Driving Your Online Brand to Success With Content Strategies

As many know, search engine optimization (SEO) provides the most targeted traffic to your website. Prospects are in the research phase, and looking for more information before taking action. How you build your site determines what they do at that time.

But in order to get started, you need to create some kind of content strategy. Rather than simply providing a simplistic overview on a subject, aim to be a resource. keyword position checker online The more you put into it, the more you will get back. But also keep in mind you want to find a niche angle so that you might be able to see things pay off sooner. What’s meant by this is if you focus on a crowded space, then it will take that much longer to see value and possibly make you want to give up.

How do you judge these types of things? For a simple overview of competitive analysis, do a little preliminary keyword research (typically 2-4 words phrases, not single words) to see who shows in search results. Note how many results are available too. If its over 100k or in the millions, you’ll likely need professional assistance. Looking at the top 10 listings on page one, are there well know or established brands you have heard of in there? That can make it more challenging for you too, but doesn’t mean that its impossible.

When just starting out, look up a keyword tool (like the free one provided by Google) and make sure you are pursuing keyword phrases that actually have traffic. Be sure to look at “exact match” results. All too often I have come across situations where clients want to rank for a phrase, and we could go down that path and accomplish it easily, but it wouldn’t bring them many visitors. Pursuing the right phrases is critical.

It should be mentioned that while you want to invest in your website and create quality content, the links are a key element to ranking. So what you want to do once you’ve built your baseline is create articles or posts that you can provide for guest submissions to other sites or blogs in exchange for some kind of byline with your preferred anchor text linking back to your website, similar to what I’m doing by contributing this article. Keep in mind that there are varying values to where you submit. An example of this is a link on CNN is going to have a lot more value than one appearing on a free blog that has next to no links or authority. Search engines rank sites on a variety of things, and trust and authority would be a couple of them. With a site like CNN, NY Times, and similar having built credibility, a single link from them can be worth hundreds (or more) of what unknown blogs offer.

Wondering how to determine a site’s credibility? There is no perfect solution, but you can do a few things to make an educated guess. Check it’s rating at Alexa dot com to see if it’s in the top 100 thousand. It probably isn’t, so the top million is still good. You can use a page rank checker, or you can lookup the domain authority with a tool called Open Site Explorer – aim for 30 or higher.

To recap and simplify the above, create content to earn links, don’t forget to promote. And creating quality content on other sites are the smart way to get your feet wet with SEO, there is still lots of other things to do. But if you were to only focus on 2 things, these would be strong suggestions. Now the real challenge lies in creating that magnetic content that everyone falls in love with and wants to share and link to. A word of advice, using multiple images and including other forms of media like video embeds is advised as it will likely become more valued by the reader. There are no shortcuts to creating online business success. The best way of doing so is finding a problem and providing a solution, but if you’re trying to provide an existing product or service with a spin, you can get ahead by being a resource on relevant subject matter.

Lots of big brands have done it for decades, look how many companies have their own tips and guides available as free magazines. Car makers and home improvement centers come to mind. But the now economy makes self publishing easily attainable by anyone, which is your chance to appeal to a bigger audience to get your brand out there.

The above principles are provided a loose guideline to help those new to SEO to start off on the right path, and hopefully help position their online branding and marketing efforts for future success.