SEO is not dead. And SEO is not just something for the experts. Every blogger and content marketer should understand how to make their content attractive to search engines. There are people looking for your content. Help them find it.
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1. The Complete Guide To The SEO Driven Approach To Content
Marketing by Garrett Moon An understanding of how SEO works can
help your content marketing get discovered. Learn about keywords,
optimization, ranking, and how to include all of this in your
overall content marketing planning. Table Of Contents Introduction
Why SEO? Where It All Begins Step 1: Locate Your Nearest Keywords
Step 2: Learn Where You Stand Step 3: Incorporate Goal Keywords
Into Your Editorial Calendar Process Step 4: Use Basic Keyword
Identification For All Of Your Posts Step 5: Properly Optimize Your
Content For Each Keyword Step 6: Optimize Your WordPress Site With
These SEO Friendly Plugins No, SEO Isnt Dead
2. Introduction Should you be worried about SEO on your content
marketing blog? In recent months, the necessity of search engine
optimization has come under major fire. As Google released their
Panda and Penguin algorithms we all saw a major reduction in search
spam, and an almost overnight, we began noticing major changes in
the type of content we saw in our own search results. Long time SEO
Jill Whalen, is now internet famous for quitting her career as an
SEO following these major announcements. Google works now said
Jill, this means, my friends, that my work here is done. What does
she mean? Is SEO really dead? As is often the case, nothing is
really dead. SEO has changed, dramatically, and as Jill points out,
this is a good thing. The good news for content creators like you
is that it has changed in your favor. Google now rewards content
marketing over spam bots and link-building tricks. Its a victory
for good content and a loss for tactics of questionable nature.
This is a good thing. Why SEO? You may be wondering why you still
need to consider SEO in your writing with all of the changes that
have been made by Google. The answer is relatively simple: For a
long time, SEO was all about tricks and tactics. It was truly about
optimization and opportunism, but not anymore. Now, SEO is about
content. Lots of content. In other words, SEO as we know it picked
up camp and moved in with content marketing. We have a new
roommate. Why not get to know it a little? From what I can see, the
opportunity for content marketers to use SEO-driven tactics is more
applicable now than ever. We already have the content. What if we
add a little science and tactic to our workwho knows where we might
go in the future? We could even put ourselves on page one of
search. Wouldnt that be something? How should the content marketer
be approaching the search engines with our writing? This guide aims
to answer these two questions. SEO may not be dead, but it has
dramatically changed and that means there is a big opportunity for
the content marketer who is paying attention. Heres a step-by-step
guide to what you need to do to have a modern SEO-driven approach
to content marketing.
3. Where It All Begins When outlining an SEO strategy for
content marketing, we take a slightly different approach than what
we were used to. It is probably best to begin understanding how
(and why) Google is rewarding longer-form content and other content
that is visually focused. Google has started to see these elements
as symbols of quality, and is doing a better job of connecting
search users to quality content. Again, thats a good thing, but it
doesnt mean that some of the tried and true techniques of old SEO
arent still viable. Thats where keywords come in. One of the most
important aspects of search engine optimization has always been the
keywords, those words that people use to find our content in
search. In the early days of SEO, the goal was to achieve exact
keyword matching. This meant that the page we wanted people to find
was perfectly tuned to show up in the search results when someone
searched for that phrase. If you searched for exact keyword match,
for example, you would find pages that used that phrase exactly as
written. Not anymore. Now, you will find pages that discuss the
general topic of exact keyword matching. It may be subtle, but it
is an important difference. Rand Fishkin of Moz explains it well in
one of his whiteboard Friday videos.
4. From Rand Fishkins video on building SEO-focused pages All
of that said, though, I still believe that most good SEO
optimization still begin with the keyword. This hasnt changed.
Whats changed is the framework we need to use for implementing
those keywords into our writing. This is the method that I am going
to break down for you in the guide. I am going to show you, step by
step, how to use keywords to create an SEO driven approach to
content marketing. Try not to think of it as SEO so much as smart
content marketing. Step 1: Locate Your Nearest Keywords The first
step is to find the keywords that matter most for you. There are
several tools that will help you do this. The most notable is the
Google Adwords Keyword Planner, a tool that is freely available
with any Adwords account.
5. Should content marketers be using keywords in their writing
process? Yes. The concept here is very simple. Start by typing in
one of the keywords that is most crucial to your business. Here at
CoSchedule, for example, this would be something like content
marketing or editorial calendars. From there, Google will
automatically provide you with a list of words related to your
primary keyword that people all around the world are searching for.
As a content marketer, this is incredibly valuable! Not only do you
get a host of keyword ideas, but you should also begin to
understand your readers more than ever. This is what they are
searching for. How cool is that?
6. Keywords are located based on your website URL and product
category. They are customized to you! Once you have a list of
results from Google, you can individually add keywords that stand
out to you to your keyword plan. Avoid getting get overly
aggressive, though. For example, in this screenshot I probably dont
need to add both content marketing strategy and content marketing
strategies. They are a bit redundant, and not likely different
enough for me to care about. Since content marketing strategy gets
more attention, it would make sense to go with that.
7. Your goal here is to create a list of 30-100 keywords that
matter to your business, your audience, and to Google. You are
doing research here, so the most important thing is that you learn
what your audience wants, and what Google will reward. Once youve
created a good list, use the export option to download it as an
Excel file, or whatever format you want to work with. Key Point:
Create a list of keywords that your blog should be targeting and
keep it handy.
8. Step 2: Learn Where You Stand The list of keywords you built
using the keyword planner is your new content marketing checklist.
These are the words that you want your site to rank well for on
Google. I consider them a list of keyword goals to shoot for. The
next step is to load these goals into a tool that will help your
track and monitor where you site ranks for each of these terms. For
this, I like to use Positionly, but larger SEO tools like Moz and
RavenTools are good options as well. For me, Positionly offers a
simplicity that the others dont. It does less, but sometimes that
is more. The purpose of Positionly is very simple. They aim to
monitor daily changes to your search engine rankings and help
improve where you show up in search engine listings. In other
words, they will tell you where your site ranks on Google in
respect to each keyword term that you add for your site. This is
valuable information because it gives you a benchmark to work
against. When you upload your initial list of terms, Positionly
will give you an overall assessment of your site in comparison to
your selected terms. Depending on how long you have been writing or
working on SEO, your results may vary.
9. One of the hazards of a tools like Positionly is the
frequency of information. On any given day you may log in to find
that your rankings on several keywords have dropped for no
particular reason. This is a natural occurrence, and not something
that you should worry about too deeply. Ranking well on Google is
an art, not a science. It is also a process, so dont expect to land
on top and stay there forever. ;) Key Point: Use a tool like
Positionly to monitor your keyword ranking and track your progress.
Step 3: Incorporate Goal Keywords Into Your Editorial Calendar
Process Once you have your marching orders (keyword goals), it is
time to start incorporating them into your content marketing
process.
10. At CoSchedule, our goal is to focus on one keyword phrase
each week by adding a blog post with that keyword phrase to our
editorial calendar. We dont get overly scientific about it, we just
plop it on there are and leave things up to the designated writer
to figure out. Once the post is on the calendar, it will get
written. If you arent managing an editorial calendar for your team,
this is an excellent reason to do so, and one that we heartily
recommend. When you pre-plan your content you can become much more
purposeful and strategic with you goals. Once youve worked through
your keyword goals list the first time, be sure to refer back to
Positionly regularly to help prioritize the keywords that you want
(and need) to improve on. Key Point: Add keyword goals to your
editorial calendar each week to keep yourself accountable. Step 4:
Use Basic Keyword Identification For All Of Your Posts It is worth
mentioning at this point that you should never be writing a blog
post where a specific keyword isnt identified. On our team, we try
as often as possible to identify the keyword immediately when
scheduling a post. Each time we create a post, we either identify
the keyword in the headline itself, or note it in the comments
field if we are choosing to write the headline later on.
11. This is a good practice to get your team into, and will
make a big impact on the quality of your posts. Not only will it
add SEO value, but it will force your writing team to focus their
writing on a well-selected and focused topic. If you are having
trouble identifying your keywords for one-off posts, there are two
easy places you can go. First, you could always head back over to
the Google Adwords Keyword Planning tool, but that might be
overkill at this point. What I like to do is simply complete a
basic Google search and take a look at the recommended search terms
at the bottom of the page. Another way to do this research is to
use an content creation tool like Scribe by Copyblogger. This tool
allows you to do headline research right inside of your WordPress
add/edit page, and provides additional details about the popularity
and competition level of each keyword option. It will also provide
data regarding your keywords from both Twitter and Google+.
12. Key Point: Develop good habits, and declare a keyword for
each post that you write. Step 5: Properly Optimize Your Content
For Each Keyword Once you have a keyword selected for you post, you
will need a few tools to ensure that your content stays on point.
The two tools that we use here at CoSchedule are the Scribe plugin
by Copyblogger and WordPress SEO from Yoast. If you are on a budget
the Yoast plugin is free, and will get you 90% of the way to where
you need to go. Both of these plugins work in a similar way. With
each, you start by declaring the keyword phrase that you are using
for the post. From there, the plugins will tell you how well you
content ranks for those keywords. These plugins will evaluate your
post based on several key factors: Article Headline It is
considered best practice to include your exact keyword phrase in
the headline of your post. Page Title The page title is the bit of
text that will show up in your browser tab, or more importantly, at
the top of your Google Search listing. You will definitely want to
include your keyword in full here.
13. Page URL Your keyword should be included in the slug of
your URL. WordPress makes this easy to customize as long as you do
it before the post is published. Content Both Yoast and Scribe will
want to see that the keyword is mentioned within the content of
your post. With this, the more you have the better. If you can
include the keywords in various sub-headlines you will even get
bonus points. Meta Description The meta description is the short
description of your post that will show up on Google. You will want
to use your keyword phrase in this copy. When writing your posts,
you want to make sure they are as optimized as possible for the
keywords that you are trying to reach. Both Scribe and Yoast will
give your visual confirmation of your success.
14. At our office, we always shoot for green before we publish
every post. Clicking though both plugins will provide additional
information and suggestions.
15. Topics vs. Strict Match Be careful about the difference
between the strict matching of keywords and topic related search.
As Rand Fishkin pointed out the video we mentioned, Google cares
more about how you cover the topic overall rather than the exact
keyword itself. Yoast tends to lean too heavily on the strict match
method, which is outdated by Googles standards. Scribe, however,
seems to handle this much more gracefully and might be worth the
extra investment. Key Point: Optimize your posts so that they
perform well for the chosen keywords. Step 6: Optimize Your
WordPress Site With These SEO Friendly Plugins Even though SEO is
no longer about the tools and tricks, there are still a few you
need to use to make sure that everything is in order. As any good
web designer will tell you, most SEO happens in the page itself. If
the structure and makeup of your webpage isnt properly optimized,
you are already fighting an uphill battle. You can always use
Positionly or this free tool from Neil Patel to get an assessment
of how your site performs. Here are a few additional WordPress
plugins that will help you get things in order: WordPress SEO by
Yoast WordPress SEO is a powerful plugin. Use it to set up sitemaps
on your site, and optimize your social sharing meta tags.
Seriously, spend some time with this one. WP Rocket Site speed can
make a huge impact on your SEO performance. WP Rocket is a paid
plugin, but unlike many of the free options, it shouldnt mess up
your site. It is worth the few extra bucks. In Depth Articles
Generator Generates posts metadata for your pages to better present
search results to users. There are other plugins that do this, but
this one is simple and easy. If you need to validate that it is
working, you can use the Google testing tool. Googles Search Engine
Optimization Starter Guide This free guide made available by Google
is a great place to start in the world of SEO an optimization.
16. No, SEO Isnt Dead SEO isnt dead, it has just changed. The
good news is that the new world of SEO is better than ever for
content marketers like yourself. When combined with a few SEO
basics, there is nothing stopping you from making SEO a core part
of your inbound marketing strategy.