Getting Your Sh*t SeenWeBlogMCR January 2017

Who am I?I run an inbound marketing agency. We use content a lot.15 years of experience in digital marketing.Like to “play around” with digital (constantly testing and tweaking).Massive advocate of the power of bloggers.Worked on the FT blogs.We use blogging to help clients get found, and to sell stuff.

So…

Thinking about your blog…

Who are you targeting?

So ask yourself…Who do you want to read your blog?What interests them?Why would they read your blog?What content do they want to read?How do they consume content? (Video, blogs…)

Ask yourself…

What is it actually?At a very basic level, SEO is about making your site as “Search Engine Friendly” as possible.

It’s based on something we call “ranking signals” (there are hundreds of them)…

These are the ones I would focus on:- How many links to your site- Temporal relevance (how often are you being talked about

on social)- User experience (mobile, mobile, mobile)- Quality of your content- What people do when they are on your site… - Structure of your site- Keyword density

Links to your siteIt’s not “the more the better” (sometimes). You don’t want 100’s of links from one domain… You want one link from hundreds of domains.

Ask for a link EVERYWHERE. If someone quotes you or mentions you, ask for a link. Someone uses your image, ask for a link.

Share your images on Pinterest from your site (Pin buttons). Share your content on Reddit. Answer questions on Quora with a link to your blog (don’t be spammy). Find sites you could write for, in exchange for a link back…

Temporal relevanceGoogle likes sites that are being talked about.

- Share your content across social- Make it easier for others to share- Make it easy for readers to comment- Mention influencers in your blogs, mention them on

social e.g:

“.@hollynicol’s House Project has given me inspiration for my new post on… http://myblog.com/my-blog-post”

User experienceIf your blog is a pain in the arse to read, no one will read it.

If it takes too long to load, Google will penalise you.

If the content is convoluted, packed with links or too image heavy, Google will penalise you.

Content qualityDon’t write shit.

Google likes good content. It knows it’s good content by looking at how long people read it for, do they go on to read other things, and is it shared.

Write content that appeals to your target persona.

Make sure each page has >400 words on it.

Include images in your post (or even better, include video)

Structure of your siteWe could do hours on this...

In a nut shell, your site, in terms of inter page linking and how the page itself is structured, should show google that you are an expert in a given area and that there is a breadth and depth of content.

Think about how your menus are structured, how content is layered.

Ideally, you want Google to look at the site and say, “fuck, there’s loads of content associated to that particular keyword”

Structure of your siteCreate hubs of content…

If “weddings” was the keyword…

Weddings

Wedding dresses

Wedding Photography

Wedding venues

Wedding Reviews

Honeymoon locations

Keyword densityEvery single page should have a key word target.

And every one of those pages should have a slightly different keyword target.

Make sure your keywords are in:- URL- H1 tags- H2, H3 or H4 tags- Image alt tags- In the text, naturally 3-4 times.

Focus on longer tail keyword: Not ”Marketing Agency” but “Inbound Marketing agency”

But…

Don’t focus on SEO…

Social is your friend…Use Facebook LiveGet involved on TwitterImages and video will rule the world

The last blog you found…

How did you find it? Did you search for it, or was it over social..?

Social can be labour intensive, but it’s incredibly affective.

Look for the influencers. Piggy back on them.

Use video, use video, use video

In case that’s not clear… use video.

On Facebook, video posts have 135% better organic reach than photos. People spend 80% longer watching live video.

Doesn’t need to be in depth:- Consider introductions to blog posts- Live videos- Consider reaction posts- Product/restaurant reviews…

You’re not broadcasting… Stupid.

Remember, social is about starting a conversation… You’re not broadcasting messages. Engage with people.

Email sucks, but…

It’s an effective tool…

Ask people for their email addresses. Build a newsletter list.

You can use it to keep people coming back AND it’s an important asset for agencies and PRs to consider.

Use Mailchimp, it’s easy and it’s free (to a point).

Install SEO Yoast

If you’re on Wordpress, add this easy to use plugin/

It helps with making sure you’ve got best practice stuff sorted.

Add ALT tags to all of your images

And yes… It’s a ball ache…

Go through all your old posts…

And make sure there are keywords in:

- Content (try to naturally fit these in 3 times)- H1 tags – really important- H2 (or subheading tags)

SEO Yoast will help with this!

Change your standard URL structure

But be careful… for those of you with a good level of existing search traffic… this can be tricky and needs you to think about some other things (301 redirects)…

But, it’s worth it…

This: http://www.spamellab.com/2017/01/coconut-oat-caramel-slice/Could be this: http://www.spamellab.com/recipes/coconut-oat-caramel-slice/

Go to Wordpress > Settings > Permalinks

Add analytics and Webmaster tools

It’s important. Get Analytics added to your site (it’s free). It will give you insight and will help you rank.

Add Your site to Google Webmaster Tools – bit fiddly, but well worth it. Then add your site map.

Add Disqus comments to your site

Allows people to comment using their social profiles – and it has some other nifty tools you can use.

Make it easy to share…

Add in Sharaholic… or something similar…

Add in a CTA!

You’ve got people reading your blog… Now get them to do something…

Add the Mailchimp plugin…

It’s free(ish). Has loads of great plugins with Wordpress. Very easy to use…