Reginald Chan

Tag: content marketing

  • How Can I Improve My Content On Blogs?

    How Can I Improve My Content On Blogs?

    You want to generate more traffic for your blog and you understand that the only way is to improve the content.

    But you face with ONE major problem. How do you improve your content that will drive more traffic?

    I’m happy that you asked because I’m going to share my case study with you in this article.

    I decided to improve my content because I wanted more traffic and have better conversions. As an affiliate marketer, traffic is paramount for my success (and even yours). The more traffic I get, the higher chance for me to make money blogging.

    I dive in deep and took time to understand what went wrong — and took massive actions to solve the problem.

    The results?

    • check13.28% increase in organic keywords
    • check5.62% increase in organic traffic
    • check6.43% increase in visibility

    See the screenshots below which is taken directly from SEMrush. I use SEMrush because it is the best all-in-one monitoring tool for bloggers who want automated website improvement ideas. Get a free account here.

    how to increase organic keywords for seoincrease position in SERP

    If you are finding for the best way to improve your content for search engine optimization, follow these steps and watch your traffic grow under 14 days.

    Step 1: Produce MORE content

    The first step I took was simple. I do something that every authority figure in the world doesn’t recommend — producing more content.

    My previous content writing strategy involves publishing one or two articles (1,000 to 2,000 words) a week.

    I decided to do once a day publication and it was heavy on me. I will be joking if I said that it was ‘okay.’ As a matter of fact, I burned out within the first week of doing it!

    To my surprise, I coping up was easy. I stopped playing mobile games and spend two hours a day with content generation.

    The results: More content, better search results, more readers and ultimately, excellent search engine ranking.

    Step 2: Keyword research done right

    Again, I see people using hours and hours of doing keyword research. I ought to be different. I spend around 30 minutes on keyword research every day.

    Wait, what? Only 30 minutes?

    Yes, you read that right.

    1

    Google Search

    First, I go to Google to search for the topic that I’m interested to write on.

    Do this: Collect a list of automatic search results that pops out and the titles of the top 10 articles in the SERP.

    2

    Google Keyword Planner

    Head over to Google Keyword Planner and search for the seed keyword (seed keyword is the general keyword).

    Do this: There should be a more than 1,000 searches in a month to have higher profits and for the topic to be on demand.

    3

    Quora

    On Quora, search for each keywords you have collected. You can avoid using the whole sentence and use the main keywords only.

    Do this: You are looking for questions that has over 1,000 views (the more, the merrier).

    4

    KWFinder

    Use KWFinder (register for a free account here) and search for the top keywords you have gathered from Quora.

    Do this: Search for keywords that has at least 500 searches in a month and under 45/100 in difficulty.

    5

    KWFinder Alternative: Long Tail Pro

    If you like Long Tail Pro, sure — that is a great alternative to KWFinder. Here, you do the same thing which is to search for the top keywords you have gathered from Quora. Get a free trial using this link.

    Do this: Search for keywords that has at least 500 searches in a month and under 45/100 in Target Keyword Competitiveness.

    Step 3: Start crafting your content

    You have the targeted keywords. The next step is to craft the content that search engines love.

    Here are some guidelines on how to improve “website content” for SEO:

    • checkAt least 1,000 words long
    • checkKeywords within the content
    • checkKeyword within the title

    Installing third party WordPress plugin such as Yoast SEO and All-In-One SEO Pack will help you further improve your content in SEO perspective.

    Step 4: Improving the user experience (important)

    You may have the best content but if your content is not interesting, you are not going to make the visitors stay on and read the article.

    How long does users stay on a web page?

    7 seconds. That’s exactly how long you have to impress your website visitors.

    With advanced WordPress editor, you can focus on increasing the average session duration for your site.

    I use Thrive Architect to build each blog post. This plugin allows me to create interesting elements within the article such as styled boxes, coloured checklists and many more.

    While there are many other WordPress editors that you can use, I highly recommend Thrive Architect because it is fast and super effective to use. You can read the review or try the demo here.

    Step 5: Record, publish and embed videos

    Don’t just stop at writing blog great blog posts. I take it further by recording videos and embedding videos within the blog post.

    Why?

    When a reader stay on the blog and watch the video, it increases the duration of them staying on my blog. The longer they stay on my blog, the better search engine ranking I’ll get (thanks to RankBrain).

    question

    How long is the dwell time?

    According to Brian Dean from Backlinko, the best dwell time (average session per user) is around 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

    Now, stop right here for a moment.

    Open up Google Analytics and check on your site’s stats by going to Google Analytics > Audience > Overview.

    average user sessions

    If your stats is under 3 minutes, it’s time to seriously improve your content.

    best average session duration

    See the above image. It is taken from one of my client’s site.

    It certainly took me sometime to get her understand that she need to increase the average session duration before she can see bigger jump in traffic.

    Step 6: Do not publish the content (yet)

    Keep the content for at least a day and revisit the content for more improvement. Usually, 24 hours is more than enough to get the job done right.

    Just trust me on this, would you?

    Step 7: Add photos and images to the blog post

    Now that your content is pretty much ready, add in photos and images where neccesary. I add at least 5 images on every blog post to keep the content interesting.

    Plus, humans are often more attracted to images than words.

    If you are using Thrive Architect, you can easily add images and photos through the drag and drop feature.

    Step 8: Before publishing the content

    This is the last step. Optimize your content for SEO to improve the ranking on search engines.

    There are several ways to get this done correctly and fast.

    1

    Check density for main keyword

    If you are using Yoast SEO or All In One SEO Pack plugin, you can easily check the keyword density. I recommend it to be under 2% for most cases.

    2

    Use related keywords/LSI keywords

    You should add related keywords to your blog post. The fastest and easiest way is to use LSI Keyword Generator. Enter the main keyword and a list of related keywords will appear. Input some of the keywords into your blog posts (anywhere necessary and logical) is good SEO practise.

    You should also use third party tools such as KWFinder and Long Tail Pro to search for low competition keywords to improve your content.

    3

    Use ALT-text

    Last but not least, make sure that all your images has ALT-text for SEO purposes. ALT-text shouldn’t be long and should be under 7 words (my personal choice).

    4

    This Publish!

    Yes, finally. Publish the content knowing that you have improved the content the right way.

    Why should you improve your content?

    Improving your content doesn’t only increases the web traffic for your blog, it helps you make sure that your audience is more engaged with the content. Overall, it will help you generate better leads and even higher revenue from sales (or affiliate sales like I do).

    Are you using any website strategy plan to improve blog content? Let’s discuss further!

  • 5 Simple Content Marketing Strategies To Double Your Traffic

    5 Simple Content Marketing Strategies To Double Your Traffic

    Content marketing is all about putting your articles on the first page of Google search.

    Or at least, that’s one of the top three goals for many bloggers.

    I started a simple survey that comes in my newsletter. The goal was simple; Drop your request to me and I will blog it up for you. And if you have yet to participate in the survey, you can do it here – Content Survey.

    The request was made by one of my readers in Kerala, India with the question, “Anything along the lines of content marketing.”

    I hope you are reading this and here are some useful content marketing strategies which can potentially double your website traffic in a very short period of time.

    Want to save the article for later? Download the PDF copy here.

     

    Content Marketing Strategies

     

    Best content marketing tips for 2014
    How do you do content marketing for 2014?

     

    Content marketing is never easy. If it is hard last year, expect a bomb this year instead.

    If you think that content marketing is just for businesses, you are dead wrong. You need it even if you are a small time blogger.

    Want to rank on the first page of Google? You need content marketing. Period.

    While that literally answered the question on how important content marketing is in today’s world, the biggest question I am going to touch today is as below.

     

    How do you do content marketing with just 5 steps?

     

    Why is content marketing important?

    Content marketing #1 – Strategies

    In my latest blog post on professional blogging tutorial, I outlined one very important factor; having a bulletproof strategy.

    Even before you purchase a domain or pick one up for free on Blogspot, you need to consider:

    • What your blog is all about? (single vs multiple niche)
    • Who would be your readers?
    • What makes others come to your blog?
    • How to make readers come back for more?
    • What makes the blog different from the rest?

    And the list continues.

    In content marketing, you need to be absolutely sure on the path you are heading to. The goals set have to be:

    1. Achievable
    2. Logical
    3. Within a specific time frame

    When it comes to content marketing strategy, putting a high bars in the beginning of the ‘race’ would easily lead to many failures.

     

    Content marketing #2 – Headlines

     

    Magnetic headlines will increase traffic

     

    Article headlines are the first thing your readers read and therefore, it is a no brainer to put all your effort into constructing a great one.

    Headlines should be craved accordingly to:

    • Reader’s interest
    • Latest headlines
    • Mysterious
    • Delivering promises

    Let’s take for example, both of these headlines:

    5 Simple Content Marketing Strategies To Double Your Traffic

    5 Content Marketing Strategies To Build Traffic

    For starters, both the above are very close to each other but by just adding a few words, you could easily skyrocket your conversion rate; getting more readers to read your article.

    The first title is obviously a better choice because it has the word ‘simple’ and ‘double’.

    This give an impression for the readers that the 5 tips are easy to do (less time consuming) and a promise that it would increase blog traffic by at least once.

    A few other headlines that you could use are:

    • Best 10 … To …
    • A versus B
    • How to make money while you are sleeping (example for mystery headlines)

    Want to dig in more? You can check out what Brian Clark wrote here, How to write magnetic headlines.

     

    Content marketing #3 – The content itself

     

    Writing great content is important in marketing

     

    Two questions that easily pop into mind would be:

    • The length of the article
    • Creating out of this world discussion

    While there are probably hundreds of discussions in regards to this matter, I ought to differ.

    People says longer articles gets ranked better by Google and many of us are scratching our heads just to reach the 1,200 words mark.

    True?

    Honestly speaking, my case studies (unpublished yet) show that articles between 1,000 to 2,000 words would rank better but with heavy optimization; keyword density, title tags etc.

    Not only that, I have a website ranking on page two of Google without any SEO done to it and the epic part? The articles published on the site are created by a robot, has around 600 words on average per article and articles created are around 60% readable.

    Does longer articles get ranked better? Probably.

    Do you really need lengthy articles to rank well on Google now? Not really (or until Google changes its algorithm again).

    So, truth debunked? Go figure!

    And our next discussion, article creation.

    When it comes to content marketing, you need great content if you want to stand out from the crowd. If your blog posts are plain and simple, you are already losing half the battle.

    I often consider content marketing (or writing articles in this sense) as an art; The art to captivates audience.

    Take a read on what some of the professional and prominent figures in the blogging industry on their blogs and you will notice a huge difference between them. Some would simple start with a story while others, would give you bits of the story to drive you nuts.

    Either way, those are real darn good content marketing techniques.

    Moral of the story? Every single word that you use should be followed by another to make your reader NOT pressing the X button.

    If you are wondering, the below is one of the oldest tricks in blogging.

    Bribe your visitors with information they are looking for, not opposite.

     

    Content marketing #4 – The effect of images in a blog post

     

    How to increase traffic with images

     

    Okay, so you had written a super lengthy post of 2,500 words.

    Great ~ but why is your bounce rate so high? Why are readers not digging into your articles?

    Chances are you are not using images.

    A picture represents a thousand words. Same goes to blogging!

    The concept here is fairly simple. Readers (including me) will not read your article from A to Z if it is over 1,000 words. Unless you are a great writer like Brian Clark, you are probably nowhere near success.

    In content marketing, you need to make sure that you are using the power of images. You don’t need to use high resolution images for all your blog posts. Instead, choose the right one which represents the best meaning of the word/sentence.

    Have you noticed that Pinterest is one of the prominent social media platform growing in the shadows of Facebook?

    Images are getting more important and if you are losing if you are not using images.

    Blogging or content marketing as what I call is a business. If you want to start growing your ‘business’, start utilizing images for Christ’s sake.

    It probably cost you around 10 seconds to find one thanks to Google.

    So seriously, use images, slides, videos or any visual related sources to drive your website visitors crazy. Yes, make them “wow”!

     

    Content marketing #5 – Are you ‘marketing’?

     

    Content marketing with social media
    Social media is apart of the content marketing strategy

     

    You may have:

    • The best content
    • Fully optimized with on-page SEO
    • More than 2,000 words
    • Killer headlines
    • Epic images, slides and videos

    And you are popped a beer and congratulate yourself for the job well done. Well, you are nearly there … but not there yet!

    Traffic is not going to flow in just-like-that with the above optimization techniques.

    Seriously!

    If you want your content to go viral or being shared across the various social media platforms, you need to market the article to ready-listeners.

    Yes, you’re right; Those followers you have in your mailing list.

    If you do not have a mailing list yet, you can get one here for 30 days free and no credit card required.

    While you can reach hundreds or thousands of followers with the right email marketing provider, the job doesn’t stop there.

    You need to continue marketing the article as long as it is still published and this, my friend, is one of the biggest mistakes done by many content writers.

    People tend to share new articles for the first 2 to 4 weeks from the date published and after that, everything goes flat; no more marketing after reaching the 5th week mark.

    If you are writing evergreen articles, then make sure you schedule them for social media sharing at least once a month. You can easily promote these articles across various social media platforms using Buffer.

    Not sure how to use it? Check this article out – How to schedule posts using Buffer App?

     

    Do you like the content marketing tips above?

    Tell me what you think using the comment form below and if you like to throw in your request, head over to this link and drop your request there!