Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and SEO content have been around for awhile now, but many business owners are still a little ….mystified by it. That’s why Andy is going to take us inside the “mysterious” world of Search Engine Optimization and SEO content – so it’s easier to understand and apply to your business marketing strategy.
Andy works at Artonic, a Michigan web design and marketing agency. Andy creates content for digital marketing campaigns, including website content and digital articles.
What Do You Enjoy Most About Writing SEO Content?
The variety. Writing for many different industries lets me learn new information about topics I may have never otherwise investigated. I like being a jack-of-all-trades type, and getting to know a little about a lot of different subjects like business and health makes the job fascinating.
Why Did You Choose to Work in Digital Marketing (or Content Creation)?
It’s never boring. I enjoy things that give me variety and digital marketing is a never-ending ride on a shifting, winding road. New platforms, new rules and new schools of thought constantly force you to change gears. Certain fields are very cut-and-dried, creating a narrow ladder of knowledge and experience that everyone climbs. With digital marketing, it’s more of a Wild West experience – there are unarguable rules, but few things are set in stone.
What’s the Most Difficult Assignment You’ve Ever Had?
This sounds like a cop-out, but I really can’t think of a good answer for this. Almost any assignment comes with its own challenges. The most difficult ones are when I have to create content on a specialized subject. I often have to start from square one to learn about the industry or lingo before I can begin to research the actual topic. It’s like trying to become an expert overnight.
How Important is SEO when It Comes to Content?
Extremely. Better content should always take precedent, but without SEO as a backbone to content strategy, you run a big risk of producing great information that never gets found. Google can’t show your results to an interested party if it doesn’t realize you have precisely what they want. Some see SEO as a trick to boost content and alter results pages, but it’s really just presenting your information in a way that the platform knows what you’re talking about.
When the average consumer is shopping for goods and services, results that rank higher on SERPs have an unofficial Seal of Approval that makes them more credible. Because of the intense competition, SEO is necessary to vie for position. It’s rare – though not impossible – to accidentally stumble into high rankings with modern advertising.
What Topics Should Businesses Blog About?
Everything! Any topic that is relevant to most of your readers is a good place to start. However, I think articles that teach are the strongest topics out there. A significant volume of search traffic consists of people trying to figure something out. Educational blogs don’t just capture this search, they give you an authority that makes your business credible and trustworthy to individuals that may have never heard of you before.
Is it True that Content is King? Why or Why Not?
Of course. Many marketing concepts remain as effective as they were one hundred years ago, but consumers are becoming more sophisticated. Whatever industry you’re in, you have 100 competitors all saying the same thing: they’re the best. Producing unique SEO content not only gives you the opportunity to flex your expertise muscles, but it lets you give more value to your current and potential customers.
What’s the Most Important Thing to Remember when Writing Website Content?
The user’s experience. Everything that goes into a website’s content should be approached from how it benefits the end-user. Copy should be thorough – but not so dense that it can’t be scanned for key information. Every unique value or service should have content dedicated to explaining it, but pages should also be limited so as to avoid overwhelming a reader.
Ultimately, you need to find a balance. A reader should never find a website to be so dense that it’s tedious to find information, but also not so sparse that they leave without having key questions answered.
What’s the Best Advice You’ve Ever Gotten About Writing or Marketing?
Don’t market to yourself. It’s too easy to throw out a good idea or double-down on a bad idea because of how you, as the creator, respond to it. Marketing is largely a collaborative industry. While there are superstars that can hit the right notes on their own most of the time, creating good content and marketing strategies is difficult to do if you’re only thinking about what sounds good to you specifically.
Not only is the creator often not the target, messaging that hits their pain points specifically won’t necessarily match up to the public at large.
What do You See in the Future for Online Content and SEO?
With how volatile the industry has been up to this point, it’s hard to say. I think the biggest thing that could happen is a closing of the gap between the average business owner and SEO experts. With technology, the game always changes when you don’t need to be savvy to use a tool or platform – remember Geocities?
There are a lot of great businesses and smart businesspeople that don’t care about SEO or don’t think about it because it’s not something they just get. If Google continues to make natural, quality SEO content rank higher and kick down sites that game the system, we might eventually reach a time where content-based SEO doesn’t require you to read a book every day to stay up-to-date. I would say we’re much closer to that already, particularly when you think about how things were 3-4 years ago.
Share an SEO Tip that’s Easy for Everyone to Accomplish.
For anyone that’s not tech-savvy, there’s an easy way to see how most of your website shows up to people when they’re searching for keywords you might rank for: Do a search with the phrase site: and include your website. For instance, I could do site:artonicweb.com and Google would return the crawlable pages from Artonic’s website.
Send your SEO content questions to Andy at [email protected].