What are your SEO/Content hurdles right now?
I am curious to hear what issues people are experiencing when it comes to SEO and content. SEO almost feels like there has been a resurgence in interest, not sure if it's people having more time to read about it during lock-down or there's now an influx of new business ideas also because of the influx.
I am so glad this group exists
I feel this is my biggest hurdle right now. Am still very much new to this game and in-fact I hadn't done anything that matters until this time. I started my blog couple of weeks back and took this opportunity to learn something about SEO so that when I do (will launch here it here soon!) I know what I have to do.
At the moment, I am only writing blog articles and posting a short version of it on dev.to to help the DA. Other than that I didn't do much. What about you?
I've been doing SEO for 8 years now so there has been a lot done on my behalf :) but right now it's a focus on content and UX. When you take out the complexities of SEO and focus on delivering a quality experience through relevant and quality content you find that everything works in your favour.
I often see this and I wonder, If I focus too much on my content and make no or less effort on SEO, how could I get exposure. If no-one sees the content I made then wouldn't it moot?
I suppose this is where the 'mystical' power of SEO comes in. You essentially get rewarded for the effort that you put in with quality VS pleasing the bots.
Quality is determined by backlinks but in many cases having a solid internal linking setup is enough to get rankings. The point is that it is connecting the dots between content and relevancy of your site to the keywords people are using.
Getting backlinks and traffic right now is tough going. In most cases I do my rounds of sharing across networks like IH but ultimately I sink a few $$ into Facebook promotion or if I'm feeling really fancy I go for LinkedIn. Anywhere that lets you target your audience with laser focus can demand a premium in my eyes.
Indeed. I am on a round of experiments with SEO atm. It is getting tough, with very little relevant articles explaining this. Although, many have strongly suggested "Back-linking" a so-called off-page seo. I am looking into this.
This is something I can work on. For my personal blog I have some of linking. For my other "project" I only have a landing page and nothing else.
Would you recommend any resources to readup based on your experience?
Consider a backlink from an external site as a signal of authority. Wikipedia has insane backlinks pointed to it because it is a source of key information. I tell clients that when you create content, think of yourself as the Wiki of your industry. Try to address all the what, why, when, where and so forth to get backlinks. Nowadays though it is tricky to do that as there's a lot of spam and abundance of content.
I suggest starting with this: https://moz.com/learn/seo
It gives you the basics of what makes the wheels of SEO spin. But I suggest these points for content:
Stick with long-form content >1000 words. This provides you with long-tail search terms (>70% of all online searches are these). For example "what is the best X when I have Y" is a long-tail phrase. For my DTC tea company, I am targeting pain-point SEO which is "what tea is best for stomach aches"
Internally link between each article/content piece. This helps with helping Google bots understand what it is that you do and what the website is about. Missing links requires more effort to figure out your website, therefore it will be harder to index = lower rankings.
Use Facebook to boost your articles by targeting what you believe to be your target audience. $5 in most cases can generate 000's of impressions and hopefully clicks. After a while, you will start to get an idea of the type of content that resonates well with your audience and you can then double down on it.
Create FAQs, add summaries to the top of long-form content in bullet points (this is to attempt to grab featured snippets A.K.A position zero).
Wow. that was exhaustive. thanks for reply!
I just created an FAQ page and I have created an AMP version of both the pages. I submitted for indexing and am yet to see it in field.
Thanks!
No problem! FAQ is a great way to get started. It generally grabs those juicy paint point searches. Low volume but much higher conversions. AMP is the devil's child. I would not put too much effort into it. It is basically a heavy Google Tax that does not guarantee any results.
https://medium.com/@danbuben/why-amp-is-bad-for-your-site-and-for-the-web-e4d060a4ff31
And many more like this.
Yes I read a whole lot of articles about it and had a first hand experience how PITA is to make an alternate version of it. A whole lot of the current 'competition' are all on AMP and I am not sure if I can compete with them 😒
I hate it but it was something I wanted to test if it makes any difference. Will officially launch it publicly here in IH soon-ish