by Fronetics | Nov 8, 2017 | Blog, Data/Analytics
Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics founder, suggests three key ways to make your content more relevant and to improve your SEO visibility.
We talk a lot about the importance of content, like here and here. Content is everywhere, and companies are working hard to continually produce new content. But not all content is created equal.
Searchmetrics founder Marcus Tober discusses how data is changing the relevancy of content in his conference talk, Mastering the World of Deep Learning: How Big Data Is Making Content More Relevant in Search. As a pioneer in search-analytics software, Tober has watched search engines become more advanced at figuring out which web pages people will find relevant. Through years of research, Tober offers three lessons to make your content more relevant.
3 ways to make your content more relevant
Develop your content niche.
“Experts are not called upon because they are the smartest person in every room; they are called upon because they are the smartest person in a specific room.” John Gordon
Find your area of expertise, or niche, in your market and focus your content around this topic. Instead of writing broadly about various subjects relevant to your industry, your writers should tackle tough questions and introduce cutting-edge thought leadership in one key area that defines your company’s strength.
Marcus says, “This means that if you specialize in something and make it really good because you understand the user, you can have great search performance” compared with a huge site that produces content about everything.
Through this valuable and focused content, your company will stand out as a leader in your industry. Audiences will know how to categorize you, which sounds like a bad thing, but isn’t. When they have a specific question, they know to turn to you as a specific expert.
Get rid of ROT.
ROT (redundant, outdated, and trivial content) can sink your website. “Think about your house. We’re all a bit messy and a bit lazy. Likewise, I can imagine that you have a lot of content that maybe you should get rid of or should merge with something else you have,” says Tober.
Many companies keep older ROT content because of the volume of posts they want under their belts. Tober worked with a German company, Pflege.de (similar to care.com), which was afraid of cleaning out its ROT because of the internal links and the possibility of older posts still bringing in traffic.
On Tober’s recommendation, Pflege purged ROT and lost 95% of its content. 95%! The content the company was left with was more relevant and ranked higher with search engines. Pflege’s SEO visibility grew 240% within a few short months.
Update remaining content to address user intentions.
It’s not enough to just get rid of ROT. You also need to keep an eye on older content and make sure you continue to update as needed. “You have to make what’s left really good,” Marcus says.
What is meant by content that is “really good?” He means content that addresses people’s intentions – content that meets the information needs underlying the keywords and phrases they use.
Big data can help brands track their older content and make changes to address audience questions and relevancy. Tober’s company, Searchmetrics, is an example of a data service that helps companies take an in-depth look at older content and how it addresses user intentions. When brands update content to address specific wants and needs, it can boost online visibility and reveal new potential for older posts.
Improving your company’s SEO visibility can be easier to achieve than you think. Using these three steps, you can get ahead of search engines and place your brand in front of untapped audiences.
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by Fronetics | Nov 6, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Use these four tips to earn high-quality backlinks that will boost your company’s search engine ranking.
It’s no secret that backlinks can help your search engine rankings. Backlinks are any link on another website that points (or links) back to your website. Since the 1990s, search engines have used backlinks as a bit of a popularity contest: the more you had, the more popular your website became.
It didn’t take long for companies to hunt for backlinks, creating relationships with other companies in the same industry for the sole benefit of getting links to their websites. But like all relationships, link building can be abused and, often times, only beneficial to one party. Pursuing links for search engine ranking alone creates a negative mindset, leading to uneasy relationships, damaged brand reputation, and low-quality, spammy links.
How can you achieve high-quality backlinks?
Let’s start by understanding what constitutes a high-quality backlink. SEO consultant Mark Walters defines them as links that:
- Are from a relevant and trusted source
- Have anchor text that matches your keywords
- Are on a page with Google’s PageRank
- Are next to backlinks to authority websites
- Are from different sources
- Are not reciprocal
- Are on pages with few other backlinks
Now that you know what defines a high-quality backlink, how can your company achieve these organic relationships? The answer is hard work.
Here are 4 tips to help your efforts get high-quality backlinks.
1. Create the best content available on your topic
The best content is content that is unique. Not only is original content SEO friendly, original content is audience friendly. In one minute, users share 300 hours of video on YouTube and tweet nearly 400,000 tweets times. If you want content that stands out, you need content that differs from that of the rest of the pack.
You can make content stand out by using winning headlines, graphics, images, and with great writing. Create every single piece of content with your current and prospective customers in mind. Content that attracts and engages audiences effectively communicates valuable information, providing knowledge to help guide informed decisions. Creating reliable information will establish your website and business as a thought leader within your industry, and other companies will start to take notice.
2. Perform exclusive interviews with industry experts and/or influencers
The strategy of interviewing industry experts is becoming more and more common. Here at Fronetics we often interview influencers. The draw from big names helps bring in new traffic to our site, as well as provide readers with the latest happenings in our industry.
“The benefits of creating content around authority figures in your space is vast, such as bringing recognizable authority names to your site, while also having the opportunity for such content to be shared by featured experts as well. The end result could create lots of great content for your site, while also bringing in a nice consistent supply of new traffic as well.” Writes Zac Johnson for Business 2 Community.
3. Create custom infographics
Images are a fail-safe way to create engaging content, but infographics do more than just give readers visual knowledge. Infographics also help achieve backlinks. They provide interesting and valuable information using images, giving readers the knowledge without having to read through heavy text. The most popular infographics incorporate amazing design and well-researched statistics.
According to HubSpot, social media users share and like infographics 3x more than other any other type of content. Good infographics have the ability to make your content go viral, generate tons of high-quality back-links, and improve your site’s overall SEO.
4. Participate in collaborative content marketing
Collaborative content has many benefits, but one of the biggest is reach. Your collaborators have their own followers and platforms. Combine that with your audiences, and your content is already reaching more people. These collaborations save time and money and will earn you backlinks through the other participants. Collaborative content will help drive organic traffic, provide valuable and relevant information, and introduce a new voice to your content.
Using these four strategies will help your company earn high-quality backlinks and start improving your search enginge ranking. Your higher rankings will come from organic backlinks that your hard work helped to create.
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