I have loved content marketing since I was distributing my BBS list in 1993. I had no idea that I was marketing content, but, it was indeed content that people were dying to see each month. This was pre-Internet Explorer and pre-Google. Back then people visited your online presence because they wanted to see the information you had to offer. Imagine that?
In October of 2014 I had a very epic month. I rarely use the word epic, but it was epic. I had new clients coming on board and old clients asking for more. As time goes on the content we produce for clients gets better and better. A couple of my content writers and I can now just sit down at a keyboard and start banging out great, unique content for a wide variety of niches.
Epic Content and SEO go Hand in Hand
You could be an educated SEO guru, yet stink at creating content. Technical SEO will only get you so far. Knowing SEO and being able to create epic content is a combo you either have or you don’t. You could be an ex-con that drinks beer all day long or an English professor; there is no right or wrong. While I am neither of these things I have had some great content leaving here lately. This is content that people want to share. When people share your content, you earn natural links, your message gets heard, and most importantly, your website performs.
Here is a screenshot of a client’s site that is experiencing some epic success. On October 22, 2014 this client had 1,939 hits to their website. This particular client is getting natural links daily. Boom.
Hits do not necessarily matter
One of our most successful clients gets an average of 30 hits per day. It is a mildly competitive niche and with us creating his content his competition stands absolutely no chance at all. The market needs competition and their competitor is not going out of business or anything but let’s just say that our client is definitely getting their slice of the pie. They get no natural links from their content but they do indeed rank for every long tail search term you could possibly imagine. This is because we are in the process of covering absolutely everything about their product anyone could ever want to know.
Epic Content of October 2014
One of my personal clients had a Halloween post go mini-viral earning him several shares on social media and shares from businesses geographically located near him. It was spooky how well that worked out.
A law firm that we work with started coverage of certain vehicle defects that nobody else has yet getting them calls from all over their state. While they probably won’t leave their city to try these cases, they will definitely refer them out at 4-6k a pop.
A real estate agent that we work with covers so much hyper local news in their area the local newspaper is doing an interview with them this week.
One website I work with deals with cute animals. A local elementary school contacted us to inform us that the blog posts will be covered daily throughout all of December since the content is so informative and current.
On another client’s site we interviewed a neighboring business. They were so happy with the interview, they shared it on their blog and with their 500+ Facebook followers. This utilized what some marketers call “other people’s audiences”.
My friend Jesse Wojdylo had a Google Inbox invitation post get over 1,000 comments. Maybe we can get him to comment below on this epic feat.
This is the power of ranking in search.
I could go on all day long; this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Social media is wonderful and all, but this is the power of having websites that perform well in search: Along with epic content, comes epic search rankings. Nothing compares to showing up in search when people are looking for your product or service. Having owned multiple businesses I understand that when the phone is ringing the cash register is jingling and you and your employees are making ends meet.
If you would like us to help you create content that people and search engines are trying desperately to find, hit us up.
- What Happened to ChicagoNow.com? - August 30, 2022
- The December 2021 Google Local Pack Algorithm Update - December 17, 2021
- Google Slows New Content from Entering Search Results in October 2020 - October 19, 2020
Pinging Jesse… What was your traffic like for your post Where Can I Get a Google Inbox (Gmail) Invite?, and do you have any idea what the ratio was of people who visited the page to people who commented? Do you feel it takes incentives like this to get people to comment?
For years I have tried to come up with a website that is comments driven. I have always said, you can get content on a page in two ways; content you create or content that is by users but moderated. The only way I feel comfortable with user generated content is blog comments because other sites bring in the garbage. Quickly.
As soon as I saw all kinds of people asking for Google invites on Google+ I knew this was a great opportunity. I quickly wrote my blog post and posted to Google Plus. Within 24 hours it was indexed and on the front page of Google search for “Inbox Invites”. Prior to being on the front page of search, the blog post had received over 50 comments just from Google+ users.
It is important to note that sifting through comments is not easy. Heck, it is a full time job for some of the larger websites on the Internet. That said, it is well worth it because it is content that you do not have to create. This blog comment alone will make this particular blog post better.
Remember that each person writes in their own way; they have their own brain. Users that are willing to comment are going to use a vocabulary that you are not. This can only help you with search traffic as you will start to show up for terms you never even thought about. Some of my best search articles ever were because I stumbled into keyword phrases I would have never guessed brought in traffic.
All that said, get out there and create amazing content. Hopefully that content will bring in blog comments and you will dominate your niche in Google search.