Content Marketing

White Papers 101: Why to Write Them, How to Make Them Sing

by SEO Savvy June 12th, 2014

A strong white paper can serve as the cornerstone to your overall content marketing plan, but there’s a significant difference between a super-sized blog post and a bona fide white paper. To do it right, it’s important to focus on well written technical content so that your white paper can act as a foundation of related content, and get your brand the recognition and credibility you’re looking for.

 The Basics: What a White Paper Is, and What It Isn’t

Typically somewhere between 6-8 pages long, a white paper is a succinct piece of content that offers plenty of evidence, facts, and statistics on a particular aspect of your industry. Your white paper should be well organized, and include an engaging introduction, background information on the subject, individual sections for various elements and supporting information, and a clear conclusion that summarizes all of the important information.

Shoot for writing one page for the background, one page for each of the information sections, and a half of a page each for your introduction and conclusion. If you find yourself with more than six informational sections, you may want to break your ideas up into two separate white papers in order to keep your ideas focused and your readers attentive.

One important thing to keep in mind is that a white paper is not a sales pitch. Search Engine Land emphasizes the importance of taking the “high road” when crafting white papers. In other words, focus on creating high-quality, shareable content that positions you as a knowledgeable expert in the field. Oftentimes, content marketing is merely thinly veiled sales copy. Work to provide clear, unbiased information, and your potential customers will appreciate the value your white paper provides to their search.

Why Bother With White Papers?

A solid white paper requires in-depth industry knowledge that has been crafted into well-written, carefully proofread copy, in order to help people make educated decisions. The process can take some time, especially if you choose to compose a white paper in-house. So why bother spending hours on a piece of your content marketing plan that doesn’t explicitly sell your product or service?

Because they work. As noted by Smart Bug Media, several recent studies revealed the role that white papers play in sales conversion. In one study, 83% of those surveyed said that reading a white paper had significant influence in their decision to make a particular technology purchase. In other words, the majority of those who read white papers are utilizing this information when shopping,

In addition, a strong white paper can serve as a powerful piece of “evergreen” content, or content that has lasting relevancy. You can link to your white paper in blogs, email newsletters, even landing pages. Potential customers will appreciate your company’s focus on providing thorough information, and will see you as a brand worth doing business with.

While blogs and social media updates are essential pieces of any stellar content marketing plan, the longer length of a white paper allows you to share valuable information in a unique format that can benefit your brand for years to come.

5 Ways to Write For Your Audience

by SEO Savvy June 10th, 2014

Humans resonate with, respond to, and act based on the emotions they feel. When someone visits your website, you’ll want them to be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative:

• Do I feel a connection to this business?
• Do I see or hear another person there?
• Do I connect with the user experience?
• Do I know, at first glance, that my needs are being met?

Visitors make quick decisions as to whether to stay on the site, or to continue through their search results. Your website’s look and feel should offer them what they want in an easy-to-navigate and attractive package. Google knows this, and has evolved to the point where they can start to determine whether the content has been written for a person, or simply to rank high by an algorithm’s standards.

How do you make your website both Google AND user-friendly? Here are five tips to create content that your audience connects with, and that is optimized for search.

1. Use their language

If you look at keyword research, you’ll notice that the phrases people type in search engines often sound unnatural. Instead of attempting to use this exact language in your content in order to rank high for those searches, use them as guidelines. These are the topics people are searching for, and you should write your content as if you were sitting across a coffee table chatting with your customer face-to-face. In other words: don’t stuff or inject a keyword or phrase if it doesn’t seem natural.

2. Be conversational

In that same vein, make your website conversational and easy to read. People buy from other people, not from machines. Start the conversation naturally on your website to make people want to click further and learn more about what you do. As a bonus, when they click further, search engines will notice and will reward you for keeping the interest of your visitors. Just as there is a natural progression from one topic to another in your verbal conversations, so should there be from one blog post to another on your website.

3. Solve your customer’s problem

This is Sales 101. People don’t like to be sold to, but they love to find out how they can work with people like you to solve a problem. Again, starting a conversation will show how you can be helpful, and why you should be in their life. They’ll be more likely to buy from you when they can visualize how you’ll make their life better. Offer solutions by giving examples they can relate to, and by connecting with your customers.

4. Answer questions

As any skilled salesperson will tell you, questions are just objections to buying. On your website, you can’t be there to answer their objections in the same way you can be in person. In addition to an FAQ, you can use your content to answer questions you may anticipate your audience asking. Should industry changes arise, or important news occur, this is something you’ll want to address. An example might be if you were an internet security company, you would address the recent Heartbleed bug with a post that gives your users answers regarding what Heartbleed is, what they should do to protect their information, and how you can help them.

5. Show a little personality

When writing, let your personality shine through in your first draft, and then go back through and edit out any fluff. Stop worrying about whether that unnatural keyword is incorporated into your heading, sub-heading, and copy. Instead, write with spunk and give your audience something enjoyable to read. Think about what you would want to read if you were searching for information on the subject, and have someone else look at it to make sure that there aren’t any gaps in your information. Speak freely and naturally, and your readers will connect with you on a personal level.

The best way to write for both your audience and search engines is to ignore that algorithms and machines exist. Keep your content on point with a message your audience wants to hear, and search traffic will naturally follow.

How to Extract More Value from Your Old Content

by SEO Savvy June 3rd, 2014

If you have been keeping up with your company blog for a period of time, then you have a rich marketing resource that can be tapped into. Your existing content can be repurposed and reshared in a number of ways, in order to extend its value. Learn how to get more out of old content to educate web surfers and bring in traffic and possible customers to your site.

Update Old Posts

Take a look at your old blog posts. What has changed in your industry since you posted last on a specific topic? For instance, there are new updates to Google’s algorithm frequently. If you have a post created in 2013 that discusses the evolution of all of Google’s major updates up through Hummingbird, you’ll want to create a new post with bullet points regarding the new Panda 4.0, and include a link to your in-depth post. You’ll be giving new readers exposure to old posts, which is good for SEO, as search engines show a preference for frequently updated websites.

Create Compilation Posts

Have you written several posts on a specific topic? Write a compilation post that picks the best parts of those other posts and links to each of them. This can give your visitors a place to find all the information they want in one place, and it’s a fast and easy way to bring in more readers.

To remind you to refresh this content and to give regular readers something to look forward to, do a “Best of” post on a regular basis. Blogs that are updated numerous times a day could do this as often as once a week, in the form of a Friday Flashback post. Blogs that are updated less often could have an “In Case You Missed It” post maybe once a month.

Follow the Trends

Pay attention to trending topics on Twitter, and create an RSS feed for your industry, as well as news in general. If you’re following the latest happenings, you may find that you have a piece of content in your archives that could be of use to others who are following the tweets on that trend.

For example, when the Heartbleed Bug hit, people were scrambling to figure out what it was, and what they needed to do to stop it. By directing them to a post you have written on internet safety, you’re getting more views for old content that may have been buried by new posts. Be sure to be tactful in your dialogue on message boards or hashtag threads; No one wants content shoved down their throat. Simply engage and recommend.

Write and Distribute EBooks

Have you written reams of content on specific topics relevant to your industry? It likely won’t take much work to organize this content into an eBook. Sometimes all that is needed is an introduction, conclusion and a table of contents. Enlisting those who’ve been through the process before to format the text can produce professional results quite affordably.

EBooks can be given away on your site in exchange for email sign ups. Or, if you are in a position to add new, exclusive content, they can even be used to create additional streams of revenue.

Present Information in Fresh Ways with Infographics

Does your blog feature any research and data-heavy posts? These are perfect to turn into infographics. This form of content is quick and easy to read and packs in visual appeal. People love to share them, which can bring in links to your site. Be sure to watermark your infographic and, if possible, provide embeddable versions, as well as linking out to the old content within the post.

The content on your site can be one of your strongest marketing assets. By using and reusing this information, you can provide more value to your viewers while getting the best exposure for your marketing dollar.

Semantic Search – Why This is the Evolution of SEO

by Mark Hawks April 10th, 2014

With recent changes to Google’s search algorithm (Panda, Penguin and now Hummingbird), the focus of SEO as we know it has changed drastically. What worked in keyword optimization and link building a few years ago could leave you in the penalty box today. However, there are certain changes, like semantic search, that have forced the traditional view of SEO to evolve to a more holistic and strategic approach. Those who combine content marketing, SEO and social influence to drive web traffic are finding search success on a broader scale.

What is Semantic Search?

Semantic search is a principle that strives to improve accuracy for search engine users. Essentially, it better understands the intent behind the words searched for—instead of just processing a string of search terms. At its best, semantic search can help users find the best website to answer a question or inquiry—even if it does not contain the actual words that the user searches. At its worst, it can be inaccurate even for websites that are well put together—but simply not set up well to work with the semantic search algorithms.

Moz.com published a piece on semantic SEO. In this article, industry expert Tamas Doszkocs defines semantic search as, “a search or a question or an action that produces meaningful results, even when the retrieved items contain none of the query terms, or the search involves no query text at all.”

What is Semantic SEO?

Semantic SEO is an evolution of traditional SEO. For many web designers and content marketers, semantic SEO should theoretically occur naturally. Because of the very idea of semantic search, web pages that do a good job of providing information about a subject to visitors will naturally perform in semantic search because search engines are becoming smarter. Pair this with traditional SEO techniques like building a variety of backlinks and social media influence, and a page can perform well in keyword focused search and in related search results. Making use of structured data markup on a page can be a big help. Adjusting, optimizing and testing page layout can go a long way in search performance. Pages that are well organized and make it easier to identify information are, of course, easier for search engines to index.

How Can Semantic SEO Techniques Improve Your Results?

If you choose to utilize SEO to boost search results in semantic search, what are you trying to achieve? The answer may seem obvious: To improve your keyword search engine rankings. But is that really it? Ultimately, you are not simply optimizing for keyword rankings in search engine results—you want to drive traffic for related phrases in search engine results, for searches that will drive quality, action-oriented visitors to your page. Keeping this in mind, semantic search is about widening the focus of your content, and making some simple organizational layout and markup adjustments. Combine that with some traditional SEO techniques to bring in relevant traffic and visitors that engage with your content, website and brand.

Search engine algorithms constantly change and evolve each and every year. Semantic search has been talked about for many years; its adaptation, permeation and growth are certainly going to continue, as search engine algorithms get smarter. Naturally, SEO has to evolve to incorporate a broader strategic content marketing strategy as well.