How to accelerate traffic and rankings with content
marketing.
One of the most powerful on-page SEO strategies is adding more unique,
fresh content to your site. If you consistently add new pages to your site, you
are going to receive more traffic. In fact, not only can you increase your
traffic, you can receive an exponential traffic increase as you publish more
content.
It’s a no-brainer when you think about it. This is why blogs, publishing and
news-type sites consistently get good results in search engines. More content
means more rankings, more visitors, and more sales. Let’s look at getting
started with improving your traffic by adding fresh content.
1. Post new content on a regular schedule.
If you are going to add new content to your site, you need to decide on a
schedule and stick to it. This might seem obvious, but you would be surprised
at the large number of businesses that talk about starting a blog and never get
around to it. It’s the businesses with a regular roster of adding content to their
site that see regular increases in search rankings, increases in overall search
engine performance, and a growing loyal audience. Without a dedicated
roster or schedule, it will never get done.
If you don’t have the capacity to create content yourself, or a budget to hire a
full-time marketing assistant to create content, try hiring a ghostwriter.
Good quality writers can be sourced between $25-$75 USD per article and
you can regularly churn out fresh content to your heart’s content. Popular
services can put you in touch with talented writers, such as Textbroker or the
Problogger job board.
Textbroker
https://www.textbroker.com
Problogger Job Board
https://problogger.com/jobs/
2. Leverage your social media accounts.
It almost goes without saying, but you should be leveraging social media to
drive traffic to new posts or pages added to your site.
Whenever you post new content, post it across all of your social media
accounts. Then post it again in a couple of days and you will expose your
content to a different segment of fans. You’ll increase your social activity and
as a result get higher rankings.
3. Link up your site to blog aggregators.
Blog directories are an easy opportunity for high-quality backlinks, available
for anyone running a blog. A handful of large authority blog directories
accept site submissions and syndicate content—an opportunity to build up
referral traffic. Simply ensure you have a base level of content to start, and
then submit your site. A link to your blog can be approved within a week or
two.
Here’s a handful of high-quality blog directories accepting submissions:
https://www.alltop.com/
https://www.blogarama.com/
https://blogs.botw.org/
https://portal.eatonweb.com/
How to target featured snippet rankings in Google’s
search results.
Ever searched in Google and saw your answer featured in a giant ranking
sitting just above the search results? These large search results are called
"featured snippets" and can send a mind-blowing amount of traffic if you're
clever enough to achieve one of these types of rankings. While achieving a
featured snippet can be difficult, there's a couple of techniques for achieving
one of these rankings.
Before I jump into the techniques, are you still not sure what I'm talking
about? Quickly Google a couple of questions and look for the giant search
result that answers your question at the top of the search results, you can't
miss it—it's about three times bigger than a regular search result. Here's some
example searches that usually deliver a featured snippet in the results, “how
to get started in real estate”, “how to increase your blog traffic”, and so on...
Fortunately, some clever SEOs have figured out some general techniques and
criteria for targeting these sexy rankings.
1. Your desired ranking must be for a question type keyword. Searches that
aren't phrased as a question generally won't trigger a featured snippet, so
better to focus on question related keywords.
2. Your page must be performing okay generally. You don't necessarily need
to be ranking in the top position, but if you're ranking on page 2 or page 3, it's
unlikely you'll achieve the featured snippet ranking, if this is the case, first
focus on ranking higher. If you're already ranking around positions 1-4, then
you have a greater chance of being featured.
3. Your answer should be clear and concise. It almost goes without saying,
well-written and clear answers have a much greater chance of being featured
then poorly written answers.
4. Provide more valuable information than a simple and direct answer. If your
answer has numbered lists, rich media such as images and videos, and is
generally more helpful than an obvious answer to the question, then you have
a greater chance of being featured.
5. Include a Q&A or how-to section on your site. Increase content in a
question and answer format and increase your odds of being featured for
several pages.
6. Add the HowTo, QAPage, and FAQPage Schema.org code to your page.
While this won’t guarantee results, it can’t hurt. If you are not comfortable
with editing code, you may need to hire a programmer to implement this.
HowTo Markup – Schema.org
https://schema.org/HowTo
QAPage Markup – Schema.org
https://schema.org/QAPage
FAQPage Markup – Schema.org
https://pending.schema.org/FAQPage
~
That sums it up for the on-page SEO chapter.
If you have a small business, the technical factors mentioned earlier in this
chapter are what will make the difference—such as ensuring your site has the
right keywords and is accessible for all users.
If you are doing SEO for a large company and need a large amount of traffic,
regularly publishing new content and ensuring structural areas of your site are
setup correctly are what will make the difference—such as regularly posting
new blog posts, ensuring you have sitemaps working correctly, and no
duplicate content or 404 errors.
What’s most important is you act. On-page SEO is often the easiest part of
SEO. The power is in your hands to fix these areas in your site. Remember
small changes can lead to big results. Put these methods to practice and start
improving your rankings.
Just like the keyword research steps, for readers who want to put the theory
into practice, all on-page optimization tips from this chapter are included in
the SEO checklist. I recommend finishing the book before downloading the
checklist and the on-page SEO steps, so you are familiar with the theory
behind the practical steps.
marketing.
One of the most powerful on-page SEO strategies is adding more unique,
fresh content to your site. If you consistently add new pages to your site, you
are going to receive more traffic. In fact, not only can you increase your
traffic, you can receive an exponential traffic increase as you publish more
content.
It’s a no-brainer when you think about it. This is why blogs, publishing and
news-type sites consistently get good results in search engines. More content
means more rankings, more visitors, and more sales. Let’s look at getting
started with improving your traffic by adding fresh content.
1. Post new content on a regular schedule.
If you are going to add new content to your site, you need to decide on a
schedule and stick to it. This might seem obvious, but you would be surprised
at the large number of businesses that talk about starting a blog and never get
around to it. It’s the businesses with a regular roster of adding content to their
site that see regular increases in search rankings, increases in overall search
engine performance, and a growing loyal audience. Without a dedicated
roster or schedule, it will never get done.
If you don’t have the capacity to create content yourself, or a budget to hire a
full-time marketing assistant to create content, try hiring a ghostwriter.
Good quality writers can be sourced between $25-$75 USD per article and
you can regularly churn out fresh content to your heart’s content. Popular
services can put you in touch with talented writers, such as Textbroker or the
Problogger job board.
Textbroker
https://www.textbroker.com
Problogger Job Board
https://problogger.com/jobs/
2. Leverage your social media accounts.
It almost goes without saying, but you should be leveraging social media to
drive traffic to new posts or pages added to your site.
Whenever you post new content, post it across all of your social media
accounts. Then post it again in a couple of days and you will expose your
content to a different segment of fans. You’ll increase your social activity and
as a result get higher rankings.
3. Link up your site to blog aggregators.
Blog directories are an easy opportunity for high-quality backlinks, available
for anyone running a blog. A handful of large authority blog directories
accept site submissions and syndicate content—an opportunity to build up
referral traffic. Simply ensure you have a base level of content to start, and
then submit your site. A link to your blog can be approved within a week or
two.
Here’s a handful of high-quality blog directories accepting submissions:
https://www.alltop.com/
https://www.blogarama.com/
https://blogs.botw.org/
https://portal.eatonweb.com/
How to target featured snippet rankings in Google’s
search results.
Ever searched in Google and saw your answer featured in a giant ranking
sitting just above the search results? These large search results are called
"featured snippets" and can send a mind-blowing amount of traffic if you're
clever enough to achieve one of these types of rankings. While achieving a
featured snippet can be difficult, there's a couple of techniques for achieving
one of these rankings.
Before I jump into the techniques, are you still not sure what I'm talking
about? Quickly Google a couple of questions and look for the giant search
result that answers your question at the top of the search results, you can't
miss it—it's about three times bigger than a regular search result. Here's some
example searches that usually deliver a featured snippet in the results, “how
to get started in real estate”, “how to increase your blog traffic”, and so on...
Fortunately, some clever SEOs have figured out some general techniques and
criteria for targeting these sexy rankings.
1. Your desired ranking must be for a question type keyword. Searches that
aren't phrased as a question generally won't trigger a featured snippet, so
better to focus on question related keywords.
2. Your page must be performing okay generally. You don't necessarily need
to be ranking in the top position, but if you're ranking on page 2 or page 3, it's
unlikely you'll achieve the featured snippet ranking, if this is the case, first
focus on ranking higher. If you're already ranking around positions 1-4, then
you have a greater chance of being featured.
3. Your answer should be clear and concise. It almost goes without saying,
well-written and clear answers have a much greater chance of being featured
then poorly written answers.
4. Provide more valuable information than a simple and direct answer. If your
answer has numbered lists, rich media such as images and videos, and is
generally more helpful than an obvious answer to the question, then you have
a greater chance of being featured.
5. Include a Q&A or how-to section on your site. Increase content in a
question and answer format and increase your odds of being featured for
several pages.
6. Add the HowTo, QAPage, and FAQPage Schema.org code to your page.
While this won’t guarantee results, it can’t hurt. If you are not comfortable
with editing code, you may need to hire a programmer to implement this.
HowTo Markup – Schema.org
https://schema.org/HowTo
QAPage Markup – Schema.org
https://schema.org/QAPage
FAQPage Markup – Schema.org
https://pending.schema.org/FAQPage
~
That sums it up for the on-page SEO chapter.
If you have a small business, the technical factors mentioned earlier in this
chapter are what will make the difference—such as ensuring your site has the
right keywords and is accessible for all users.
If you are doing SEO for a large company and need a large amount of traffic,
regularly publishing new content and ensuring structural areas of your site are
setup correctly are what will make the difference—such as regularly posting
new blog posts, ensuring you have sitemaps working correctly, and no
duplicate content or 404 errors.
What’s most important is you act. On-page SEO is often the easiest part of
SEO. The power is in your hands to fix these areas in your site. Remember
small changes can lead to big results. Put these methods to practice and start
improving your rankings.
Just like the keyword research steps, for readers who want to put the theory
into practice, all on-page optimization tips from this chapter are included in
the SEO checklist. I recommend finishing the book before downloading the
checklist and the on-page SEO steps, so you are familiar with the theory
behind the practical steps.
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