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

 

 

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.

Pandas, Penguins and Learning To Love Disavowed Links

Two key changes to Google’s search algorithm this year have, at long last, tipped the balance away from SEO `experts’ and put the emphasis back on readable, sharable content.  Penguin and the Disavow Links tool.

Here’s a team of SEO experts, on a team-building day at Alton Towers. They don’t understand why they can’t jump the queue by using meta tags.

In the beginning, the internet was an information resource; a way of connecting people’s ideas and gleaning nuggets of knowledge.

But over the last decade, SEO has become a Harry Potter-esque black art. Basically smart-arsed geeks have spent all their waking hours trying to figure out ways to bend Google’s rules.

Well, there’s a load of money at stake for the websites that make page 1, positions 1-5, so who can blame them?

But now, it seems, Google’s had enough of all that sh*t.

 

Pandas and Penguins are Really Bitches From Hell

Google pushed ahead with both the Panda and Penguin updates earlier in 2012. In essence, both changes were about rewarding fresh, original content and high quality backlinks.

There were a raft of technical changes too, but it’s the emphasis on editorial content above the fold – that’s the top section, or most visible part of your homepage – not marketing, competitions, or spammy links to crappy `Mom Lost 57lbs With This Weird Tip’ adverts that counts.

Penguins put lots of energy, care and attention into one chick. Google’s Penguin will reward site owners who also take time to do things right.

Without doubt that has damaged the ranking of thousands, maybe even millions of websites, but you know what, most of them deserved it. People don’t really want to visit sites stuffed with keywords, copy written by machines, or peppered with dodgy links.

Fact is, the old methods of employing SEO experts to  optimise your site for Google ( and Yahoo and Bing if you’re really thorough) are rapidly coming to an end. Which in my opinion, is long overdue and a good thing.

Google is Going Back To Its Roots Baby

For those of you too young to recall the internet pre-1998, there were search engines which didn’t provide much relevant content in their results. Search then was like a fairground lucky dip. That’s why Google became the dominant player in the market; it just worked better.

Well now, Panda and Penguin are doing the same job – delivering relevant information to those who search for it. The bottom line is that if you don’t put truly relevant information on your website or blog, and write your copy for humans, not search crawlers, then your site is toast.

By all means, keep wasting money on link farms, syndicating the same dull PR via content scraping `news’ sites and paying outsourced bloggers 58p per page for 4% keyword-rich drivel if you like. It won’t work.

So What The Hell is A Disavow Link Tool and Why Does It Matter?

Glad you asked.

There was another little Google tweak a few weeks back. A Disavow link facility was launched and this means that webmaster can stop crappy sites from linking up with them.

Now links matter, big time. Probably 70-80% of your site’s page rank is determined by the quality, as well as the volume of your inbound links. So for example, a link from Salford University, the BBC, or Huffington Post carries more weight with Google than say a link from weBuyAnyPreOwnedMeds.com

I hope that site doesn’t actually exist. But you never know.

Worse still, low quality links can damage your site. Google sets store by `trust and authority,’ so poor links from dodgy sites will shove your home page back down to page 37 of Google’s SERPs.

So now, you can take action and Disavow the link. Break that daisy chain of pills, porn, gambling, or tedious home insurance adverts. Excellent. You can use Google Analytics to see which sites are linking in each week, test their page rank using SEO Majestic or Alexa, maybe even visit the site, and then if you don’t feel it’s a quality website, Disavow.

Nail those bitches into the cellar of spam. And throw away the hammer.

Be A Real Person, Be Social

Now, I’m going stick my neck out and say few people will disavow a link from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, You Tube and a whole load more social networks.

This is me, Alastair Walker. Introduce the author, because this is going to matter more than a few snippets of code from now on.

All of which should mean that traffic from those networks will become intrinsically more valuable as far as Google is concerned – no matter what they say in public.

If Google wants to maintain its credibility, then real, human interaction – the water cooler effect – has to have a defined SEO value. It also means that a site’s rank for say `best deals in iPhone covers’ will ebb and flow, according to how viral their content is. We should see SERPs evolve into a kind of Top 40, with sites going up and down pages 1-3 with more volatility.

In theory.

What Can A Small Business Do to Combat The Big Boys?

Get an editor on your website listed as an author, with a Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and WordPress or Tumblr profile. You really do want that author to pop up in the new Knowledge Graph search feature that Google is rolling out soon.

They should aim to become an authority info resource, in old journo parlance, the ‘go to’ person for a quote on a topic.

Another key point; make sure the social sharing buttons on your home/news pages are at the top of the page – in 20 years working in old media, I can tell you that advertisers paid more for those page positions because IT WORKED.

Don’t put the sharing buttons at the bottom of a news story – lots of people simply NEVER scroll down the web page. Here’s a little web page eye-tracking research for you.

Your site has to push people’s buttons, make the content worth sharing.

You absolutely have to – no excuses – get your content shared via Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Pinterest etc. That social aspect of your news section on your website is crucial now. There’s no dodging around it.

You need quality copy, sharp images, all alt tagged so they pop up in Google Images, plus a You Tube channel – Google owns it and you can see YT results popping up on P1 of SERPs.

But you want your YT clip to be shared right? So you’d be crazy to think your video content doesn’t need a strategy, a HD camera, a decent audio track – professional editing basically. Stop cheap skating and get on with it. Or die in the search rankings.

The internet is becoming a place where credibility, honesty, authorship and the craft of writing relevant copy, not keyword-infested rubbish, is going to be rewarded in search algorithms – praise the Lord and pass me the ammunition.

You Cannot Code Human Interest Stories, Someone Has To Write Them

Your site needs news, which has to be topical, informative and – like San Diego – classy.

The thing is, good content goes viral and site visibility is becoming a fight to the death for our attention span. Why does this matter? Well, where our eyes go, our money often follows.

Hire yourself a damn good, creative, news-hungry writer – or watch your site wither and fade and lose business. We are all deserting the High Street and shopping via mobile phones, tablets, Kindles and apps over the next decade. It’s an unstoppable, structural shift in our economic way of life.

Your website isn’t primarily about clever code, sitemaps, meta descriptions, tags and 101 other pieces of geeky, trivial architecture. Without beautiful, seductive words and images, it is nothing.

Stay classy.

 

SEO Stuff: Looking Beyond the Keyword Forest

I went hiking in the Valais region of Switzerland recently, which was just as stunning as you can imagine; glaciers, the Matterhorn, amazing apricot ice cream – what’s not to like?

It’s 14Kms of ice palace heaven – the Aletsch glacier in the Valais, Switzerland.

Whilst on a cycle ride alongside the Rhone, I was chatting to Manuela, the local Swiss Tourism guide/marketing person.

Manuela told me that Oberwald ( a small town in the Valais) is well ranked, and globally known, for its cross-country ski-ing, but struggles to get good Google page rank for some other Swiss/Alpine holiday, or tourism related terms.

That set me thinking about how keywords are like a forest sometimes.

They can look the same, be densely packed and kinda rooted together. It’s also hard to see anything else once you’re standing on the inside of the keyword forest.

So how do you break out of a niche and reach new customers?

MARKET RESEARCH

If you start with looking at your customer emails, figure out what activities, accommodation, currency queries, train times, flights etc people are asking about.

Then look at holiday and travel websites and magazines – editors often know first about changing trends in the travel industry and you’ll see that reflected in features, plus new products and accessories showcased.

 

Make the most of your events, around 25% of all holiday/travel searches have an event listed as a keyword modifier.

Now, search Google Adwords and Insights -

Test your existing keyords, for overall volume, rising search percentages and type them into the new Knowledge Graph – see what Google thinks is naturally, organically linked to your initial query.

Knowledge Graph will auto-complete your keywords for you – not 100% accurate, but worth doing.

Now look at your events. One travel blog and website I manage has an event listed in around 10-12% of its Google traffic. Many `official’ tourism sites have a much higher percentage than that.

People often have a specific event schedule planned out – not just a race, show or music gig, but maybe even a particular bar, restaurant or hotel that they know and trust.

Amplify your region; blog, FB, Tweet…

So let’s say you run a UK regional tourism site. You might want to syndicate SEO optimised blogs and articles about the bigger events. Don’t forget to tag photos with keywords – one site I manage gets 30% of its traffic from Google Images, not Google search.

Got a news page?

Great, but if you want your content listed on Google News, you’ll need a contacts page, with real names and emails as part of the site submission process. It’s just one of the techie roadblacks that can throttle your SEO page rank – not a big thing in itself, but worth doing.

Then your news stories need to be linked to the same `core keywords’ strategy that underpins your social media, blogs and website itself.

Joined up thinking is the basis of Google’s Knowledge Graph – so play ball with Google and thread those breadcrumbs of content through the forest…

Oh yeah, the apricot ice cream…from a cafe in Munster – and truly scrumptious

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!  ;-)