January 22, 2020in Uncategorized

What is “High-Quality Content” and What Does It Mean for Your Business?

We’ve heard “Content Is King” — the rallying cry for every content marketer and an ideology that most businesses live by. The creation of content is important. How important you say? 

 

After Google reduced the impact of generic content and updated its algorithm to take context and prepositions into account, content creation has become even more crucial for your business. 

 

If that’s not enough, industry influencers continue to bash us over the head with illustrations of how content has taken their businesses to new heights, highlighted by their rapid growth and improved company identity and branding.

 

We know content is important, but what kind of content do we need to create? What kind of content is important? 

 

Some professionals say, “High-Quality Content”. 

 

This phrase has been thrown around for some time without much explanation. So, I will do my best to explain what this concept means and how you can work towards creating high-quality content to advance your business and inbound marketing strategy. 

 

What is “High-Quality Content”? 

“High-quality content” is content that is relevant to the customer query, contains or suggests significant authority, and ultimately, answers their pertinent questions. 

 

As long as the content you create adheres to these signifiers, you will be highly regarded by users and the designated search engine you’ll be using to generate traffic. 

 

How To Create High-Quality Content

First, you need to create original, relevant content. Irrelevant content won’t be found and serves to be less read compared to content that fulfills its desired purpose. So, how do you do that? 

 

Let’s break it down. 

 

 

  • Inspire A Connection

 

Don’t settle on simply informing the reader by emphasizing ideas or concepts. Theorize these concepts, and push the reader to use your tips with actionable, engaging titles and content.

 

 

  • Answer Their Questions

 

How did you find this blog? Did you have a question about high-quality content and came across my blog? 

 

It’s called a “search engine” for a reason! People are here to search for and find information. Provide the answer and people will come running. 

 

 

  • Use Your Own Experiences 

 

As a content creator, you are also a teacher, and nothing teaches people better than experience. Use your experiences to highlight your point. Hopefully, readers can learn from your mistakes and develop their business using your advice. 

 

If they learn something, it’s likely they will share it with their friends and colleagues. The more shares, likes, backlinks and references, the more your search engine ranking will rise whether socially or online.

 

 

  • Original means ORIGINAL

 

Rehashing pre-existing content is not going to raise your rank. In fact, it’s sort of cheating. Plagiarised or duplicate content will get you in trouble. 

 

Consider creating content around the specific kind of reader you are hoping to attract, or the verticals you are hoping to do business with.  

 

As a writer, you must maintain a focus on the notion that you are providing content for specific audiences.  With a particular audience in mind, you can write content around the questions this individual might want the answers to. If you have the answers and you’re passionate about the topic; there’s truly no limit to the amount of content you can produce. 

 

Try creating a spreadsheet with the type of buyer persona you are trying to reach and then create content dedicated to answering their questions. Through a quick Google search or Q&A websites and message boards, you can discover what people are asking, so if you have the answer, you can create content around this question.   

 

Do I Need “High-Quality Content”? 

The only way to rank and rank highly is through the development of “high-quality content” – your business won’t go far without it.  Therefore, you need to invest and make a concerted effort to create content. Consider outsourcing, an internship program or inspire your team to write original content. 

 

Written content is easily the most accessible form, but you don’t need to stop there. Video is an immensely powerful medium. A well-made video is bound to catch the attention of many and nowadays, they’re fairly inexpensive to produce. 

 

Most people are visual learners anyway, so if you can condense your content to a few minutes, you are sure to see some likes. It’s important to note different videos do better on different platforms. You should research the platform and create content accordingly.  

 

Podcasts are taking the business world by storm. Their versatile format allows for the production of different kinds of content, whether socially or visually. These pieces can be posted on a variety of different platforms, increasing your potential reach to fans and clients alike. Podcasts require a little more investment, but if you have a fantastic idea and an engaging host; you’ll set the world on fire!

 

It Sounds Like A Lot Of Work. Should You Even Get Started? 

The answer is yes! As Neil Patel says, “You get what you pay for”. It’s an investment in yourself and your business. 

 

People won’t associate with your business if you don’t have experience or expertise. Most small businesses don’t have a lot of experience but might have significant expertise. So, show off! Show potential clients your knowledge and expertise – show them how capable you are. If you can do that while providing answers to their deepest concerns, why wouldn’t they choose you? 

 

How Will People Find My Content With All These Experts Around? 

Your written content does not need to be on par with industry experts. Everyone writes differently and these days written content is often a smorgasbord of writing styles, grammar, and form. 

 

You do not need to be an industry expert in order to create great content. Eventually, through thorough research and continuous engagement in your field, you may be positioned by your followers or by your own devices as an industry expert. This process takes time, but as I stated, with continuous engagement and content, you will become an “expert”.

 

How Will I Know My Content Is High-Quality? 

This is not a question you need to answer. Ultimately, the audience decides. Clearly, content created by the appropriate authority will always garner the best results, but that doesn’t mean you can’t position yourself as an authority if you know what you are talking about. 

 

Content is THE great equalizer. It’s going to generate business, but it’s also going to support your business. Content is a window towards greater transparency with potential clients and people are more than likely going to respect you for being honest and upfront. It’s also a quality a lot of people are looking for. 

 

Hopefully, with a stellar content strategy and some great content, you can see growth in your business for years to come. 

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January 22, 2020in Uncategorized

8 Reasons for inbound marketing and how it helps your business

Bring people to your business instead of pushing your business to the people.
“Audiences everywhere are tough. They don’t have time to be bored or brow beaten by orthodox, old-fashioned advertising. We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in & be what people are interested in.”

As Craig Davis (CCO, JWT) explains, inbound marketing is the way to go in today’s changing marketing environment. Inbound marketing can be anything from blogs or online videos to SEO(Search engine optimization) and Social Media. Why is this better than my good-old fashion radio ad, you ask? Prepare to be convinced.

  1. The time on the internet is increasing. And increasing. The average US internet user spends about 32 hours a month of his spare time on the internet. A billion searches are done every day on Google, 131 billion searches are done on the internet every month as a total.
  2. Inbound marketing costs 61% LESS per lead than traditional, outbound marketing – it’s a lot more cost-effective.
  3. Where outbound marketing converts about 2% of your leads to actual consumers. SEO and direct website visits tend to convert about 15% of the time!
  4. Inbound marketing actually reaches people that want to hear your message, that are looking for something – they come to you.
  5. These people already know they need your service – The only thing you need to convince them of is that you are the right choice.
  6. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing and Youtube are the 5 most visited internet pages. All of these can and should be utilized for inbound marketing.
  7. People spend about 50% of their time researching products or brands when they are making online buying decisions. 75% of these people do not scroll pas the first page of Google.
  8. 86% of people skip TV ads.

Alright, I’m convinced, but this doesn’t help me any further, where do I start?? Want us to do it for you? Contact us.

  • Attract traffic. Make sure your website is optimized for SEO (use our free website report) and has as much links as possible pointing to it – get it on page 1 of the search engines.Click here to find out more about SEO or like our Facebook for some useful articles on it!
  • Convert visitors to leads and convert leads to sales. Make sure that website looks awesome – include call to actions so people actually decide to buy from your site or give you that phone call. We offer a free website report on our Facebook page – click here to check it out.
  • Turn customers into repeat higher margin customers. Connect with your customers through Social Media and email – make them tell their friends and stay in touch with you.
  • Analyze for continuous improvement. Improve what’s working for you, change what’s not. We’ve seen many businesses on page 1 of Google with the wrong terms – meaning the people that visit your site were not looking for your service.

I hope you learned something that you can apply to your business. If you have any questions, please send me an email at todd@www.patonmarketing.com. I answer all emails!

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January 14, 2020in Uncategorized

The Impact of E-A-T In 2020…and Beyond

In uncovering strategies for 2020, I was struck by an article on MarketingLand.com.

 

According to marketing influencer and Director of SEO at Path Interactive, Lily Ray, most marketers should be focusing on E-A-T – Google’s response to helpful and useful content. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about E-A-T, and while it governs most of the content we produce; rarely, if ever, have I considered it as a key feature of our marketing strategy.

 

The concept is rather simple to understand but it seems very few businesses are considering E-A-T as a major component of their marketing campaigns or content marketing strategies and even fewer making it a focus, particularly going into this next decade.

 

To better understand the conversation, here’s some background information.

 

What Is E-A-T?

E-A-T is an acronym that stands for:

e-a-t

Expertise

Expertise means you need to show the skill of the author and mention it in your content. Expertise is less critical for humor or gossip websites, but it’s vital for medical, financial, or legal websites. The good news is any site that can show their expertise if the content is truthful and useful for users.

 

Authoritativeness

Authoritativeness means your ability to show that you are an authority or the authoritativeness of the creator. If your page is a community or a forum discussion, the quality of the conversation drives authority. Credentials are necessary, but so are personal experiences like reviews.

 

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness, as the name state, is rather implied. It’s especially important for eCommerce websites that ask users for their credit card information. Everything about your site should make users feel safe while they’re visiting. As a starting point, you should immediately implement an SSL certificate on your site as at least 70% of first page results are using SSL (it’s one of many scoring signals that Google uses).

 

Why is E-A-T So Important?

Lily Ray goes on to explain E-A-T’s significance, particularly in the medical, legal and financial fields. “It’s really important to think about E-A-T as part of your SEO strategy.
Nevertheless, I feel her comments ring true regardless of what field you may find yourself in.

 

So why is having expertise, authority, and trust so important? After all, the Google quality rater guidelines don’t determine a page’s rankings.
Essentially, E-A-T determines a website’s value. Quality raters keep E-A-T in mind when judging how well a site or page provides what they need. They look to see if they’re getting a good online experience and if the content meets their standards.

 

If the raters feel like a user would feel comfortable reading, sharing, and recommending the content; that earns the site a high level of E-A-T. Ray sums this up stating, “You have to be telling search engines why you should be trusted.”

 

Think of E-A-T as the reason why users would choose your site over your competitors’. It could have a direct impact on how Google receives — and ultimately ranks — your website.
Implementing strategies to enforce E-A-T within your content also helps to level the playing field. “It’s going to be increasingly difficult to rank, to compete, because a lot of these core updates are resulting in companies that maybe don’t have great E-A-T seeing pretty big performance declines”, states the SEO Director.

 

Over the last few months in 2019, we’ve experienced 3 major updates that have affected the way we search and the kinds of information searchers are shown. Therefore, it’s incredibly likely, that we’ll continue to see these changes as Google attempt to become more specific. E-A-T may be the only way to ensure people read and engage with your content.

 

What’s The Impact of E-A-T Moving Forward?

We have established that E-A-T is an important part of Google’s algorithms. A lack of E-A-T makes it very hard to rank. So, does this mean that only sites recognized as authorities can rank well? Is there anything else that can be done?

 

E-A-T can definitely be improved upon. Here are a few strategies you could implement to your content and marketing strategy:

  • Get good reviews
  • Get Wikipedia mentions
  • Get mentions on authoritative sites
  • Get mentions on forums
  • Be trustworthy
  • Optimize Your About/About Us Page
  • Show The Expertise Of Your Company On Your Site
  • Manage Your Reputation
  • Improve Your Content
  • Demonstrate E-A-T on your website

 

Businesses should continue to produce great quality content with links. Links still play a significant role in ranking websites. If businesses are experiencing changes in their ranking after the update, it is most likely due to their content. Sullivan went on to say in a later tweet, “There’s no ‘fix’ for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.”

 

Producing quality in accordance with Google’s E-A-T proves to be the best way forward. Especially in an ever-changing environment like the world of digital marketing.

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January 6, 2020in Uncategorized

3 Marketing Tactics Small Businesses Should NOT Invest In

In the 20 years that I have been working with small businesses, I have identified what I believe to be the 3 marketing tactics that most small businesses think they need but in reality, they should NOT be investing in.  In no particular order, they are:

 

 

As the owner of a digital marketing agency in South Florida, you might wonder why I am writing an article bashing two services my company offers.  Let me start by expressing how much I believe in the services we offer. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t believe in the work we do for our clients every day.  Instead, this article is to state that there’s not a one shoe fits all for your marketing tactics.  

 

If oxygen is what keeps humans alive, revenue is what keeps businesses alive.  With small businesses, cash flow is king. It’s what enables them to grow or forces them to close their doors.  

 

Search Engine Optimization:

 

Make no mistake, I believe over time SEO will be the best ROI for your business. This is a long term strategy.  SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. I find so many small businesses wanting SEO because it’s a hot buzzword for online marketing.  But let me set the record straight and explain how SEO works.

 

 

SEO is organically (naturally) ranking your website on the first page of Google.  Before I go into the details of how this works, let me explain Google’s highest priority. Google cares most about its users and their experience. 

 

 

In its early years, Google would rank a website highly even if it was not relevant to the search that was performed by the user. This was because companies figured out how to “trick” or “beat” the search engine giant.  Those days are long gone.

 

 

Today, it’s practically impossible to trick Google. Instead of playing games, the best strategy is to give Google exactly what they want. Good old fashioned Quality Content. If you are wondering how to create high-quality content for Google, we have taken the liberty of creating a step by step guide, a “cheat sheet” if you will, to writing a blog that Google will love. 

 

How Does SEO Work?

Google looks at two things when ranking your website.  

 

  1. On-page factors – these are things that are ON your website.  There are many on-page elements. Your Blog is the most important on-page factor. 
  2. Off-page factors – these factors have nothing to do with your website.  Only other 3rd party sites/blogs. So if a credible 3rd party website has a link of your website on theirs, Google sees that as value.

 

You might be wondering if you can do SEO yourself.  You can absolutely do it on your own but to do SEO the right way, it requires a lot of time and skill.  While you can learn and perform SEO on your website, it is not a good use of your time.

 

In other words, you will be spending about 10-15 hours per week to do quality SEO work.  That’s 40-60 hours per month. If you value your time at just $50 hour, you are actually spending $2000-$3000 a month on SEO. With the many small business owners I have spoken to, the most common mistake I see is that they do not put a monetary value on their time.  In other words, they think if they do it, it will be free. But as the DIY SEO example shows, doing so will be a larger investment than hiring a professional. Plus, Google’s algorithm changes daily so when you have the budget, you really should leave the technical nature of SEO work to the professionals. 

 

Social Media:

 

Another big mistake I see small businesses making is hiring someone to manage their business’s social media accounts.  I have seen small businesses pay $1500 month for someone outside of their office to “post” content on their social media sites.  This is a big mistake for small businesses for 2 reasons:

 

  1. Unlike SEO, there is a very low ROI on organic posts on social platforms.  You have to pay to play. Meaning you need to run social media ads in order to get your content seen.
  2. It’s so much better to have this done internally vs an outside company or person who has no direct connection to your company. Remember, this is “social media” and it’s much more effective if done internally. 

 

One of the biggest misconceptions is that it “takes too long” – but what most people don’t realize is once your social media plan is in place and a post-process is developed, it takes seconds (literally) to run your social media internally.  The key to this is building a content strategy.   

 

Public Relations:

A good public relations person can be an incredibly valuable asset to your business.  Mainly because the content is so important, hiring a professional writer to generate that content and pitch it to the media can be very rewarding, but also very expensive.  Like SEO, it should not be something you do yourself.

 

A big benefit in hiring a traditional public relations firm is tapping into their connections. Those connections include newspapers, magazines, blogs and more.  With a limited budget, you should focus your resources on developing a content strategy that includes written content, video, audio, and images. If you focus on building this content internally, you become the authority. 

 

Successful businessman Mark Cuban built his net worth through many business deals, including investments on “Shark Tank.”  Mark Cuban has been vocal about businesses not wasting money on PR Firms. In 2012, Mark wrote a BLOG post titled, “Why Startups Shouldn’t Hire PR Firms” which explains his position on the subject. 

 

As a small business, you struggle for time and money – two valuable assets. If you hire a PR firm, you’ll be waiting for them to provide you with content. This is not going to help your business directly. 

 

If you were interested in this blog, watch out for the 3 marketing tactics you SHOULD invest in. 

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