Did you know there is a way to reach your local audience without paid advertising and increase your search results? To do it right you need to do the following ten items to achieve success.
Having a strategy and plan that will make you an expert and a leader in your field will be key to all of this. You cannot just throw stuff up and gain results. It would be nice but if it were that easy everyone would do it and this wouldn’t work. When you first start out and you have no analytics to go by you might have to use a best guess method so that you can start figuring out what your audience is wanting. Just keep in mind “you are not your customer”.
With this information we will be making the magical “assumption” that you have been up and running for a while and have gathered insights from what you’ve been posting. If you haven’t used this information be cognizant that you should be modifying it as you learn more about your audience.
Even with this information already gathered don’t just stick to the information gathered. You need to adjust your information continually as your audience’s needs are changing and you need to be agile to adapt to their current needs.
The first item you need to do is define your audience and what you will be writing about. This involves the following:
- What is your customer looking for (what is the problem they are trying to solve)?
- What reading level are they `at (A reading level for 7th and 9th grade is often ideal to start unless you are doing a technical article)
- What is the format that works best for them (blog articles like this, video, pod cast, ads, etc.)?
- Language they are expecting (technical, sales, etc.)
Think about the search engines as you write but more important than that is think of your audience. The search engines should only be 1% of your thought process as you are writing. You want to cover the core aspects of what you believe people will be looking for on the search engines but that is it. Don’t over think this. You will achieve success through consistently writing and showing your expertise. The remaining needs be targeted for your audience and answering the need they are currently addressing. By doing this you stand a better chance of rising in the search engines.
As you are writing you need to figure out who you are as well. You need to have your tone of voice, your culture (yes even if you are just one individual you have a culture!), and how often you will be providing this valuable information. You then need to create a schedule and not waiver from it. This is the key to your organic search engine success. By being consistent, helping your audience, and
Now that you’ve written your article you need to get it out there. To do this you want to post and share it on social media (yes, I know that’s not the search engines, but you are marketing and need to get the word out). You also want to notify both Google and Bing of your new page you’ve created and hit any industry specific sites that allow sharing of information. If you have a newsletter you need to include a link to your article there as well.
