SEO Tips: News Values & Brand Values All Count on Google

Content marketing is the hot thing now for many companies. It isn’t rocket science, but it requires you apply newsroom values and discipline to make it work well. Fact is, there’s no quick fix, SEO isn’t a `black art,’ it is a skill set rooted in journalism.

You need trained journalists because your brand is competing with media outlets for P1 on Google. It’s a shark pool out there.

If you want your content on Page 1 of Google, recruit an SEO trained, experienced writer. It works.

You could cut corners, use an outside agency or freelancer who syndicates blogs and re-writes press releases in a keyword-stuffed kinda way, circa 2009. But it probably isn’t going to work.

So read the papers, watch the TV news, use Google Trends, Alerts, trade journals, websites, forums and Twitter to see what’s hot in search volumes. Both within your business niche and the wider economy.

Never forget human nature; people are greedy, they love something for nothing, like PPI compensation, dodgy insurance claims, cheaper petrol, designer clothes reduced by 50% in the Debenhams Sale, or vouchers for a free meal at their local restaurant.

Give them news about freebies, shops going bust and selling stock cheap, big brands dishing out voucher codes.

NOT ALL CONTENT IS LINKBAIT

You need some values, something beyond keywords.

This is where most companies lose the plot because they often see content as essentially subservient to commercial needs – every article has to make money, or gather data.

Good content can get your brand a top position on Google’s search pages.

But business is about brands too, and the trust you build into a brand has a tangible, cash value. Ask John Lewis, M&S, Aston Martin, Apple, the BBC, or Moneysupermarket.com who paid Martin Lewis £87 million for Moneysaving Expert, because readers TRUSTED what they read there.

Give your readers true value; like the knowledge to avoid online scams, or ways to buy something expensive that bit cheaper than your neighbour. People want knowledge and the internet is a knowledge economy, still developing its true potential and power.

In a decade there will be no UK High Streets as we understand them now.

There will be leisure shopping experiences, places that are fun, pleasant, safe and packed with major brands. But we will make all our essential, everyday, `distress’ purchases online. Content marketing will ease the sting of that impersonal process, empower some consumers with wisdom and expose the shabbier, more obviously dubious companies.

We live in interesting times, chronicle them.

How to Use Content Marketing to Get to Page 1 on Google Search

People talk about content marketing and how 2013 will be the year when many businesses finally get to grips with it. Possibly.

Will 2013 be the year of content marketing? Maybe. If business people get their wallets open.

For me, I don’t see that happening this year in the UK, because most businesses do not have the time, willpower or resources to create original, well written content, which will achieve a high page rank on Google.

The harsh truth is that most SMEs and smaller businesses think they can do it on the cheap. Big companies are more switched on in general, but few want to invest serious money in quality content.

Many senior managers and directors still think that by paying web developers and web designers huge amounts of money, they can `game’ Google. That there is a `trick’ to getting to P1/P1 on Google or Yahoo.

SEO isn’t X-Box; there isn’t a `cheat’ app, or website, which will enable your company to consistently get P1/P1, although there are plenty of web developers who will happily sell you that notion. And forget about link farming, that train has left the station.

The Technical Side Matters, But You Need Good Writers, with SEO Skills

Good websites need many things.

Error free website code, high quality links, H1/2/3 site structure, XML sitemaps, W3c compliance, a lack of flash media, or appalling marketing spam above the fold on your home page. There are many other technical aspects, but nothing is as important as excellent content in the long run, when it comes to overall page rank and making money from particular pages within your site.

You would think people would grasp this basic truth, but there is still far too much syndicated PR fluff, outsourced Pidgin English copy bought for peanuts from People Per Hour or some dreadful Copyscape rehash of old, or stolen content, which is irrelevant, poorly written, keyword stuffed or just riddled with tacky affiliate links.

Great stories, hard news, `how to’ articles that answer questions, product reviews, comparisons, witty, short video clips and outstanding, shareable photos. That’s what you need. Downside is, it costs money – because good writers and image creators need a living wage, just like web developers do.

If You Include News and Topical Articles on Your Website, then Employ Experienced Journalists, Not Interns or Amateurs

I will speak slowly, so that the slow of understanding can note this point; journalism matters, it drives traffic, boosts conversion rates and helps websites make money.

Storytelling is an art and like a great TV ad, online video, podcasts, or features, need skilled creative authors.

Irrespective of what you think of the Mail Online website, it delivers, being the most read UK newspaper website by a huge margin – twice as big as its nearest rival, the Guardian. The reason is that people get the news, 24/7, plus comment from both journalists and readers alike. For free.

Then there is the clever `wall of shame’ photo strip at the right-hand side of the Mail Online page, which acts as internal link bait – these pictures of scantily clad women, celebrity affairs, weight loss/gain pics, soap stars in court, Harry Styles copping off etc. all keep readers clicking on Mail Online stories – reader engagement.

That engagement, that precious web browsing time, builds trust and when people like and trust your website, they are about 20 times more likely to click on a link to a partner company, advert, or graphic image which acts as an affiliate link. That is how Martin Lewis made his £87 million from MoneysavingExpert – trust.

To create all that topical content, you need pro writers, and photographers, with SEO qualifications. Or you can hire editors to add the vital SEO tweaks via the CMS ( Content Management System) when the content is posted. It helps if those editors keep up to date with Google’s shifting sands of SEO rules and regulations too.

That too, takes a financial investment, you cannot learn it all from a Mashable post or two.

Case Study: Beating Car Magazines at Car Reviews

Google search result for Jag XF 2.2 diesel review.

OK, check the screen grab; Google P1/P4 result on my Jaguar XF 2.2 Diesel car review.

Now, let’s be blunt, I shouldn’t be able to beat What Car, Auto Express, Fleet News, Autocar, Evo and others with my review on Watch My Wallet, which isn’t a car magazine.

Google should see my feature as being less relevant than specialist car magazines, but it doesn’t.

The reason this content has a good page rank is because I have applied the lessons learned whilst studying SEO and social media marketing at Salford University. Great course, if you’re in business, you should try it – I’m not on commission by the way.

I also used Google Analytics and Trends, to fine tune the content, so that I could match it to the potential searches entered online.

For example, top keywords include the Jaguar’s engine size; 2.2 litre, mpg, review, road test and the engine type, which is the more popular diesel variant. In my experience, Google likes to look at the opening paragraphs of articles to define relevance, so try and make sure you write a natural, flowing intro, that has two or three of those top keywords in there. It works.

Define your images, add the make or model to the image description – some people search Google Images, not the text search, never forget that.

Don’t forget to mention rival cars. You want potential car buyers to look at your content, because ultimately you need some sort of link, or partnership deal to monetise your content. So people who type `Jaguar XF 2.2 vs Audi A5 diesel’ need to see your content on P1 of Google, because you really, really want those readers.

You can create content that has a higher page rank than articles produced by specialist magazines.

There are some other SEO tweaks involved, but these basic hints and tips should serve you well. So go and create some original content, write some reviews, and amplify your reach using social media. Google Analytics will tell you which days, which hours of the day, your Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook or You Tube posts are most likely to bring you the right traffic.

Content marketing can, and will, bring readers to your web pages, and where our eyes go, our money follows.

Tweet me @npointsocial

 

 

Education Works: Things I Learned About Google at Salford University

‘Best iPhone 5 Deals’

Page 1, P3 Google search.

That’s SEO baby. Thank you Salford Uni #SSMM course. The best search and social media education you can get in the North. True.

 

How To Make Friends with Google and Influence People. Learn SEO at Salford Uni.

SEO Case Study: News Values Really Do Matter After Penguin

After Google’s recent Panda and Penguin updates, the relevance and timing of your content is even more important in SEO terms. Keyword density in the text, tags, alt tags on your photos, keyword rich H1/H2 headings and authorship all matter too.

But good journalism matters. It can get your content to position 2, Page 1 of Google for a highly searched term.

The bad news is that a news related spike in traffic doesn’t last. But the upside is that once you understand more about how Google’s algorithm has changed in 2012, you can produce topical, well written content and get on Page 1.

Or you can syndicate some tedious PR/cheap blogs online. It’s up to you.

CASE STUDY; IS COMET CLOSING DOWN?

Recently, news broke that the receivers were due to be called in at Comet electricals. I put together a short news story which was headlined `Comet On The Brink; Spend Your Vouchers ASAP.’

Always read the news before you create your content, but get your story uploaded as fast as possible. Surf that traffic wave.

That isn’t a keyword optimised headline. It’s a human headline. When people are scared of losing money, they pay attention.

However I added a H2 sub heading in the body copy, along the lines of `Is There a Comet Closing Down Sale?’

Again, this ticks the human nature box. People are greedy, and they love to profit from the misfortunes of others. But I also guessed that the phrase would be a high volume search term the moment the receivers were called in at Comet.

The story was uploaded on a Friday lunchtime.

GOOD TRAFFIC SPIKE? HELL YES

Friday saw 980 visitors – 88% of all traffic was to the Comet story.

Saturday and Sunday saw a drop in page position on P1 of Google. Mostly we were overtaken by `old media’ sites, such as daily papers. Partly I would guess Google sees their massive traffic compared to our site and there’s the question of trust – our site was founded back in March. The national papers have been online for a decade or more.

Traffic dropped to about 650 per day over the weekend. We updated the story on Monday, then posted another story once Comet administrators announced that vouchers and gift cards WOULD be accepted again in stores.

The net result over the week was an overall rise of 100% in search engine impressions – our content became more visible with Google. Our traffic was up around 120% for the week.

POINTS WORTH NOTING

You cannot search Google Insights, or use any other tools to monitor a traffic spike that hasn’t happened yet. If a volcano erupts, a shop goes bust, or a new product is launched you often need a journalist’s instinct for the likely search terms.

Don’t forget other Google channels; You Tube, Images, Google News.

To get indexed on Google News you need to add an author biog page to your site. Get your authors blogging and active on social networks. Here’s where you can find me on Twitter andLinkedIn

In terms of site referrals to the Comet story, Facebook was far and away the most successful. Twitter second – but Twitter users are more fickle and spend less time on the page, plus `bounce’ at a much higher rate.

News is tough. It requires planning, lots of reading, accurate research (you may be sued) and money – good writers have to be paid more than the pittance that outsourced `Copyscape farms’ cost the typical UK business.

You might not always guess right when it comes to news stories. I certainly don’t. But when it all comes together your site will gain new readers and guess what? Some of them stick around, or come back next week to see your moneysaving news.

Greed is also good SEO; understand human nature and you can add the magic keywords. Sometimes.

As Gordon Gekko noted in Wall Street; Greed is good. Greed is also good SEO.

How To Get Your New Website to Page 1 on Google

I work for LBM Marketing in Cheshire and we recently launched Watch My Wallet, a new consumer advice, moneysaving tips web magazine.

When I studied SEO and social media marketing at Salford University for three months back in 2012, I learned a few useful strategies for optimising websites, especially content. This is important because Google puts new websites in a kind of sandbox – a holding pen if you like – while it works out how trustworthy, useful and original your content is.

Obviously factors such as the structure of the site, clean IP address and many more are important, but nothing helps to boost your site’s early page rank so much as links via social media, news outlets or getting individual articles ranked highly on commonly searched keywords.

START WITH A PLAN BASED ON HUMAN NATURE

People search for a variety of reasons but using Google Insights & Trends, setting up Google Alerts, using Rippla to gauge newsworthy stories and many other tools will help you form a plan for your site itself and the content within its pages.

Choose a topical story, get a trained writer to produce keyword rich content and tag it in your CMS - it will boost your page rank.

For example we researched pet insurance terms, listed the top keywords over 3-12 months, checked typical `modifiers’ and cross-referenced that with news stories.

We found that Lloyds TSB withdrew pet cover for older pets in Feb 2012, plus we saw `reduce pet food bills’ was a common search phrase. We put them together and three weeks after launching the site, we had position 1, page 1 on google for our article.

OK, it isn’t always that easy – we didn’t get that lucky with every article, but we did get page 1 results for seven articles within 17 days after launch – got to be happy with that

PR STILL HAS VALUE

We had a low budget PR campaign, based around syndicating press releases about topics such as `saving money on travel into London for Olympics 2012.’  That got us a backlink from the San Francisco Chronicle and other newswire services within a week of being sent out.

As petrol prices increased and the tanker drivers strike caused more searches for reducing driving into London costs, we found the original article on `cheapest ways to drive into London‘ picked up more interest through late March. That was lucky, sometimes Google works out like that.

Links from major news sites are worth having. Why? Well when your website is new you have to prove to Google it isn’t a scam/pills/porn site – it has to build trust and authority, partly through decent quality link traffic. Newspaper, radio and good blog links matter, so devote some time and money to chasing them.

GO SOCIAL, TRACK LINKS

The Watch My Wallet logo - your branding is important in the long term, so hire a good graphic designer.

We established Twitter, Pinterest, Google + and Facebook pages for Watch My Wallet. Facebook performed the best in terms of referral, closely followed by Twitter. Open a bitly account and shrink your page urls, bitly will track visits by each article or feature link for you – you can compare those to your Analytics stats.

Google + is really only worth doing to please Google by the way. It’s like a gym; many people are members, few actually use it.

We found the `8 Ways to Reduce Your Pet Food Bills’ story performed well on social media, especially Twitter. This kind of story gets people talking, so use that `Twitter rage’ factor to get links to your content. My personal feeling is you should NOT automate Twitter content, but put the man hours in.

Be a real human, be nice, it gets a better quality follower and that’s what you need to convert people in the long run. Your brand values MUST be paramount, not your follower numbers.

USE A CMS THAT IS CUSTOMISABLE

One final point; your content CMS must – absolutely MUST – have the facility to add keywords and a unique keyword description for each article or story. Tag photos and videos too, never miss a chance to define your content. It works.

Our Watch My Wallet developer has chosen Umbraco and it is performing well. Easy to use when uploading a variety of features each day too with details like default sizes for images within stories. Anything that makes your site look professional builds reader trust, so use a good CMS.

If you have any SEO tips for brand new websites, post them below – I’m always keen to learn more!  ;-)

 

 

SEO tips: Content is King, so add a photo or video clip

This isn’t just theory, I tested it last year whilst studying SEO and social media last year at Salford University. Add a photo and your post will gain about 60% more traffic over the following month. There are lots of things you can debate in the arcane world of SEO, but you can’t argue with cold hard stats. Traffic speaks volumes.

This pic from New Zealand was perfect for the MCi Tours motorcycle travel blog

The other great thing about adding photographs or video clips is that people engage far more with the blog. They like it, they share it, they comment.

If you are blogging on behalf of a brand, not just for fun, then adding well composed, beautifully lit, eye-catching images is essential. You want comments because one of the main reasons for promoting your products on social media is market research, seeing genuine comments – seeing what inspires, enthuses, impresses.

By the way, if you are one of those companies who thinks this can all be done on the cheap, using outsourced keyword-rich copy and stock images, think again.

Google will knock your page rank down if you simply paste press releases and samey photos, or wobbly video clips with duff sound. You need to post something original.

If you film an entertaining clip that’s a start. Then set your own You Tube channel, link it to your blog, and tag the clips using keyword research tools, not just the seat of your pants.

In short, create something engaging and people will engage with it. The old saying, ` a picture paints a thousand words,’ was never so true as it is today.