I'll answer all of your content questions
Hey everyone,
I've got some free time and I love questions so I thought I'd spend some more time here.
So if you're starting a blog, thinking of launching your content strategy, or just want to write your own posts on LinkedIn and have a pressing question, this is the place to start.
I'm guessing a common question will be along the lines of "Why aren't our blog posts bringing any traffic?". So I'll need to check out your blog before and resume the problem in a couple of words. Maybe add in your industry/website/other details too. Content might not work in your case or maybe you need to shift its focus from a blog to social media.
Just leave a comment and I'll get back. Promise to give super honest answers so go ahead with your craziest questions.
I’m about to start blogging.
I have written 2 long form articles which I am first internally testing with limited people to get early feedback.
Both are 2000+ Words article. I want to know how do I know which structure works best for readers? What kind of questions I can ask to readers to understand properly what is working best? Is there any proper way to do this or do I just keep publishing content and understand what works from analytics mainly?
Do you already have an audience? If you do, all you have to do is either ask them directly or see what they're commenting about or sharing.
When I write for outlets that already have a large audience, I look at other articles on their website to see what people liked.
Most of the time though I write with the purpose of ranking for a specific keyword. So I research the top 10 [often more] for the keyword I want to target. Unfortunately, anyone in marketing or writing online is a slave to Google. So, in order to rank, you need to add in most of the headings there. That's why you'll see articles in top 10 with the same structure. The only thing is that you also need to find something unique to tackle besides these to differentiate your piece. + When searching for a keyword, you might have noticed a section called People also ask. There's also a tool for these queries: https://answerthepublic.com/ This is a good place to start.
This is the proper way to do it.
No, I don't have audience yet. I've recently started to build audience first. I'm giving more time to building audience than writing.
The suggested tools, look totally useful to me. Thank you so much for all your SEO suggestions.
Hope it helps! Good luck with the audience building process
Thank you Alexandra!
I am working on a tool to help content creators (writers mainly) create the content their subscribers want by gathering their recommendations (https://www.audrec.com).
Would love to get your thoughts on whether this tool (currently in the making) would be helpful.
Oh wow, I actually have a client with a complicated target audience and I suggested they do this: ask people to see what content they'd want. Problem is:
Also, maybe make it clear as to what type of subscribers you refer to: newsletters, YouTube...? If it's for YT this would make for a great integration.
Thank you Alexandra! For business owners such customer feedback boards exist already with pretty similar functionality. I am trying to think of ways to make it more content creators specific.
I should definitely zoom into one segment (YT, newsletter, podcasters), not sure which at this point. We might also include a feature allowing the audience to upvote each others' recommendation and by making a $ contribution to have more upvoting power over the content creation roadmap.
We are obviously in need finding stage and would love any intro you could make to youtubers you feel this could be helpful to!
Thanks for doing this!
Any recommendations on how to succeed with content/SEO in a highly competitive space against companies that are larger and have been around for a lot longer and therefore have much greater domain authority than li'l ol' me just starting out?
I answer this in part for Lisa below so I'm pasting this:
"On-Page SEO: You can check this list https://www.business2community.com/seo/16-on-page-seo-factors-you-must-update-on-your-blog-at-all-times-02282086 to see if you're missing any aspect of on-page SEO. Because... you need to get all of them right.
Off-Page SEO: I'm super happy you've mentioned this. Not many founders understand its value but to be perfectly honest: It's what makes the difference. Given all Google algorithm changes, it's kind of impossible to rank well without some off-page efforts. This can take a lot of time and effort and it's really the most gruesome aspect of marketing [yay].
But is it worth it? Yes. You can take loads of approaches: reaching out to websites in your industry for a link, guest posting, opting for a sponsored post, looking at where your competitors have links and trying to replicate that... It can take years but once you get a few links, others will start picking up on the content if it's good and you'll receive more backlinks organically, gradually increasing your rankings. Ahrefs gives you a rough estimate of how many links you need but often the real number is lower."
I see you're in a highly competitive industry: productivity apps. I'm not sure what your app does [PM, time tracking, etc.] but there are usually two types of competitors here:
So in your case, number 2 is the focus. You won't have their budget but you can start gradually investing in content. Again, it will take a lot of time but maybe you can tap into an opportunity they haven't found yet. Maybe something on YouTube or just having a strong outreach game.
Thanks!
Hope it helps!
Definitely, thanks for the advice.
I have one more question if you have the time – I was listening to some advice from another content/SEO expert and his take on actively generating backlinks through outreach was that it definitely works but is very time-consuming.
Instead, he recommends focusing efforts on creating the best content possible and letting backlinks form naturally as people organically find and link to it. It will take longer, but the benefit is you get to spend more time on content generation rather than backlink generation.
Do you have an opinion on this? Thanks!
"his take on actively generating backlinks through outreach was that it definitely works but is very time-consuming." - yes, I already mentioned this in two other answers here
"Instead, he recommends focusing efforts on creating the best content possible and letting backlinks form naturally as people organically find and link to it." - The problem with this is that this is also time-consuming. It takes way too long to put together and promote the article and you could see the boom in traffic only 2 years later. I have a client that only used this approach and was able to get all articles to rank top 10 and gradually get backlinks but it's a mixture of loads of things. For instance, I had an article on working remotely before the pandemic and it was #1. The problem is that it was created for people who were considering this career [I would have never imagined we'd all be working from home.] Over 1 year it did get a couple of backlinks organically as it was comprehensive and helpful. So when the change in the reader intent came [as everyone was now remote], the article stayed in top 10 thanks to the links and brief updates.
So, really I'd recommend a mix of both approaches.
Makes sense. Thanks for your insights!
What's the first thing you should do after publishing an article? Do you need to syndicate it across other platforms?
I've just posted my first article (https://www.usebolt.io/blog/ui-vs-ux-design-whats-the-difference), but I'm currently taking a 'post it and leave it' approach, which is obviously wrong, but not sure how to approach blog marketing.
I can see you got some SEO points right even though this is not your focus area. Did someone else give you the structure to follow? The real value in having a UX expert write an article such as this one instead of a regular writer is that you can bring in some super unique insights and just screenshots/videos of how you do your work. You didn't do this. So that's the first place to start. Usually Medium has good posts from designers. You can check those out to see how they're different.
The "post it and leave it" approach is useless. It's like you never wrote anything. The first thing after would be to submit it to Google via Search Console. This makes the process of ranking faster but Google will pick up on the article even if you don't do this. It just takes longer. Remember that when you're not writing for a big outlet, Google remains your #1 promotion space. After that, yes, you need to share/syndicate it across other platforms BUT this is also useless if you don't have a network. And things get complicated because if you were to share this article with your network [probably a lot of people who are already in the UX/UI world], they wouldn't care about it since it's for beginners.
Conclusion: take on writing work for your target audience from now on to showcase your expertise and leave these SEO-friendly topics for the person responsible for the content in your team. Then, grow your network and keep at it!
Fantastic advice, thank you! Great eye - I hired a content company to create some content for us. I guess I'll take this mantle on myself from now on.
I have some content ideas [just a few] I had prepared for a competitor of yours but I haven't heard from them and now they're just sitting around. Do you want them? for free of course
Oh yeah absolutely! I just checked out your website - if you're taking on work maybe we can work together to get some of those ideas written up? Can you ping me an email (tom at usebolt.io) please? Thanks! :D
And one more thing: don't make blog content a priority, try video and maybe some design influencers on YT [just make sure they're big]. I'm sure you know where designers spend most of their time. Medium outlets for designers are also a good idea. Just bookmarked your tool so I can review it too. I'm not big so I'm doing it for free lol but I soooo need more video ideas.
Well, it did seem weird that you stuck with the headings and didn't bring the designer touch. Maybe do the keyword research and add in the headings that are needed but write it yourself or with your team from now on. Not any content company will work for you.
Kinda a tangent from your post but related to startegy... what do you use to repurpose content? Or how do you reuse/repurpose content to maximise it?
I see you're in content marketing too so you probably know quite a bit already. There's really no ultimate tool. Instead, there are loads of methods that work. My favorite: writing a long-length guide and breaking it up into small sections. You can use these as social media posts [written, stories, images, videos, etc.]. I like to think of this goal as I write the article so it's easier to divide the content. Another thing you can do is create pillar posts. This means you'll write multiple smaller articles and then tie them together to a large post for a keyword you really want to rank for. But it always depends on reader intent.
What do you think of the flurly blog ;) flurly.com/blog
The first thing I'd recommend is to change up the looks a bit. What others are doing will be just fine. You can find examples here: https://mktodyssey.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/business-blog-homepage/.
Next, the type of content is a big issue, but that's fine because you're just launching. I don't know your exact goals, but given your industry and the fact that you're going up against some pretty big names, you'll want at least:
So really a content strategy would be the first place for you to start. The product updates you have now are fine as long as you mix in the other types of content + maybe try other channels like video.
What if we want more traffic from search engines like Google? I think on-page SEO with right content and some off-page SEO to beat your competitors is also necessary here. What do you think?
You seem to already know the ins-and-outs of ranking.
On-Page SEO: You can check this list https://www.business2community.com/seo/16-on-page-seo-factors-you-must-update-on-your-blog-at-all-times-02282086 to see if you're missing any aspect of on-page SEO. Because... you need to get all of them right.
Off-Page SEO: I'm super happy you've mentioned this. Not many founders understand its value but to be perfectly honest: It's what makes the difference. Given all Google algorithm changes, it's kind of impossible to rank well without some off-page efforts. This can take a lot of time and effort and it's really the most gruesome aspect of marketing [yay].
But is it worth it? Yes. You can take loads of approaches: reaching out to websites in your industry for a link, guest posting, opting for a sponsored post, looking at where your competitors have links and trying to replicate that... It can take years but once you get a few links, others will start picking up on the content if it's good and you'll receive more backlinks organically, gradually increasing your rankings. Ahrefs gives you a rough estimate of how many links you need but often the real number is lower.