Content Marketing Part 1 – SEO Unlocked – Free SEO Course with Neil Patel
– Hey everyone, it's Neil Patel, and today is another day of SEO Unlocked, and today I'm going to be covering content marketing, part one. So we're going to get
into the fundamentals, and then the next lesson
is going to go over step-by-step tactics that you need to implement to get results through content marketing. Before we get started,
I want to let you know, don't look back and ask, "Why," look ahead and ask, "Why not?" Because, as we cover content marketing, what you'll find is, a lot
of companies are asking, "Hey, why should I end up doing it?" Well, you should end up doing it because it produces results, and I have some stats
to show you later on.
But before we get started, let's look at the evolution of Google. What most people don't know is Google does more than one algorithm update per day, and as they've gone around over the years, they've gotten smarter and smarter, where now, a lot of it is related to artificial intelligence, and they're really able to
predict what humans want. If you look at Alphabet's
parent structure, you'll notice that they have
a lot of key initiatives that involve AI, from self-driving cars, to even Google Home, that is trying to predict
what you are looking for, and what you want, and
trying to answer it, right? So it's not just, they're a search engine that's using artificial
intelligence and machine learning.
And one quote that I love when
it comes to content marketing is from Content Marketing Institute, I'm not going to read the whole quote, but the key point that I want
to end up pointing out here in this quote is consistent content. Most people get it wrong
with content marketing, which they're not consistent. And it starts with a consistent process.
If your process is consistent,
kind of like a machine, in which you're building this machine that continually crank
out high-quality content on a consistent basis, you'll do well. In other words, if you're
not consistently awesome, you won't do well when
it comes to your traffic. With one of my first
blogs back in the day, no longer own it, it's called QuickSprout, I used to write content every single week, and then when I stopped for a month, I saw a 30-plus percent dip in traffic, and it took me over three months just to recover that loss in traffic, that's how important
it is to be consistent.
Content marketing is also on the rise, it's getting more popular over time. A quick stat for you is there's over a billion blogs on the web, that's roughly one blog
for every seven people. People wouldn't be
creating all these blogs if it wasn't producing a positive ROI. So why is content marketing important? I'll go over a few of
the main bullet points. Conversion rates are six times higher for adopters against non-adopters, it results into increased brand awareness, 91% of B2B marketers
use content marketing, so it's not just for B2C,
it's also for B2B as well. 27% of U.S. internet users now
have ad blocking installed, so you're not going to
get to as many people as you used to through ads, so content marketing is another way to attract more people.
And if you adapt, you can win,
it's a great way to compete against the bigger corporations. And that's why I really got into it, is because when you have
little to no budget, and you want to compete with the big guys, ads are expensive, but content marketing is a good solution for you. If you do this, it'll also help you build trust and authority
with your ideal audience, which generates quite a bit of sales. Two quick case studies for you. Skin Care by Alana, I've known Alana and Jared for awhile, husband and wife couple, they run this skin care
site, it's amazing, you got to check it out. Through content marketing SEO, they were able to grow their revenue by over 150% in one year, organic traffic grew by 275%.
In other words, their
revenue and traffic climbed, through a combination of
SEO and content marketing, and the SEO was mainly
driven through content. Here's another one, this was
Private Label Extensions, similar to Skincare by Alana, they're revenue increased
from $3.1 million to $7.9 million, they were also on the Inc. 500 list, which is a list for the top
500 fastest-growing companies in the United States, they were on it two years in a row, and of course, their SEO
traffic increased by 400% over a six-month period, which is amazing. When you're doing content marketing, if you don't understand
you're customer's problems, you won't do well.
It's all about finding the balance between the keywords that you
want to target with your site, and the content. If you have content that blends in and adapts with those keywords,
and they flow together, you'll do well, but if your keywords
clash with your content, you're going to have content,
maybe people like it, but it won't rank. If you have keywords
that are searched a lot, but you don't blend it
in with your content, sure, search engines like it, but users won't like it,
they won't read those pages, you'll have terrible user
metrics, like bounce rates, and you'll find that your
pages won't rank on Google.
When it comes to e-commerce, you need to know the journey, especially with content marketing, from discovering the potential problem, to understanding it, to then figuring out solutions, to the type of product that you want to test
the solution against, comparing your brand with other brands for the same type of product. You also want to search
for discount codes, see if people are using content for that. You want to look for your
product specifically, see if there's good content around that, and then of course, creative
applications for your product. And this one applies to innovative products specifically, right? And we'll go over examples of
that in the upcoming lessons. Now, I don't want you to think content marketing is just for B2C, it also works well for B2B.
Crazy Egg, one of the
companies I co-founded, we were able to grow
to over 100,000 users, and a lot of that had to
do with content marketing. As you can see, the traffic on Crazy Egg has continually risen, this is ascreenshot from UberSuggest, this is just from the
organic search traffic. And when we first started Crazy Egg, before we launched, we were really interviewing people, trying to figure out the problems, and creating content around how our tool, it was an analytics tool, still is, could be used to help people out. So, for example, if
you're doing A/B testing on your website to increase conversions, you can use Crazy Egg for that, and we would have articles on our blog talking about how you can use Crazy Egg to maximize your conversion rate.
We, in essence, really drill
down to our target audience, because if you don't drill
down to your target audience, you're going to get your content wrong, and you're also going to get wrong on where they're hanging out. So, for example, you don't
always have to produce content for your own website, you can also publish on
other people's websites. So we went to a lot of
the design websites, and galleries there, bought ads, and even published content there, and that helped us get a ton of traction.
Super-effective, and a
lot of people are like, "Huh, you're not just publishing
content on your own blog." And I'm like, "Yeah, because
if my potential customers "are reading other blogs that
have millions of visitors, "why wouldn't I try to get my content "featured there as well?" And I did that mainly
through guest-posting, which we'll go over in SEO Unlocked, but I also did that through press.
You don't have to hire a P.R. agency, if you want, there's a
guy named Chris Barrett, at Prserve.com, he's performance-based, if he gets you press, he charges you, if he doesn't, he doesn't charge you. And we created our own
list of popular blogs, offered them a free account, helped them get our tools set up, and a lot of them just blogged on it. In other words, we got super-creative. And creativity is a huge component in doing well with content marketing. What I want you to do is follow
this process step by step, because I know not everyone has those creative juices flowing, and that's okay, so I
figured out a formula, and we call it the Franklins'
Law of Content Success, you know, Benjamin Franklin, lightning.
And with this formula, we found that even if
you're not that creative, you don't have to worry, just following this formula
will get you results. So the first step in Franklins'
Law of Content Success is String Ideas. How do you find out your ideas? Which pages do you optimize first? How do you know what's already working? How do you know what your
competition is focusing on? Well, you can grab your keyword ideas from the earlier modules that
we covered in SEO Unlocked, because we already covered
how to find those keywords, and within there, you'll
have a list of keywords, and that should also give you some topics that you could go after as well. Another thing that we've also discussed is the Musketeer Intent, you know, what type of keywords do you
want to end up going after? A lot of times, if you're a newer website, low-volume keywords under 1,000 visits are easier, quicker wins,
and can still provide ROI. The higher-volume terms,
as you're more established, you have more authority, they can also do extremely well for you, but I recommend most of you start with the lower-volume
keywords that you filled out within your Musketeer
Intent Key Plot Points.
Now that you have some keywords, you want to first figure out who you are, because not every company is the same. Let's say you're a
sustainable clothing brand, you may want a certain look, feel, image, the same goes with your
content and your keywords, some content pieces may
not match your image, your culture, your brand, so you wouldn't want to end up doing it. This is super-important,
especially at the beginning, you don't want to go off-brand, because yes, it may drive traffic, but if it's off-brand, it probably won't drive any sales, and this is both for B2B and B2C. A easy way is to figure out what's already working
for your own website. If you have a new website, put in a competitor's
name, go visit UberSuggest, type in your site name, and hood over to the Keywords tab in the left navigation sidebar.
Again, if you have little to no traffic, and you have a brand-new site where you've done little to no SEO, put in a competitor's domain here, because when you add a
competitor's domain name, you'll be able to see
what's working for them, and it's a great place to start. This will take you to a page that shows you all the keywords that you're getting traffic for, or your competition's getting traffic for, and it'll give you an idea, on
the right side of the report, of who else is ranking, and it'll give you essence of, all right, how much traffic can I
get if I ranked higher, is this keyword
representative of my brand, will it work well? So, it's all great strategies
when it comes to figuring out here are the main keywords
that we think are right fit, or that are a bad fit. I also like looking at the top
pages report in UberSuggest, especially with my competition, because on the top pages report, you could end clicking View
All under Estimated Visits, it shows you all the
keywords that the top pages on your competition's
website is ranking for.
This is important because it tells you what pages that you should
consider replicating when it comes to content
on your own website, and of course, you'll want to make yours better than the competition. When looking at the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, make sure that the
keywords have good volume, they're driving good traffic, high CPC and low SEO difficulty. If they meet those criterias, those keywords are the ones that are the most likely
to convert into sales. Another report that you should look at is a content ideas report. If you put in a keyword within your space, it'll tell you all the popular blog posts that are already working
well in your space, based off of estimated visits from Google, social shares, and even
how many other people are linking to them.
This will all give you ideas of what's working, and what's not. Another thing that I like looking at is the keyword ideas report. So in the left navigation of UberSuggest, click on Keyword Ideas, and it'll show you all the other keywords that you could be going after. There's a Related tab,
there's a Comparisons tab, this is great because the Comparisons tab may show other keywords or other brands that people may be comparing you to. And as I mentioned earlier, with either the Content Ideas Report, or even the Top Pages, you can see all the
backlinks pointing to a URL, you can click all the View All, and you can see who in your space is linked to the competitors
that may link to you, and you want to go after these people an see if you can get them
to link to you as well.
In essence, all of this
shows you, and teaches you, what's already working, because you don't want
to recreate the wheel, you might as already use what's working for your competition. And that's why I like doing things like looking at the backlinks
report within UberSuggest. It shows me all the people
linking to my competition, and I try to create similar pages of the ones on my competitor's sites, so that way I can hit up all these sites, and get them to link back to me as well. And, as I mentioned, top pages, really look at backlinks
and social shares, as well as estimated visits. When you combine all
three of these metrics, you're much more likely
to create pages that hit, versus pages that only have
one of these metrics, right? If a page really has
high estimated visits, but low backlinks, and low social shares, it's not going to do as well
as one that has all three. One thing that I want you to do is go and figure out what
channels the content lives within. Head to UberSuggest, search
for your keyword term, review which sources are popular, and note them down.
Because, you may find
that some of these pages and content pieces do
really well on Facebook, while others do well on Pinterest. Well, if they do well on Facebook, now you know what content you should be targeting for Facebook, and if they do well on Pinterest, now you know, hey, these pieces of content will do better on Pinterest, let me go and put them on Pinterest, and not promote them on Facebook.
Because if you're promoting
content on Facebook that doesn't do well, and you keep pushing and
promoting on Facebook, Facebook will be like, "Hm,
you keep promoting content "that users don't like, "so even in the future,
if you promote a content "that our users would like, "we're not going to show
it, because our algorithm's "going to flag your
account as low quality." Some last points before we get into the next section of Franklins' Law, I want you to take note of
the content types that work, and look at what content pieces
that your competition has that you never talked about.
Also, look at related topics, it's the Related tab within
the Keyword Ideas section, and don't forget to
take advantage of video. Video's huge, especially on
YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, it's blowing
up there altogether. And when you're looking at all
these videos, content pieces, especially ones that
your competition's using, go to their site, and see how their commenting
and engagement are. If the comments and engagements are great, that's another sign that
people love the content. We also have a worksheet for you, you can find it below, or if you're on a social
channel watching this video, you can go to neilpatel.com/training, and then head over to SEO Unlocked, and you'll be able to find it there. And this worksheet will help
you generate the right ideas, with the right titles.
I like putting a lot of
my competitor one in here that they've written, their
traffic, their keyword count, and putting in their backlink information, this all helps me generate
ideas for the future. The next up of Franklins'
Law of Content Success is the Target Kite. What I want you to do now is
head back over to UberSuggest, and put in some of the keywords, or start with mainly one keyword that your competition is ranking for that you want to go after, click on the keyword ideas report, look for all the other suggestions, but more importantly,
look on the right side, who's ranking for it, look
at their pages of content, and when you click through
to all their sites, it'll give you idea of what
they're doing successful, and what you need to copy. And, you can do the same
thing through Top Pages, and in Top Pages, you
would end up putting in a domain name of your competition.
I know I've discussed this, but the reason I'm reemphasizing this, is if you don't do this,
you're going to end up writing content that gets no traffic, and no one likes that feeling, because it's a waste of time
and energy, and even money. But when you go to the Top Pages, and you're seeing, hey, my competition is ranking
for these keywords, and you're seeing that page, click through and go to their website. Sometimes, they won't have
a heavy, text-based page, it could be a lot of images.
Everyone things that hey,
the best content pages are all text, well, a lot of them
have videos, and images, some of them even sell products, they don't always have text. You want to see what
they have on their pages, think about how you can make it better, so you can beat them and
create a better page. You want to really dive
into their content. Hm, what would people like to see that would help them more on this page? Oh, are they selling a product or service? Is the cost clear? Is the benefits clear? Are the reviews clear? Well, if none of that's clear, you'll know how you can make it better. Or even if it's just an educational piece, does it give step-by-step instructions? Are the instructions clear? Would I know how to replicate them through one, two, three, four? Do they need images, or videos
to help describe the steps, so then that way, people can
end up getting better results from reading that content, and
it could be more actionable? Keep all those things in mind, because it'll help you
produce better content.
Again, some quick checks, when you're creating
content on your own site, you want to also look at the keywords that your competitors are
ranking for for similar pages, and when you can,
intertwine those keywords within your own content, because it'll help you rank
for those keywords as well. As I mentioned, you also
want to check out reviews, read all the reviews, see what customers think, because this will give you feedback on how to adjust your content,
your service, your product, so it can be better than the competition.
There's also another worksheet
called Conquer Worksheet, this will help you
conquer your competition. Make sure you fill that out. If you don't see it here below because you're on a social
site, and watching this video, you can go to NeilPatel.com/training, go to SEO Unlocked as a course, and then from there, when
you go to the right video, you'll find all the files. The next step of Franklins'
Law of Content Success is Supercharged Content. If you don't supercharge things, you won't get the results
that you're looking for. So here's an example of
supercharged content. As you can see, it's above and beyond, there's images, there's custom graphics, it's something that stands
out, and isn't the normal. That's an example of supercharged content. You want to download examples
based on your industry. Google stuff, look at the stuff in the content ideas
report in UberSuggest. Some of them will be that
supercharged type of content.
This is the type of stuff
that is the gold standard that you want to copy. You don't want to copy them word-for-word, you want to do better than them, but you want to copy the concept of how they're going above
and beyond with their quality. So what is supercharged content? It's in-depth, and highly useful, long form content, like
thousands and thousands of words that don't contain
fluff, that are relevant, contains accurate data and insights, and when you're using
this data and insights, you need to cite your sources. It stands out from the crowd, and it satisfies a need or a want. That's supercharged content.
You want to educate your reader, that's one of the simplest ways to supercharge your content. I love doing in-depth,
step-by-step walkthroughs, and backing everything
up with stats and data, and citing my sources so
people know I'm not full of it, and everything that I'm telling them will help them get results. I also am not afraid of conflict, so when I write content, and I have my opinion, or a viewpoint, I'll stick with it. I won't go back and forth, and flip-flop, I'll stick with my viewpoint even if people disagree with me, and that also helps create more comments, more social shares, more backlinks, and makes the content more popular, because when you polarize your audience, yes, you're going to get
some people who hate you, or who may disagree, not really hate, but more so disagree, but you're getting a lot of
people who strongly agree, and those are the people who
are more likely to share.
You also want to do research, research very specific
facts, data, insights, make sure the stats aren't old. You can Google for this data, so any time you're trying
to include research within your content piece, and you're not sure what to include, Google it, you'll end up finding a ton of relevant, new data, and make sure you cite your sources, just don't steal from other people. And this also proves, and gives you more credibility over time, because people are like,
"Huh, Neil really knows "what he's talking about, "look at all these stats and
data points that he used, "and he backed it up, so we
know he's not full of it." Whenever you do a Google
search for research, as long as you use the word stats, or statistics, or data
at the end of your query, you'll find a lot of results that you can potentially pull from.
Be careful with research though, if it's not a reputable source, or they don't have a good reputation, it could be false information, and citing it could hurt your
credibility in the long run. Here's an example of a case
study that's using data. Harry's Marketing, What we
Learned from Reverse Engineering a $400 Million Startup. That's cool, it piques your interest. People are like, "Huh,
what did Harry's do? "I want to copy that formula,
especially if I'm a marketer." Another aspect that's huge is design. Pretty goes a lot way on the web. But pretty that loads slow
doesn't go a long way on the web, so it has to be pretty and minimalistic, in which the design
doesn't just look good, make the content more readable,
but also loads super-fast.
And if you can use design to help you out, you'll do really well. Logos are another great way to build up more trust and authority
within your design. I just took a lot of
trust seals from the web, you want to be using them in the content, but if you look at, probably wondering why, is because they build trust. The same goes with stats
and data, and logos, and other elements like that, that you put within the
design of your content. Here's some pretty examples of nicely designed content pieces. These are just rule of thumbs as what you really want
to end up looking for. Last but not least, in Franklins' Law of Content Success, is Key Personnel. You could try to do
everything on your own, and there's nothing wrong with that, and that's how I started out. But as you grow, you want
to be working with a team. And we use Trello for our team, and you can have researchers,
writers, editors, and you can see that it's
broken down in phases, and when you do this, it creates an easy, streamlined formula to create content at mass scale.
Now I don't do this for NeilPatel.com, because I only blog once a week, but if I was blogging ten times a week, or something like that, I would be using this process, because it'll allow me to scale. Writers, they typically
like writing in Google Docs, or WordPress, and that's fine, have them outline first, because then it streamlines it. The last thing you want
is a writer to write, and then it not work out, because you're just like, "I don't like what they're writing." Well, if you had their outline first, you can stop them ahead of time if you don't like what they're producing. Then, of course, editors
usually edit within WordPress.
A lot of them use Grammarly,
the Chrome extension that also helps with the editing process. And, if you want to hire
people, don't worry, we'll go into that more
in depth next week. As long as you follow everything
in Franklins' Formula, you'll have supercharged content that can rank well on Google. So now, I have three action items for you before we end this lesson. One, I want you to download
the ideas title sheet, and create five target pages to beat. Two, find three data sources that are relevant for your industry, that we can source people and cite them, and of course, last but not least, download our examples
of supercharged content, that way you have an
understanding of what to produce, and what not to. Again, if you need these files, you can head over to
NeilPatel.com/training, go to SEO Unlocked, and you'll be able to see all
the files and lessons there, it's under each video.
Thank you for watching, I look forward to
continually educating you and help you get loved by Google..
