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Monthly SEO Monitoring Handbook

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:11:25 +0000

SEO MONITORING HANDBOOK

Everything You Need To Work On Your Rankings Every Month.

Continuous optimization and monthly monitoring are key to maintaining top search engine rankings. 📈

Curious about what we do each month to enhance SEO performance? Dive into our ultimate guide for actionable insights and expert tips! 🔍✨

Contents

Part 1 The tools

SEO tools are essential because they help you understand what’s happening on your website and how search engines and users perceive it. Think of SEO like navigating a ship; without instruments like compasses or maps, you’d be sailing blind. SEO tools provide the maps and instruments—you get data that tells you where you are, where you need to go, and what obstacles you might face. So, don’t start sailing without the tools; you will end up on an iceberg.

Input tools

Input tools are like your sensors and radar on the ship. They gather all the raw data you need about your website’s performance from various sources.

Google Search Console (GSC)

Think of Google Search Console as your direct hotline to Google—it tells you exactly how Google views your website. It’s free to use and essential for any SEO effort because it provides insights directly from the source. Here’s what you can do with it:

Performance Report: This is like a health checkup for your site on Google. It shows you how often your site appears in Google search results, which queries show your site, how often searchers click through to your site, and your average position in search results. This helps in understanding what’s working and what’s not.
Coverage: Here, Google points out any pages that have problems like broken links or pages that Google can’t read properly, which can prevent them from appearing in search results.
Enhancements: This part of GSC helps you improve user experience on your site, covering aspects like mobile usability and how quickly your pages load.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

GA4 is the latest upgrade of Google Analytics. It’s like a spyglass into how visitors interact with your site, tracking where they come from, what pages they visit, how long they stay, and what actions they take. It’s great because it:

Tracks User Engagement: You can see not just how many people visit, but how they interact with your content—like if they watch a video, download a brochure, or sign up for a newsletter.
Event Tracking: Instead of just seeing page views, GA4 lets you track specific actions people take on your site, which is crucial for understanding what catches their interest. Are you familiar with events?
Cross-Platform Tracking: If you run both a website and a mobile app, GA4 combines the data so you can see the full picture of how users interact with your brand across platforms.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs (or any other SEO tool with API access) is like your SEO Swiss Army knife. It’s not free, to the oposite, it’s a bit expensive, but it’s incredibly powerful for digging deep into the nuts and bolts of SEO. Here’s why you might use Ahrefs:

Site Audit: This is basically an SEO checkup that scans your website for issues that could be hurting your search engine rankings, like slow-loading pages or duplicate content.
Keyword Explorer: This tool helps you find words and phrases that people are searching for so you can tailor your content to what’s hot.
Backlink Analysis: Backlinks are when other websites link to yours, which is a big thumbs up in Google’s eyes. Ahrefs shows you who’s linking to you and the quality of these links.

Visualization / Reporting Tools

Once you have all this data, visualization tools come into play. They’re like the display on your ship’s dashboard, making it easy to see and understand all the information your sensors are collecting.

Looker

Looker is a tool that makes data pretty and understandable. It takes all the complex SEO data and turns it into easy-to-read charts and graphs, so you can quickly see what’s working and what’s not. Here’s what makes Looker special:

Custom Dashboards: You can build your own dashboards that highlight the SEO metrics you care about most, so you don’t get lost in numbers that don’t matter.
Data Exploration: Looker allows you to dig deeper into your data without needing a degree in data science. It’s user-friendly and lets you answer specific questions about your SEO efforts.
Integration: Looker plays well with other data sources, so you can pull in information from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and even Ahrefs to get a comprehensive view of your SEO landscape.

Part 2 Prerequisites / Foundation

Before diving into the intricate world of SEO, having the right foundations in place is essential. Think of these prerequisites as the building blocks of your SEO strategy, ensuring you have the necessary access and setup to make informed decisions and drive results.

These prerequisites are not just helpful—they are crucial for a successful SEO strategy. They ensure you have the right data and tools at your disposal, allowing you to monitor, analyze, and optimize your SEO efforts effectively. Let’s dive into each prerequisite and understand their importance in setting up a solid SEO foundation.

Access to Google Search Console (GSC)

Google Search Console is an indispensable tool for any SEO strategy, offering direct insights from Google regarding your website’s visibility in search results.

Access to Looker’s Reports and Data Sources

For a comprehensive analysis of SEO data, access to Looker’s capabilities is essential. Looker facilitates advanced data visualization and analysis by integrating with various data sources, including Google Search Console and other SEO tools.

Keywords Tracked in Ahrefs

Maintaining a dynamically updated list of keywords in Ahrefs is critical for monitoring your SEO health. This practice helps you track your website’s rankings for specific keywords, assess the effectiveness of your SEO efforts, and identify opportunities for improvement.

Competitors Tracked in Ahrefs

Competitor analysis is a cornerstone of strategic SEO planning. Ahrefs provides robust tools for tracking and analyzing competitor performance, which is essential for benchmarking your own site’s performance against industry standards.Go to your Project > Setting > Add up to 10 competitors

Part 3 Your Monthly Tasks

SEO is an ongoing process requiring consistent attention and adjustments.

It deserves a retainer…

It’s not enough to set it up once and forget it. To keep your site performing well in search results, you must regularly monitor and optimize your site.

How much you would pay for this?

It could be from $1.000-$4.500 per month. It’s mainly related to:

Number of keywords you monitor
Size of your website in terms of pages.
Countries you support on your SEO
Languages you have on your website

Source: Google Search Console (GSC)
Visualization: Looker

Let’s start by analyzing the branded keywords for your SEO strategy, focusing on what they are and why they matter for your business.

What Are Branded Keywords?

Branded keywords include any search terms that contain the company’s name, product names, or the names of key personnel or stakeholders associated with your business. These can range from simple names like “Ergo” to more complex phrases that might include products or services, such as “Ergo digital blog” or “Ergo coaching.”

Importance of Branded Keywords

1. Brand Visibility and Recognition

Increased Visibility: Branded keywords are crucial for maintaining visibility in search results directly related to your brand. They help ensure that when someone searches for your company, they find you, not a competitor or unrelated content.
Brand Control: By optimizing for branded keywords, you have better control over what people see when they search for your brand, allowing you to shape public perception effectively.

2. Customer Intent

High Conversion Rates: Searches using branded keywords typically indicate higher intent. Users searching for your brand are more likely to engage with your content, products, or services, leading to higher conversion rates than non-branded searches.
Customer Retention: People searching for your brand are likely previous customers or are already familiar with it. Capturing their searches helps with customer retention and loyalty.

3. Competitive Edge

Outranking Competitors: Your brand must appear first when someone searches for your branded terms. If competitors bid on your branded keywords in their ad campaigns, you need strong SEO to ensure your listings come out on top organically.

Analyzing Branded Keywords

Analyzing your branded keyword traffic and performance allows us to strategically enhance your brand’s online presence and ensure that your visibility in search engines translates into tangible business benefits.

Review the Queries: We should start by reviewing the top queries that have brought users to your site. This involves looking at the volume and context of these queries to understand what aspects of your brand attract the most attention. Are they correct? Are they resonating with something that happened? In the above diagram, you can see a peak for a specific keyword: The founder’s name, an actress who happened to present a new TV series at that time.

Client Consultation: We should discuss these queries with you, the client, to determine if they align with your current brand messaging and goals. If discrepancies or opportunities exist to enhance visibility for certain aspects of your brand, we can identify and implement necessary changes.

Activity Planning: Based on this analysis, we can plan specific activities to boost your brand’s reputation. These might include content creation around less visible branded terms, SEO optimization for critical products or services, or even targeted advertising campaigns to protect brand space in search results if you see that nobody is searching organically for you or get on the competition when they search your name (meaning that you loose clicks intended for you).

Source: Google Search Console
Visualization: Looker

Now, let’s analyze the non-branded keywords, which are queries that don’t directly relate to your company’s name or specific proprietary terms but are still bringing traffic to your site. Understanding these can help diversify your SEO strategy and tap into new audience segments.

Importance of Non-Branded Keywords

Audience Expansion: Non-branded keywords allow you to reach potential customers who may not be aware of your brand but are interested in related topics or services. This can significantly expand your audience base.
Market Insights: These keywords can provide insights into market trends and customer interests, helping you tailor your content and offerings to meet the needs of a broader audience.
Reduced Dependency on Brand Recognition: Relying solely on branded terms can limit your traffic sources. Non-branded keywords help mitigate this risk by diversifying your traffic and reducing your vulnerability to changes in brand perception.

Analyzing non-Branded Keywords

Let’s review some of the top non-branded keywords from the dataset above:

“body language expert explains how to show…”: This query has generated a fair number of impressions and clicks, suggesting an interest in body language expertise. Consider creating more content that positions your brand as a thought leader in this area.
“joe navarro confidence”: Although the impressions are low, the specificity of the query indicates a targeted interest. Content that ties similar topics to your brand could capture this engaged audience.
“3 pillars of trust”: This keyword has both high impressions and a good click-through rate, indicating strong interest. It’s a great opportunity to develop content around trust-building, perhaps linking back to your services or products.
“knowledge vs competence”: Despite low clicks, there’s search activity around this topic. It could be beneficial to explore content that differentiates these concepts, positioning your offerings as both knowledgeable and competent.

Strategy for Non-Branded Keywords

There is not a “generic” strategy to propose. BUT, there are some tips to use: If you see that you appeared (impressions) but people didn’t click, try to support your article with more content to rank higher and change your metadata description and the feature image. Just think: What would make people click your link on SERPs?

Here is what to do with the non-branded keywords:

Content Development: Develop articles, blog posts, and white papers that address these topics. This content should be informative and subtly incorporate how your services or products relate to these queries.
SEO Optimization: Optimize this content for these non-branded keywords. This includes using the keywords in titles, headers, meta descriptions, and throughout the content to improve search engine rankings.
Marketing and Promotion: Promote this content through social media, newsletters, and other channels to drive traffic and improve visibility in search result
Monitoring and Adjustment: Continuously monitor the performance of these keywords in terms of traffic and engagement. Adjust your strategy based on what works best for engaging the audience and converting leads.

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It includes:

Source: GA4
Visualization: Looker

The category of “Unassigned” traffic in your analytics refers to traffic for which the source cannot be determined or categorized by GA4. This can occur for various reasons, such as missing tracking codes, redirects stripping away referral data, or privacy settings in browsers that block analytics trackers. If the percentage of unassigned is high, then you need to focus on solving that issue first before moving to optimizations, let alone jumping to conclusions.

Something to remember:

Unassigned traffic, sometimes referred to as “unknown” or “direct/none” in GA4, encompasses all visits to your site where the source of the visitor cannot be traced. This might include users who directly type your website’s URL into their browser, use bookmarks, click on links in mobile apps, or when the referral data is blocked or not passed along due to security settings. That written, a small percentage of 2-3% is always expected.

Importance of Unassigned Traffic

Data Accuracy: A high level of unassigned traffic can indicate issues with tracking setup, which might lead to underreporting in other channels. Ensuring accurate data collection is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Security and Privacy Implications: Increasing privacy-focused browsing habits and regulations (like GDPR) can lead to more unassigned traffic. Monitoring these trends is essential for predicting changes in traffic sources over time.
Marketing Optimization: Knowing where your traffic comes from helps tailor your marketing strategies. If a significant portion of your traffic is unassigned, you might miss out on insights that could optimize your outreach efforts.

As per our example, in terms of numbers, the unassigned traffic is quite low relative to other sources. Here’s a quick breakdown based on the visual data:

If we estimate total user engagements from organic search at around 350, and the total engagements including all sources at approximately 400, then the unassigned segment (barely visible on the bar) likely represents a very small fraction, perhaps around 5-10 users. This suggests a low percentage of traffic is unassigned.

Considering the estimated total engagements are 400, and unassigned engagements are around 10, the percentage of unassigned traffic would be calculated as:

This relatively low percentage of unassigned traffic is generally positive, indicating that most traffic sources are well accounted for and tracking mechanisms are effectively in place. However, it remains important to strive for even greater accuracy in tracking to ensure you are fully aware of all traffic sources, aiding in more informed marketing decisions and strategy adjustments.

Source: GA4
Visualization: Looker

Understanding traffic abnormalities is crucial for diagnosing issues and capitalizing on opportunities within your SEO and broader digital marketing strategies. Let’s dive into the four key focus areas you mentioned, explaining why each is important and how they can help identify and address anomalies in your traffic.

1. Comparison with the Same Period Last Year

Comparing current data with the same period in the previous year is essential for several reasons:

Seasonal Trends: This comparison helps in identifying seasonal behaviors and trends, which can influence various business metrics, including website traffic, conversion rates, and customer engagement patterns.
Growth Tracking: It provides a clear perspective on year-over-year growth or decline, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies and operational changes.
Anomaly Detection: Significant deviations from the expected seasonal patterns might indicate underlying issues or opportunities, prompting a deeper investigation.

2. Monitoring Bounce Rate

The bounce rate, which measures the percentage of visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page, is a critical metric for assessing user engagement and content relevance:

Channel-Specific Norms: Different channels can naturally have different bounce rates. For instance, a high bounce rate from a paid channel might be more acceptable if it involves landing pages designed for specific campaigns with single conversion goals.
Content Relevance: A high bounce rate in organic search usually suggests that the page content may not be relevant or engaging enough for the visitors coming through these channels. This could be tied to the quality of non-branded keywords drawing traffic, indicating a mismatch between user expectations and content.

3. Checking Average Engagement Time

Average engagement time on the site gives insights into how effectively the content holds the audience’s attention:

User Interest and Content Value: Longer engagement times generally indicate that the content is valuable and interesting to visitors, which can positively impact conversions and SEO rankings.
Identifying Content Weaknesses: Conversely, shorter engagement times might highlight areas where content does not meet user needs or expectations, suggesting areas for improvement.

4. Analysis by Channel

Analyzing each traffic channel individually is vital:

Optimizing Strategies: Different channels (organic search, direct, paid, referral, social) may perform differently based on the strategies employed. Analyzing them separately helps tailor channel-specific strategies.
Resource Allocation allows you to allocate marketing budgets and efforts based on which channels perform best and offer the highest ROI.
Customizing User Experience: Understanding channel-specific behaviors helps in customizing the user experience and marketing messages to better suit the audience coming from each channel.

Example Scenario: High Bounce Rate Analysis

For instance, if you notice a high bounce rate from your organic search traffic, this could be unusual and indicative of issues such as:

Non-Branded Keywords: Perhaps the non-branded keywords are too broad or not aligned well with the content on the landing page. Visitors might be expecting different information than what is presented.
Page Quality: The quality or relevance of the page content to the audience needs may be lacking, suggesting a need for content optimization.
Conversely, a high bounce rate from paid channels might not be as alarming if those campaigns are focused on specific actions like sign-ups, where visitors leave after completing the desired action.
By monitoring these aspects, you can better understand the health of your digital marketing efforts, optimize strategies across different channels, and ensure that your site meets the needs of its visitors, ultimately leading to improved performance and satisfaction.

To do all of the above, all you need is to focus and try to get conclusions from a diagram like the one below:

Source: Ahref
Visualization: Looker

Domain Rating (DR), often referred to as Domain Authority (DA) in some SEO tools, is a metric that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). It is calculated based on multiple factors, primarily revolving around the link profile of a website—how many backlinks the website has and the quality of those backlinks.

Why is Domain Rating Important?

SERP Positioning: A higher DR indicates that a website is likely to rank higher in SERPs, which can lead to increased organic traffic.
Trust and Credibility: Websites with a high DR are often viewed as more trustworthy and authoritative in their respective fields.
Competitive Edge: Understanding your DR in relation to your competitors can help you identify where you stand in the competitive landscape and what you need to do to improve your positioning.

How to Increase Domain Rating

Increasing your DR is primarily about enhancing the quality and quantity of your backlinks:

Quality Content: Create high-quality, engaging content that provides value to your readers. This type of content naturally attracts backlinks because other sites want to direct their users to helpful resources.
Guest Blogging: Write articles for reputable websites in your industry. This not only positions you as an authority but also helps you gain backlinks from these established domains.
Broken Link Building: This involves finding broken links on other websites and suggesting that they replace these links with links to relevant content on your site.
Regular Backlink Audits: Conduct regular audits to ensure your backlinks are from reputable sources and disavow any links from low-quality or spammy sites.

What’s a “Correct” Domain Rating?

Determining the “correct” DR for your website involves two elements:

Competition’s DR: Analyze the DR of your direct competitors. Your target DR should be competitive within your specific industry or niche. If your competitors have DRs around 50, you might aim to meet or exceed that benchmark.
General Benchmark: Generally, a DR above 60 is considered vital. Websites with a DR over 60 are often seen as authoritative sources and securing backlinks from them can significantly boost your own site’s DR.

Source: Ahref
Visualization: Looker

Let’s break down what referring domains are, their significance, and key factors to consider when evaluating them.

What Are Referring Domains?

Referring domains refer to the websites that link back to your site. Each domain counts as a single referring domain regardless of how many times it links to you. These are distinct from backlinks, which are the individual links from those domains to your website.

Why Are Referring Domains Important?

SEO Impact: Referring domains are a significant factor in SEO because search engines view backlinks as votes of confidence. The more reputable sites link to yours, the more trustworthy your site appears, which can significantly boost your search engine rankings.
Diversity and Authority: A diverse profile of referring domains suggests that a wide variety of sources recognize the value of your content, enhancing your site’s authority and credibility.
Traffic Sources: Referring domains can boost SEO and drive direct traffic to your site, expanding your audience and potential customer base.

Key Factors to Check Regarding Referring Domains

When analyzing your referring domains, there are two critical aspects to consider:

Domain Authority (DA): DA predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. A referring domain with a high DA generally benefits your SEO more than a low DA.
Traffic Paths: Importance: Understanding where the traffic is being directed on your site can help optimize those pages to capture better and convert the traffic. It also shows the relevance of the linking page to your content.

Engagement with Referring Domains

In the context of managing relationships with your referring domains, consider these steps:

Acknowledgment: For domains that are clients, partners, or otherwise have a relationship with your business, it’s good practice to thank them for their links. This can strengthen your relationship and encourage further collaboration.
Outreach: If there are high-authority domains that mention your brand but don’t link to your site, it’s worthwhile to reach out and ask if they can convert the mention into a link. Similarly, if there are existing relationships with businesses or influencers that haven’t linked to you yet, reaching out to request a backlink can be beneficial.
Monitor and Respond: Keep an eye on new referring domains and reach out to acknowledge them or discuss how you can work together for mutual benefit. This proactive engagement can lead to more robust and beneficial relationships.

Source: ahrefs
Visualization: Looker

Although we analysed backlinks before, let us also set the definition here: A backlink is a link from one website to another. Search engines like Google use backlinks as a ranking signal because when one website links to another, it implies that the content is noteworthy. High-quality backlinks can boost a site’s DR and improve its visibility and authority in search engine results.

Types of Backlinks: Dofollow vs. Nofollow

Dofollow Backlinks: These are the links that allow search engines to follow them and pass on link equity (ranking power). Dofollow links are crucial because they directly impact your SEO by contributing to your site’s authority.
Nofollow Backlinks: These links include a nofollow tag that tells search engines to ignore them in terms of passing on link equity. While they don’t contribute directly to your SEO ranking, they can still bring traffic to your site and aid in brand exposure.

Backlinks carry both SEO value (also known as SEO Juice) but also Traffic to your website. Therefore, it’s important to get backlinks even if they come with nofollow attribute.

Understanding and managing lost backlinks is a vital aspect of maintaining a healthy SEO profile. Let’s dive into what these are, the different types, and the necessary actions to address them effectively.

Why do we keep losing backlinks?

These can disappear for various reasons, such as website restructuring, page deletions, or changes in linking policies.

Actions to Address Lost Backlinks

Understand Why the Backlink Was Lost: Investigate the cause of the loss. This might involve checking if the page that linked to you still exists, if the content has changed, or if the site’s linking policy has been updated.
Communicate to Regain the Backlink: If the link loss was accidental or due to changes on the linker’s side, reach out to the website owner or webmaster. Politely ask if they can reinstate the link, especially if it was bringing mutual benefit. You can also, offer to provide updated content or a new reason why linking back to your site would be valuable for them, aligning it with their current content strategy or website structure.

Caution with SEO Tools Reporting Lost Backlinks

Many SEO tools report lost backlinks, but these reports can sometimes include false positives or errors. It’s important to take a detailed approach:

Focus on Important Backlinks: Prioritize checking backlinks from authoritative and relevant sites rather than every lost link. Links from major industry websites, news portals, or educational sites are more valuable and worth the effort to regain.
Verify Each Report: Manually check each reported lost link to confirm it’s actually gone. Tools can sometimes misreport links as lost due to temporary website downtimes or changes in page structure which don’t actually affect the link.

This meticulous approach ensures that you are only spending resources on backlinks that genuinely impact your site’s SEO and are correctly reported. Recovering these links can significantly help in maintaining your site’s authority and search ranking.

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It includes:

Source: Ahrefs

Visualization: Looker

Checking changes in ranking positions is essential to understanding the efficacy of your SEO efforts and adjusting your strategy accordingly. Let’s explore how to effectively monitor these changes, analyze the reasons behind shifts, and report new rankings.

Set Baselines: Establish baseline rankings for your keywords to detect any significant changes better. This helps in identifying both positive shifts and concerning drops.

Identify the Changes: When a previously first-page ranking keyword drops to the second page or lower, it’s critical to identify this change and analyze potential causes quickly.Here are some reasons for Ranking Drops:

On-page Issues: Check for changes on your website that could affect rankings, such as altered content, lost backlinks, or technical issues like increased page load times.
Competitor Actions: Sometimes, a drop is due to competitors strengthening their SEO strategies. Analyze competitor movements and improvements in content, backlinks, or site structure.
Algorithm Updates: Search engine algorithms constantly evolve. A drop in rankings might coincide with algorithm updates, which typically prioritize different factors or penalize others.

Reporting New Rankings

Highlight Achievements: When your pages achieve new first-page rankings, especially for competitive keywords, it’s important to report these successes.
Impact Analysis:
- Traffic Increase: Demonstrate how new rankings have led to increased traffic, using analytics to show improvements.
- Conversion Improvements: Correlate new rankings with any uptick in conversions or other key performance indicators relevant to your business.

Source: Ahrefs
Visualization: Looker

Focusing on keywords currently ranking in positions 11-20 is strategic, as these are just on the cusp of breaking into the first page of search results. Moving these keywords into top positions can significantly increase visibility and traffic. Let’s outline the activities that can help elevate these rankings.

1. Optimize On-Page Elements

Key Actions:

Keyword Placement: Ensure that the target keywords are optimally placed in titles, headers (especially H1 and H2 tags), the first paragraph, and throughout the content where relevant.
Meta Descriptions and Title Tags: Optimize meta descriptions and title tags to include the target keywords. These elements should be compelling enough to improve click-through rates from search engine results pages (SERPs).
Content Quality: Enhance the quality of the content to provide real value to readers. This includes expanding existing content, improving readability, and ensuring it fully addresses user intent.

2. Improve User Experience (UX)

Key Actions:

Site Speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify and fix issues slowing down your site. Speed is a crucial factor in user experience and SEO.
Mobile Optimization: Ensure the website is fully optimized for mobile users, considering that a significant portion of web traffic is mobile.
Navigation and Internal Linking: Improve site structure and internal linking to ensure users and search engines can easily find and relate pages, enhancing the overall site authority and relevance of individual pages.

3. Increase Content Depth and Relevance

Key Actions:

Content Updates: Update existing content to increase depth, incorporate recent information, and cover related subtopics that can satisfy a broader range of user queries.
LSI Keywords: Include Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords that support the main keywords. Thematically related terms help search engines better understand the content context.
Answer User Queries: Integrate content that answers direct questions related to the keywords, which can also help in appearing in featured snippets.

4. Enhance Backlink Profile

Key Actions:

High-Quality Backlinks: Focus on gaining high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites within your industry. Use guest posting, influencer collaborations, and the creation of shareable content like infographics.
Analyze Competitor Links: Look at who is linking to your competitors who are already ranking in the top 10 for your target keywords. Target similar sources for your backlinks.
Disavow Low-Quality Links: Regularly audit your link profile to remove any low-quality or spammy links that could be affecting your rankings.

5. Leverage Social Signals

Key Actions:

Social Media Engagement: Increase engagement on social media by sharing content that includes target keywords, encouraging shares, comments, and interaction.
Content Promotion: Promote content through email marketing and other channels to increase visibility and direct traffic, indirectly boosting SEO performance.

Source: GA4
Visualization: Looker

Focusing exclusively on traffic from the organic search channel provides crucial insights into the performance of your SEO strategies. Analyzing this data is important to ensure consistency with other SEO reports and metrics, such as rankings and keyword performance. Let’s explore how to monitor and analyze organic traffic effectively.

Analyzing Organic Traffic

1. Track Organic Traffic Over Time

Tools and Metrics: Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor the volume of visitors coming from organic search. Pay attention to trends over weeks, months, or year-over-year comparisons to understand growth or decline.
Comparative Analysis: Compare these trends with changes in SEO efforts, such as new content or optimization strategies.

2. Evaluate Consistency with Other SEO Reports

Keyword Rankings: If your reports show improved rankings for key terms or an increase in the number of ranked keywords, organic traffic should logically follow an upward trend. Higher rankings typically translate to more visibility and increased traffic.
Backlink Quality: An increase in high-quality backlinks should support higher rankings and thus boost organic traffic. Ensure these elements are aligned in your reports.

3. Identify New Keywords

New Traffic Sources: Use SEO tools to identify new keywords that are driving traffic to your site. An increase in organic traffic could be due to ranking for new, valuable search terms.
Content Relevance: Ensure the content associated with new keywords is highly relevant and meets the search intent of your target audience.

4. Consistency Checks

Rankings vs. Traffic: If your rankings are stable or improving but organic traffic is declining, investigate potential issues like changes in search engine algorithms, increased competition, or technical SEO problems on your site.
Keyword Loss vs. Traffic Increase: Conversely, if you are losing keywords but see an increase in organic traffic, delve deeper to understand the source of this traffic. It could be due to a few high-value keywords driving more traffic, despite a drop in the total number of ranked keywords.

5. Seasonal Variations and Market Changes

Seasonality: Account for seasonal variations that might affect search behavior and organic traffic. For example, retail sites may see spikes during holiday seasons.
External Factors: Consider external market factors or gl

Source: GSC
Visualization: N/A

Monitoring and resolving issues with non-indexed pages is crucial for ensuring that your website’s content is discoverable by search engines, which directly affects your site’s visibility and SEO performance. As shown in your screenshot, let’s break down the common reasons for non-indexation and discuss strategies for addressing these issues.

Common Reasons for Non-Indexed Pages

Excluded by ‘noindex’ Tag
- Description: Pages are explicitly instructed not to be indexed by search engines through a ‘noindex’ meta tag.
- Action: Review these pages to determine if the tag is applied correctly. If these pages should be indexed, remove the ‘noindex’ tag. Check the page first. Not all pages are to be indexed. /feed for example.
Page with Redirect
- Description: These pages redirect to another page, which can prevent them from being indexed.
- Action: Ensure that redirects are used appropriately. Permanent redirects (301) should be used for content that has permanently moved, and temporary redirects (302) should be used sparingly.
Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag
- Description: These pages are not indexed because they have a canonical tag pointing to another page, suggesting that they are duplicates or closely similar.
- Action: Verify that the canonical tags are correctly pointing to the preferred version of the page. If incorrect, update the tags to reflect the primary page that should be indexed.
Not Found (404)
- Description: These pages are inaccessible because they result in a 404 error, indicating that the page does not exist.
- Action: Identify and fix broken links leading to 404 pages. If these pages were removed intentionally, consider implementing redirects to relevant pages to preserve user experience and link equity.
Crawled – Currently Not Indexed
- Description: These pages have been crawled by search engines but not indexed.
- Action: Investigate why these pages were not indexed. Common issues might include low content quality or value, poor site architecture, or technical issues that make the content hard to parse.
Discovered – Currently Not Indexed
- Description: Search engines are aware of these pages but have not yet crawled them.
- Action: Ensure that your site’s crawl budget is not being wasted and that important pages are prioritized for crawling. Improve internal linking and sitemap accuracy to facilitate faster crawling.

Source: Google Search Console (GSC)
Visualization: N/A

Focusing on-page experience and Core Web Vitals is essential, as these factors significantly influence user satisfaction and search engine rankings. Google has explicitly stated that page experience signals are integral to its ranking algorithm. Here’s an overview of these terms and why they’re essential. Make sure Core Web Vitals are green and passed

Page Experience

Definition: Page experience refers to a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value. It includes Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, security (HTTPS), and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

Components:

Core Web Vitals: Real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads.
Mobile Usability: Ensures the page is usable on mobile devices.
HTTPS: Indicates the security of the connections through which users access the content.
No Intrusive Interstitials: Ensures content is easily accessible to the user.

You keep creating valuable content. Well, believe it or not, these content pieces work for you. So, every month, you must add new keywords for which you may rank. You should ask the system to exclude those keywords you already ranked for. With this function, you will be able to see all the keywords that, surprisingly, you didn’t select to monitor but that your valuable content made those keywords rank.

You need to do two things here:

You need to check positions 1-10 separately to keep an eye on those positive surprises.
Then, you need to check positions 11-20 (meaning the 2nd page) and those relevant to your business to add them together and come up with some actions to take to push them further up.

n the dynamic digital marketing and SEO world, adapting to the evolving landscape of your business, industry, and broader market trends is crucial. As your business grows and changes, so must your SEO strategy, particularly in keyword optimization. Here’s why it’s essential to continually update and expand your keyword list based on trending terms and industry shifts:

Why Add New Keywords Regularly?

Business Evolution: As your business evolves, you may introduce new products or services or target new market segments. These changes can bring new keyword opportunities that better align with your current business model and offerings.
Changing Markets: Industries are not static; new trends, technologies, and consumer preferences emerge constantly. Once relevant keywords can become outdated, and entirely new terms can gain importance.
Search Behavior Changes: People’s search behavior can shift due to technological advancements (like voice search), cultural shifts, and changes in language use. Staying on top of these trends can give you an edge in reaching your audience effectively.
Competitive Advantage: Regularly updating your keyword list can help you stay ahead of competitors who may not be as quick to adapt to market or industry changes.

For those keywords, a small incremental keyword research will have to be performed for effective keyword research, including analyzing search intent and how to implement these keywords for maximum impact strategically. This will ensure your content is relevant and competitive within your niche, driving traffic and engagement.

But that’s a topic for another guide

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Theodore Moulos

Theodore has 20 years of experience running successful and profitable software products. In his free time, he coaches and consults startups. His career includes managerial posts for companies in the UK and abroad, and he has significant skills in intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship.

Theodore Moulos

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SEO Copywriting – The Definitive Guide

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 13:31:50 +0000

SEO Copywriting

The Definitive Guide

Writing content that our beloved Google understands is SEO Copywriting. Nonetheless, that content should also be written in a way that makes people want to read it, share it, and link to it. It’s a tough balance, right?

Relax, because today we’ll show you how to do just that.

Contents

Part 1

Before Writing

The first step of the SEO Copywriting process has little to do with, well… writing.

It’s all about setting priorities, setting goals for your content’s performance, and planning properly.

Trust us, you don’t want to skip this phase. Preparation accounts for a full 50% of your copy’s success.

By the time you finish this chapter, you’ll be ready to write content BOTH search engines and human users love.

So let’s dive in.

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Perform Keyword Research

SEO professionals constantly have their work cut out for them with Google occasionally rolling out new algorithm updates.

Thank God, at least one thing has remained pretty much the same: Keyword Research.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of determining and analyzing the words and phrases people use in search engines, such as Google and Bing. It includes not only finding the keywords you want to rank for, but also the ones you should rank for (what people who want what you offer actually search for).

When done properly, keyword research even uncovers the topics based on which you should be creating content.

An area closely related to keyword research is Competitive Analysis.

Through keyword research you can discover terms your competitors are ranking for that you are not, which may lead to essential insights not only for your SEO strategy but for your overall business too.

(PS. Please don’t drink a shot for every time we use the phrase “keyword research”… Shoot, we did it again.)

Why Is Keyword Research Important?

Did you know that 90.63% of published content gets no traffic from Google?

Do you want to increase the chances of your content being in the other 9.37%?

Then you better start conducting keyword research ASAP.

Keyword research is the one and only way to understand what people are typing into search engines. You need to know this so you don’t create content around topics that nobody cares about.

It also helps figure out the specific terms your target audience is using to solve their problem – as well as the context behind those terms.

So what are the key benefits of conducting keyword research?

Traffic Growth. The higher you rank in SERPs – the more traffic you attract to your website. That’s what happens once you determine the best-fitting keywords for the content you publish.
Insight Into Marketing Trends. According to our BFF, Inbound Marketing, we don’t create content around what we assume people are interested in; we create specific content around what we know people want to learn. In other words, our audience is in the driver’s seat.

Efficient keyword research can provide you with insights into present marketing trends, plus it allows you to build your content around relevant topics and keywords your audience is searching for.

Customer Acquisition. If you publish content that other professionals are looking for, you can meet their needs by creating a CTA that will lead them all the way from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.

By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and intent, you can discover the questions your audience wants answers to.

Remember: Keywords are your SEO campaign compass – they provide guidance on where to go and let you know whether or not you’re making progress.

Which Are The Most Important Keyword Metrics?

What exactly makes a keyword valuable?

As search engines become more complex, that question is getting harder and harder to answer.

Choosing keywords that pay off is the end goal, but to do that, you need to know which keyword metrics matter the most.

So let’s get into it.

Keyword Difficulty – Keyword difficulty is exactly what its name states: a metric used to determine how difficult it is to achieve ranking for a keyword.

Measuring keyword difficulty can help you establish whether or not it’s worth your time (and money) optimizing an organic page for that keyword, or bidding on that keyword in a Google Ads campaign.

Search Volume (Local & Global) – This metric demonstrates how many times a certain keyword is searched for within a defined time frame, in a specific location.

An important clarification to make is that SV reflects the number of total searches of a keyword rather than the number of unique searches. Yeah, don’t be fooled. If a keyword has a monthly SV of 100, those searches could have been performed by 100 different people, or it could have been 10 people that just searched 10 times each.

CPC (Cost-Per-Click) – CPC helps you determine the estimated cost advertisers pay for each ad click, and it’s yet another metric you should check before trying to rank for a keyword. You need to know what it’s worth to the competition to jump the queue in SERPs. Yes, even if you aren’t running ads at the given time.

A high CPC indicates that there’s a substantial number of advertisers working to beat the organic results. If the market is influenced by a lot of advertising, it won’t be easy getting your organic results to rank.

Intent – Keyword intent represents the user’s purpose for the search; it’s what the user is likely to do when searching for a particular phrase.

This metric also helps you satisfy searchers’ needs better by matching your content and landing pages to their intentions.

Golden rule: Unpacking keyword intent should be your first step when diagnosing conversion issues.

Useful Keyword Research Tools

Running the gamut from beginner-focused to highly advanced and ranging from basic (and unhelpful) to extremely valuable, it’s safe to say there’s no shortage of tools designed for keyword research.

When operated right, these tools can streamline your entire SEO workflow. They make it easier to find the correct keywords to target and provide the data you need to actually rank for them.

That is why it’s necessary to choose the right keyword planner tool.

To help, we have gathered our personal favorites (and trust us, we’ve used A LOT):

Target Long-tail Keywords

Read 50 articles, and you’ll find 50 different explanations of what long-tail keywords are. Some define them as phrases consisting of 5 or more words (seriously?)… Others say they convert better, yadda yadda yadda.

What are Long-tail Keywords?

Long-tail Keywords are detailed search queries. They often have considerably lower search volume compared to short, broad keywords, but also much lower competition. So if you arranged your keywords by their search volumes, these would be on the “long tail” end of the search demand curve.

Allow us to demonstrate with a very simple example:

Let’s say you own a bicycle shop and want to sell online. You could aim to rank for terms like “bikes” or “bikes for sale” and end up competing against giants like Amazon. Now, you can imagine how that would go.

What if instead, you intended to rank for a long-tail keyword with specific intent, like “best electric bikes under $800”?

When searching for this, smaller hobbyist sites with weaker backlink profiles show up, indicating that a first-page ranking is much more feasible even for a website with low Domain Authority. As The Beatles would say, with a little help from your friends, which in this instance are quality blog posts, you’d have a very realistic chance to crack Google’s front page for this particular term!

Why Target Long-tail Keywords?

91.8% of all search queries are long-tail keywords, according to Backlinko’s analysis of 306M keywords. That alone is explanation enough.

Just kidding, we’ll elaborate as always:

They have a more targeted search intent. Because of being so broad, head terms often make it difficult to figure out what a user is looking for. Sticking with the above example, if someone searches for “bikes”, how can you know what they’re really searching for? Are they shopping for a stationary bike, a motorcycle, an electric bike, or a mountain bike? Or maybe their intention isn’t to buy at all – they could be looking for someone to repair their bike or seeking out ways to meet other biking lovers. It’s tough to create a page that will satisfy every visitor when the intent is so general.

On the contrary, long-tail keywords include hints that help you limit what the person wants. If they search for “best stationery bikes under $800,” that provides 2 incredibly useful clues already:

They are interested in buying a stationary bike
Their budget is $800

What does targeted content achieve?

Targeted Content = More Conversions + Lower Bounce Rates + Higher Time On Page

This winning formula will make Google go: “Hmm, seems like this page is worthy of ranking”.

They represent a suitable buyer. At the beginning of the customer journey, users start out by searching for broad terms because they’re not sure what they’re looking for. It’s through this research that they start to decide on details and ask more specific questions to help settle on what to purchase.

Someone in the market for a new camera might start out by searching for “best DSLR cameras” (6,600 MSV). After reading some lists comparing the most popular options, let’s suppose that they decide on a frontrunner: the Nikon D850 (FYI, we’re no photography experts). Next step is to search for “Nikon D850 review” (590 MSV). This term may only get 590 searches a month, but at this point, the user has already assessed pricing, compared specs, and picked their favorite product.

Bottom line?

Long-tail keywords may lack volume, but they convert insanely well by attracting high-quality leads who are ready to buy.

Create Content For All Funnels: TOFU – MOFU – BOFU

No, TOFU – MOFU – BOFU is not a TikTok trend…yet. It’s not an insult either.

As marketers, we love our acronyms. TofU (Top of Funnel), MofU (Middle of Funnel), and BofU (Bottom of Funnel) are short for a process you’re familiar with: the customer journey.

TOFU (awareness)

Aka the awareness stage. Visitors may not be familiar with your brand or even know what they need. During this research phase, they want answers. That often looks a lot like: “I am facing x problem, and I want a solution.” During this phase, you should provide them with the educational/entertaining content they’re looking for, without adding anything remotely close to a sales pitch. Only introduce your brand as a valuable resource and present your products as a potential solution.

TOFU content examples: Social Media, Blog Posts, eBooks, Infographics.

MOFU (consideration)

At this consideration stage, visitors have accepted they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution, which means you have a narrower target audience. They’re evaluating your brand as one option but considering other solutions as well. MOFU searchers are generally more precise with their Google queries. They know of the solution you offer and are curious to learn more. What are the fors and againsts? Are there any other options they haven’t discovered yet?

In this phase, you’ll need to provide them with as much information as possible in order to decide. Don’t oversell, instead focus on how you are different from the competition and secure their trust in your brand’s expertise and quality. It’s all about encouraging them so that they can move into the decision phase of the customer journey fully prepared.

MOFU content examples: Guides/How-tos, Templates, Case Studies, Whitepapers, Webinars, Videos.

BOFU (decision)

This is your golden stage. Finally, your highly qualified leads are on their way to making a purchase. They are interested in your product, but since they’re probably still comparing, they need a little extra nudge to choose you: extra confidence, extra incentives, and urgency. This phase showcases how your product or service solves their problem and is superior to the competition.

“Shameless” selling is more suitable here, however, we suggest taking an advisory approach to support the lead in deciding. Instead of pushing them to purchase the product, suppose they’re already buying it and help them tailor the purchase to their personal needs. Offer incentives that will make them feel more confident to purchase, like strong warranties and world-class customer support.

BOFU content examples: Product Demos, Comparison Charts, Testimonials, Free Trials.

But Here’s The Catch…

If you are all TOFU // You’ll be educating your audience, but you’ll also be losing out on conversions.
If you are all MOFU // You’ll be restricting yourself to the people aware of the problem you’re solving.
If you are all BOFU// Your content will essentially be a digital brochure.

Search behavior changes as someone moves down the conversion funnel. Therefore, if you don’t optimize your content for each stage, you won’t attract visitors for the full funnel (hence, no money no honey).

Theo Moulos (CEO MarketMasters Consulting ) Tweet

Use The Skyscraper Technique

Have trouble drawing your target audience’s attention? Can’t seem to deliver on their expectations? Worry not, because Brian Dean from Backlinko has just the thing for you!

He is the brains behind the Skyscraper Technique, a link-building strategy, according to which you identify high-ranking material with lots of backlinks, locate its weaknesses, and benefit from them to create a far superior piece of content.

There are 3 core principles to this technique: You start by finding a piece of content in your niche that’s doing well. Then you add value to it in some way, whether that’s adding graphical treatment, adding new layers of information (hence the skyscraper reference, think of layers as floors), or writing a companion piece. Needless to say, give credit where credit’s due. To top it all off, reach out to everyone who shared the original and let them know about your spinoff.

Why does this technique work well?

You have a prepared audience. You will truly delight the already existing audience if you create something that’s one step ahead of the original piece. As long as the topic is still relevant, we suggest creating a target list of influencers, brands, and publications that either shared or linked to the initial post so you can contact them straight away.
There’s major potential to rank. Chances are high that Google has already indexed the initial resource. Given that you have created something more valuable than the existing piece, and if you succeed in getting those five-star quality backlinks, you’ll have the chance to “dethrone” that older piece of content and drive in more traffic.
Demand already exists. Since you’ve already determined that there is demand for this particular topic because of existing content, now it’s crucial to examine why that particular piece did so well. Maybe it provided the readers with entertainment or a solution to a problem? Ask yourself all sorts of questions.

Apply the Hedgehog Concept

An insightful lesson can be learned from Jim Collins’ classic “Good to Great” – and it’s called The Hedgehog Concept (thus the cute, slightly spooky small mammal below).

This concept derives from an old Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

It easily translates into the business world. Foxes are always changing direction, leaping from one idea to the other. On the contrary, hedgehogs pick a thing and work hard to become the very best at that one thing. According to Jim Collins, that is why hedgehog businesses have a clear market advantage.

So how can you become a “copyhog” and apply this concept to your SEO Copywriting process?

Identify what you enjoy writing about most.
Recognize and communicate the one important thing you do better than everyone else.
Determine what drives leads and generates sustained cash flow and profitability.

The sweet spot is where all 3 overlap (good luck finding it).

Is it optional?

Truth is, if you don’t follow the Hedgehog Concept, sooner or later you’ll just end up writing content nobody cares about.

Part 2

While Writing

In 2022, keywords are still important in SEO.

However:

SEO Copywriting today is far more complex than just adding your target keyphrase X number of times on a page.

In order to rank for keywords with high difficulty and competition, you need to use advanced SEO Copywriting techniques.

Today’s your lucky day, because that’s precisely what we’re going to discuss in this chapter.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

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Add Bucket Brigades To Boost Time On Page

Have you ever stumbled across a blog post and were absolutely glued to it from start to finish, but couldn’t understand why?

Quick Answer: It’s very possible that you were looking at a piece of content full of Bucket Brigades.

It’s also very possible that you have been using this copywriting tactic all along – and just didn’t know there was a term for it!

Bucket Brigades are words and phrases that essentially “hold” people on your page by keeping the flow and the conversational tone of your copy. They are an old-school copywriting tactic that was originally designed to attract people to sales letters.

Here are a few tried-and-true Bucket Brigade el clasicos:

Here’s the deal:
What’s the bottom line?
You might be wondering:
This is crazy:
It gets better/worse:
Want to know the best part?

But there’s more!
By making use of Bucket Brigades in your SEO Copywriting process, you increase your conversions and keep readers on your page for longer, which can be super helpful in decreasing your bounce rates.

Use LSI Keywords To Make Google Happy

Google used to only look at Keywords – stuffing a blog post with your Primary Keyword proved to be effective. Instead, today Google aims to find the overall topic of a piece of content. So, how does Google know whether your page is about:

Cars the vehicle
Cars the movie
The 1970s rock band (with awful hair)
The Canadian Aviation Regulations (CARs)

The answer? LSI Keywords.

LSI Keywords are a fancy way of saying: “synonyms and closely related words”. Τhese LSI Keywords help Google understand what your page is all about.

Don’t get it twisted though. LSI Keywords are NOT synonyms, they’re terms that are closely tied to your Target Keyword.

For example, take a word like: “jogging”. In this instance, “running” is just a synonym for “jogging”. There’s nothing wrong with using that synonym in your article (in fact, it can help with your on-page SEO). But it’s not an LSI Keyword. LSI Keywords for “jogging” are terms like: “shoes”, “cardio” and “5k”.

Now we come to the million-dollar question: “Where do you find LSI Keywords?” Honestly, finding LSI Keywords is easier than ever. Just search for the Keyword you want to rank for and scroll to the bottom. Google will “serve” you the related searches Keywords:

Bottom line?

Search engines use LSI Keywords in order to understand the subject matter of your page.

Speak Your Audience’s Language

Who are you writing for? Do you know your audience’s problems in their industry, the trends that might affect them, or the role they play in their companies? Are you aware of the language they use?

Knowing who you are speaking to is a fundamental part of any type of effective communication. Whether you’re crafting targeted emails, blogs, podcast scripts, or tweets, you need to understand who’s on the receiving end.

If you’re familiar with the niche, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll have to play detective in the communities where your target audience hangs out.

These could be communities like:

Facebook Groups
Reddit
Slack Communities
Quora
Forums

By making this a part of your SEO Copywriting strategy, you’ve already taken a huge step toward convincing them that whatever you’re going to ask them to do, is a pretty damn good idea.

Include Both Features And Benefits In Your Copywriting

If you’ve dipped your toes into copywriting before you’ve likely heard that you should: “Sell the benefits, not the features”. Great copy isn’t just about selling, it’s also about building a connection with your audience.

Think about your favorite shirt. It has a specific number of threads keeping everything together, a certain size and a particular gold metal for the buttons.

Those are its features.

But when asked why you adore it, you’re unlikely to respond, “I just love the 30-inch waist, the material of the metal buttons and the cotton thread sewn into the seams”.

Instead, you’d probably say: “It’s so comfortable, it fits really well and I love that it looks good with both plain jeans and suits”.

What’s the Difference Between Benefits And Features?

Features are characteristics of your product that often are explanatory and technical.

Benefits describe how those said features can make your customers’ lives easier.

The quick and dirty answer?

Features are the what, and benefits are the why.

Both are key in providing customers with important information such as design, price, and real-world practicality, but ultimately, the benefits of having a product or service are what drive consumers to purchase.

Why Should You Incorporate Benefits, Not Just Features, In Your Copy?

Benefits are essential because they connect the dots for your customers.

At first, it may seem a little silly laying out all the why’s behind your product features. Won’t customers “just get” why a feature is important?

It’s true, consumers aren’t dumb. What they are, however, is busy and distracted.

So why leave it to chance that they’ll immediately understand the positive impact your product or service will have on their lives?

Don’t suppose your clients will instantly understand why your product features are great. Clearly tell them why by also communicating its awesome benefits.

Use this Intro Formula to Skyrocket Time On Page

Not 10, not 5, but 2 seconds, that’s all the time you’ve got to hook someone on your page. If you lose them in those 2 seconds, you lose them for good.

But how can you get Google readers to stick to your copy like superglue?

The APP Method.

“APP” stands for agree, promise, and preview.

Let’s break it down.

1. Agree: You want to start your intro off with an idea or concept that a Google searcher would agree with. Your chances of capturing their attention increase if you show that you understand their problem.
2. Promise: Now that you’ve got them aggressively nodding their head in agreement, time for the promise. This is where you explain how you’ll solve their problem.
3. Preview: Finally, hit them with the preview. All you have to do is brief your reader on what you have in store for them.

APP Method

“APP” stands for agree, promise, and preview.

Borrow Headline Formulas From BuzzFeed

A fascinating phenomenon in the content marketing and writing world: BuzzFeed. On what other site (let’s exclude Quora and Reddit) would you see these side by side?

People Who’ve Had Workplace Affairs Are Confessing What Happened, And It’s Juicy
Here’s How To Deal With Health Anxiety, According To Therapists

If Buzzfeed hadn’t nailed the algorithm, this wouldn’t work at all. They’re masters at drawing attention to their content, taking advantage of the curiosity gap, and ensuring clicks on their site. How do they do that? The key is in the headline. Buzzfeed proves that sometimes you don’t need a 2K word count, an unusual subject, or even original content – as long as you have a strong headline, you can soar in traffic.

There are a few qualities all Buzzfeed headlines have in common:

Most of them include a number.
They’re particularly casual. The use of “awesome” and other simple language is attractive, especially to younger audiences.
They’re on the long side. A longer headline grants more room for variety and character.

All of this contributes to making them “content potato chips”. Thin, not much body, but you can’t stop eating once you start. Here are some “clickbait-y” headline formulas from BuzzFeed you can use for your post titles and subheadings.

25 ___ That Will Change The Way You ___
I Tried ___ And Even I Was Surprised About What Happened Next
This ___ Makes ___ 10x Better
Here Are 11 ___ That ____. And They’re Backed By Science
Use These 20 Simple Hacks For More ____. #5 Is Awesome
When You Learn About ___ You’ll Never ____ Again

Part 3

Supportive Writing Tactics

It’s only fitting that we close out this guide with some of our favorite supportive content tactics.

In this chapter, you’ll discover:

How to create compelling CTAs
The most important KPIs to measure your content’s performance
How to use social proof to increase conversions

Add CTAs for conversions

Say you’re trying to get more conversions from your blog. You’d probably go crazy with including as many CTAs as you could, right? Yes, and no. You can increase conversions by adding more CTAs on your blog, providing that they’re various types of CTAs, addressing different parts of your funnel.

Before publishing your next blog post, contemplate how your readers can learn more about your company. Which CTAs will urge them to take the next step in their buying journey?

Bottom-of-the-Post Smart CTAs

Do you mean to tell us a visitor has spent 10 minutes reading a full 2k words, for you to not have a CTA at the end of your post? No way Jose.

When deciding which CTAs to use in your blog post, placing one at the very end is probably the most important. After people are done reading your blog, you want them to take action. But not everyone’s at the same stage of the buying journey, so how can you modify what you show to each visitor?

Smart CTAs (they don’t have an IQ of 130, don’t worry). By using Smart CTAs, you can customize your CTA based on who is reading your content. So for a first-time user, your blog’s CTA may be a download link to a free Guide. Accordingly, for someone who is already subscribed to your newsletter list, it could be a “Book your Free Trial” button. Essentially, Smart CTAs help target your audience based on where they are in the buyer’s cycle.

Top-of-the-Post Smart CTAs

If you’re using different types of CTAs in your blog post, place at least one higher up on the page so it’s certain to be seen. We’re all about confidence here, but sorry to break it to you: Not everyone will scroll through the entirety of your content. Capture their attention while you can with an eye-catching button at the top, where most of the readers spend their time.

Connect on Social CTAs

If someone’s reading your content, chances are that they will also be interested in future content you post. Make it easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy for readers to follow your social media, by adding a CTA for each one of your profiles. If all it takes is a simple click, they’ll be more likely to do it.

Disclaimer: This and a CTA that allows users to share your content to their personal social media accounts are 2 different things, but both are great tactics to boost your blog content.

Blog Subscription CTAs

Any loyal readers interested in your content will also want to subscribe to your blog by email so they can receive notifications for new posts.

Since the goal here is to grow your subscriber base, you don’t want to turn users off by requiring them to fill in a ton of personal information. Make sure this CTA is a simple form that only asks for their email address. The easier the process, the higher the chances of blog visitors actually filling out the form.

Tweet This CTAs

Dream of your content becoming viral on Twitter? Surely that’s not an everyday occurrence, but what if we told you there’s an easy way for your content to be shared by die-hard fans, website visitors, and employees on their Twitter accounts?

(drum roll…) They are called “Tweet This” links. To put it simply, when someone clicks on this type of link, a pre-created tweet appears promoting the specific content.

This CTA can be great for posts containing snippets of knowledge that are easy to share, like data and infographics – and could help increase your blog’s traffic. Go ahead, try creating one yourself with ClickToTweet.

Comment CTAs

If you’re trying to get your audience to engage with your content, try adding a Comment CTA at the end of your blog posts. There’s no link to follow here; you’re just prompting readers to leave their thoughts in the comments below.

You can be chill and phrase it like: “We hope you enjoyed our article! Comment below and share your thoughts on today’s blog post”, or offer even further encouragement by asking them a question based on the topic of your blog.

Slide-In CTAs

As you scroll down MarketMasters Consulting ’ blog posts, you’ll notice that a CTA slides in the bottom right corner as you approach the middle of the page.

Slide-in CTAs allow your readers to convert, plus they’re not as pushy as an “ignore everything else you do and look at me… I SAID LOOK AT ME” pop-up CTA. Now that’s not a very loveable experience that would make you want to revisit a website. On the contrary, Slide-in CTAs offer additional information to your readers, while simultaneously allowing them to continue reading your blog post.

Cough-cough… Now stop getting jealous over our badass Slide-In CTA, Roxy, and go create your own!

In-Line CTAs

The most underwhelming Call-to-Action in existence. When thinking of a CTA, most of us think of an incredible, amazing, showstopping… (please use your Lady Gaga voice to read this) image, that just pops and instantly grabs your attention. Well, that’s not the only way to utilize CTAs on your blog.

A CTA can also be a link within your blog post that supplies more info on the topic. It functions just like a button CTA, prompting people to take action, the only difference being that one is a hyperlinked button, and the other a written link.

Sidebar CTAs

You have CTAs necessary to drive conversions, CTAs you want to make prominent for content-understanding purposes, and CTAs that may be relevant for your company but don’t add value to the content of your post. The sidebar of your blog is a great place for the latter because they are important to help drive your business goals, but may not be perfectly in sync with your blog’s topic.

Below you see a CTA for MarketMasters Consulting ’ MarketMasters Consulting University, which is important for our company but not for the blog post itself – that’s why the sidebar is the perfect place for it.

Utilize Social Proof

Say you’re on holiday and you’re searching for a restaurant to eat in. There is a series of factors that help you decide, one of which is looking to see if other people are eating or drinking in a particular establishment. A packed restaurant raises your confidence that the food and service are good, and let’s be honest, there’s more chance of you choosing a bustling place than a downright empty one.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the psychology of social proof.

There are 6 types of prominent social proof, and you’ll come across at least a couple of them combined (if not all 6) on pretty much every well-staged website:

Case Studies: Data-driven, extensive analysis of a product or service you provided a specific customer with. Definitely use them when marketing B2B software, agency services, etc.
Social Media: As the name suggests, social media is a no-brainer when it comes to improving your social proof online. If done correctly, it will help you get through to entirely new audiences without spending a dime on advertising.
Testimonials: As stated in a Wyzowl survey, 2 out of 3 people say they’d be more likely to make a purchase after watching a testimonial video demonstrating how a business, product, or service had helped a person similar to them.
Important note: Video testimonials ≠ written testimonials
Written testimonials are “meh” compared to video ones; video testimonials are more captivating, they humanize the person sharing their experience, attract the modern video-obsessed consumer, and reveal the emotion and purpose behind someone’s words.
Trust Icons: They are the little logos of companies you’ve worked with that scream social proof, and they work a treat. Simply placing trust icons on your website can increase conversions by as much as 400%. Bloody hell, talk about delivering ROI. They let the world know that you partner with known and highly regarded companies, and that those high-performing companies choose you among the competition.
Reviews: We bet you can’t remember the last time you purchased something without reading a review first. Reviews are similar to testimonials, but they’re usually a bit more in-depth (just think of them as testimonials’ more objective cousin). Use them for products that are too technical or in industries that are crowded and competitive.
Reminder: People aren’t waiting for an invitation to review your product or service. Visit forums and review sites (like Yelp and Google) regularly to be aware of what’s being said about you.
Numbers: Not all social proof needs to come from your customers. Consider promoting stats that focus on your brand, like:

Total of active users
Shares on your blog page
Number of satisfied customers

Promote these numbers on your website, in email campaigns, digital ads, and social media posts to increase consumer confidence and conversions.

A number can be worth a thousand words. And by combining this type of social proof with another, you’re basically saying “x people bought our product, and here’s how much they’re loving it”.

Check out how Slack uses social proof on their About Us page; who wouldn’t trust a product that 65 of the Fortune 100 companies already use?

Start Your CTAs With Strong Verbs

A verb is a word used to describe an action – and it’s the first word in your CTA (or at least it should be). But what does a strong verb look like? A strong verb is a specific verb that motivates action and gets the point across immediately. More importantly, it communicates worth, not effort, receiving, not giving. Words like submit, start, activate, pay or earn are all action-oriented words. Words like receive, get, view, enjoy, discover or play are also action-oriented. Let’s spot their difference with a very simple example. Let’s say you have created an amazing Inbound Marketing Guide that you want people to download. Which of the following CTAs do you think would convert more?

FREE DOWNLOAD
DISCOVER HOW TO ATTRACT MORE CUSTOMERS!

Obviously the second CTA would perform far better, and that is because it emphasizes receiving. Always use words that are calls to reward, not calls to effort.

Final Thoughts

By following the above, advanced SEO copywriting techniques and strategies, you’ll be well on your way to creating high-quality content. After publishing, be sure to measure its performance by tracking KPIs like:

Page Visits
Bounce Rate
Inbound Links (i.e. the total number of sites linking to the page)
Conversions (i.e. the number of page visitors who performed the CTA on the page or responded to the CTA prompt)
Number of Comments
Total Number of Social Shares (cumulatively and by channel)

Keep track of the metrics that are more valuable to your business, update existing content as needed, and craft new content to fill the gaps.

As long as you create user-friendly content that answers people’s questions and is based on keyword research, you’ll be a gold mine of helpful content in no time.

Until we meet again, happy writing!

Theodore Moulos

The post SEO Copywriting – The Definitive Guide appeared first on MarketMasters Consulting .

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Monthly SEO Monitoring Handbook

Everything You Need To Work On Your Rankings Every Month.

Table of Contents

Part 1

The tools

Input tools

Google Search Console (GSC)

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Ahrefs

Visualization / Reporting Tools

Looker

Part 2

Prerequisites / Foundation

Part 3

Your Monthly Tasks​

01 • Branded Keywords

02 • Non-Branded Keywords

03 • Unassigned traffic

04 • Traffic abnormalities (per channel)

05 • Domain Rating

06 • Referring Domains

07 • Lost Backlinks

08 • Ranking positions of monitored keywords

09 • The list of 11-20 position keywords.

10 • Traffic from Organic Channel only

12 • Monitoring CWV (Core Web Vitals)

13 • New additions (out of radar)

14 • Adding new keywords

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Theodore Moulos

SEO Copywriting – The Definitive Guide

The Definitive Guide

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 1

Before Writing

Table of Contents

Perform Keyword Research

What Is Keyword Research?

Why Is Keyword Research Important?

Which Are The Most Important Keyword Metrics?

Useful Keyword Research Tools

Target Long-tail Keywords

What are Long-tail Keywords?

Why Target Long-tail Keywords?

Create Content For All Funnels: TOFU – MOFU – BOFU

TOFU (awareness)

MOFU (consideration)

BOFU (decision)

Use The Skyscraper Technique

Apply the Hedgehog Concept

Part 2

While Writing

Table of Contents

Add Bucket Brigades To Boost Time On Page

Use LSI Keywords To Make Google Happy

Speak Your Audience’s Language

Include Both Features And Benefits In Your Copywriting

What’s the Difference Between Benefits And Features?

Why Should You Incorporate Benefits, Not Just Features, In Your Copy?

Use this Intro Formula to Skyrocket Time On Page

Borrow Headline Formulas From BuzzFeed

Part 3

Supportive Writing Tactics

Table of Contents

Add CTAs for conversions

Bottom-of-the-Post Smart CTAs

Top-of-the-Post Smart CTAs

Connect on Social CTAs

Blog Subscription CTAs

Tweet This CTAs

Comment CTAs

Slide-In CTAs

In-Line CTAs

Sidebar CTAs

Utilize Social Proof

Start Your CTAs With Strong Verbs

Final Thoughts

Your Monthly Tasks