth descriptions and the inclusion of additional keywords. What’s more, meta descriptions have increased to 100 characters per line and now allow for three lines in a description. Keep in mind, however, that this change is on a per-line basis and Google is still cutting off anything that runs over 160 characters, so it’s smart to stick to that limit for now. Title Tag Changes Currently, Google is allowing title tag lengths to be 70 characters. While it’s possible to push that limit to 71 characters by using small letters like “i,” Google generally truncates anything that runs over the limit. The new 70-character cap represents an increase of between 10-15 characters, which is huge news for savvy SEOs everywhere since the extra space can be used to include additional keywords or make a title tag more longer or more descriptive. While the specific length of this increase will vary depending upon the words used, many SEOs are managing to include 2-4 extra words in their title tags. While the desktop changes are big news, the mobile title tag increase is what’s causing most SEOs to do a happy dance. As you probably know, mobile search is exploding right now, and it’s clear that the mobile character limit increase is Google’s effort to make mobile search more relevant and detailed than ever. According to The SEM Post, Google bumped its mobile tag lengths up to 78 characters, which is a whopping 8 characters more than even the desktop limit. This longer mobile tag allows marketers to input additional keywords and reap the click-through benefits that the extended tag has to offer. What’s more, longer title tags on both mobile and desktop allow a search engine result to take up a larger space in the all-important SERPs, which makes it more visible and attractive to Google users. Meta Description Changes While many SEOs are jumping up and down at the prospect of longer descriptions (about 16-20 characters longer, to be exact, to a cap of 100 characters per line), it’s wise to remember that Google is still truncating descriptions after about two lines or 160 characters. Because of this, it’s wise to ensure that you’re sticking to the 16- character limit, at least until it becomes clear that these changes are here to stay. Should You Get Excited? Yes! This is big news for SEOs, copywriters, and marketers. Meta content has always been important, but it’s also always been tough to create. While we still aren’t entirely sure whether these changes are A/B testing that Google will reverse in the near-future or long-lasting improvements that are here to stay, the prospect of larger meta content character limits is exciting in a few different ways. Here are some of the main reasons we’re excited about the character limit increase: Meta content will be easier to write. Brevity is hard. Anyone who has ever tried to craft a super-insightful tweet knows that getting the point across in just over 100 characters is tough. While the character limit increases aren’t massive, they offer just enough room to provide additional value and meaning in meta content. Additional keyword inclusion. Right now, most SEOs are managing to add 2-4 words to title tags. This increase allows for additional keyword inclusion and more SEO-focused content. Just remember, never stuff your keywords in; a natural meta description is far better than a stuffed one, since you need a conversational, well-written meta in order to get more click-throughs on your piece from Google results. Increased visibility. Longer meta content means more targeted results and increased visibility for all online material. This is good for marketers, search engines, and Google users. What To Do Now Since nobody is quite sure whether or not the character limit is here to stay, SEO experts are recommending that marketers measure their click-through-rates (CTRs) beginning before May 4th (the day that the change to the meta lengths took place). While it’s risky to alter your SEO efforts to fit the increased character limits before we know that they’re permanent, searching for any recent positive or negative changes will give you an idea of how and if your site has been affected. In addition to monitoring your CTRs, you should also optimize your mobile and desktop title tags separately in order to ensure that they’re both adhering to their respective character limits. This helps ensure that your readers are getting the value they need from your content and that you’re getting the real estate you deserve in the SERPs. The Future of the New Meta Title & Description Length While there’s no telling whether or not Google will reverse the character limit increase, there’s also no doubt that this new change has the potential … Read more