Cornwall SEO

Content Marketing Blog

What are the foundations of content marketing?

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Content marketing and what it is and what it isn’t.

  • Blogging is not content marketing.
  • Tweeting is not content marketing.
  • Facebook advertising is not content marketing.

Of course the tools above could be what you use to implement content marketing, they are still only tools.

Content marketing has a problem, if everyone follows the same strategy, using the same tools, creating the same content, connecting with the same followers then you will most likely fail.

It’s not that you simply “do” content marketing. But that you must do it better than your competitor.

Not only that, but you must persuade the audience you are communicating with that your content is worthy of their time and therefore their tweet, link, facebook like, brand connection…etc.

Which highlights the two foundations of content marketing.

Communication and persuasion.

  1. You must communicate the message, clearly and effectively. You need to transport your message into the brain of the person you are communicating with. If this does not happen, you have failed.
  2. You must persuade the person you are communicating with to perform a specific form of action which will meet the objectives of the project. If you do not manage to persuade the minimum amount of people. You have failed.

Everything else, blogging, tweeting, networking…etc is an enabler to allow communication and persuasion to work.

This is what the foundational elements of content marketing are, communication and persuasion.

So when you try to improve your content marketing, don’t just focus on the using the tools, focus on the actual things that make up content marketing.

It is by improving your communication and persuasion skills, and then picking the tool for the job, that you get good at content marketing.

12 Free Tools to help increase your traffic and SEO

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12 Free SEO tools

We are in the best of times when it comes to SEO tools. So many tools now exist for any SEO problem which will help build your online traffic to your website.

The great thing about all this competition from makers of SEO tools, is that a lot of tools are offered free as a form of content marketing.

The bad thing about this is that it creates lots of noise, right now there are so many offers it takes a lot of time to figure out which are the best ones for you.

So we are going to show you some of the ones we like and use. Whilst some are not strictly SEO tools they do ultimately help you with your SEO.

1. Keywordtool.io

keywordtool.io

Keyword tool

Quick, clean keyword inspiration and data dump.

It’s quick and you can download to CSV with the free tool, which can give you up to 750 keyword ideas. A quick search for “guitars” threw up keywords that are missed by Google.

Keyword tool

I see this as being additional to the Google keyword tool and helps get a wider coverage. Getting your edge over you competitors keywords can really help, so worth trying out something new.

The paid version will give you more keywords, plus search volume etc…

Also: Check out keyworddiscovery.co.uk

 

2. Google Analytics

analytics.google.com

 

Analytics

It may be an obvious one to the seasoned SEO, but newer students of SEO may not realise this is still the best, free package available. The UI is sometimes confusing to new users due to feature bloat. But once mastered there is no better free tool out there for digging into your data.

Also: Another free alternative that has the benefit of being easy to use is Clicky, which is good to use if you don’t want your data gobbled up by Google.

 

3. Screaming Frog Spider

screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider

screaming frog

The free version of the Screaming Frog spider tool does a great job at crawling your website revealing information on webpages, links, images and other useful data.

It does have a paid option to crawl more than 500 links and lots of other features.

Also: Xenu which has been around for a long time and I still use from time to time.

 

4. Google Websmaster Tools

 

Google
It is now called Google Search Console, but a lot of those who have years of experience still call it by it’s original name.
New users sometimes don’t realise the fantastic free, web tools that both offer. Both allow crucial analysis to take place on the health of your website, alongside with important, error alert tools. These tools are essential for any SEO toolbag.
Also: Bing Webmaster Tools

 

5. Open Site Explorer from Moz.com

Moz seo tollbar
SEO toolbars are great for giving you quick, visual information for the website you currently have in your browser. This one from Moz.com is particularly efficient and getting you the important data you need quickly and without fuss.
It has some little extras like a link highlighter which you can set to display “dofollow” links in a different colour to “follow links”.
Also: SEOQuake  another free SEO tollbar, helping you build seo audits on the fly.

 

6. Google trends

Google trends
Knowing what’s hot and cold with regard to specific keywords can really boost your web traffic. Spot a hot new keyword  and you can catch the wave just right. Google trends is an excellent addition to your keyword, toolbox. You should have a trend spotting system in place which allows you to update your content output in real time.
As with all tools in this list it’s free, but it’s also quick, clean and gives you the ability to drill down into the detail of the keyword, with comparisons over time ranges.
Also: buzzsumo.com I love this tool, it gives you limited functionality for free, but even this can give you an edge. Seriously look at going the paid route if you can afford it and you constantly need to be on top of social and who is promoting what content.

 

7.  Similar Web

Sneak a peak at a websites statistics without them knowing
Similar web
I enjoy performing competitive analysis, it’s crucial to check how your website is doing compared to its competition.
Similarweb, allows you to access a number of types of data on competitor websites. I find it best use your own website as a control site to give you a fixed, data point. You do need to hand over your mobile number for verification, but it really is worth it. The tool givesyou a ton of info on web traffic, traffic sources, web content etc…
It’s impossible for a tool such as this to be 100% accurate, but this is a very good attempt.
Also: Ahrefs a very user friendly backlink, keyword etc… seo tool. Its free version can give you lots of great data and is worth having.

 

8. Check your rank for free

Rank chacker
Fast, clean and free tool to quickly check where a keyword ranks. To get serious and track 1000’s of keywords, look at a paid for tool, but as a free one this does the job.
You can compare keyword rankings with another sites, geo-target the results…etc.
It wins in simplicity by having nothing to get in the way of your task. Other tools fail because they add too many features and force you to invest time to think what to do next.
When all you want to do is check where a keyword ranks on a specific website.
Also: SEMRush.com, although this is similar to Ahrefs, albeit with a busier user interface. It does have a great keyword ranking tool, which you can access for free. The paid version is also very good.

 

9. Create an XML Sitemap

xml
Your website absolutely needs a site map, it can be uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools and help get your content ranked.
Does the job well, but also check out SEO wordpress plugin, by Yoast. It automatically creates a sitemap for you, plus a lot of other things for free.

 

10. Google mobile speed test

Google mobile
Make sure your site is fast on mobile with Google PageSpeed Insights.
Google has a free, mobile friendly test to check out your websites speed. Part of a great user experience is a fast website, and Google is spending  a lot of time and money motivating website owners to make their sites faster and mobile friendly. Back in 2010, Google said the speed of a website would be a factor in web ranking.
For a more in-depth study on website speed and Google rankings, check out the Moz.com article.
Also: seoptimer.com not only checks speed, but a lot of other useful metrics.

 

11. Robots text generator

A robot .txt file will allow you to tell search bots which page to go to and which to ignore. Usually I create them by hand but sometimes it’s great to have a tool that will do the boring bits for you. The Internet Ninja Tool, from Jim Boykin’s company also allows you to do A/B testing to see how different Robots handle your site.

 

12 Optimise your images

Smush
As we all know website load speed in vital for user experience and ranking in Google. Optimising your images to load as fast as they can is an easy win and WP-Smushit is an excellent tool to crunch your images is using WordPress.
 Also: tinypng.com
tinypng
 I hoped you like my list of free, SEO tools.
If you have any suggestions of other tools, please leave them in the comments below.

The Secret to ranking a website

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Sapiens seo

I am currently reading, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harariand quite early on he gives us his take on how the Homosapien became the dominant species on the Planet Earth.

It struck me that this reason is the same reason people get websites to rank.

Which is.

“The ability of getting vast numbers of humans to cooperate using the power of stories”.

Stories in the context of religion, nations, tribes, companies. All exist because we imagine them and we do it in cooperation with each other.

To rank a website you need other people to hold a story in their head. That story will help in them giving your website a link, a retweet, a Facebook like or whatever reaction you need.

To create a story that sticks, you need people to believe in it, and believe and trust in the messenger.

We may think it’s all about seo, social media, internet and shiny technology. But really the roots of how to rank a websites are buried deep within our human psyche and why about 70,000 years ago we became the dominant species on our planet.

You don’t just “do” content marketing, you use the very technique that makes us Human.

Why Quality Content does not get it

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Emotional content

People share content, love content, devour content because of the emotional reaction they get from it. It’s why polished, visually correct fails all the time. The key to content that works is when it crawls right down inside the brain and awakens something primeval.

I’m going to be writing more on this subject and how to use empathic focus when creating content for marketing.

How to reboot your blog after a long break

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Blogging works well when done regularly, however it’s not always easy to keep up the momentum.

As a tool in the online marketing tool box, blogging is still very useful. Not as sexy and trendy as other techniques, but it can really help your SEO, social media and content objectives.

How do you keep up the momentum and blog regularly?

It’s a question on my mind currently as I have taken about a ten month break from regular blogging. I simply lost the taste for it and it no longer did what I wanted it to achieve.

I forgot some of the basic rules of blogging and blogged my way over a cliff.

The idea of tapping out another blog on the keyboard filled me with a loathing and I always found something more interesting to spend my time on.

Looking back over what worked and what did not I learned a few things about my own style and about what does and doesn’t work. We all have a style and it’s important you give room for it as it helps to distinguish you from your competitors.

There are a numbers mistakes I have made and I think they are common as I have seen many other bloggers do them. (I’ve made a lot more than these, but we have to start somewhere)

  • When I write I over think, simplicity is the key in blogging. Complex concepts communicated simply and without fuss
  • I expect others to find things interesting just because I do (no one wants to hear about the Second Punic War)
  • Readers of this blog need solutions quickly and are time poor and I sometimes waffle, not getting to the point quick enough
  • I forget that lessons need to be retaught and just because I wrote about a topic once, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be revisited from a different angle
  • Not everyone has my humour, or my politics or my love of etymology
  • Being useful is far more important than being seen as clever

Most of my failings come from a writers arrogance, I word it like that because it sounds better than “my arrogance”. But before I beat myself up too much, I think it’s quite common when you spend a lot of time studying and working hard in one sector to start to reshape your thinking about that sector.

It’s hard to work in a field for a long time and then realise and admit that you have headed off the path and into the wilderness.

it’s important for me to share, because it may have happened to you and it resonates. Or it may be happening to you right now and it can help you rekindle the fire before the dying embers go cold.

Hopefully you realise everyone goes through this and withe a little help you can keep going, so as able to reach your objective.

The golden time is when coming fresh at a subject.

There are no places not to discover, no rock which you think is not turning over and so you discover more and delight more. This fuels the desire to learn even more and to hone your craft as a blogger.

This post may well be over thinking it, although I like to call it, but hopefully I have simplified the process enough for it to engage and empathise with you the reader and blogger.

Empathy is the new black

Empathy is something I keep reading about. It is crucial in getting your message across and convincing people your words are something worth giving time for. It may be my past blog posts did not empathise enough.

I actually took an empathy test and scored quite low, although not as low as some as my other male friends. And so I now make an overt effort to show empathy in my blogging. Not in some wishy washy, overly emotional way. But in a way that shows I care about the problems of the readers of this blog and  that I am prepared to put the sack of grey mush that resides in my cranial cavity to the task.

The reality strikes me that I am hear to help you solve your problem, and not to create a blog that is for me and my own ego.

The aim is to solve problems around online marketing issues, specifically those of an SEO, social media and content nature.

Now we are here, where do we go?

For me it’s about listening to people and finding problems and attempting to solve them.
Think about doing something similar in your own sector, especially giving thought to how empathy can be integrated into your blogging as most blog posts (mine included) lack this important ingredient.
Showing expertise is as simple as showing empathy, sharing knowledge and helping solve problems that your audience want help with.

My next few blog posts will be covering this area. Come back if you find this stuff interesting.