Content is king

I’m sure you are curious about how to increase traffic to your website. It is a question that many people ask themselves, and it can be quite frustrating when they don’t know where to start.

I am here to tell you that there is an answer. In this email, we will talk mostly about SEO- but before we get into the nitty-gritty details of how it works, let me just say one thing: content matters!

You need to produce content for your website that is engaging and interesting for your potential visitors.

What is engaging content will vary depending on the type of website you have. For an e-commerce product page, your content should include unique and thorough product descriptions, images, and reviews. For a blog post, you should cover the topic better than anyone else and answer the questions readers are coming to the site with.

Think of the user, what are they hoping to achieve on the page and how can you give them the best experience.

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Social media isn't your friend

Your reach on social media isn’t as large as you think it is. The average reach of a Facebook post is only 5.2%. That means that only about 1 in 20 of the people who follow your pages will see your post.

The engagement rate, the percent of fans who click, like, or comment on social media is even worse. The average post on Facebook has a 0.09% engagement rate, Instagram is better at 1.2%, and poor Twitter leads the rear at 0.045%.

These numbers are depressing for those trying to promote their content on social media but totally makes sense. People are on social media to be social. To interact with their friends and see what’s going on. Not to interact with brands and companies. And not to buy something.

So, let's focus our efforts where the numbers are on our side.

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If not there, then where?

Do you know where people go when they do want to buy something? Or interact with companies?

Google

People go to Google to find something out. What the best X for Y is, Where to buy X, or How to do Z.

That’s why optimizing your website for organic search traffic makes sense.

But to get that traffic from Google, your web pages need to appear on a user’s screen. You need to rank for keywords (the words and terms people type into a search engine) to get some of that traffic.

Optimizing your content

• You should also focus each page on your site around one main keyword (or phrase) that best describes what the page is about. This helps Google understand what relevance it has to someone who’s searching based on those terms. It can be helpful here if you think about how potential customers would describe the item they want by its name as opposed to just listing a long list of features below the headline.

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• Create an interesting description of what the page is about. This is your page’s meta description and should be between 120-160 characters in length. This is the first piece of your content visitors will see from a search engine so make it is enticing.

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• Use keywords throughout your content. Be sure they are related to what’s being discussed on the page. Best practice is to include the main keyword for the page in the URL, the page title, and in some of the headings. Don’t include your keywords in an unnatural way, it will make readers feel like they are just encountering keyword spam instead of actual content.

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• Link out to other relevant pages. Treat links to other sites like citations where visitors can go for more information. You should link to other pages on your site that cover similar topics, but also link to other websites.

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• Make sure that your content contains a relevant call-to-action (CTA) at the end of it which can help turn blog readers into customers and paying subscribers by prompting them with an offer they might not want to miss out on like: "contact us today for your free quote" or "subscribe now before this promotion expires."

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Longtail Keyword Tip

Use this tip to find longtail keywords with high impressions that your site is already ranking for.

1. Open Google Search Console's performance report
2. Add a New Query
3. Choose a Custom (regex) query and put ([^" "]*\s){8,}?
4. This will show you all queries your site is ranking for with 9 or more words

A quick way to optimize for them is to add them to the page as a H2 heading and add a couple of hundred words of content around them. They're also a great source for future blog posts.

Play around with the number in the regex to find what works for your site. This tip won't work well for a new site or one not already getting a decent amount of traffic.

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In the next email...

In the next email, we'll talk about keyword research. How to find the search terms people are using to find content like yours. And once you know the keywords people are using, you can better optimize your pages around those words and know what kind of new content will help increase traffic to your website.

If this has been helpful, let me know!

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