What if we’re thinking about SEO all wrong?
You won’t be shocked to see such a question posed on this site — one that harbors posts in its archive with headlines like SEO is Dead and What if You Could Simply Eliminate SEO from Your Life?
Don’t get me wrong: we’re not anti-SEO.
Heck, we were recently awarded a U.S. patent for the Content Optimizer we developed that now powers the SEO tools bundled with our premium WordPress hosting.
We’re just anti some of the misguided notions and incomplete narratives about SEO that masquerade as good advice.
And one of the most fundamental mistakes I see people make is not fully appreciating the full breadth of each of the three terms that comprise S-E-O: Search. Engine. Optimization.
Notice the placement of that first period after “Search.”
It’s time to think beyond traditional notions of “search engines”
It’s easy to group the terms “search” and “engine” together. And for a long, long time, it made sense to do so.
When we used to discuss “search engine optimization,” we were mostly talking about searches typed into Google, perhaps Bing, or (going back further) Yahoo.
But now it’s 2017.
The new search
Gone are the days of only typed searches. People now conduct more and more searches with voice commands. A recent article on Forbes, 2017 Will Be the Year of Voice Search, makes a compelling case.
And who knows what will happen when we all have chips implanted in our brains that can read our thoughts. We
Category: Search
Try These Useful Suggestions to Build Your Audience
On Monday, our good and wise friend Andy Crestodina showed the difference between optimizing for search engines and optimizing for social shares. He also gives us a nice piece of advice about how you can get really crafty and do both.
Proofreading might not seem exciting, until the day you publish a post with the headline Making that Shit into the Next Phase of Your Career. Don’t let that happen; read Stefanie’s Tuesday post.
On Wednesday, Brian Clark reminded us that search and social get all the attention, but it’s email that pays the bills. He explains why email is the most important content distribution platform you have … and reveals that my favorite analogy for how to treat your audience has always given him the jitters. (Do you agree with him? Let us know in the blog comments! …)
And earlier today, I posted our Content Excellence Challenge prompts for April. These are fun, creative exercises we do together as a community. Both of the prompts are practices that will make your content better, and get you making more of it.
On The Digital Entrepreneur, Bryan Eisenberg shared his insights with Sean and Jessica on how to leverage Amazon self-publishing to find new audiences and customers. If you haven’t encountered Bryan yet, he’s a bit of a marketing and persuasion guru/ninja/Jedi/grand master … but the kind who actually knows what he’s talking about. He understands Amazon on a deep level, and the conversation is filled with useful
How to Optimize Content for Both Search and Social (Plus, a Headline Hack that Strikes the Balance)
It’s as if they live in different countries: Searchlandia and Socialstan.
Search optimizers and social media marketers don’t get together a whole lot, at least not in the same piece of content. But there’s no reason they can’t peacefully coexist in one article, in one URL.
Imagine. One topic, one message, united in quality, but with two separate and equally powerful sources of traffic: search and social.
Is it possible? Can one post be optimized for both?
Yes. And when it happens, the traffic is greater than the sum of its channels.
Um. Actually, the traffic is equal to the sum of its channels. But we’re not here to do math. We’re here to create the right type of content that gets traction everywhere.
Optimizing for search
Let’s start with a rundown of search optimization.
Our goal here is to indicate relevance, not trick a robot.
After you’ve identified a target keyword phrase:
Use the phrase in highly visible places
Those places are the title, header, meta description, and body text (of course). Yes, the tiny, barely visible places are nice too — such as alt text and the file names of images — but they’re not as important as those primary spots.
If this isn’t obvious, just ask yourself:
If you were building a new search engine today, would an image file name be a major search-ranking factor?
Probably not.
Include words and phrases semantically connected to your phrase
You see words and phrases semantically connected to your phrase everywhere when
Content Marketing Advice, with a Side of Snark
So today is April 1, which usually means we’ll try to feed you some stupid joke that will just make you roll your eyes when you realize the date.
Not this time, internet.
Brian kicked things off on Monday with three ways to get links that you haven’t heard 20 million times from people whose websites have no links. Plus he gets a little snarky, which you never want to miss.
On Tuesday, our friend Jon Nastor showed us how we can actually get listeners for our podcasts. It’s a useful thing to know, since the #1 question on the minds of new podcasters is: “For the love of all that is holy and good, is anyone ever going to hear this thing?”
And on Wednesday, Loren Baker helped you figure out why your site is slower than a slug on Xanax … and how to fix it. Seriously, there’s moss growing on that thing.
Moving to the podcasts: On The Showrunner, Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor discussed sponsorships and affiliate marketing. On Copyblogger FM, I considered the fine balance between being precise with usage and grammar … and just being an annoying jerk. And on Unemployable, Brian Clark talked conversion optimization with Talia Wolf. “Conversion optimization” is another way of saying, “People will actually buy what you are selling,” so don’t miss that conversation.
That’s it for this week … enjoy the goodies, and watch out for April Foolery!
— Sonia Simone
Chief Content Officer, Rainmaker Digital
Catch up on
6 SEO Friendly Tips to Improve Site Speed on WordPress Blogs
In the world of SEO, user experience on websites has always been a factor, as has the time it takes for a site to load.
However, with the use of mobile devices surpassing desktop use (in most consumer-facing industries) and the wide adoption of broadband, people expect sites to load instantly.
Long gone are the days of waiting 10 seconds for a site to load.
If a page takes more than a couple of seconds to load, users will instantly hit the back button and move on to the next result.
Accordingly, Google officially started paying attention to site speed and declared its importance as a factor in rankings.
In order to keep up with Google’s site-ranking measures, WordPress blog users need to know exactly what they can do to improve their own site speed.
Remember when Google rolled out AMP (accelerated mobile pages)?
They now serve up publisher content in a simplified Google hosted experience that renders superfast. I like AMP from a user perspective because I know that AMP content will load incredibly fast on my mobile device, but as a publisher:
I’d rather speed up my blog and attract traffic directly to my site than have users stay on Google.
If you use StudioPress Sites or the Rainmaker Platform, your site will already load quickly. However, adding ad scripts, featured images, tracking codes, 301 redirects, etc. will slow down the loading of a site and increase demand on your server/hosting company.
Here are six simple
Podcasters: Stop Looking for an Audience (and Let Them Find You)
“Three … two … one … Ready or not, here I come!”
My daughter Sadie hides anxiously behind the living room couch, while her best friend is searching, calling out her name, and trying to find her.
Hide-and-seek, a game played out millions of times.
If you don’t know, hide-and-seek is a popular children’s game in which any number of players conceal themselves in the environment, to be found by one or more seekers.
The hiding is not what makes it fun.
Kids will play for hours and hours when they continually find each other. When one of the children stays hidden for even five minutes too long, the others quickly lose interest.
It is a quest fueled by the moment of discovery.
Hey podcaster, stop hiding behind the couch
Now let’s think about why thousands upon thousands of content marketers, business owners, hobbyists, and fans start podcasts. More often than not, it’s to build an audience around a topic they love.
They start with enthusiasm and determination, only to quit after 10, 12, or 20 episodes (the number doesn’t matter, the quitting does).
Listeners couldn’t find their podcasts, so they quit. Like Sadie hiding behind the couch, when no one finds us, the game ceases to be fun and we quit.
Podcasts need to be actively optimized — not only to help you build an audience and authority, but also to help you stay motivated to not quit.
The search begins
The consensus amongst podcasters is that since Google can’t index audio, you can throw your
Search Engine Madness on Copyblogger
Apparently, “March Madness” on Copyblogger is less about college basketball and more about finding things to say about SEO.
One could say we painted ourselves into a corner by saying, “Technical SEO isn’t nearly as important for most sites as actually producing content worth consuming” … and then deciding to write about search optimization all month.
One might even call us foolhardy.
One may have a point.
Nevertheless, we persisted … and it turns out, good things happen when you persist.
On Monday, Jerod talked a bit about some of the easy-to-forget steps that do help those darned search engines understand what your site is all about. Because he’s Jerod, he also had to talk about college basketball. Honestly, it’s March, we’re lucky to have him on the blog at all. And it was a good, useful post.
Yesterday, I wrote about how to cultivate relationships with other folks who publish content … without it getting all icky and weird. Relationships are one of the most fundamental elements of SEO, but they’re also interesting to write about because we’re human beings. Most of us, anyway.
On the podcast network, we mixed it up a little. Sean Jackson and Jessica Frick shared some thoughts on affiliate marketing for digital entrepreneurs. Brian Clark talked with Marcus Sheridan about Marcus’s no-baloney approach to content marketing and his new book, They Ask, You Answer. And Kelton Reid sat down with The New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy to talk about memoir, reporting,
Schedule 30 Minutes to Uncover the Keys to More Powerful Content
I understand why content marketers may avoid SEO: it seems complicated and time-consuming.
But I’ve got good news. Today, you’ll learn why content marketers like you are well-positioned to use SEO tactics — possibly even more so than *cough* an SEO like me.
Keyword research doesn’t have to be a marathon. A brisk, 30-minute walk can provide incredibly useful insights.
Even though keyword research benefits may not be obvious, the work you perform will help connect you to a wider audience on a deeper level.
Discovering how many people (a month) search for something, the words they use, and the questions they ask are important keys to more powerful content.
Why keyword research is essential
My previous company, Pryde Marketing, leveraged online data strategically for private medical practices.
When we were hired to do keyword research for an MRI company, we discovered that hundreds of people a month were searching “open vs. closed mri” but no sites provided any good answers, content, or photos for these searchers.
We decided to create a “Open vs. Closed MRI” page for our client that continues to see more than double the traffic of the homepage. And, it has brought in more than 50,000 unique visitors.
We were not successful because we thought of this content idea.
We were successful because we paid attention to the keyword data.
4 keyword research hacks
As Jerod Morris explained yesterday, there are keyword research tools built right in to the Rainmaker Platform and StudioPress Sites that you can use
7 Easy-to-Forget SEO Steps You Need to Consider Every Time You Publish
“But I don’t really think about SEO very much anymore.”
That was my initial reaction when we all agreed that March would be SEO month here at Copyblogger. At which point, of course, I knew I’d have to write about it.
“Look, I just create useful content for people. Do that, get it read, get it shared, get links, have good hosting and fast page-load times … and productive search engine results will follow, right? I mean, what else is there to say?”
Turns out, plenty.
Keyword research is more fundamental to your content marketing strategy than you may think. Also, you may already be making fatal optimization mistakes. Plus, who knew SEO advice could be so … practical? (Including #8, which will punch you square between the eyes.)
I read those articles, rethought my position, and decided to examine exactly how much I actually think about SEO on a post-by-post basis.
And, turns out, plenty. (Whether or not I realized it.)
It’s easy to forget about the basic steps I’m going to outline below, but they shouldn’t be overlooked. Because the minute I stop doing them is the minute my content starts attracting fewer targeted visitors. Same goes for you.
So let’s start at the top, because the first one is by far the most important of the seven — and it will take me the longest to explain.
(Note: I’m going to use my site AssemblyCall.com as an example throughout this post. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which
Zen and the Art of Content Marketing
Google reminds me that we’ve covered the intersection of Zen and business a few times at Copyblogger … which doesn’t surprise me a bit.
At the heart of Zen is the concept (which is not a concept) of nonduality. In the words of Shunryu Suzuki:
“To speak of waves apart from water or water apart from waves is a delusion. Water and waves are one.”
I’m sure Brian Clark had been rereading his Suzuki Roshi when he advised us on Monday to “forget SEO” — because the wisest practice of SEO is to get out of dualistic thinking about SEO. It’s not separate or distinct from your daily business — it’s a facet of what you already do.
On Tuesday, we saw the return of the shaved head and serene countenance of Gardner Roshi Brian Gardner — our esteemed partner over on the StudioPress side of the house, who let us know what he’s been up to for the past, oh, half-year or so. Brian has recently started answering questions live on Thursdays (2:00 p.m. Eastern Time) at the StudioPress Facebook page — swing by and say hello later today, if you like!
And on Wednesday, Stefanie briskly reminded us that, nonduality or no, there are such things as content mistakes. She pointed out five ways to fix common ones. (Zen is, as it happens, quite practical.)
On The Writer Files, Kelton Reid wrapped up his interview with Oliver Burkeman, the author of the very Zen title, The