19 simple tips for writing an SEO friendly blog.

Sep 2,2021 Leave a comment

How to write an SEO friendly blogs

Social media may be the darling of the marketing world, allowing creatives to put together engaging images, videos and audio, but Google search is still the best way to find engaged, motivated and interested consumers. Google can’t understand video, so an SEO friendly blog is still by far the best content marketing strategy for organic search.

So, how do you write content that Google can read and will like? Well, first and foremost, Google wants you to write for people not for machines, so your audience has to be the clear focus f your writing, and Google is constantly developing it’s algorithm to reflect customer engagement, relevance and enjoyment in assessing sites.

There are two key aspects.

Technical factors for SEO friendly blogs.

Make sure your site is set up properly and offers an effective user experience. It must be easy to navigate, respond quickly and doesn’t block user access to data. Google is increasingly using engagement stats like bounce rate, pages per visit, average session time etc as a proxy for user experience and these can be affected by how fast your site is, your organisational and linking strategies and the level of pop-ups you use etc.

This is an evolving subject and I have written a more detailed article here about Technical aspects of blogging.

Creative factors that improve on-page SEO.

If your site is set up correctly to provide a strong customer experience, you need to populate your site with relevant, engaging and entertaining content, that will attract and retain the attention of the reader, and hopefully drive them to explore and return to your site, building a long term relationship with you and your service offering.

Relevant content

Google’s objective is to give the searcher the best possible answer to the questions they ask, not to help advertisers find the right customers. The onus is on the site owner to make sure that they meet the needs of the searcher, hence having content relevant to the search is essential.

That means making sure you answer their questions, use their language and avoid terms which mean something to you and nothing to them! Potential customers no longer need to spend time working out whether a site or page is relevant to them, they expect Google to have done that for them, so you need to make it very clear to Google what your page is about and how to find more relevant content on your site. That means:

Make sure you understand the questions potential clients might be asking that you are the answer to. Remember, people search with questions, not with answers, so you need to write in the same way.
Use language that means something to your reader, not just to you.
If your content answers more than one question, maybe split the page into separate articles, each answering one of the questions.

Researching the right content is essential, so if you want to know more, read this next.

SEO Friendly blogs are Entertaining and engaging

Google needs to be able to read your content and understand it, and there are certain things you need to do to help this which we will cover below

However, the most important reader is human, and your content has to be written with them in mind before anything else. You want to build a relationship with a human, not a machine, so make sure you communicate with them in a way that reflects how you want to appeal and appear to them.

seo friendly blog - standing out in the chaos

Answer the right question.

This is particularly true in service businesses, where developing a sense of authority and demonstrating competence help to overcome buyer objections and simplify the buying process.

Help the reader quickly see how relevant the content is.

The days of padding articles with loads of keywords are long gone. Articles need to be written in clear language, and quickly demonstrate how the content is relevant to them. Most readers don’t “read” articles at first, they skim, so consider using images, intros and headings which help quickly demonstrate how relevant the content is.

Make the content engaging.

If it’s not informative, entertaining or well structured, people will switch off, so it’s worth investigating creative writing techniques, particularly storytelling to help you understand how people absorb information and how this can help you write better. An SEO friendly blog is a reader friendly blog!!

Want to know more?

This follows on from the relevancy points made above. Your article should focus on one concept, issue or insight, and not cover too much irrelevant content. If you find that you need to explain something in more detail, or there are related subjects, these should form the basis for other articles that link to the article you are writing.

This serves multiple purposes, letting your reader focus on the specific subject at hand, but also helping them to understand where they can go to find related content. This helps them and you, as Google is increasing looking at stats like

Average pages per visit and session times as metrics which affect your site score.

SEO friendly blogs – How to write content that readers will like and Google will rank.

Don’t get in your own way!

The biggest failure for writers is not writing anything, so don’t let doubts and uncertainty stop you from getting written content up on your site. It doesn’t matter if other people have written similar articles, or if you don’t think your writing is up to scratch, No one is perfect, so just learn as you go.

Know your audience

Effective writing starts with a clear understanding of what the reader is looking for, so spend time researching what questions they ask, what words they use and the sort of content they are interested in to understand this better before your start. Google is very good at providing clues to what to look for offering tips on keywords and questions asked and the searcher’s intent.

Know yourself.

Ultimately you are seeking to build a relationship so your level of interest and enthusiasm will affect how engaging the reader finds you, so write about subjects which interest and excite you. Over time you’ll cover other subjects, but it’s perfectly Ok to focus on your favourite subject first!

Pick a specific keyword phrase

SEO Friendly blog - do you key word research

If you are in business for a while you understand what your customer issues are, how they talk and what they ask you, so remember that, when they search, they are likely to use the same terms. They are searching for answers, so this is what Google is trying to deliver, and you need to write if you want to be found.

Google is actually very good at providing hints on this, so spend some time researching the topic and make sure you understand which phrases come up most often.

Avoid the temptation to cover too many things in one article, as this both confuses readers who are only looking for a specific answer and reduces your opportunity to write other articles.

Have a clear idea of your specific keyphrase or word and make sure you use it in the right places.

Focus on the long tail

Long tail keywords are more detailed phrases that indicate a searcher has a specific target in mind, and has focussed theri search specifically to find it. This indicates they are more motivated and more likely to convert than people using simple words with multiple meanings.

For example, someone searching for “chair” could be looking for furniture, a role in a company, a university place or somewhere to sit down, whereas someone looking for “blue, fabric dining room chair” has a very specific product in mind!

Structure your article properly

Make sure that the article’s structure means the expectation of the search and title. If it’s supposed to be a list, make sure it’s a list, if you’ve said it’s a “how-to”, make sure it tells the reader what to do etc.

Satisfaction is the difference between expectation and reality so make sure you manage and meet those expectations.

If you are trying to communicate a more detailed concept, then storytelling is a very effective technique which uses 10,000 years of oral storytelling traditional to help communicate in a way our brains are trained to understand. Hubspot have a great article on Storytelling.

If you are offering a solution, make sure it is actionable

There is nothing worse than thinking you’re going to find the solution to your bad back or marketing problem only to find an article which offers no advice or actionable solutions, and this will put your reader offer and ensure that never read you again.

It also means you should be thinning “where next?” when writing your article and make sure there is a clear customer journey for them to follow, whether it’s to more information, a definition of your product or service or a way to purchase, as long as it’s relevant to the article and where the potential customer is in their journey.

Write a relevant introduction

Your introduction is key for several reasons. It helps readers understand quickly what the article is about and Google’s bots also focus on this section so it’s important to get your Keyword/phrase in early.

Use headers effectively

Headers serve two purposes. Firstly they let the reader understand quickly what the article is about and whether it’s relevant to them ( a table of contents for long articles can also help here)

Secondly, it’s the first place that Google looks to understand what your content is about. It is therefore essential that your Title and Main subheadings contain your keyword or phrase.

And I do mean headers, not titles. HTML uses a formatting concept called “headers” to define the formatting for titles, subheadings, sub-subheadings etc. and Google specifically looks for these tags in the HTML code to understand your article.

So, your bold and underlined titles may look bice, but if they are not properly tagged as H1, H2, H3…. headers, Google won’t realise they are important, which will affect your ranking.

Write content of the relevant length

Tl:DR is a common phrase now, indicating that the reader couldn’t be bothered to read the article in detail, mostly because we are more time poor and readers are more discerning.

Partly this is caused by articles having no obvious structure or too much text but often they are just too long! It’s probably the question I get asked the most, how long should an article be? However, there is no hard and fast rule, it really does depend on the topic.

I recently read two interesting articles on the topic which looked at which pages get the highest ranking on Google. One article concluded that the optimum length was 5,700 words, the other concluded it was between 1,250 and 1,750 words.

Why the difference?? Well basically it comes down to the topic. One article looked at Marketing content the other at sporting content, and the main conclusion is that the length varies depending on what you are writing about. Padding will kill your article, so write as much as you feel you should to cover the subject without being flabby, boring or repetitive.

There is a bottom end however, and that’s technical. One of the things Google ( and I think FB/Instagram) looks at is the ratio between code and content. Your page has loads of HTML in it which tells the browser how to present the content. Lots of code and no content suggests a page with little informational value and can be negatively affected from a SEO perspective, so try to aim for a minimum of 4-600 word for an article.

Write for your audience.

Unless you are using blogging as a catharsis, it’s likely that you want to attract people to your site using your content, hence it needs to appeal to them and be relevant. Use words they use and make sure you are writing from the problems perspective. People with bad backs don’t care how pain killers work, they just want to know that they get rid of pain, so make sure you show how the reader will benefit.

Use images and videos when relevant

Images help communicate ideas more effectively than words, and help break down the text, hence improve the readability of the article. However, they need to be relevant and appropriate. Writing a short article and dumping loads of images in will not help the readability of the article, it’ll make it worse!

Also, check with Google and see whether image content is relevant and interesting. Search for your key phrase, and, if Images results are above the Search results, consider add more images, a pinterest page or a gallery for your chosen subject.

Don’t forget Alt-text!

A simple one, but Alt-text (a written description of an image that helps blind people understand the web) is a great place to add keywords and can help you appear on image searches.

Craft a powerful, eye-catching but relevant Title

Whilst it won’t guarantee a high ranking, your title will have a massive impact on your click through rates so it is essential that it communicates the subject and clearly demonstrates what the reader should expect.

There are lots of formulas that talk about power words, including numbers etc, and they can be effective, but ensuring the title adequately reflects the content is arguably more important especially as engagement and satisfaction stats become a greater part of the ranking algorithm.

Make sure your metadata is correct

From an SEO perspective, this means making sure your URL, Title and Description clearly communicate what the article is about and contain the keyword you want to rank for. Length is key here, you only have around 75 characters for your title and 160 words for the description so be concise!

Use Links effectively

Links are the lifeblood of the internet and Google expects to find and use them. These come in two flavours, Internal and external.

You should be including links to other resources on your site as it helps people find more relevant information, keeps them on the site and increases potential for engagement. Make sure they open in new tabs, and that the text of the link tells you what the link leads to.

Google also wants to see links to other sites, and you can use this to support related businesses or add credibility to your own information. Again, set these to open in another tab and make sure they are a mix of follow and no-follow links.

Organise your content properly using Categories

Organising content on your website makes it easy to find relevant content and increases the chances that your readers will stay longer and read more. Creating detailed hierarchy of evolving content is tough, and runs the risk of broken links, so consider using categories ( one per article) to keep track of your content.

Help readers find new content through related posts

Related post plugins let you present 3-5 articles that have similar ideas or content. This is particularly easy if you have added a category to each article, as this can be used as a search term on the plugin.

Promote your content

We all want our content to be found organically, but it’s always worth giving it an extra push! This can be as simple as posting on a relevant social media channel, adding a comment to a forum or answering related questions on site like Quora.

Outline Marketing Strategy

May 23,2021 Leave a comment

Outline Marketing Strategy plan

The marketing strategy and plan outlines how you intend to attract customers, what you consider to be success and the steps you will take to implement the plan.

As with all plans it needs to be flexible as each strategy will be different.

In addition, it should create a framework which allows for an iterative approach to testing and implementation. There is nothing worse than trying to stick with a plan that isn’t working exactly as expected, so each step should be seen as a hypothesis that needs to be tested rather than a prescription carved in stone.

Most importantly, this is about the customer and what is the best way to communicate with and influence them to demonstrate how you are the best solution to their problems. It should not be a justification of your favourite marketing technique or spend that you have already committed to.

Similarly, don’t stress about the language or the text, it needs to express how you understand the problem and what you intend to do about it, rather than be consistent with the current buzzwords and trends. It just has to work for you.

This document will outline the sections involved, offer some insight into what the section is supposed to include and an example to illustrate how this might work in practice.

Where specific content needs to be expanded on, this will either be included as a sidebar in Italics, reference Appendices or separate documentation.

Section 1. Who is the customer

At the heart of your marketing strategy is the customer. This is the entity that benefits from the work that you do. They have a problem that needs to be solved or a goal that needs to be reached and will seek mechanisms to achieve this goal. The size of the benefit will define how actively they search and how much value they place on the solution.

Your marketing objective will be to influence this entity to act in a certain way, so you need to understand how they benefit and how they search for a solution if you are to craft an effective marketing communications strategy.

In a business to business context, there may be different decision-makers, such as accountants, Boards etc, and these may have different requirements and it can be important to influence these decision makers. However, it is important to focus on the person or role that benefits at this stage as they will be the active buyer and will lead any search activities.

Example

In my case, the customer is a small business owner who is either in the start-up phase or whose business is not growing quickly enough or has stalled. I am not looking to speak to large companies, their needs are different and they have the ability to bring skills into the business. They are local, they are likely to be marketing a service or relatively complex product and probably don’t come from a marketing background.

They are motivated but, being entrepreneurs, their first instinct is to do the work themselves, only going to external service providers once they have run out of ideas or most likely resources and knowledge.

They are independent and have personal objectives which drive the business as much as the normal financial objectives

Section 2. How does the customer benefit from your product or service

Consumer decision making is based on an exchange of values, where a customer gets something they want in exchange for something that you want. In most cases this is a product or service that the customer values in return for money, but in all cases, the perception of the value of the product or service is based on how much the customer feels they will benefit from the exchange.

It is essential therefore for you to understand and communicate how the customer will benefit from the transaction. This is not what you do, it is the outcomes in relation to the goals, benefits and solutions that the customer is seeking.

As an example, if your service saves the customer money, the focus of this section is to communicate how much money the customer is likely to save, not what you do to save them money. To communicate this may require you to offer examples that set an expectation in the mind of the consumer along with social proof.

Think of this as a before and after section, briefly describe the customers situation, desires and goals, and how these will be resolved after the interaction in general terms and in the customer’s language.

This is not the functional characteristics of the product, just the benefits and outcomes.

Example

In my business, the customer is seeking advice, guidance and access to skills that they don’t have in the business. The benefit is assistance in understanding how to create a marketing and sales strategy which will grow their business.

Many small business owners have worked with agencies in the past and found the process to be frustrating. They have seen adwords campaigns generate a lot of cost but little traffic, invested in SEO with no tactical response or create a lot of content with no lead generation. Much of this is because the tactics drove the strategy rather than being part of a consistent and integrated plan.

By working with me the customer creates a plan that they are in control of. they understand why each step is being taken, how it will benefit them and influence their customer and how to measure and improve the plan as we go along.

Most importantly, as they have been at the heart of the planning process they feel confident in its potential outcomes, that it is relevant to their business and that they are not dependent on a third party to do expensive work to make the most of the plan.

Section 3. What do I do for the customer

This is a functional description of the product or service that is provided and the mechanisms that are used to provide it.

Is it a product or service.
What are the main features that directly deliver the value

This a good opportunity to assess the features and benefits of your product against the customer’s goals and core benefit. Are you communicating products which actually add value or simply reduce a barrier or sales block?

It is also useful at this stage to define what you are not. Feature creep is an inevitable drive, especially in small businesses who feel that they need to meet all of the needs their customers have, but this generally bloats a product and can lead to a suboptimal experience for the customer and inflated prices to cover the cost of product aspects which may not add value to a specific customer.

Example.

In my business I act as a mentor and advisor to help the business owner define and refine their marketing strategy and consider new approaches. During mentoring sessions and workshops we will define who the customer is, how the company delivers value to these clients and how we can convert general interest in a subject into sales through and integrated, online marketing strategy.

Where clients are interested in developing a skill that I have, I will provide access to training.

Section 4. Customer journey and relevant channels

The tactical detail will be outlined later, this is a general outline of how the sales and marketing funnel will be outlined.

Communications channels will be broad, such as social media, display/adword advertising and search marketing but should all aim at providing interested and motivated prospects access to a resource that you control and where they have opted into receiving more detailed, specific and sales focussed information.

This may be following on social media, connecting on LinkedIn, subscribing to Youtube channel or website, where you have the ability to target them with individualised messages.

Customer journey

A potential customer will move from an entity that has a rough outline of a need or problem but no idea how to solve it, through a series of steps until they have found and successfully implemented a solution and is satisfied. This is the customer journey and will be different in each case.

For example, for food shopping it may be as simple as visiting a supermarket and choosing staple products. However, for a more complex product it may be a search for information followed by structured decision making around potential solutions and suppliers, followed by a visit to a website to make an online purchase.

Different customer journeys will impact on how you market, do you want them to call? Leave their details? Visit your retail partners? It all depends on your business model.

Channels

This needs to consider what channels are going to be important in the sales process ( online, shops, referrals, social media etc), what the search intent is, and what your influence should be.

Leads can come from Search, Email, or Social sources with decreasing levels of involvement and engagement. Leads generated by the search will always convert better than other sources as the client is actively seeking a solution rather than responding to a marketing message. Referrals are obviously the strongest, but should be considered as search as they are actively looking for information on a specific subject from a reliable source of information.

Ideally, all of your communications should be routed to and through your website, as this will boost your Search engine rankings and increasing the number of search-based leads.

Buyer intent

Depending on the complexity and competitiveness of the service offering, the intention of the buyer will dictate how you approach your communications at different stages of the journey.

This is where buyer intention comes in. Buyers can be looking for information, to compare products and suppliers or to make a purchase, and how you approach communications is going to change based on this.

At each stage of this process they will require different information and make different decisions, and it is important to understand what those needs are, and how you are going to address those needs and how you wish to influence the customer to move to the next step in a way which is beneficial to both parties.

Example.

In my case I know that the majority of motivated clients are in search mode, and I can use this fact to provide information that will help them identify and solve their problems. I know that most of the searches will be done online, so it’s important to rank well for specific search terms and subjects, so domain authority and backlinks are important. I foster this by creating content that meets their search goals and guides them to more detailed, relevant information within my website.

Where and how this happens is dependent on the audience and where the search is likely to happen.

I also know that, as clients may be looking for practical advice on a subject, that video and how to articles are going to be an important tool.

I might produce an article on how to increase revenue, for example as this is the basic requirement my customer has. This will cover a range of solutions, such as avoiding discounting, increasing conversions, increasing leads, Up-sales and cross-sales, widening the product range etc.

I will host this on my site where it will help drive Search engine ranking, but I will promote the article through relevant social channels, often with a cut-down version of the article, and a link to more detailed information on my site. This may be shared on relevant sites like Quora, Linkedin, Warrior forum, small business marketing forums etc.

However, this is not a teaser, there is enough information in the cut-down post to answer the question for a casual reader, leaving the more interested to follow the link to a more detailed answer.

On my site, I can follow several routes. Firstly, I can link to more detailed information, for example, How to avoid discounting, which will keep people on my site longer, and increase the possibility that search engines will crawl my site.

I may also have more detailed information behind an email subscription wall. This is only likely to attract the most interested buyer, and gives me the opportunity to build a relationship that will progress into a lead over time.

Section 5. Messaging

There are two parts of messaging, one relates to the subject matter you intend to produce content or ads relating to and the other relates to how you want to be perceived.

Subject area.

Subject matter research will be a big part of the implementation phase, but you should already have an idea of the kinds of phrases, questions and queries that are common with your customers. Regardless of what you do, you solve a problem, and want to be found by people who want that problem solved. That means you need to think in terms of the questions they ask, not the way you answer them.

The classic demonstration of this is Holes Not Drills. Someone who is putting up a shelf isn’t looking for a 1200w twin speed drill with tungsten carbide bits. They are looking for “How to put up a shelf”. IF your marketing is focussed on the former, they aren’t even going to come across your messaging!

Outline the main subject matter that you want to communicate about, as this will form the basis of your keyword research later, not matter what approach you take.

What do you want people to think about you?

The word positioning is overused, but it essentially means how your customer sees you relative to competing offerings. This is important as it will help you decide what and how you want to communicate.

Do you want to be seen as cheap and cheerful? Fast and efficient? Knowledgeable and credible? Fun and frivolous? Your communications need to be consistent both in terms of approach, content, voice and channel.

Section 6. Communications objectives – how I plan to influence the customer

This is the broad brush communications objectives

Awareness vs engagement vs action.

Depending on the complexity of your product and your target market, your objective may range from name recognition through understanding more about how you are relevant to the customer and to driving a specific course of action. It may also need to cover all three in a specific order.

Buyer intent.

Where do you think most of your buyers are? is the product simple and commoditised meaning searches are predominantly buyers, or are there many possible solutions to the problem, meaning you need to position your approach compared with others? This will also affect the type of keywords that are relevant to your content work and whether advertising is a viable option.

Actions and Metrics.

What is your preferred outcome? Are you aiming to increase your following on Instagram or Linkedin or do you need to drive specific lead flow? how are you going to measure this and what do you want to achieve?

Approach

What tools and channels do I want to use?

Example.

In my case, I am seeking to increase awareness of my knowledge and experience as an authority on specific aspects of start up marketing.

As my buyers understand that they want to improve their profitability by growing their revenue, but don’t know how to do this, providing Information relating to possible options will best meet their needs.

I will create content that is hosted on my site and promoted via youtube, LinkedIn and Forums to boost my domain authority and traffic to my site and will measure this using Google analytics.

Section 7. Project plan

This is the plan that you need to follow which will lead to achieving your objectives.

This is obviously going to be dependent on what you are doing but needs to start with:

What do I need to have in place to achieve these results and what time frame will I need to follow.

This might be to have a google ad campaign in place by the end of the month which drive traffic to a landing page which can capture lead information on a CRM

What resources do I need

This is a list of the assets and skills that are needed to fulfil the plan. It could be content, writing skills, keyword research, content ideas, etc.

I will need:

A list of relevant keywords that I can use for advertising and ad copy
Access to a google adwords account
A landing page on the website that can capture the lead and send it to me in a way that I can use to action contact with the customers
Access to funds to pay for the AdWords
Access to a google analytics account to collect statistics and measure success
A website
A way to respond to the customer that fills in the lead capture form
Access to my site to amend the lead capture form if it is not working

If I don’t have access to these resources, what steps do I need to take to acquire them?

This could involve steps to learn or to access external resources for a specific skillset.

1. I don’t know what keywords are going to work, I will research them by doing X, Y, and Z

2. I don’t have the time and energy to learn this so I will work with call google’s sales team and get them to help me

3. My web developer needs to add a page to capture the lead, I need to supply content.

This can then be parsed into a timeline and project plan.

Why spend time on researching keywords and Phrases

May 23,2021 Leave a comment

Search Keywords and phrases

Whether you are writing content, creating a search friendly website or planning on investing in adwords, picking the right words and phrases is essential if you want your content to be seen.

It’s not an easy task, but if you are a small business operating in a relatively small niche and have a bit of patience and creativity you should be able to quickly pinpoint those phrases that will help you stand out.

Before we look at the process you need to follow, lets look at the reasons why keywords and phrases are so important.

How do people find information

For the vast majority of people, their main source of information is the internet.

They will either specifically search for the information they seek or notice relevant and interesting posts or ads on social media because they have expressed an interest in a subject through hashtags, follow thought leaders, or are parts of specific groups.

In any event, the information they seek will be presented to them, not by advertisers or writers, but by algorithms and expert systems that assess their informational needs and try to match them to content that expressly meets their needs.

So, if you want your content to be seen, you need to understand how this works.

Expert systems

Most algorithms are expert systems that look at pages and assess whether they meet certain characteristics. These are learning systems that use feedback from real people to fine-tune the criteria that they use to rank the pages based on a hierarchy of relevance.

Whilst they are all proprietary and different, most follow the basic model that Google uses in its mission to “Organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Even Twitter and Facebook try to present posts that are relevant, not just new.

Building a strategy based on providing information that people see will increase visitors to your site. It’s a bit like opening a shop, you want it to be at the front door and looking inviting rather than being round the back near the bins!

Example.

If you search for Private Dentists for children on Google, the system will aim to provide you with a page that is

Close to you. Make sure that you have claimed your site on Google Business.
Offers the most relevant information based on your query. It will try to match pages that specifically match the search term, then, if it cannot find these, for specific keywords like “dentist”. This is why your content needs to have a consistent keyword strategy.
Try to assess why you are looking for information and match content that meets your intentions. In this case, it is likely that you are looking to visit a dentist not learn about dentistry, so it will present Surgeries rather than an outline of why kids should wash their teeth
Authority. Google will seek to present information from sites with High Authority, where the information is credible and has been found to be useful by other people and sites in the past. This is where backlinks come in, it’s part of the way Google scores how good the web thinks your content is. Links from the Irish dental authority, or articles you’ve written for A children’s health website will work here, giving you traffic and authority.
User experience. This is a rank of how closely the experience of clicking on a link matches what the average user is looking for. An example is pop-ups and sales messages on a landing page. If the user is searching for the top ten plants for a south-facing garden and the landing page is just a sales message for a garden centre, or if the content is covered by a pop-up ad, this doesn’t match the search intent and therefore will be ranked badly.

Where online communications are used, your need ensure that

1. the content you are providing meets the needs of the searcher

2. you understand how important it is to promote your content and how to do so as this will increase your ranking and pull in visitors

3. you understand what your customers are searching for and how keyword searches can help you boost SEO, but, more importantly, create content which is readable, relevant and enjoyable

What is search intent and why is it important

May 23,2021 Leave a comment

What is search intent and why is it important

When people search they are not always looking to buy. most often they are just looking for information, in order to better understand a subject or issue, before looking for more detailed information at a later date.

This is important for two reasons

1. if a customer is just looking for information, bombarding them with sales messages is not answering their question and is going to put them off.

2. google actively assesses user intent and uses this to present pages which have the most relevant answer

4 types of buyer intention

Informational Search intent.

At this point the customer is doing general research about an issue or subject, they are trying to understand their context and situation better, seeking to understand what options are available to them, rather than making a decision. Content marketing helps to position you as an authority at this stage and so you are looking for long tail keywords and questions you can build content around.

Commercial investigation.

At this point, the customer is seeking to compare alternative decisions. Reviews, case studies, and comparisons work well here. Again, this is a content focussed area, but, if the product is relatively generic, ad words will fit well. Top tens, best XYZ or comparison articles go well here.

Transactional.

At this point the customer is making a decision. they are looking for the cheapest, best, discounts, Where can I. buy or Near me types of investigations. At this point, you are looking at Adwords.

Navigational.

This is where they are looking for a specific site, so are using the title, brand or company name to find the site rather than adding the URL into the navigation bar.

If you don’t know what sort of search it is, look at what sort of content Google is displaying as this will often give you a clue.

Why are you researching?

Keyword research is iterative and, to a certain extent, non linear. As you search for the keywords it will spark ideas of content etc. so it’s not a step by step approach necessarily.

As you research you will identify thousands of words and phrases that could be used, so it’s important to understand what you are using them for. Be clear about your objectives before you start.

For AdWords

The intention here is to target searchers who are in buying mode. Your objective is to identify words that signal buyer intent and have sufficient volume and are cost-effective enough to generate actions conducive to buying.

For content writing.

Here you are looking for interesting and relevant ideas which are going to entertain and educate searchers about a specific subject, allowing you to position yourself as a trusted authority. Here you want relevance and interest and are seeking informational buyer intent. you are looking for questions and phrases, not buying words, products or brands. Subjects for youtube videos or Blog articles are a good example

For on-page SEO.

Keywords are still an essential part of search ranking, so if you want to be high on the list, you need the right keywords for on-page SEO and the right links of Off-page. The key here is relevance and competition. If Accounting is your area and the first 20 entries on google are Colleges and National bodies, it will be almost impossible to rank for, so you need to find phrases where there is less competition and a good volume.

For off-page SEO.

Here you want to find sites that carry content that is relevant to your subject area, and the kinds of content they carry, as this will allow you to write content that they might carry, or where to promote existing content.

What tools can I use for Keyword research

May 23,2021 Leave a comment

What tools can I use for Keyword research?

Keyword research can be as limited or as detailed as time and budget allows. youtube, facebook and google all contain information that will point you in the right direction, but there are also free and paid tools which can give you more insight, depending on your needs.

Google is the heart of search. It’s the most common search engine and is the leader in search technology, so many of the main social and content channels follow the same methodologies, so it will always be the place to start.

It is also well worth using chrome as your browser, as there are a range of extensions that can help, and are exclusive to chrome.

Most of these tools work by scraping google’s auto suggest or related search terms, so they are acting to automate what you can do manually.

Keyword search tools

SEOStack

This is a chrome extension for brainstorming. It takes a keyword and searches for the top ten most popular searches on a range of platforms, returning literally hundreds of statements, questions, keywords and phrases. There is no detail on volumes, but it’s great for idea generation

KWsurfer

This is another chrome extension that lets you look at how popular a keyword or search term is. As you enter a search term it displays estimated search volumes and CPC rates for the territory you specify within the search bar, a list of similar terms ranked by search volume and similarity. it also gives some limited information on the top 10 web results.

Moz Bar

Moz bar gives you a bit more information on each site, and is more related to off pages SEO. the extension adds detail to about page and domain authority to each web result, plus access to details on backlinks, but this is limited without paying for Moz

Text optimizer

This extension is designed to help you improve your content writing by offering suggested words or phrases that can help you broaden out your writing, both from a readability and SEO perspective. However, it can be effective for keyword research. If you find an article that you like, it can identify the most common keywords on the page. you can use this to analyse the most popular searches on a page for example

Tube buddy

This extension gives details about videos and channels on Youtube, like number of and trends in subscribers and views. It also exposes the tags on each video and channel which can give you a read on what keywords are attached to popular videos. Going deeper , there is a suite of additional tools like keyword explorer which will assess specific words, but you may need to pay.

Keywordfinder.io

This is a good research tool, which gives you monthly search volumes, trends, estimated CPC rates, and a rank of the competitiveness of the word. It’s a bit clunky and you can’t specify a region, but it’s generally a good tool.

Keywordtool.io

this is a great tool if you want to see details about youtube, twitter or instagram. It also tracks keywords popular on ebay and amazon. say you want to come up with thought leaders on instagram for Accounting? this tool will list the most popular people and hashtags. the down side is that it doesn’t give you volumes for free, and I am not sure that the lists are ranked. However, from a pure ideation perspective, it works very well

Competitor and site activities

Analysing popular and competing sites can be exceptionally powerful to assess where they get their content from, what they rank for, who links to them etc. and these range from the free to the exceptionally expensive enterprise-level tools.

Just a word of caution. Information costs money, free tools will have limited info, detailed sites will be expensive. it;s also worth noting that Google doesn’t give out this kind of information, so these sites provide data based on their own databases and estimations, so there will be discrepancies between each tool.

Ubersuggest

This is a great place to start as it will give you basic information on a range of criteria using either a domain or keyword as a source. This can give you detail on which keywords a particular site ranks for, which pages are the most popular, where they get backlinks from and what content is popular for a particular subject.

It’s increasingly being pulled behind a paywall as user numbers increase, but it’s a good place to start.

Moz vs Ahrefs vs Semrush

These are the pro level tools, and are exceptionally good for managing your own site, running keyword and competitor research and a whole host of arcane and specialised tasks. They tend to be very close approximations of google, and can give you exceptional insights on keywords, competitors and popular sites.

But they aren’t cheap. expect to pay 100 per month minimum for access, with more complex tasks and tools adding significantly to this. Competitor analysis on Semrush will set you back at least 300 per month for example!!!

Unless your business is online marketing or you have a high ad spend, it’s debatable whether you will get the value from it. However, if this is a one off project, Moz and Semrush give limited time trials, during which you should be able to capture a lot of information.

Customers

Customers sit at the heart of keyword research because you are looking to identify what they want to know and how they search for it. Conversations with customers will highlight phrases and words that commonly come up. If your customers are using the same words and phrases over and over, chances are they are going to use the same lexicon when they search.

Finding keywords to create powerful, customer-centric content

May 23,2021 Leave a comment

Keywords and hashtags are key to online and social marketing and it’s really important to make sure the keywords we are using are those our customers are using, not just the marketing department!

Why are Keywords Important

Demand and lead generation strategies are supposed to flag our site or business to customers by presenting them with information that makes them want to learn more about how we can help them, so it’s essential that we speak in their language.

We have to build content around subjects and topics that our customers are searching for, so research is key if our outcomes are to attract readers not just to hit page or post creation targets.

Search engine optimisation has become much more sophisticated over the past few years and ranks sites as much on the relevance and effectiveness of its content, so SEO tools are now useful in the creation of relevant content in the wider context.

How do I start looking for the right keywords

One approach is to look at the words your competitors are using, especially if they rank much higher than you or generate better coverage in social media.

A great tool for this is Ubersuggest from Neil Patel, which looks at what’s popular on a site, which sites are backlinking, and which keywords are the most important.

For any given site, keywords are listed and the site illustrates:

How many people searched for the keyword
How the site ranked on google
How many Visits this would lead to
The SEO difficulty ( how competitive the keyword is)

The site also has a very good keyword analysis function, which lets you research specific keywords, suggests alternatives and also shows which sites are ranked highest for that specific keyword.

Google Keyword planner is another option, but now you need to have an active ad, which limits its use as a research tool, and there are other options out there.

How to find keywords

Regardless of whether you’re creating content or buying keywords, you will follow a three stage process. Firstly you will compile a list of seedwords which could be used, then prioritise those words based on your chosen criteria.

Create a database of relevant seedwords

If you have an active website or YouTube account, you will be able to see what words you rank for. Tools like ubersuggest or tube buddy are good for this but be careful not to be too focussed on your own words. Just because you rank for a word or phrase doesn’t mean it’s the best, but it does give you a place to start.

Ubersuggest, for example, allows you to see which words are most commonly used to find your site and will show you which words have the most search volume, where you rank for that word and the number of visits.

A low rank and a high volume suggests you need to build your domain authority.

What words do I rank for? Run a tool such as ubersuggest on your site and find out what words are most commonly associated with your site
Look at direct competitors sites, are there words there that either they rank better for or that drive traffic that you don’t get?
Identify thought leaders and repeat for their sites and social content
Look at the content of thought leaders or the most common videos about your chosen subject and see what words come up most commonly in their tags. Installing Tube buddy on chrome will allow you to see this content.
From the above, create a list of the words and phrases that outline your business and its competitors online currently
What are the top 5-10 words or phrases that come up?
Make 5-10 word buckets based on the above, and use these as seeds for further analysis. The steps you take next will depend on what type of advertising you do.

Identifying keywords for advertising

PPC advertising seeks to position your pages at the top of the page when they are searching with buying or commercial intent. The point here is to find a sweet spot which balances volume, competition and cost. High volume keywords with buying intent tend to be very competitive and expensive, but can be effective if your website is weak.

Keywords that your website is already strong for, i.e. you rank in the top 5 pages are not really worth spending on as you are already top of the page. 30% of people click on the number 1 ranked page for a search term, dropping to below 10% for position 2, dropping down to 3% at the bottom of page 1.

Less than 10% of people click on paid ads, and as it’s a competitive space you are not guaranteed to be presented during a search, so you are much more likely to be clicked on if you are ranked 5th than if you pay fo advertising, so regardless, you should ensure that your page ranks for the same keywords as you advertise for.

Tools like Ubersuggest, KWsurfer and Wordstream‘s free tool are great for this, they will display estimated volume, CPC and competition for a range of variations for your keywords which will allow you to assess what to test for. Once you have created a list, the best way to assess the best words is to test them out.

High volume low competition words are the sweet spot, especially for on page SEO ( which will boost your page ranking in the long term, and if you aren’t doing SEO, the only thing you can guarantee is that your ranking will slip!)

Identify keywords and phrases for content or advertising.

Conduct searches for each of these words and collate ideas and better words depending on your needs. The following list of sources of information will help you, and assumes you have access to the tools listed above. Make a note of ideas or relevant information as you go.

As you type in the keyword, Google will try to autocomplete the phrase for you. This gives you an idea of the sort of terms that are commonly searched for. Any in purple are ones that you have searched for before.
Once you have started the search, google will display related searches at the bottom of the page
Google will also provide two other search options, one called “people also search for” and the other “People also ask”. The former is similar to the autocomplete and related searches, but the latter is a good source of content ideas as it offers questions asked rather than just phrases.
Look at the kind of content that is being presented back to the user. this will give you a good idea as to the search intent that google attaches to the search phrase. if you are getting shopping or featured snippets, it means google thinks these searches indicate a degree of purchase intent. High levels of ads will also indicate these are buying words or phrases, so searchers would expect a page that helps them complete the transaction. Videos, blog articles, and How to type content infer informational intent, and therefore you should be seeking to inform rather than sell to these customers as they are looking for answers.
If you have KWsurfer installed, it will tell you the average search volume for your chosen territory and the likely CPC estimate for that phrase. It will also display a list of alternative phrases based on similarity and volume. Remember, high volumes generally mean more competition, and are difficult to rank for.

Where else can I find Keywords and phrases?

At this stage you should have identified one of two things either:

Your seedwords are the best ones out there.
There are more effective seedwords than those you had already picked and have replaced some of the words.

It is likely that you will also have picked up some ideas for content that you want to use to move forward from the automatic suggestions Google makes. If not, there are a couple of other places you can go for ideas. For each one, search using your preferred key words and look at what content is returned

YouTube

Searching for your seedword on youtube will tell you what sort of content is popular. Make a list of the most popular and or interesting titles.

Quora and similar sites.

Searching for a seedword on Quora will give you two things. It will give you a list of popular answers and a list of questions that have been asked and not yet answered. This is both a very rich source of content ideas and a great place to promote them

Forums and groups.

This includes Groups on Linkedin. If you are a member of any industry forums, have a look around for the most asked questions for inspiration.

Answer the Public.

Answer the Public is a great site, as it returns a vast array of long and short tail keywords and phrases that are relevant to a seed word and you can use it to expand on to create content ideas. it returns relevant phrases, questions, and comparisons in a pleasant graphical format.

Content type.

Google search intent has another useful feature, in that it prioritises the type of content and format that is most popular. The top search results can tell you a lot.

Are they socially active? if the majority of your search results are on social media rather than websites, then marketing you content on social media would be effective
Is the most popular content on video, audio, images or text? this might suggest one format will work best for this audience
What are the most popular pages? Is it top tens or product pages?

Using Instagram marketing to communicate your brand’s Unique Voice

May 13,2021 Leave a comment

Is Instagram Marketing going to work for my business?

Social media marketing is an essential part of the marketing mix, but needs to be used correctly and be relevant to your audience and business model. As part of a wider series on social media platforms, lets look at whether instagram is right for you, and if so, how best to use it.

What makes Instagram different.

Let’s start by saying that each social media platform has its strengths and weaknesses and you need to be clear on which one is right for your business. Facebook’s audience is still substantially bigger ( 3-4 times bigger) than instagrams, but Facebook wouldn’t have spent $1bn on the platform if it didn’t see some benefits!

Instagrams strengths relate to the use of video and imagery to create a story and convey a message more effectively than other platforms. Other platforms may also have the ability to add images, but instagram is built around this so it just does it more easily and quickly.

Messages are small, which while it limits the depth that you can go into, does lend itself to the low attention spans of modern audiences, and means you need to be focussed on your communications objectives. It also means that text heavy content doesn’t work too well, and facebook users are much more likely to engage with text based content than instagram users.

This has led to Instagram being a highly effective microblogging tool, allowing brands to keep in regular, easy to digest contact with its audience, building a broader picture over time and acting as a staging point for more in depth web content.

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Obviously, like other social platforms, it is reactive, allowing viewers to like, comment and share, and the extensive use of hashtags allows better categorisation that other social platforms, increasing the potential to reach a wider, related audience.

It’s more open than facebook and linkedin, allowing people to engage with your brand much easier, and increasing range.

This makes it effective in conveying complex or esoteric messages and building engagement with brands. However, it’s more internalised than other platforms, and it’s less effective in promoting web content for example, as it doesn’t allow promotion of URLs other than in the Bio section.

What makes instagram better

This obviously depends on what you are trying to do, your audience demographic, your business and content type, and a whole host of other things, but, making it simple, Instagram is effective if your business is involved in one of the following areas:

Younger demographic

As with all marketing tools and business decisions, you need to start by understanding your audience, and picking tools that will help you reach and engage with them rather than finding an audience which is active on your tool of choice.

That being said, if your audience is in the 18-30 age bracket and are active on mobile, then there is a high chance that they have an active Instagram account, and are more likely to be active on this than on Facebook, which tends to be more relevant to an older age segment

Instagram Users are active

Research demonstrates that instagram users are more active, with users being 60% more likely to like and share on Instagram than facebook. Whether this relates to the demographics or the platform is open to debate, but it’s clear that increasing reach is easier on instagram. As mentioned above, Instagram users are more likely to react to imagery than text, so the type of content you create will have a bearing

Instagram users are buyers.

Instagram marketing has proved very effective in driving buyer behaviour in consumer markets, especially where the product’s value is intangible and easy to transact. 87% of people surveyed in a facebook survey said they took action after seeing a product’s information on Instagram, so it’s worth looking into more, especially if you have eCommerce capabilities.

Instagram marketing is better at communicating visual characteristics

If your business’s brand or product identity is visual in nature, then the availability of strong, built in video and image tools, makes Instagram a strong marketing choice, as it allows you to communicate more effectively.

This makes instagram marketing especially strong for design led brands such as clothing, make up and tourism, but also for more mobility based brands such as sporting goods and teams or trainers and instructors. Yoga and alternative therapies work well here especially.

Instagram is better suited to mobile.

As the majority of online activity is now mobile based, with more searches happening on mobile than on desktop, mobile optimisation is key. Google is now more interested with how a site performs on mobile than desktop for example, so it’s important to get this right for your users.

Instagram is built around mobile use and offers a much better experience for mobile users than those on desktops, whether you are a content creator or consumer.

However, there is a downside. Video on instagram is optimised for mobiles hence the default format is portrait rather than landscape, which does affect the type of content that works well.

Instagram features and how to use them

Most social platforms offer similar functions, but call them different things, which can add to confusion and puts many people off using different platforms. What are the main features of Instagram and how can you benefit from using them

Posts

Posts are the core of the instagram experience and allow users to publish short content in test, image or video format to users. Images can have filters applied to optimise the content or make it more fun and users can tag people or locations in an image.

Videos up to 60 seconds in length can also be posted, and are becoming more popular because people tend to engage more with video, which is doubly important as it can also boost your chance of being seen as the algorithm rewards higher levels of engagement.

Text content can be added to support the image, but you can’t add clickable links, which reduces the effectiveness of Instagram marketing as a blog promotion tool

Hashtags

Hashtags are ubiquitous now across all social media, but used in slightly different ways. If you don’t know what they are, the best description is that they represent category tags, allowing users to easily see the latest and most relevant content on a specific subject. Think of them as the social media equivalent of keywords for SEO.

Instagram allows users to include a lot more hashtags on posts that other platforms, where 1 or 2 are best. Getting the right hashtags will obviously affect how many people outside of your current subscribers will see your posts and hence your ability to increase the size of your audience.

DM's (Direct messages)

Direct messages allow one to one contact with your audience in a private manner, similar to email or whatsapp, or most other platforms. This allows greater engagement and the ability to use Instagram as a lead generation or service delivery platform.

Live Instagram video and IGTV

Youtube is the second largest search engine after Google and for good reason. Video is a highly effective medium for communicating, as it combines the ability to impart the density of information that you get with text, with the passive nature of audio and image based communications.

Video posts are limited to 60 seconds on Instagram but the platform does provide two other options for longer content.

Live Video

Instagram live is similar to Facebook live in that it allows the creation of scheduled live video events that people can opt into and watch. These tend to be longer, and more persistent than video posts, forming part of the Stories functionality on instagram. These are very effective for webinars, classes and demonstrations, and offer some interaction from users via comment.

One thing to remember though is that Live video is not permanently held on your page by default and will disappear after 24 hours unless you change the settings on the video.

Live video used to be limited to 60 minutes but this has now been extended to 4 hours.

IGTV

IGTV is the youtube of Instagram allowing you to create and post longer content on your page. The big difference between this and live is the fact that content is created offline, and the expectation is that videos will be edited and optimised before upload hence needs to be more professionally created.

Instagram Stories

Instagram stories add snapchat like content to your feed. These are collections of posts and content that allow you to communicate a time limited set of images or videos about a subject that disappear after 24 hours. This can let you post about an event that is relevant today, but you don’t really want on your account forever.

Instagram Shops

As it’s focus is keeping people on the platform, it’s difficult to promote products that are sold via Amazon or ebay for example, and to support eCommerce, Instagram allows users to create Shops which offer the same basic eCommerce experience within the platform.

Facebook Integration

It’s also worth noting that facebook owns instagram, and therefore your facebook and instagram profiles can be linked, allowing you to promote on both platforms at the same time. This can be both a benefit or a curse, as you have to comply with the business rules of both sites, which can be very restrictive.

Is Instagram Marketing right for my business?

Instagram marketing isn’t for everyone, it requires a level of dedication to creating strong visual and video content that is relevant to your business needs, your product and your market. So, if you’re selling accountancy services, it’s probably not for you!

Where you are looking to build a personal connection to your audience based on your personality, rather than your skill set
Where movement or interaction is key to your brand, like personal trainers, yoga instructors etc.
Where design or visuals are a big part of your brand, such as food and drink, location based businesses such as tourism, or clothing brands where the look is more important than descriptions.
If you are looking to educate in any creative or physical subject, such as arts and crafts, physical activity or wellness based activities. It works well for people selling craft goods for example, as you can demonstrate the product in use
The brand is targeting a younger demographic. 18-30’s are more active here than on facebook, or twitter for example.
Its a simple product to sell online. Low engagement purchases are perfect for eCommerce, and if you have online supply chains set up, instagram promotion will work very well.
If you are communicating something intangible or that is difficult to describe. The feelings experienced during use may be a key to a product's value, such as taste, comfort, relaxation, etc, which are very difficult to describe.
Its a simple product to sell online. Low engagement purchases are perfect for eCommerce, and if you have online supply chains set up, instagram promotion will work very well.

Using Instagram marketing to communicate your brand’s Unique Voice

Boost your small business with simple content marketing ideas

May 4,2021 Leave a comment

Finding great content marketing ideas

If knowledge and skills are your business, demonstrating credibility and capability is essential, and well planned content marketing can significantly increase your authority and value to potential customers.

Why include content marketing in your strategy

Content marketing refers to any approach that seeks to educate and inform, leading from basic blogging and video content up to complex elearning strategies as part of a wider onboarding strategy.

It incorporates Social content strategies, youtube channels and web content, and gives potential clients a much better sense of who you are and what value you can bring to them which increases your perceived value.

However, with over a billion new pages being added to the internet each day, how can you hope to stand out?

It’s actually quite simple, as long as you understand how your customers learn, and how search engines like Google organise search results based on search intent.

Think in terms of questions not words

Long tail keywords have been a viable paid search strategy for a while, using smaller, more focussed groups of keywords where you trade lower search volume for disproportionately higher conversions, and therefore, potentially higher volumes of leads at a lower price per conversion.

This is driven by increased specificity in searches as we all have to filter out irrelevant search results to get closer to the information we want. This has led to longer, more focussed search terms that seek to answer questions rather than just basic keywords

People aren’t just searching for “shoes” anymore, now we are more likely to search for “shoes near me” or “black trainers near me”, or even “ which shoes shops have the best discounts”, and each of these searches tells us about what kind of information people want to hear.

But, Google is not clever enough to make the connection between the question and the answer, so you need to be specific, telling google the question that you are answering with your content.

Understanding how people search online.

We tend to buy things that help solve a problem. Whether it’s as basic as buying food because we’re hungry, taking a bus to get to work, the size of the problem will tend to correlate to the value we put into the solution and the effort we are prepared to put into finding it.

For more complex problems, we often don’t have a ready-made solution at hand, and will seek information that allows us to understand our problem, it’s potential solutions and what we need to do to implement them.

Understanding this process, and providing guidance at an early stage helps you engage with potential customers earlier, increasing your value to them and potentially your conversion rates.

However, it does require you to realise that you do more than just provide a service, and accept that there may be other solutions.

Imagine you’re a yoga instructor, is your value only in teaching someone a new position, or, are you really helping them solve their stress or pain problems?

Discovery - what is my problem

Keeping with the Yoga analogy, few people wake up in the morning thinking I must learn yoga!”.

Instead, they wake up after a restless night wondering why their neck hurts, or why they didn’t sleep well, and, if this continues, they are going to start looking for a solution, possibly googling “lack of sleep”, Causes of sleeplessness” etc.

This will lead them to isolate a possible cause, and motivate them to find a solution.

Understanding - what's the root cause of my problem

Neck pain is often the cause, but what’s causing the next pain, is it a posture issue, a sports injury or something wrong with the pillow of bed? There are still loads of potential solutions, so our insomniac will likely search for more information to isolate the cause and get closer to a solution.

Once they realise it’s a posture issue, they can then focus on a set of potential solutions, which might include a new chair, changing their working practices, learning some new stretches or getting a massage, but they are closer to finding a solution that will solve their particular problem.

Do it yourself

Most people will try to solve their own problems, before they spend money on a solution, so will seek out exercise videos, How-To’s etc, that let them try out a possible solution before they commit.

It’s only once they have exhausted the free solutions that they will look to buy, so only at this point will the specific search terms that are traditionally used are relevant.

Be the solution provider

As this brief example demonstrates, most people will have gone through a comprehensive search process before they start looking for a specific provider online, and it’s likely that the earlier you engage with a client in the process, the more valuable they will see you and the more likely you are to be the provider of choice when they get to making their decision.

You’ve been there from the start and are demonstrably interested more in helping your client than taking their money.

How to find the right questions

There are millions of guides on the internet that tell you how to find the right keywords for your business, but most of these are internally focussed, identifying the words that describe you, not those that your customers are trying to find.

So, rather than thinking about yourself, think about what language your audience uses, and what questions they ask.

Customers

Obviously your customers are the best people to listen too, and, assuming you’re a people centred business that engages with your clients, you’ll have a good sense of what motivated them to find a solution in the first place.

The trick, however, is to look a bit deeper. You’re not interested in why they picked you, but what triggered the journey in the first place, what underlying need motivated them to seek answers and take action.

We call these “pain points”, stressors in a person’s life that are bad enough to take action to remove, and therefore of great value.

Understanding the pain point gets you closer to the root cause and the start of their journey, and allows you to reinforce how much value you add at a basic level.

Understanding search intent and how Google uses this.

Sometimes this isn’t easy, or we operate too far from our clients, so how do we understand what people are searching for? Thankfully, Google is there to help us out.

Google wants to be the researcher’s friend, seeking to give you the best possible answer to your question or query, and it starts by understanding the intent behind your search. You will have noticed how the search results page changes depending on the type of search you make, and this is because Google seeks to assess your search intent, deciding whether your goal is buying or information.

This is important, because it will affect whether you’re placed highly or not, and if you’re not on page 1, you’re effectively nowhere!

If Google thinks a search has an information intent, i.e. the reader is looking for information, it’s unlikely to present shopping or eCommerce responses, meaning that you will not be placed.

Answer the public

There are a number of sites like Answer the Public, which collate potential questions and queries based on a seed phrase with the addition of a preposition. So, for example, they may start with “neck pain” and then use complex algorithms to create sentences, by adding “How” or “What” giving you a set of potential subjects to write about.

Quora

Forums are also a great source of questions. If there are any industry forums, try joining and searching these to get a better understanding of the kinds of queries your audience asks. It’s also a good place to start building connections and a presence, as you can also add your answers to the forums.

More generic sites like Quora or Reddit can also be helpful, although Reddit is often not for the faint hearted! Quora is a Q&A site, where people can ask specific questions to be answered by the general population. Searching for a subject will help you build a picture of the priority queries, and those in your industry who are also actively answering. You can find ideas for content marketing and obviously add your own answers.

Build a long term web presence with content marketing

Content on your website is permanent and the more credible and well written content you include the more likely you are to be found. Covering your subjects in more detail, aligning your content with the searches being made and improving your relevance increases your search ranking and therefore the number of people likely to see you.

You can obviously use social media to promote your content, but remember, you are trying to make your site more visible, not Facebooks, so don’t waste your best content on post. Create valuable content for your site, then create shorter posts for Social media. That way you can build your audience amongst both groups and drive more traffic to your site.

The marketing funnel

Feb 12,2021 Leave a comment

The marketing funnel describes the process through which an entity goes from being totally unaware of your company's existence through to being a customer and potentially out the other end.

Basic Models

As with most models in the commercial world, there are lots of different versions offering different perspectives depending on what the creator wants to describe ( or sell).

Marketing led models like AIDA tend to describe the action that you want to drive in the customer at that point beginning with raising awareness of the proposition or just the issue it addresses, promoting interest, creating desire and prompting action. As these came out of the Advertising industry, they are much more focused on the consumer market than B2B. They are also difficult to apply to processes, being a bit more esoteric.

Content Marketing models tend to focus on actionable and performance-based models. Hubspot, Pardot and Marketo would be examples, although Hubspot has moved to a flywheel that recognises that communications post-purchase is important, and this may not be right for all businesses.

Sales models tend to be driven by the data structures of CRM’s and focus on categorising the stage a customer is at for example a prospect becomes a lead, which is qualified to create an opportunity which is converted to a sale. If you are heavily engaged with a specific CRM, this will dictate your methodology, and Salesforce offers a good model for how the process is supposed to work

Which model works for you will be very dependent on what you are trying to achieve, but they all have a few things in common.

Funnel

The shape is relevant as it demonstrates that there are more entities at the top than there are at the bottom. This has two implications. Firstly that you will be communicating to a significantly broader audience at the top than at the bottom, and secondly that you will lose people as you move through the process

Stratification

There are distinct groups and layers in your marketing funnel that can be classified and measured. Each of these layers has specific needs and requires specific actions, needs to be differentiated and potentially owned by different groups.

Process

The funnel is not a bucket, it is a process that has direction and layers. Maximising the number of people that you get out of the bottom needs two things

As many people as possible going into the top
Efficient migration of entities as possible from layer to layer.

Both marketing and Sales have traditionally considered their roles to be art, not science and one will always blame the other if they aren’t hitting the target. Moreover, they are competing objectives. Marketing’s view is to get as many leads in as possible, whereas Sales just wants the best leads.

This is where operational management comes in and builds structures that allow mutually agreeable objectives and clear measurement

Relationship and content marketing are the real game-changers for real estate.

Feb 12,2021 Leave a comment

With the rising cost of leads and reduced conversions rates, lead generation is becoming more expensive and less sustainable than ever. But with long sales cycles and limited opportunity for repeat business, is content marketing the alternative?

Real estate is, by its very nature, transactional.

We buy homes so rarely, that we don’t get to know our agents and have little need to remain in contact with them from sale-to-sale.

From the agent’s perspective, therefore, the focus is two-fold. Firstly, getting leads and winning listings and secondly getting as many people into view a property to guarantee that sufficient numbers are willing to bid to get the house.

The rate-determining steps are therefore lead generation and conversion rates. Mosts leads are still sourced from lead lists either purchased or created through outbound email or coldcalling.

Some agencies such as Castles in Dublin have been very successful with personalised leaflet drops and flyers, leveraging their strength in their target markets and brand awareness in discrete territories.

However, both of these routes are time-consuming and expensive.

Are search and social the answer?

Search and social media advertising is less common, accounting for about 22% of all lead creation, However, targeting at a local level is difficult and produces variable results. General keywords are competitive and expensive. CPC rates around €5 and conversion rates below 2% mean each lead’s costing over €100.

Either way, each of your leads is going to cost between €50 and €100, and if you factor it conversion rates of less than 5%, that’s giving a cost per sale between €1-2000, which, in the face of declining prices and commissions is not sustainable, especially in Ireland for example, where commissions are down to 1.5%.

No wonder then that many agents are looking in different directions for their business, but what are the options?

Relationship marketing for estate agents

Many successful agents are taking a leaf out of the corporate sales book, realising that the two key advantages of the referral are trust and expertise.

The fact that someone we know to be independent has had a positive experience pushes up the trust learning curve with a referral allowing us to reach the point at which we are willing to work with a company much faster than if we approached them cold.

It also means that we know that the referred contact has expertise which is relevant to us through the discussions with our trusted third party.

Content marketing

Agencies are starting to recognise that content marketing and marketing automation allows them to get over the hurdles caused by long gaps between sales by creating relationship opportunities which will ultimately lead into listings or sales in a more cost-effective manner.

This means the creation of online communities of individuals who opt in to receiving your communications and are prepared to engage with the content you create.

This is important because recognising that the content needs to be what the audience wants to hear, not what the writer wants to say is a key concept for effective content marketing. No-one wants to be bombarded just with new listing messages!

The platform is important too.

Social media offers a great opportunity to broaden the audience base, but it’s very low engagement, whereas email subscriber bases will be smaller and more difficult to build but will be substantially more engaged.

Stepping into content

Depending on how committed you are to content management and your ROI timeline, you can create deeper and deeper levels of relationships.

That’s the key to success, realising that you’re not selling houses in your marketing, you’re selling relationships. Your audience needs to buy into you before they will buy what you are selling.

The Marketing Funnel

For the company shifting from a transactional to a relational selling model this is the simplest step, as it allows you to start to build a content marketing funnel without losing sight of the importance of a call to action leading to a specific endpoint.

This approach centres on providing content which is relevant and interesting to the audience, but retains some focus on the sales process. The rule of thumb is that 80% of the content should be pure content and 20% sales focussed.

This can mean retaining a call to action on all mails or focussing some mails or posts on the process or competitive advantages of the product. The key is the mix. More obvious calls to action or a sales approach will push some people down the funnel faster but are likely to disengage a lot of people.

Content marketing

Companies coming from a softer, marketing-led background or who have found their funnel approach plateauing, tone down the overt sales pitch in favour of a greater focus on content which builds authority and trust with the potential for messages to be shared.

This is the more traditional social media approach and leads to greater engagement and lower dropouts, forming a strong and growing audience.

Sales messages are downplayed considerably so it takes a bit of a leap of faith coupled with strong marketing skills to create what is essentially going to become a strong source of high-quality leads, akin to those generated from referrals.

One example of this is the 33 touch campaign run by Keller Williams companies.

In Ireland, this involves a 2 strand approach, developing the agent’s reputation for both professional and local knowledge, tapping into the audience need for estate agents that they can trust both to know the area intimately and be both professionally competent and successful.

Audiences are split by region of interest and receive two communications per month, one focussing on the area ( best restaurants, relevant news stories etc) and the other a market report detailing new listings, price movements and general commentary.

Selling and listing call to actions are conspicuously absent.

The upshot of this is open rates in the late 20’s and virtually no unsubscribers, leading to a growing audience. Listing enquiries naturally fall out of the process, but there is no push.

From an agent’s perspective, Keller Williams automated marketing tools are linked to the CRM, making lists and campaign management simple minimising the need for marketing support and letting the agent’s personality shine through. Social media posts can also be scheduled automatically from within the platform.

Monetising your base

Like Google and Facebook before it, Keller Williams has realised that once it has a loyal audience, it has the potential to offer them a range of products and services outside of the core offering.

The products and services it offers need to be relevant and aligned and obviously provided either internally or via aligned, well-vetted but non-competitive providers.

Keller Williams is able to leverage its global reach and size to negotiate good deals on traditional real estate products like mortgages, home improvement loans and insurance, but also recognises that the transition from one home to the next is only relevant for a small portion of its audience, whereas the others are settled homeowners.

Plumbing, gardening, home warranty and cheaper utilities are much more relevant to the majority of its base and providing compelling offerings is a great way to both provide stickiness and an ongoing revenue stream.

This isn’t without its pitfalls, however, as the affinity benefit means that whilst a good experience will act as a halo around the brand, any bad experiences with third parties will also negatively impact, so picking the right partners is essential.

It’s also important to limit the offering and ensure offerings are aligned with the core proposition otherwise you risk diluting the brand.

The revenues from cross-sells are rarely high compared with the core proposition, so it doesn’t make sense to lose sight of your core business.

Servicing your base through data mining.

As it transitions to a technology company, Keller Williams is already planning the next-generation technology utilising AI and hyperlocal content to provide an invaluable real estate tool for consumers and agents alike.

On the consumer side, content is localised to a specific address, giving access to a range of services specific to your home, acting as your home’s personal assistant effectively.

Want to know what your house is worth now or projected into the future? How about what it would be worth rented on Airbnb or Long term rental? The app gives consumers to create their own landing page, with details on their home, its current value, services in the local area and anything else that the homeowner might need.

Partnerships with companies like Nextdoor allow additional features like combining the best features of a Facebook, WhatsApp or Justeat in a local, curated group or provide highly localised and differentiated services.

From the corporate side, datamining and AI allow agents to predict when a consumer is likely to be considering a change, prompting a reach out, for example.

Content remains at the heart of the offering, as effective adopting requires access to service and content which continues to be relevant and useful to consumers.

The benefits, however, are game-changing.

As the go-to app for all of your homeownership and needs, Keller Williams stands to own the consumer’s interaction with their home, and who do you think will be the first person they think of when it comes to selling their home?

The future is relational, not transactional.

Building strong, long-lasting relationships with potential consumers is the future for real estate and this takes courage, patience and a long term approach.

You need to focus on what you can offer your consumer not what they can deliver for you, it really is a buyers market! However, the rewards are potentially huge.

Not only can first movers capture a large share of voice which can be translated into a cost-effective lead flow, but they have the potential to broaden the revenue base for the company and potentially lead to diversification and derisked revenues long into the future.

Category Content Marketing

How to write an SEO friendly blogs

Technical factors for SEO friendly blogs.

Creative factors that improve on-page SEO.

Relevant content

SEO Friendly blogs are Entertaining and engaging

Answer the right question.

Help the reader quickly see how relevant the content is.

Make the content engaging.

Want to know more?

SEO friendly blogs – How to write content that readers will like and Google will rank.

Don’t get in your own way!

Know your audience

Know yourself.

Pick a specific keyword phrase

Focus on the long tail

Structure your article properly

If you are offering a solution, make sure it is actionable

Write a relevant introduction

Use headers effectively

Write content of the relevant length

Write for your audience.

Use images and videos when relevant

Don’t forget Alt-text!

Craft a powerful, eye-catching but relevant Title

Make sure your metadata is correct

Use Links effectively

Organise your content properly using Categories

Help readers find new content through related posts

Promote your content

Outline Marketing Strategy plan

Section 1. Who is the customer

Example

Section 2. How does the customer benefit from your product or service

Example

Section 3. What do I do for the customer

Example.

Section 4. Customer journey and relevant channels

Customer journey

Channels

Buyer intent

Example.

Section 5. Messaging

Subject area.

What do you want people to think about you?

Section 6. Communications objectives – how I plan to influence the customer

Awareness vs engagement vs action.

Buyer intent.

Actions and Metrics.

Approach

Example.

Section 7. Project plan

What do I need to have in place to achieve these results and what time frame will I need to follow.

What resources do I need

If I don’t have access to these resources, what steps do I need to take to acquire them?

Search Keywords and phrases

How do people find information

Expert systems

Example.

What is search intent and why is it important

4 types of buyer intention

Informational Search intent.

Commercial investigation.

Transactional.

Navigational.

Why are you researching?

For AdWords

For content writing.

For on-page SEO.

For off-page SEO.

What tools can I use for Keyword research?

Keyword search tools

SEOStack

KWsurfer

Moz Bar

Text optimizer

Tube buddy

Keywordfinder.io

Keywordtool.io

Competitor and site activities