Content Strategy And SEO: How This Royal Couple Will Make You Succeed: A Review

Your website is a bridge between a person’s search and your Thank-You page. The goal is not to get as many people as possible on the bridge, it is to get the right people on the bridge. The right people cross the bridge because you have authority, and you earn authority by having link-worthy content.

In the CXL Institute course, Content Strategy and SEO for Lead Generation, Andy Crestodina addresses several areas of focus for powerful content strategy and search-engine optimization.

Document Content Mission

Andy defines content strategy as a plan to use content to reach a specific business goal. Content certainly consists of what we naturally think of: blogs and articles, social media material, press releases, whitepapers, videos and podcasts.

Content is also derived from internal sources: training materials, policies, project documents and proposals.

The key to content strategy is to give it a mission: “Our content is where (audience X) gets (information Y) that offers (benefit Z).”

Andy offers his own company’s (Orbit Media) content mission as an example: “Where digital marketers find practical advice on content, analytics and web design to get better results from their websites.”

Studies reveal that marketers who had a documented content mission that was understood and practiced were 3Xs more likely to succeed than those that did not have one or did not document one.

Content mission statements are easily converted into calls to action. In Andy’s example, the Orbit site posted “Practical advice on content, analytics and web design. Join over 16,000 people…”

Topics for content are often found in three sources:

1. Keyword searches
2. Q&A websites
3. Listening to your audience

The key to engaging, highly-linked content is to publish either strong opinion or original research. Research is derived from observation, aggregation and survey. In observation, you pick a data set and deep-dive into data on that particular set. In aggregation, you are combining data from existing sources, and to survey involves mass outreach and analysis. 

The most potent strategy is to find the missing statistic in your industry and produce original research around it. As Andy asks, “What do people in our industry often say but rarely support?” For instance, someone might say, “The average blog post takes three hours to produce.” But is that true? Be the one to do the research and provide the real statistic.

Content format is diverse:

1. Text - articles, guides or ebooks.
2. Images - infographics, diagrams, memes
3. Video - how to, explainers, memes
4. Collaborative - interviews, roundups

The law of content format is simple: “Movement is more powerful than images. Images are more powerful than text.”

Another law of content strategy is “An ally in content is an ally in promotion.” Collaboration builds links. There are 5 easy ways to collaborate:

• Quote and mention in an article (and let the person know they were quoted).
• Ask a person for a contributor quote
• Include a person in an expert roundup
• Ask a person for a guest post
• Conduct a deep-dive interview

I like what Andy says, “If you’re not making friends, you’re doing it wrong.”

Build Authority and Relevance

SEO is about durable and quality traffic. 

There is more to search than ranking. We aren’t trying to rank for a keyphrase that no one is searching for. Authority flows around the internet through links: one website to another, one web page to another, internal links on an individual domain and between links and pages on different domains. 

The best links are:

• From a site with high domain authority
• From a page with few outgoing links
• To a deeper interior page (not just your homepage)
• Those that include a relevant phrase in the anchor text

Relevance means that when a person searches, they find you. There are three types of search: informational, transactional and navigational. In other words, a search is research-related or buyer-related or brand-related. 

Keyphrases help lead people to you. Ideal keyphrases have a high-search volume with low competition while staying relevant to your business. Keyphrases need to be popular, in that people are actually searching for it, but also must be ones you have a chance of ranking for. Your own authority needs to be in the same range as other high ranking pages, otherwise you will lose the search to competition. Once you land on a keyphrase, you want to put it in the title, header and body of the text. 

Adopt Best Practices

Andy says, “Good stuff is amazing and bad stuff is useless.” 

Make the best page on the internet for the topic.

Use headlines that:

1. Make a promise
2. Trigger curiosity
3. Use numbers
4. Ask a question
5. Use power words
6. Sized to fit the purpose
7. Put the keyword first

In formatting content, use short paragraphs. Short gets read, long gets skimmed, very long gets skipped (Jason Fried, Basecamp). Add internal links. As Andy advised, you’re not done publishing a new post until you have linked to it from an older post. Go back and edit previously published works to link to the new but relevant post. 

Areas of formatting include:

• Headers and subheads
• Bullet lists and numbered lists
• Bolding and italics
• Internal links multiple images

Keep words less formal, short and direct. Write for 8th-graders. On average, about 20% of words are read during an average visit.

Long content gets linked more, ranks higher and generates more leads. The key is to cover the subject in detail and to answer all of the related questions. 

Images get more retweets in Twitter and more shares in Facebook. Images with captions are far more effective than those without. 

Visual cues are critical. Use arrows to direct attention and make sure that “eyes” in photos are looking where you want your viewers’ eyes to be. 

Engage In Collaboration

Organic traffic from search and social is getting more difficult. Influencer marketing is on the rise, and the use of influencers is a great strategy. They have the built-in audience you want to connect with. 

The goal of using influencers is to:

• Improve brand advocacy
• Reach new and highly targeted audience
• Improve brand sentiment
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase share of voice
• Support product launches
• Drive lead generation

There are several strategies for finding influencers:

1. Listen to them: subscribe to a blog, follow on social
2. Engage with them: share their content, favorite their tweets, like their posts, comment on their content
3. Connect with them: Use social media, meet them at an event or ask a connection for an introduction.
4. Collaborate with them: Ask for a contributor quote, include them in an expert roundup or conduct an interview.
5. Befriend them: Build a relationship through calls, meetings or shared groups.

Andy reminds us, “When you say it, it’s marketing. When they say it, it’s social proof.”

After aligning yourself with an influencer, follow up with a friendly pitch. Utilize guest blogging, collaborate with a potential prospect or partner, and use content as a networking tool. Identify prospects in your sales line and write for them. 

Be Efficient

Effective content strategy and SEO must be efficient in process and production. Andy teaches on several keys:

1. Turn email into high ranking content. You are answering questions in email all the time; it is a source of great content. Get into the practice of including details in your email responses, and exceed a person’s expectation. As Andy says, “Never waste a good conversation by having it in private.”
2. Use a master content template
3. Convert internal documents into content
4. Update existing content and repurpose them for rankings and traffic. Brian Dean with Backlinko says, “If all of my content is up to-date and ranking where I think it should be, I’ll write something new. If not, I’ll update and launch an old post.”
5. Honor sleep, nutrition and exercise.
6. Repurpose previous content.

Content Strategy was one of my favorite courses with CXL Institute. I found the information valuable and easy to digest. I made immediate adjustments to my own practices. Combined with the CXL Institute course on Influencer Marketing, I have implemented collaboration as a key strategy for the companies I serve. 

As a creator, I can easily forget that the value of what I produce is found in more than the content itself. Content requires the hard work of marketing, and the focus of a mission worth my all.