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How to Write & Publish Authority-Building SEO Blogs (SEMrush Webinar Recap)

February 7, 2024March 5, 2019 by Adam Oakley

How to Write & Publish Authority-Building SEO Blogs in 2019 (SEMrush Webinar Recap)

A few weeks ago, on February 11, I gave a talk for SEMrush on one of my favorite topics – writing and publishing authority-building blogs and SEO content. We had hundreds of viewers live, and lots of great questions! To help out those of you who couldn’t attend, and for those who were just too busy for the almost two-hour talk I gave (!!), we’re recapping the entire webinar here on the Write Blog. ?? I cover everything you need to know, including why inbound content ROCKS, and how to create strong content that gets results, step-by-step. Ready to learn? Let’s get into the nitty-gritty, including why ads are dying and why inbound marketing/blogging is the way forward in 2019. [bctt tweet=”Read the recap of the live talk @JuliaEMcCoy gave for @semrush in February, on #authority building #SEO content ?” username=”ExpWriters”] The Talk: Secrets to Writing Authority-Building SEO Blogs in 2019 Like video content better? Watch a replay of the 1.49 hour session on YouTube: The Recap: Secrets to Writing Authority-Building SEO Blogs in 2019 As promised, here’s our written recap of the top takeaways from my talk! Why Blog? The State of Advertising is Dismal The state of advertising is pretty bad when you look at the conversion numbers. Compared to 3 years ago, conversion rates on advertising have dipped ridiculously low. In 2016, the average return on ad spend (ROAS) was 11.88x. Today, that number has dropped to 0.66x. (Read all about the dreary state of advertising in this recap of The Ad Strategist’s report.) By comparison, blogging and content marketing look awesome. Seriously: Inbound is THE future of marketing. For instance, did you know Google is the most-visited website in the world? YouTube and Facebook hold the next two top spots, but they still aren’t anywhere close to Google’s traffic numbers (nearly 3.5 billion searches per day!). When you build authority SEO content on your website, you build your Google authority simultaneously. That’s because Google will crawl your blogs and rank them, giving them a position in the search engine results. Since Google grabs so much traffic, that could be beyond powerful for growing your web presence. BUT – To build authority, your content has to be amazing, strategic, researched, and well-crafted. Your content platform (your website) must be user-friendly and well-designed. You have to do it all (or, if you’re a smart delegator, make sure it all gets done). Don’t worry, though – where there’s a way, there’s a will. And there IS a way. Follow me! [bctt tweet=”To build authority, your content has to be amazing, strategic, researched, and well-crafted. Your content platform, your site, must be user-friendly and well-designed. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] How to Write and Publish Authoritative, GOOD Content: 6 Strategic Steps It’s time to dive into authority-building content creation. Get ready for greatness! 1. Make Sure Your Website is Right A useful, user-friendly website needs to be the bottom layer of your online presence cake. Without this crucial piece in place, you won’t see any real results from your content. A strong website is what makes your content eligible to rank in the first place. Our site at Express Writers gets nearly 4,000 organic visitors daily from our blog and content rankings (we currently rank for over 16,000 keywords). Those numbers wouldn’t be possible without a strong website serving as the foundation. What does a strong website look like? Using our site as an example, the top 5 elements are illustrated below. Strong sites are built on trusted platforms, like WordPress, which is one of the most robust SEO out there. They load quickly – under 2 seconds is ideal. According to Google, as page load time increases from one second to 10 seconds, a site visitor is 123% more likely to bounce. The page copy is simple, clear, and easy to read. CTAs are also clear, strategically placed, and stand out. Sites should have cohesive branding and design that don’t mess with site speed and page load times (no heavy images or videos!). Communication apps, pop-ups, and chatbots are minimized so they don’t annoy your visitors. 2. Map Your Blog Topic to Your Goals Before you even start writing or outlining, your goals should mark your content trajectory. [bctt tweet=”Before you even start writing or outlining, your goals should mark your content trajectory. @JuliaEMcCoy #blogging” username=”ExpWriters”] How will your blog help you advance to your goals? Will it increase your brand awareness? Build trust and loyalty with readers? Capture leads and grow your following? Whatever you hope to achieve, make sure each blog you put out aligns with either an overarching goal or a smaller goal that paves the way to bigger successes. Answering the following questions can help further nail down your goals for each blog you write: Who are you writing this blog to? What questions can you answer for them on this topic? What format will this content take? Is it suited for a long-form, in-depth blog post, or does it lend itself better to a visually stunning infographic? Remember, blogs aren’t your only option for content creation. When will you publish the blog? Can you strategically tie it to a season or holiday? Where will you publish? To build authority, you should focus on publishing most blogs to your website. However, posting to guest blogs from time to time can give your brand more exposure. 3. Do Strategic Research After mapping your blog content to goals, the next step is to dive into strategic research. First up, that means keyword research. Don’t start with any random industry keyword, though – begin with your audience’s pain points and research keywords that hit on their problems. You want to find keywords that tie to the questions they’re asking in Google so you can position your content as a solution they’ll find in search results. Using a tool like SEMrush during keyword research is immensely helpful. It will give you vital data about your keyword including keyword difficulty (KD) and related … 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