If you ask 100 different SEO experts how to write an SEO-friendly article, you will probably get 100 different answers.
The topic of SEO is extremely broad and changes with every Google update.
This makes it difficult to determine whether an expert is up to date or still advocates methods that have only worked in the past.
So, how do you write an SEO-friendly article?
The best way to make an article SEO-friendly is quite simple. So read on, and let’s dive into what you need to know.
Add value
To understand how to write the best SEO-friendly article, it’s worth considering Google’s mindset. What does Google want to achieve?
The answer is simple: Google wants to serve its users by linking them to the highest quality, most relevant content.
Any signal you send to Google to show that your high-quality and relevant content will improve your SEO. The only question is how you do it.
One example is to include links to other useful resources relevant to your site’s content. This shows Google that you’re interested in providing your readers with as much information as possible, associates you with high-quality sites, and provides references to back up your claims (which suggests accuracy).
But that shouldn’t mean every article needs at least two outbound links. This is completely off-topic because it creates a predictable pattern on your page that looks like manipulation. Link out when relevant and useful, and don’t be cynical.
This is also why Google likes to see long content, over 800 words. While there are varying reports, the consensus is that the ideal content length for SEO is around 1,800 words, which increases your chances of being featured in News.
Keywords
It hurts, but some SEO companies still believe that a good SEO article is one in which the same keywords appear over and over again, which negatively impacts the reading experience. This is one of the quickest ways to get your content classified as spam, if not by Google, then by the human readers on your site.
Instead, keywords should be used very sparingly. A density of about 1-2% is recommended, but only if appropriate and fits the content naturally. You should write longer content because there is more room for repetitive keywords in longer posts.
It is also important to know that synonyms and related terms are just as important, if not more so. Try to write around the topic and incorporate related terms naturally into your content. You can expect this to play an increasingly important role in the future. If you want to know how to find keywords that are easy to rank for, check here.
Readability
Finally, you should break up your content and use lots of headings. Use large fonts and a narrative with a user-friendly structure. This helps to keep visitors on your pages longer, and that’s one of the other things Google looks for when evaluating content.
If the average time spent on a page is higher, Google tends to send more visitors because your content appears useful. This means that when you write articles for real users, you also write articles for Google bots.
So keep your quality and readability high, and Google will reward you with lots of traffic!
As you can see, writing SEO-friendly articles isn’t that hard. What are your experiences? Anything you would add? I’d love to hear from you, so leave a comment below 🙂
Are you launching a new online product and need ideas for a landing page?
Landing pages are among the most effective content marketing tools for bloggers, online businesses, and entrepreneurs.
They are a separate page on your site that guides visitors to a new product, course, or subscription. As such, they need to be designed to be attractive and convert.
Read on to discover the basic elements of a good landing page that visitors can’t ignore.
Check out these five landing page ideas
A landing page built from scratch is either a success or a failure. A good landing page will give you the results you’re hoping for. If not, you may have missed an important segment.
Below are the five things every landing page should have, from top to bottom.
1. A strong, memorable headline
The headline is the first thing visitors see when they visit your page.
Take some time to think about the headline and subheadline and what you want to achieve with them. Brainstorm until you find the right headline.
2. Make the landing page easy to read and navigate
Most landing pages with the highest conversion rate are well-structured and organized. This is important for the user experience and, ultimately, for the conversion rate.
For example, suppose you are selling an online course. In that case, you should create a clear landing page with your offer, price, an explainer video, benefits, testimonials from previous students, and a CTA.
3. Write a breakthrough text
Many landing pages look like spam websites, with bright colors and even brighter fonts, exclamation points, and too much text.
You don’t need to promise miracles to convert your visitors. A simple but compelling landing page text will do all the work.
This is how you get people to trust you – if your offer delivers what it promises.
4. Add a value proposition
To create landing pages that convert, you need a clear value proposition. This is the part of the page where you highlight the benefits of your offer and how it will help your visitors when they become customers.
Ensure you know what your visitors want and that your offer gives them exactly that. Don’t talk about your business – focus entirely on the buyer.
5. Include a strong call to action (CTA)
Every good landing page needs to include a strong call to action.
What do you want visitors to do? Sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product, register for a webinar? Let them know by including a few CTA buttons on the page.
Many landing pages don’t include a CTA, but when used correctly, it can significantly increase your conversion rate.
Create a landing page that converts!
If you want to boost your online business or website, these landing
Imagine you build a successful blog. Your blog gets a lot of visitors, and you can quit your job with the money you earn and work full-time on it.
Then Google comes up with a big update, and practically overnight, your blog is no longer displayed at the top of Google, and you only get a fraction of the visitors.
And with that, your earnings also plummet. This means your self-employment is at risk of ending before it has even begun.
What if you hadn’t relied on Google alone from the start but had also built up an email list?
Then, you could increase your visitors’ trust through meaningful email marketing (and thus your sales) and protect yourself from Google updates.
Incidentally, this does not only apply to Google updates. A social media profile can be banned, and advertising platforms can block the account.
That’s why email marketing should always be the basis for every online business.
Email marketing can help you promote products or new items and build customer relationships. Building an email list should be your most important task.
And email marketing is not that hard. In this article, I’ll show you how to build your email marketing in seven steps.
Step 1 – The Email Marketing Tool
The email marketing tool is the foundation of your email marketing campaign. You should be able to create newsletters and autoresponders with your email marketing tool. Of course, additional functions are always helpful.
There are many different tools with different prices. The email marketing tool I can highly recommend is Aweber. Aweber offers a range of different features and is easy to use.
There are also free tools, but I wouldn’t recommend them. They might be better for a start, but the other tools are better if you have a larger list. Then you have the huge hassle of changing your provider, so you better choose the right tool from the start.
Step 2 – The opt-in box tool
Of course, an email marketing tool isn’t enough on its own. People need a way to sign up for your email list, so you need some kind of opt-in box. You can create a landing page or place sign-up boxes on your website.
This is easier than it sounds. You must create an opt-in box in your email marketing tool and insert the corresponding code into a text widget in WordPress. Now, you have an opt-in box where people can sign up.
Alternatively, you can, of course, create a landing page. Here, you can use either ClickFunnels or Systems.IO.
Step 3 – The bait
No one gives away their email address for free, so you have to make them an offer for which they are willing to give you their email address. This is called a “freebie.”
Your free offer can be
a PDF report
a coupon
a case study
or anything else your customer will give their email address for.
Think about your target audience’s biggest concerns and how you could easily solve them.
Step 4 – The presentation
It doesn’t matter whether you have a landing page or a registration box on your blog. Just having a small reference to your newsletter is not enough.
As mentioned earlier, you can use your email marketing tools to create sign-up boxes and place them on the right-hand side of your blog.
It is important that you present your free offer here. A compelling headline, perhaps the product cover, and a call to action are the right ingredients.
Step 5 – The first emails
When you collect email addresses, you should not stop there. With the help of autoresponders, you can send automated follow-up emails. For example, you can send them your most-read articles that might be helpful to them.
I would suggest sending them about seven emails in two weeks. This isn’t too much to annoy them with you, but it’s enough to build a relationship.
Step 6 – Traffic
The best freebies and emails are nothing without leads. And you can’t get leads without traffic. Traffic should be your top priority when building an email list.
There are many different traffic sources, but you can distinguish between organic and paid traffic. Organic traffic sources are, for example, SEO or social media. Paid traffic can be found via Facebook Ads or Google Ads. Of course, you should always get high-quality traffic interested in your freebie.
Step 7 – Sustainability
To ensure your readers don’t forget you, you must send a newsletter regularly.
Newsletters are not the same as autoresponders because newsletters are always sent at a specific time, regardless of the registration date.
These can then be based on current topics, for example (“Are you also a World Cup fan?”)
Even if you think it’s too much work for this small number of leads. But the first leads can also be your best leads 🙂
Conclusion
If you haven’t started email marketing yet, stop what you’re doing and start today! Email marketing can make the difference between making small and big money.
Above all, it insulates you from external factors and brings more security to your business.
Now I want to hear from you!
Do you use email marketing? Is it missing a step, or is it too many? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment below 🙂
To successfully repurpose your content, you need to plan it carefully when writing it. If you’re writing a long blog post, break it into different sections to make the information easy to digest.
You can then repurpose these sections in different formats. This way, it’s easier since you don’t have to do as much editing to get your content into a different format.
Here are the methods you can use to repurpose content the right way:
1. Start with an outline
Whether your original content is in blog or video format, you need to write down the flow of your content. You can also just improvise, but that will result in a disorganized mess.
Creating an outline will save you time by helping you identify the points you need to cover in your content and will reduce the time you spend editing and restructuring your work.
Use headings and subheadings in your outline. As you write down the points you want to cover under each heading, write down your ideas for how to reuse each section elsewhere.
With this system, you kill two birds with one stone—you plan your original content and how you can reuse it elsewhere in one sitting.
2. Have a specific target audience in mind for each piece of repurposed content
This point is very important because if you don’t plan for who should see your repurposed content, you won’t be able to provide the content that will appeal to them.
Knowing your target audience is crucial for any business’s success, and it’s no different when repurposing content.
Before you reuse your content, you should look around and find out what kind of content your target audience usually likes, e.g., on YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, and so on.
If you target middle-aged women in your niche, you should create videos for that audience. This makes you personable because even if they have never heard of you or visited your website, your message will resonate, and they will most likely follow you.
If you don’t know who your audience is, you might as well be groping in the dark. You might get lucky and succeed, but it’s usually the well-thought-out content made specifically for a particular group of people that succeeds.
3. Use your brand’s identity in your repurposed content.
You repurpose content because you want your brand to be seen in many different places. How can you accomplish that if you don’t use your brand’s logo, colors, or fonts?
As we’ve discussed in previous chapters, branding is essential to a business’s success. It helps you build credibility and appear trustworthy.
People must recognize your content on many different channels, so make it easy for them.
4. Reuse your content in any of these formats
This list is not exhaustive, but these formats should get you off to a good start and allow you to increase your reach as quickly as possible. Some may not be a good fit for your niche, so you’ll need to do your research.
Ebooks
You can easily create an eBook if you have a series of blog posts or articles on the same topic. Don’t just copy and paste the posts. You still need to go over the eBook with a fine-toothed comb to make sure the content flows well.
You can then use it as a lead magnet or a content upgrade for your blog. A high-quality eBook can position you as an authority in your niche and help you get more leads and sales from subscribers old and new.
Infographics
The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true. An infographic can contain information equivalent to a blog post of a thousand or even 10,000 words.
With infographics, you extract the key points of your content and convert them into a graphic.
Don’t use too many words in your infographic. Focus on the graphical part, make it appealing to the eyes, and upload it to image-oriented sites like Pinterest and Instagram.
Slide Decks
Slide decks are easy to create with any presentation software like PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides. Just like with infographics, don’t make your slides too wordy. Instead, use graphics and icons to highlight your key points.
This makes your slides easier to understand and more likely to be shared than if you just upload a boring text slide.
Videos
If you have great content that can be used in a video, you should publish it in a video. Tutorials and how-tos are the best content to turn into videos. You can even add your video tutorial to your main content – this is good for your website’s SEO and brings you more visitors via your YouTube channel.
Roundup posts
Like with eBooks, you should create a roundup post if you have a series of posts or articles on the same topic. This not only allows you to create a longer article, but you can also link to the old posts.
Internal linking is also good for SEO and encourages your audience to visit other pages on your site.
Podcasts
Podcasts are ideal for people who are always on the go and value their productivity and efficiency. With a podcast, you can simply read your content out loud and record it with a good microphone. With a little editing, you’re done and can then upload it to your favorite podcasting platform.
Conclusion
You can repurpose your content for many other types of content. Look at what your competitors are doing or ask your audience for their opinion. It doesn’t hurt to ask them a few questions, and you might get some golden nuggets in return!
How do you repurpose your content? What has been your most effective marketing channel? Comment below!
When I talk to other entrepreneurs about their biggest challenge in digital marketing, I usually get two different answers:
“I wonder how I can attract more customers via the internet. There are so many strategies, and I don’t know which one is right for me.”
“How am I supposed to have time for Facebook and a blog?”
I can understand that.
What about you?
In this article, I’d like to show you a proven strategy for saving a lot of time and attracting more ideal customers to your business by automating your processes.
With a funnel.
Your website is one of your employees and must fulfill a specific task.
I’m pretty sure that every business owner needs at least one sales funnel.
What is a funnel?
A funnel has a narrow opening at one end and a wider opening at the other. I’m sure you know one you can use in the kitchen.
A funnel has a large entrance and a much smaller exit.
When used in online marketing, the word funnel can be confusing because not everything that goes into the funnel at the top comes out the bottom. You can think of your funnel more as a filter.
We use this funnel to get from many visitors (large entrance) to fewer people interested in our product or customer (small exit).
What types of funnels are there?
When you listen to people talking about funnels, they usually talk about three different categories:
sales funnels
marketing funnels
conversion funnel
However, all these funnels are the same.
Marketing usually occurs before sales so you can divide them into two different funnels. However, the goal of both funnels is a conversion.
A conversion can be filling out a form or making a sale.
Conversion: A conversion is the transformation of a status. For example, a lead is converted into a customer.
In this context, the conversion rate is essential. The conversion rate describes the number of people who have performed a specific action as a percentage. If 100 visitors to our website convert into five customers, we have a 5% conversion rate.
Example funnel for coaches and consultants
Let’s look at a funnel and how it can help us attract new customers. The following drawing is an example of a funnel for coaches and consultants:
Let’s take a look at the elements
The funnel starts with an ad that people click on. The ad can be on Facebook or Google, for example.
The person who clicks on the ad comes to our landing page, where they can enter their email address to receive something for free (e.g., a PDF report, free training, etc.).
After entering their email address, visitors arrive at our thank you page, containing a video and a button. In the video, you solve a problem for your visitor, who can sign up for a free strategy coaching session by clicking the button.
If they click the button (Yes), they will be taken to a questionnaire where they must answer important questions about the strategy session.
After answering the questions, they will be taken to a calendar where they can select a meeting time.
The strategy meeting takes place, and hopefully…
you get a sale of your coaching/consulting product (Sale)
If visitors to the thank you page do not click on the button (No), they will receive an automated email sequence in which you provide valuable content and build trust.
The goal of the email sequence is to get them to fill out the questionnaire and talk to you on the phone.
This example shows an ad that links directly to our landing page. Instead of an ad, we can also choose other starting points, such as:
an email list
a blog article
a post on social media
YouTube video
Why do I need a funnel?
Summarized in two points:
Processes can be automated. Instead of sending emails manually, you can automate the entire process with just one tool.
With a funnel, you can build trust and show people why you are an expert in your field (higher conversions).
Before you create your first funnel, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
The four questions for a funnel
WHO: Who is your ideal customer?
WHERE: Where is your ideal customer?
LURE: What will attract your customer?
RESULT: What solution do you offer them?
WHO?
Before you start building a funnel, you need to know your ideal customer.
What are your ideal customer’s interests? How old are they? What job do they do?
The better you know your ideal customer, the better you can speak their language and lure them into your funnel.
Where?
Where does your ideal customer spend their time online? Are they on Facebook? Instagram? Are they in online forums? What blogs, magazines, or newspapers do they read?
Bait?
What problem can you solve with your bait? Your bait can consist of resources, a case study, or a checklist.
Result?
How can you solve your ideal customer’s problem?
It’s not about what product you can sell them but about the result they will achieve with your product.
If you have a solution to their problem, price is no longer as important.
What tools and elements do I need for a funnel?
Depending on your industry and goal, your funnel may look different.
However, you will (almost) always need the following elements:
Email marketing software – Your email marketing software should be able to create automations based on your visitor’s behavior (did they click on the button or not)
Landing page software – A tool that helps you create high-converting landing pages.
Lead magnet – You need some kind of gift for your visitor to exchange their email address.
An element that can also be very effective:
Webinars – Option to conduct webinars (automated or manual)
Which tool should you use?
There are many tools for each element in your funnel. However, I recommend using one tool for all elements.
I can recommend ClickFunnels, a tool for creating sales funnels. ClickFunnels offers an easy-to-use landing page creator, powerful email marketing automation, and everything you need for your funnel (webinars, sales pages, an affiliate program, etc.).
I’ve been using ClickFunnels for over three years and have never been more excited about a single online marketing tool!
Start your 14-day free trial.
Conclusion
As you can see, a funnel is a perfect way to have a system that brings you new customers fully automatically. Your sales funnel works around the clock and never needs a break or vacation.
However, building a converting funnel is a long-term strategy.
You need to test and optimize the different elements of your funnel to get the best possible results.
Maybe you didn’t have the perfect lead magnet at the beginning, or your follow-up sequence didn’t work as well as you thought. That’s part of your work.
That’s why you should always examine your ideal customer and ask yourself the four questions (Who, Where, Bait, Result).
If you continue to improve your funnel step by step, you will achieve the desired results.
