Tag Archives: SEO

TOFU MOFU BOFU way to higher organic search engine rankings

Improving organic search engine rankings

I know, the title seems funny, but I will come to that later.

We all want to improve our organic search engine rankings.

“Organic” means natural. Instead of having to pay Google for search engine visibility, you want your links to appear naturally in the search results.

In fact, the entire concept of SEO revolves around improving your organic search engine rankings.

Do you feel that despite publishing blog posts and webpages on your website, your search engine rankings don’t improve much?

Now and then they show some spikes but overall, your rankings and consequently, your organic search engine traffic, remains somewhat less than desired.

Why do you think this happens?

This Readwrite blog post says that it happens because you are not writing and publishing your content according to TOFU, MOFU and BOFU.

No, these are not names for three brothers living in a Mogadishu village. They stand for “Top of the Funnel”, “Middle of the Funnel” and “Bottom of the Funnel”, respectively.

These are the three stages for which you have to separately write and publish content on your website and if you’re not publishing content targeting these funnels, there is little chance that you are going to improve your organic search engine rankings.

Why simply publishing a blog doesn’t improve your organic search engine rankings much?

Blogging is great.

In fact, recently I wrote a blog post titled How does blogging help you grow your business?

The problem is not with blogging.

You need your business blog to increase awareness and to engage your visitors.

Having a business blog and maintaining it diligently is indisputable.

But what the above Readwrite blog post says is, don’t just focus on publishing blog posts.

They may give you a sense of achievement and you may think that you’re doing something important for your business, but when it comes to improving your organic search engine rankings for your SEO, your progress is quite slow.

The progresses certainly there – after all, there is a reason publishing a business blog is highly recommended – but not as good as it should be.

Blogging belongs to the TOFU part of your content marketing strategy – it raises awareness about your business. About your brand.

For example, I regularly publish my content writing blog.

Through the blog, I share lots of important information about the benefits of blogging, content writing, content marketing, email marketing and social media marketing.

I also share tips on how to write content better to improve your SEO and other aspects of writing and publishing content.

This is fine. But am I able to attract hardcore clients who would give me bigger projects?

This is where the role of other funnels comes in.

People come to your website for different reasons.

I don’t want to attract just those people who want to write better content and want to blog better or those who want to improve their SEO with quality content writing.

I want to attract people who are looking for a reliable content writing service for their business.

They want to be reassured.

They want to know if I can write high-caliber content.

For this they need case studies, white papers and other authoritative materials.

They also need an analysis of how I can actually help them improve their engagement rate and organic search engine rankings.

More importantly, how cost-effective and efficient is my content writing service?

To achieve this, I need to target all the categories of the funnel.

Hence, if you want to improve your organic search engine rankings in the sense that you can generate more business, you must write and publish content targeting different funnels.

How to improve search engine rankings of your old content

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Improving SEO of your old content

In this blog post you are going to learn some ways you can use your old content – content that you have already published – to improve your SEO.

Main topics covered in this blog post

How your old content is invaluable for your SEO
Choose blog posts or web pages you want to improve for better SEO for chosen keywords
Add more content to thin content
See if you can improve the title and the description
Use images under different sections and headlines
Use your main keywords within the top 100 words
Place your keywords strategically across the body text of your blog post or web page
Aim for Featured snippets optimization for better SEO
Use your keywords in headlines and bulleted lists
Improve the overall quality
Make your content mobile friendly
Use your keywords in the last paragraph
Conclusion about using your old content to improve your rankings

If search engine traffic matters to your business, you must always be thinking how to the improve search engine optimization of your website or blog. You constantly need to work on improving your search engine rankings. For that, often you add new content such as blog posts, web pages and articles.

Why fresh content is constantly needed for better search engine rankings? Why does fresh content improve SEO ranking?

There are multiple reasons. Whenever you buy something, you want the latest. The search engines want the same thing for their users. They want to provide them the latest possible information available on the topic they are searching for.

Even people want the latest information. When you want to learn about content marketing or digital marketing, do you want to read what people were doing back in 2014 or you want to know what people are doing in 2020?

Hence, this tendency — both in humans and machines — to constantly look for new content makes it necessary that you regularly add fresh content to your website or blog.

Although adding highly targeted fresh content is always a good and recommended strategy, do you know that you can also improve your search engine rankings by making changes to your existing content. Your old content can also help you improve your SEO.

In this post I’m going to discuss how.

How your old content is invaluable for your SEO

Old content is valuable for your SEO.

If you don’t want to spend money on writing and publishing fresh content on your website, you can increase as your ranking for free by improving the quality of your existing content.

Remember that whatever SEO you enjoy right now, it has been built on the foundation of your old content, your existing content.

If your website is a few years old and you have been regularly adding new content to your website, you already have a repository with you.

When you had just posted those blog posts and web pages, they may have enjoyed higher search engine rankings but as they got old and as the others published better versions or fresher versions, your high-ranking content got relegated to lower rankings during the proceeding months and years.

The problem sometimes is, you have already covered some important topics in your old content. If you want to write again on these topics, you may end up writing and publishing duplicate content.

Sure, the content will not be exactly similar, but you may have a similar headline or title and most of the information may already be existing in older blog posts and articles.

As a result, you feel bound and constraint. You want to improve rankings for those keywords but since you have already covered them in older blog posts, you do not want to take chances with newer blog posts.

You can be creative with the same ideas. I have multiple times written how you can re-purpose your old content and how you can rejuvenate it and I’m still writing this blog post.

Anyway, the point is, your old content is already indexed and ranked. All you have to do is, spruce it up with updated information, more data, better use of primary and secondary keywords and various other things.

Here are a few things you can do to improve your SEO using your old content:

Choose blog posts or web pages you want to improve for better SEO for chosen keywords

Choose blog posts and web pages that need improvements.

Which keyword rankings you want to improve? In which blog posts and web pages you have already covered those keywords?

If you use a content management system like WordPress you can easily search your existing posts and find out titles that match your keyword/keywords.

Quickly search on Google how they currently rank. If they are not ranking well, you can add them to an Excel sheet.

In case you’re using a tool like SEMRush you can quickly run your links through its system and find out what sort of content better ranking links are publishing.

Take note of the information, the number of words, the use of keywords in the title and other attributes of those links.

This will give you an idea of how to change your own web pages and blog posts.

As a less expensive alternative you can also use Serpstat that gives you more or less the same information but without overwhelming you with excessive data and overbearing expense.

Anyway, the point is knowing which pieces of your old content ranking are lower than they were ranking previously for your chosen keywords and what improvements are needed.

Add more content to thin content

Add more content to thin content for better SEO.

I’m not crazy about creating long pieces of blog posts and web pages just for the sake of improving SEO, but the size does matter if you’re not regular.

Have you added small blog posts and web pages (300-400 words) thinking that the sheer number would improve your SEO?

They may have given you the initial push and a false sense of security, but ultimately Google seems to prefer long form content, anywhere between 1500-3500 words.

Google aims to provide as much information as possible through a single link so that the user doesn’t have to waste lots of time hopping from one link to another.

If a user finds your link on Google, clicks it, comes to your website, goes through your content, and then comes back on Google and carries out the same search, Google assumes that she didn’t find what she was looking for.

It’s like, she has a problem, she is looking for a solution, Google suggested your link, she visited your link and since she carried out the same search Google assumes that its suggestion wasn’t appropriate and then uses this action to decide your ranking.

The more such incidents take place, the lower your rankings become.

Hence, for every keyword or title, put in as much information as possible.

Consider refurbishing of every piece of your old content as a full-fledged project. Don’t make it into a rush job.

Carry out a thorough auditing. Make note of where you can add new content. Research data. Organize your content in such a manner that your visitors can easily find the information they are looking for.

Increase the length beyond 1500 words.
Organize the text under headings and subheadings.

See if you can improve the title and the description

Re-write title and description of your old content.

Your title and description, the meta information, has a significant impact on your SEO. After all your title appears as a hyperlink in the search results and the hyperlink is followed by the description.

Data has shown that if the search term a user has just used appears in your title as hyperlink, she is more prone to clicking the link.

So, when you are modifying your old content, try to incorporate your main keyword into the title of your blog post or web page and also mention it once, with variations and alternative words, within the description.

Maybe initially you were not very SEO-savvy and you ignored this part of search engine optimization, but now you can make these improvements.

Use images under different sections and headlines

Use images for different sections and headings.

I have seen that this has a positive impact on your search engine rankings.

Creating quality images for different sections and headlines can be a time-consuming undertaking, but it is worth your time.

You can use the images to incorporate your keywords but make sure you don’t unnecessarily stuff your keywords otherwise it can have a negative effect on your SEO.

Images also improve your rankings in Google Images.

Use your main keywords within the top 100 words

Use your keywords within the first 100 words.

There is a reason for that. It involves both humans and machines.

Humans are in a hurry. They want you to talk about the real thing as soon as possible. The real thing is contained within your keywords assuming your using appropriate keywords.

For example, in this blog post, I’m telling you how to use your old content to improve your SEO.

I have used words like “old content”, “improve SEO” and “search engine optimization” within the 100-word-bracket.

You don’t have to force it. In the beginning of every blog post or web page, just write a small intro of what you’re going to achieve through this blog post or web page. If you do that, you will be automatically covering your primary keywords.

When search engine crawlers crawl your content, sometimes they leave midway due to 100+ reasons. They draw conclusions about your content based on whatever information they were able to glean while partially crawling your content.

This way, if they have crawled even a single paragraph of your link, they will be gathering the relevant keywords from your content and using that information to rank your content.

Place your keywords strategically across the body text of your blog post or web page

Strategically use keywords across your body text.

Google can easily make out if you are using your keywords just to improve your SEO.

Hence, do not repeat unnecessarily. Spread your keywords over the entire length and breadth of your blog post or web page.

I follow two rules:

Use your keywords every 150-200 words and not less.
Use different variations of your keywords.

For example, I don’t always have to use SEO. I can use search engine optimization. I can use higher rankings. I can use ranking high. I can use better search results. I can use Google rankings. I can use top search results.

These are called LSI keywords – Latent Semantic Indexing.

They give Google an overall idea of what you are talking about in a diverse manner. The algorithm can draw meaning through contextually stringing together your words and sentences for better rankings.

Aim for Featured snippets optimization for better SEO

Example of Google featured snippet

Featured snippets are the highlighted, non-sponsored, search results you sometimes see at the top of the search results page.

This Search Engine Land blog post says that if your content gets shown in the Featured snippets section, there can be great SEO gains.

The key is, providing the most appropriate answer to the question being asked by the Google user.

Use your keywords in headlines and bulleted lists

Use your keywords in headlines and bulleted lists.

It is important to use your keywords in the page elements that are used to quickly scan your content.

Search engine crawlers give great credence to your text contained within your headlines and bulleted lists.

By simply scanning through your headlines and bulleted lists, people must be able to get the gist of what you are trying to communicate.

Using this logic, search engine algorithms analyse your content based on the scannable elements of your web page or blog post – headlines and bulleted lists.

Improve the overall quality

Improve overall quality of old content to improve SEO.

You can add more links as references. If the existing images in these blog posts and web pages are very heavy, you can reduce their size.

In case there are some spelling mistakes you can take care of them. Think of all the ways you can improve the overall quality of your blog posts and web pages.

Make your content mobile friendly

Make your content mobile friendly.

Do you know Google ranks your content based on how it looks on mobile devices? If your content does not fit well on mobile devices, it loses its rankings.

You do not have to worry if you have a liquid layout, which means it easily fits on various screen sizes. If this is not the case, you seriously need to consider revamping your website layout.

People on mobile phones do not read long sentences and heavy paragraphs.

Use small paragraphs. Rarely go beyond two sentences in each paragraph.

Use smaller sentences. Smaller sentences are easier to interpret both for humans and search engine algorithms.

No matter how advanced AI gets, if you create overly complicated sentence structures, it becomes difficult for the algorithms to understand what you are trying to say.

Hence, mobile and user-friendly content means

Use shorter sentences.
Use shorter paragraphs – not more than two sentences.
Keep a simple sentence structure.
Don’t digress from your main topic.
Don’t use ambiguous, confusing words just for fun sake.

Use your keywords in the last paragraph

Use keywords in the last paragraph.

Your last paragraph is like the last thoughts that people have after going through your blog post or web page.

You can sum up everything you have described in the blog post. This gives you an opportunity to use your keywords in the last paragraph.

Conclusion about using your old content to improve your rankings

In the race to continuously add fresh content sometimes we end up ignoring our old content, which can be a gold mine.

My experience also tells me that it is easier to revamp existing content than to come up with new content writing ideas.

You already have the material in front of you. In many cases all the needed thoughts are already there. The title is already there. All you have to do is, improve it.

In fact, before publishing your next, new blog post or web page, go through your existing content and make all possible improvements.

This is why your content marketing is not working

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Why your content marketing is not working

ReadWrite has published 6 reasons why your content marketing might not be working.

You know what? Content marketing is like any other undertaking in your life – it is replete with unpredictable outcomes. Hence, if you have been publishing blog post after blog post and have been keeping yourself busy (or one of your representatives) on social media and still haven’t experienced any significant improvement in your targeted traffic, some signs of disappointment and disenchantment are understandable.

The above post rightly says that “in the majority of the cases, it is not the content that is to be blamed. It is rather the content strategy.”

What exactly is content strategy?

It is

What content you need to publish.
Whom you should target.
Which format of content gives you the biggest leverage.
What platforms you should nurture to promote your content.

The author also says that most people wanting to use content marketing to promote their businesses do the bare minimum. They will just write 300 words because this is what Google recommends (minimum). They will use keywords to “optimize” their content writing rather than writing something meaningful and then using the keywords contextually.

Should you always publish long content? The Post says that you should write at least 1890 words. This number was discovered by Backlinko after analysing 11.8 million Google search results.

How many words you write depends on how much competition your face. About 1 ½ years ago I was working with a client who had hired an SEO company in the UK and this company was using SEMRush to figure out what must be the titles of the web pages and how many words individual web page must have according to the competition faced by that particular keyword or title.

Due to some communication gap, for many webpages I ended up writing more than required. They were upset because they thought that the time was wasted because if those many words were not needed, I shouldn’t have spent time writing them. Whereas, I was focusing on the necessity of the information rather than the word limit.

Why I’m writing this here is because I want to say that how many words you use when writing content for your web pages and blog posts depends on many, and often, weird factors.

When writing for my own blog, I don’t get bogged down by the number of words I must write. Hence, sometimes my blog posts have more than 2000 words, and sometimes they have merely 500 words. It depends on what I want to say at that time.

Bigger content marketing companies come up with surveys, statistics and numbers to aim for because they make big bucks flaunting these numbers.

Personally, what I have experienced is that it is the regularity that matters, coupled with quality and relevance.

Your audience doesn’t respond if your content is not relevant to what they are expecting. I provide content writing services. Sometimes I get obsessed with SEO-related topics but if I write too much on SEO, I will end up attracting the wrong audience because I’m not offering search engine optimization services. For me, SEO is intertwined with quality and relevant content writing.

Regularity is very important because even if you provide great content people need to come across your content on an ongoing basis. Thousands of businesses are continuously publishing content. Even if it is not great content, this content manages to occupy space in people’s minds as well as on the web. Hence you need to remain visible.

Here is my personal advice:

Don’t worry much about words and instead, focus on providing as much “useful” information as possible.
Maintain quality and relevance and give it precedence over regularity.
Be regular.

I know, explaining this to clients who want to pay according to the number of words their blog posts and web pages must have, can be difficult. Although most of them except that it is the quality that matters, they all aim for a certain number of words.

I can understand their worry. If they don’t give their content writer a “word-target” the writer may not spend much time on each topic.

Something to ponder on for me in the coming weeks.

Why search intent is most important when writing content for your website

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Knowing searcher intent for better content writing.

By now you have read a lot about search intent or searcher intent on my website and blog. Just came across another blog post on the importance of knowing the search intent before writing your next piece of content.

What is search intent? How does it affect your content writing?

When someone queries Google (searches for something) she has an intention. She wants to find a piece of information that she needs. What is her intention? Why is she looking for that information?

This is search intent.

Why is it important to know the search intent?

If you do not know the search intent of your target audience, how do you publish content your target audience is looking for?

For example, I want traffic for “content writing services” and not for “how to become a content writer”.

Sure, I’m constantly publishing blog posts on how to be a better content writer and how to improve your content writing skills, but these posts are to inform my prospective clients how much I know about content writing and how I can use this wisdom to write quality content for them. Yes, when I’m drawing traffic from my prospective clients, I’m also drawing traffic for people who just want to learn about content writing and have no intention of giving work to me.

Anyway, there are many benefits of getting people to your website who are looking for useful information but have no intention of giving work to you or buying from you (they can increase your brand visibility in many ways).

Searcher intent can be of the following types:

Informational intent: People are simply looking for information, such as “how can quality content writing improve my search engine rankings?”
Navigation intent: You look for “credible content writing services” on Google instead of typing the URL if you want to come to my website.
Transactional intent: You want to find out how much my content writing services are going to cost.
Commercial intent: You need a content writer for your business.

Google wants to provide you the best answers for your searcher intent and it is continuously improving its algorithm to make sure that you find what you are looking for.

For example, if you simply want information, you do not need to find information about the commercial aspects of any product or service related to that information. You just want information.

Similarly, if you want to buy something, you are more eager to know how you can buy that thing (for example, my content writing services) instead of wanting to know how to become a better content writer.

Subtle differences that can make big differences.

Knowing searcher intent can help you come up with targeted content.

Write content that provides useful information to increase your brand visibility and generate future needs.

Write content that tells people how they can benefit from your product or service to get more customers and clients.

Provide them commercial information so that they can make up their mind about doing business with you.

Knowing searcher intent helps you write targeted content.

Is your content writing sabotaging your SEO?

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Is your content writing sabotaging your SEO

Content writing isn’t all SEO.

Although 99% of my clients approach me to write content for them so that they can improve their SEO, sometimes, search engine optimization is their least concern.

In fact, they even feel awkward about talking about writing content for improving their rankings. Recently I worked on a landing page copy that explains visitors why it is important to focus on keywords. But that’s a different issue.

The connection between content writing and SEO

To understand how your content writing has a direct impact on your search engine rankings, you must think from the perspective of search engine algorithms.

What is the purpose of a search engine algorithm?

It wants to find the best possible information for the user.

Now, a typical user isn’t concerned about how a search engine like Google manages that.

If she doesn’t find the right information, she is going to assume that Google isn’t good at it, even if she herself is not using the right search terms.

For example, there is a big difference between searching for “content writer” and “I need a content writer”.

When you search for “content writer” what do you mean?

Do you want to become a content writer?

Do you want to know how a content writer works?

Do you want to know what the term means?

How does Google know what you want?

Although it shows you the results, these results are not going to be precise because the search term may carry different meanings for different people (intention).

On the other hand, if you search for “I need a content writer” or “looking for a content writer for my business”, or “SEO content writer for real estate website”, Google knows what you’re looking for and accordingly, shows you the results.

Hence, as a professional service providing content writing, although “content writer” is a search term that represents what I do, it doesn’t exactly help my clients find me when they need me.

What I write and publish on my website, consequently, has a direct bearing on my SEO.

How your content writing may be sabotaging your SEO

You harm your SEO when you are constantly writing and publishing content your customers and clients are not trying to find.

As explained above, for my own website, I’m not interested in optimizing for “content writer” because one never knows what the searcher is searching for.

I’m not saying that people searching for “content writer” are definitely not looking for a content writer for their business, but it is such a high-competition keyword that it is not worth my time.

One of the biggest mistakes people commit is that they don’t do the needed research when preparing a list of their keywords.

The bulk of your traffic doesn’t come from your primary keywords such as “content writer” or “web designing” or “mobile app development” or “running shoes”.

I’m not saying these terms are not good. It would be excellent if you could rank on the first page for these terms.

But bigger companies, or individuals and organizations who have already built a considerable quantity of high-quality content around these keywords, are way ahead of you.

Even if you try to catch up with them, since they have already had a head start, you will be spending all your resources on these keywords, with little success.

This is one reason: focusing on primary keywords.

The other reason is, assuming that your target customers and clients are going to find you anyway, no matter what you publish.

Remember that search engine algorithms don’t have feelings.

They depend on artificial intelligence. They depend on machine learning. They analyze your words. Hence, if you don’t use the right words, they’re not going to pay attention to you.

So, even if your messaging is correct, if you are not using the right keywords, you are going to sabotage your SEO.

When does content writing improve your SEO?

When you are writing content for your website, you must focus only on those keywords and search terms that are going to fetch business for you, directly or indirectly.

I have used the caveat “directly or indirectly” because you also need content for brand building.

Not all traffic converts.

For example, if more people know about the fact that I’m a content writer, it is better for me.

When they need a content writer, they will know how to find me.

If they like what I constantly publish, when someone they know needs a professional content writer, they may recommend my website.

Hence, when you are writing content for your website, focus on two possibilities:

Content writing for brand awareness.
Content writing to get customers and clients.

Make a list of topics that will help you raise brand awareness. Then write content on those topics.

Make a list of topics that can fetch you customers and clients. Then write content on those topics.

Easier said than done, I know.

This is where you will need to spend time on research.

You cannot simply assume that people are going to use certain keywords and search terms because you feel that they should be using those keywords and search terms.

Pay close attention to Google suggestions.

Use Google Analytics to know what keywords and search terms convert better compared to the others.

Use your own logic.

What is the intention of people searching for content on your website?

Although you are writing and publishing content to improve your SEO, you also want to inform people, to educate them, so that they can make a better decision.

Hence, if I create a web page or a blog post on a topic like “looking for an SEO content writer”, I may be writing something like How to hire the best SEO content writer to improve your rankings, but my purpose is not to educate you and then send you somewhere else.

No, I tell you how to hire the best SEO content writer and then also tell you why I am your best SEO content writer.

This is brand awareness as well as selling your business.

Focus on precise keywords as much as possible. It may mean generating more content, but it also means reducing advertising costs. And of course, improving your conversion rate.