“It’s not enough. Sorry, it’s just not enough.”
This is a quote from a video by SEOmoz – a top SEO blog. The 10 minute video would not embed well, but you can watch it here.
It’s a true commentary that speaks to the fact that being relevant for search engines now demands much more than being good – you have to be really good.
If you take this to heart, you will get better at optimizing your online marketing for the search engines and your community. It’s essential to please both if you expect to accomplish your business objectives.
Depending upon your level of competency with SEO, you may wish to give the 12-minute video above a look.
My suggestion before doing that is to keep reading for a simple explanation for small business folks like you and me.
Focus on Creating an Interesting Experience
You have to engage and take your audience on a delightful ride that they don’t want to end.
Google measures this by what is known as the bounce rate. When a visitor to your site only hangs around to read the page that they were directed to, Google gives that visit a score of 1.0 for the one page they engaged with.
Your goal is to be helpful, nice, humorous, and entertaining to encourage your audience to go deeper into your site to experience more.
Approach this as you would any other human experience. For example, as a professional speaker, I know I have to do more than just educate my audience or they will literally walk out of the room. I also have to inspire them, inject a little humor here and there, and more.
You have to do the same with your content marketing or your audience will walk off of your site. You have to find ways to keep things interesting.
How do you do this? Unless you are a humorist, the solution is as simple as an interesting image or video. You don’t have to be over the top – just interesting.
Make Promises and Deliver on Them
You make all kinds of promises with your online content, starting with your headline. If you use catchy headlines that are not backed up by solid content, you lose big time. If your visitor was a first timer, they may never come back.
Provided the initial comments on your content deliver on the headline, you have to keep your reader engaged. For example, use sub-headings and bold key phrases to serve the needs of the scanners.
For those that want to go deeper, you need to link to relevant content within your site. I’ve found that a list format is a great way to do this because one can pick and choose from that list. Make it a solid and manageable list of a half-dozen links or so.
Each one of those links starts the promise cycle all over again. If you are continuously creating quality content, this is easily done. You’ll have plenty of evergreen content to link to.
Design Your Content to Be Attractive
One of the reasons I moved this site from TypePad to WordPress was to have a cleaner and more visually appealing appearance. Surprise! Because this matters to your audience, it matters to Google.
While pop-up boxes and pulsating banner ads may garner attention, for the most part we find them to be annoying – and we bounce.
People make instant decisions for numberless reasons. While the design of your site shouldn’t matter if the content is great, it does – especially for those of us that have an eye for design.
What are some other ways to be attractive? Have you noticed I’ve broken the text of this article into short paragraphs of as little as one sentence. This is attractive because it makes the content easier to consume. There’s nothing attractive about clutter.
What else is attractive? Consistency, variety, interaction, personalization, and responsiveness.
What else? Opening links in a new window so your visitor can easily find their way back to your site. In other words, just about anything that makes the experience easier, interesting, and highly productive.
You can learn more from these links to lists of resources on Online Marketing and Content Marketing.
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Until tomorrow, Jeff
