How to Conduct an SEO Content Audit

Since August, we've joined forces with other promoting experts to exhibit our Master Your Marketing Webinar Series where we share noteworthy exhortation, tips, traps and contextual investigations intended to enable you to ace distinctive part of the advanced showcasing universe.

A month ago, SpyFu President and Founder Mike Roberts shared important lessons gained from their own one of a kind "down and filthy" SEO content review.

Read on for a recap of the greater part of the considerable tips he shared that will enable you to ace you content promoting and SEO.

What is a SEO Content Audit and Why Do It 

A SEO content review is an interest in your SEO future. It involves investigating the sum of your substance to decide SEO qualities, shortcomings, and how to enhance future substance creation. It's both a wellbeing checkup for your site and a chance to enhance existing substance.

Through the audit and consequent pruning of your substance, you're ready to evacuate dead weight which may have been overloading both UX and SEO quality. Google favors quality and freshness in content over amount. In other words, Google is pushing everybody to refresh or expel four year-old blog entries that don't (and shouldn't) get any activity.




Search engine optimization content reviews are for sites and organizations that have been reliably delivering content for no less than a year. They are intended to be a semi-yearly checkup and recalibration. In case you're quite recently beginning, you won't have anything to review and rather you ought to concentrate on working up a solid SEO establishment.

The most effective method to Conduct a SEO Content Audit 

In the first place, with a specific end goal to direct a SEO content review you should pick up a superior perspective of all your substance. This can be accomplished by bringing each blog entry, video, and article into a solitary spreadsheet to consider simple association, assessment and prioritization. Moderator Mike Roberts prescribes a particular strategy that includes a couple of SEO instruments and a Google spreadsheet.

Once your sheet is finished, search out and note clear specialized issues like 404s, missing titles, missing meta depictions, H1s, copy content, copy titles, and so forth. Distinguish blunders and stamp them in the sheet and get a feeling of regular slip-ups.

Next, arrange your substance into classes so you have a decent vantage point to take a gander at the connection between similarly invested content. Search out obsolete substance, more established substance that ought to be diverted to your new substance, content that is missing media that may have been made at a later date, excess substance, and so on. Generally, locate your substance opportunities.Ask target inquiries concerning each bit of substance:

• Is this piece obsolete?

• Is it worth diverting to another piece?

• Do we require more than one article or video about this theme?

• Can this substance be joined with another piece to shape something more significant and new?

Next up is watchword explore.

Finish a huge amount of catchphrase look into on which terms you'd like your site and your substance to rank for. With your composed and assessed content, perceive how it lines up with your objective catchphrases.

Here are the objectives of your catchphrase inquire about:

• Make beyond any doubt each article really focuses on a particular watchword.

• Update or kill content which does not focus on a particular watchword.

• Gain viewpoint on what should be worked by looking over what you as of now have and its association with your objective catchphrases.

Since you've sorted out, assessed, increased, and increased point of view on your substance's association with your objective catchphrases you would now be able to start methodicallly pruning, settling, joining, altering and erasing your substance. Moreover, you can set objectives on sorts of key substance to chip away at for what's to come.

Last Tips, Tricks and Takeaways 

The following are a modest bunch of tips to help you with your review:

• If you can isolate up various parts of the review among your group, do it!

• Learning how to appropriately standardly label content is vital, don't skip it. Accepted labels go about as a bypass sign starting with one bit of substance then onto the next. They disclose to Google that while there are two comparative bit of substance, we propose this one over another. This constructs the case for a specific page to rank higher.

• Turn dusty related substance into greater new pieces.

• Use Google Search Console > Crawl > Sitemaps to take a gander at what number of pages you've submitted versus what number of they've listed. Work to pick up Google's trust by having no less than 99% of your submitted content listed.

5 Ways to Energize Your Content Marketing

In our last article, I explained why content marketing is extremely valuable to use for your business.
 
But, just because you realize using content marketing to engage your audience is important, that doesn’t mean you know how to create that content.
 
This article focuses on how to create content that hooks your audience in and keeps your company top of mind.
 

     

1. Establish a Voice That Speaks to Your Audience.

Creating the “voice” of your company helps to connect to potential clients and customers that are ideal for your brand.  Whether you’re the person doing all of the content creation for your business, or you have a team that works on that, it’s imperative that you’re very clear about the voice of your content, and consistent about using that same voice across all channels.

To start, it’s helpful to identify who your ideal audience is. One way to do this is by creating a customer avatar, which is the person who represents those in your target market. To create a customer avatar, you should answer as many identifying questions about your ideal client as possible. 

Once you’ve established your customer avatar, you need to understand how they speak and what they connect to. What other websites are they reading? If your ideal customer is a single mom who works from home, take a look at blogs she may read and start to understand the terminology and writing structure those sites use.

Another way to research this is to look at forums that your ideal customer would post in. Do they write very formally with technical language, or is it a bit more casual?

Based on this research you can begin to create your voice. Here are a few things to consider when establishing your voice:

• Do you write in first person or third person?
• Does your content include personal stories, or is it strictly professional?
• What vocabulary are you going to use when referring to things in your business? Are there some things that the terminology can differ on?
• What will your format be? Do you use bold, italics, or both to stress a point?
• How do you break up your blog content?
• What kind of images will you use?
• Do you use any slang, or is all of your writing more formal?
• What is the format of your social media posts?

 

2. Create Really Really Ridiculously Good Content

Derek Zoolander may not have understood how to create a center for kids who can’t read good, but he knew how to be a male model.

The same goes for content. You may not know everything about marketing and conversion, but you understand your product or service and when it comes to creating content about it, your content needs to be really good.

Make sure the articles, videos, and images you create have a clear purpose every single time. Ask yourself, “Why am I creating this?” If it doesn’t educate, entertain, or engage your audience you should probably rethink it.

 

3. Write Catchy Headlines

One my favorite movies growing up was the Disney musical film Newsies, starring a very young, pre-Batman, Christian Bale. The movie was all about the days of William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer and the use of yellow journalism. Basically, the newspapers of the time would put out papers with extremely catchy headlines, even if they had nothing to do with the truth behind the article.

While I definitely don’t recommend going to the extreme of yellow journalism, there’s no question that writing catchy headlines is key to producing good content. Your headlines should absolutely reflect what is actually in your article, but should do so in a way that makes the content sound enticing and lets your audience know that your article is worth taking the time to read.

Headlines that include numbers, address the reader directly (i.e. use “you”), and contain active word choices do really well.

For example, for the headline of this article I started with the title “Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing”. While this would have been a fair representation of what this article is about, it’s not very exciting.

Instead, I answer the question “how many ways” and use active verbs so readers understand exactly what the goal of this article is. “5 Ways to Energize Your Content Marketing” is a much catchier headline than the original, but still delivers on the promise of what’s included in the article.

 

4. Add Videos & Images

“A picture says a thousand words” might be one of the most cliché sayings out there, but there’s a reason it has hung around this long.

Photos and videos are hugely engaging when it comes to content, which is why platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have become so successful. It’s also the reason you can play videos directly from your Facebook feed.

Images can be created as standalone content or as a way to enhance a blog post or article you’ve written. According to Hubspot.com, not only does content that contains relevant images get 94% more views than content without images, but people also remember the content for longer. In fact, when people hear information they are only likely to remember 10% of that information 3 days later. But, if that information is paired with a relevant image, they’re likely to remember 65% of the information.

If you’re taking the time to create important content, you want to make sure that people read it and remember it. Adding images helps to make that happen.

The same type of statistics hold true for video content. An article from Insivia.com presents 50 stats about using video marketing. And one stat, from Unbounce, says that including a video on your landing page can increase conversion by 80%.

When it comes to livening up your content marketing, including photos and video is a no-brainer.

 

5. Switch Up Your Format

Nobody wants to read the same article, or type of article, over and over again. It just gets flat-out boring. That’s why varying the format of your blog content is extremely important for increasing and maintaining engagement.

Here are a few article formats that can help you change it up:

• Listicles – You’ve seen these. These are lists that are used to engage or educate your audience. 
• Resource Roundups – These articles put together a bunch of resources in one place. Audiences love these because it saves them time on research. 
• Stat Roundups – People love when ideas are backed up by numbers and that’s why stats roundups are so great– you’re able to back up why people should use your product or services.
• How-To Articles – Remember, a key goal of content marketing is to educate your audience with valuable information. How-To articles offer the perfect opportunity to do that.
• Quote Roundups – The goal of these types of articles is mostly to entertain your audience, but depending on the quotes you pick, you can also educate them as well. 

   

Why Content Marketing is the Key to Business Success

The phrase “content is key” has been buzzing around the marketing world for quite some time now. It’s an easy statement to make, but not necessarily an easy one to fully understand for anyone who don’t specialize in marketing or writing.

 

In this article, I’ll explain exactly what content marketing is and why you should start using it ASAP.

 

     

What Is Content Marketing?

According to The Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is,  “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

 

Let’s break that down to make it a bit easier to understand.

 

Content marketing refers to media you create that is specific to your business. This can include the creation of blog and newsletter articles, videos, social media posts, photos, podcasts, e-books, webinars, and more.

 

The key to being successful with content marketing though is making sure the content has a specific goal related to educating, entertaining, and engaging your audience in order to lead them to perform a specific action.

 

For example, let’s say you’re a chiropractor’s office manager who recently hired an acupuncturist on staff and you’d like people to start booking appointments. You can use content to tell your audience about the benefits of acupuncture. You could create a blog post that documents a patient’s recent success with acupuncture, or a video that informs people about 5 things they never knew about Eastern medicine techniques. All of this content has the goal of educating your audience about acupuncture in hopes that they’ll want to book an appointment and try it out.

 

Now that we understand exactly what content marketing is, let’s go over why you should use it.

 

Why Should You Use Content Marketing?

 

1. It Drives Relevant Traffic to Your Website.

Almost every small business I work with wants to increase traffic to their website. But, what many people don’t realize is that traffic in general doesn’t necessarily help your business. Instead, you want to focus on driving relevant traffic to your website. This way, you know the people who are visiting your site are actually interested in your business.

 

Content marketing can help make this happen.

 

By creating good content that is relevant to your business, you open up opportunities for that content to rank in Google, which benefits your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

 

If you create a blog post focused on a topic that is specific to your business and it ranks highly in Google, then you know the traffic coming from that post is going to be from visitors who are interested in your products or services.

 

2. It Creates a Natural Opportunity to Follow Up with Customers and Leads.

Cold sales calls are tricky and require a lot of effort on the part of you and your sales team. Using content marketing opens up more “warm” sales opportunities.

 

Once you begin building an email newsletter list, you can create content to send out to the customers and prospects on your list that keeps them engaged with your company. Sending out monthly or even weekly newsletters with content your audience is interested in helps to keep you top of mind and opens up the doors for a more natural follow-up sequence. 

 

Sticking with the acupuncturist example above, after sending out an article about the benefits of acupuncture, it’s a much more natural phone call for someone from your office to follow up with clients to see if they’d like to schedule an appointment to try it out. Using content marketing to educate and engage with your audience helps to create warmer relationships.

 

3. Content Marketing Positions You as an Expert in Your Industry.

By creating content that educates your audience about your business, you’re automatically positioning yourself as an expert in your industry.

 

People love to learn new things, and if you’re the one who teaches them something new that is relevant to their lives, they’ll be looking to you for more advice in the future.

 

For example, I recently moved and needed tips on installing a wall mount for my TV. I Googled “how to install wall mount tv”. The first thing listed in the search results was an article from Home Depot titled “A Guide to Wall-Mounting Your Flat Screen TV”. I clicked on this article for tips without even considering that Home Depot would sell TV wall mounts. Because this article was highly relevant with good content, I trust that Home Depot is an expert in this and am considering purchasing my wall mount, or the tools needed to install one, from Home Depot.

 

See how that works?

 

4. Content Marketing Provides Opportunities to Engage With Potential Customers on Social Media.

There’s no question that social media is a huge part of any marketing plan.

 

According to Statista.com, Facebook had 1.71 billion active users as of Q2 of 2016. This provides a valuable opportunity for your business to engage with potential customers through social media platforms.

 

Drafting engaging social media content is a big part of content marketing. It’s important to identify which social media channels your ideal customer is using, and then to create a content plan that will engage your audience. Organic content, paired with paid social media advertising is a great way to reach potential customers.

 

I was recently on the receiving end of successful content marketing using social media. A few months ago, fitness accessory company, Caeden, was running a Facebook ad campaign to promote their new fashionable fitness tracking bracelet. Their product not only tracks steps, calories, and heart rate, but also uses the information to report on your stress levels and then pairs it with a meditation and breath app to help relieve some of that stress. This ad repeatedly came up on my Facebook and eventually lead me to click on a video post that featured a woman using this bracelet while practicing yoga.

 

This was genius because I’m their ideal customer — a female yoga instructor who has an interest in fashion. After watching the video and reading more on their blog, I became a strong prospective buyer.

 

I was shown well-crafted, relevant content which kept the product top of mind. A few days later, I ordered my Sona after using one of the promotion codes that popped up on my Facebook account through their retargeting campaigns.

 

Sharing and promoting your content, especially if targeted to your ideal customer, can help to connect with prospective clients.

 

5. Content Marketing Gives Your Business A Voice

What do you want the “feel” or overall perception of your company to be? If your target audience is doctors or engineers over the age of 40 you’re likely to want a different reputation than a business whose target audience is millennial social media marketers.

 

Content marketing helps establish the voice of your company which helps you attract and retain more customers who get along with your company culture.

 

Whole Foods is a great example of a business who uses their content marketing to establish a voice. Their Whole Story Blog focuses on healthy recipes and video cooking tips all containing words like healthy, better, benefits, and greens. This establishes their voice as a brand focused on providing meal prep inspiration targeted to people looking for healthy recipes with exciting ingredients — i.e. their ideal customers.

 

6. Content Marketing Helps Create Partnership Opportunities

Forming partnerships within your industry is a great way to get in front of a new audience that is likely interested in the product or service you are selling.

 

Content marketing opens up opportunities to engage with partners. You can reach out to influencers in your industry and invite them to exchange guest blog posts with you. This not only provides your audience with compelling content from a thought leader in your industry, but allows you to provide content to get in front of a new audience as well. And, circling back to reason #1, it will drive relevant traffic to your site… which is what you want.

 

Whether you’re exchanging blogs, social media shares, webinars, or other types of content, these types of partnerships help to expand your audience and potentially generate new clients.

 

Conclusion

Content marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to educate, entertain, and engage your audience. By establishing the voice of your brand and positioning you as an expert in your industry, it can help you connect to potential new clients. Creating a content marketing plan targeted towards your ideal client, with help you turn those prospects into new customers for your business.

Why Duplicate Content Is a Problem (& How to Fix It)

 In this article, I’ll review what we covered in the training and go into a little more detail so make sure your website isn’t suffering in the search results due to duplicate content issues.

Why Is Duplicate Content a Problem?

First, let’s address the question why is duplicate content a problem with SEO? Once you understand the problem from Google’s perspective, then I promise this will all make a whole heck of a lot more sense.

I’ll use an example that I’m sure we all can relate to.  Let’s say you just finished a book and you want to find a new one to read.  You send a quick email to your friends (or post to Facebook) asking them for suggestions and then you anxiously await their replies.

In this example, the best possible outcome is to get several different book titles that you can review and decide which one to read.  The worst possible outcome would be to get the same exact book title from all of your friends and upon reviewing that title decide it’s not for you.  In other words, you want to get a variety of different options in order to maximize the chances that you’ll find a book that fits your criteria.

This is similar to Google’s approach to their search results page.  Google knows if they give their searchers 10 webpages that are nearly identical, then that severely hurts their chances of providing the searcher with the information that fits her criteria.  How frustrating would it be to click on all 10 webpages in the search results only to find the same information?

To combat this problem, Google’s algorithm prevents duplicate pages from showing up for the same search phrases.  That means, if your page is nearly identical to another webpage online (either on your site or on another website), then only one of those pages will rank in Google.

How to Check for Duplicate Content

There are a lot of tools out there to check for duplicate content.

The two I recommend are:

1. Siteliner.com (free)
2. Copyscape.com (paid)

In both tools, you copy/paste your website URL into the search bar and click “Go” to run a duplicate content check.  In many cases, you will find some duplicate content so now let’s talk about how to fix it.

How to Fix Duplicate Content

At this point I know you’re hoping I’m going to give you the one, quick-and-easy, push-button solution. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy and the correct solution depends on your situation.  Here are some possible solutions to help you make the best choice:

1. 301 Redirect.  A 301 redirect would automatically forward people from one duplicate page to the other.  By 301 redirecting, you effectively eliminate the duplicate content because now there is only 1 page that can be accessed online. 
2. No Index.  You can add <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” /> to one of the duplicate pages to tell all search engines you do not want the page included in their index.  In this case, you’re not redirecting the traffic; You’re simply removing one of the pages from being considered in the search results. 
3. Rel=canonical. Finally, a third option is to use the rel=canonical tag on your duplicate pages.  This tag tells search engines which URL of your duplicate pages should be included in the search results.  The code to add is <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/the-url-you-want-to-rank-in-Google.html” />.

As you can see, all 3 options are fairly technical so I recommend talking with your web developer to see which one makes the most sense for your website.

Are There Other Issues Preventing You From Ranking In Google?

Duplicate content is just one of many issues that could be hurting your rankings in Google.  If you think there may be other problems with your website, then you need to conduct an SEO audit.