But the purpose of the toolset remains the same — to help website owners, marketers, SEO companies and professionals, and designers monitor their page performance on Google’s search index.

Google Search Console has many marketer-friendly features and tools. 

Like what?

It provides information on crawl data, search index and appearance, and technical status updates. Plus, it can check your site’s mobile usability and integrate insights from Google Analytics as well. 

Considering that clickthrough rates (CTR) increase by nearly 30.8% on moving up one spot on the SERPs, it’s worthwhile to invest time and energy into researching Google Search Console. 

Let’s expand on it, shall we?

5 Reasons Why Marketers Need to Leverage Google Search Console

Google Search Console can provide a wealth of information that marketers can use to finetune their content marketing, SEO, and targeting.  Here are the top reasons why modern marketers need to master this toolset:

Reason #1: It Assesses Your Inbound and Internal Links

Link building is an essential part of online marketing, SEO, and brand building. When high-authority websites link to you, it’s like a vote of confidence for users as well as Google.

Not only that, internal linking helps keep visitors glued to your websites, which increases dwell time and engagement. 

Google Search Console provides a detailed Links Report after analyzing your backlinks and internal links. It includes information such as:

• Top linking domains (sites that link to you the most)
• Your top-linked pages (globally and site-wise)
• Your top-linked text
• Most linked pages internally

From these insights, you can spot internal linking opportunities to boost visitors’ time on site. You can also create more content pointing to your most-linked text and bask in the reflected attention. 

Anything else?

Yes. If you use tools to analyze backlinks, you’ll be able to identify and disavow spammy and low-authority links, thus keeping your backlink profile healthy.

Reason #2: It Provides Insights about Your Real-Time Performance

It may sound cliche to you, but customers are indeed the king, especially in the digital world. Everything about modern marketing hinges around user experience. Even if your marketing is on-target, you can’t hope to keep visitors on-page if your UX is less than perfect.

That’s where Google Search Console can come in handy. 

How so?

The Core Web Vitals Report they produce assesses how your pages perform in real time. Among other things, the report measures your site’s load time, which has an impact on your bounce rates. Think With Google research states that bounce rates increase by 32% when load time increases from 1 sec to 3 sec.

If you find your pages on the lower end of the speed spectrum, you can change your web-hosting provider or experiment with different file formats.

Apart from page speed, the report also talks about how your pages perform on mobile devices and desktops. It groups together pages by URL and digs out performance issues related to each URL group. It expands on each issue and provides suggestions for improvement as well.

As a marketer, you can work with your developers and designers to resolve these UX issues. By providing a more painless and seamless experience to your visitors, you can encourage them to revisit and recommend your site.

Reason #3: It Evaluates Your Site’s Mobile Usability

In 2015, Google rolled out an update that favored mobile-compatible websites. It was a huge incentive for marketers and webmasters to optimize their digital properties for small screens. 

Building on that premise, Google Search Console offers two ways to evaluate and optimize your site’s mobile-friendliness:

1. Mobile-Friendly Test Tool: Just type your site’s URL into the tool and check whether or not it renders well on mobiles. Check out the results for my website, shanebarker.com:

On the right is how my homepage appears on mobile screens. You can see that, on the whole, the site is “mobile friendly” but there are a few loading errors. I can click the “VIEW DETAILS” link to dig into these issues and loop in my developer to iron them out.

To give you some more insights into this report, I repeated the test with another website, and here’s what I found out: 

You can see the technical issues listed on the left and improvement suggestions on the right. Even if you use website builders with responsive templates, it’s essential to run your pages through this test to ensure they meet Google’s standards of mobile compatibility.

2. Mobile Usability Report

While the Mobile-Friendly Test analyzes the overall mobile-readiness of your site, it doesn’t drill down into page-by-page issues. For that, you can use Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability Report. It pinpoints issues on each page and also identifies areas for improvement. 

Whenever you make significant changes to your site’s look and feel, make it a point to run this check. This way, you don’t disrupt your site’s mobile experience and marketing funnels.

Reason #4: It Offers Insights about Your Search Performance

Since Google searches are a major source of traffic for most sites, it’s essential for marketers to understand how to fare well on them. 

If you sign up for Google Search Console, you can get your hands on their Performance Report for Search that answers questions like: 

• What is your average position and CTR in relevant searches?
• How often does your site figure in searches?
• Does Google draw any rich results (snippets) from your site?
• Which queries originate from mobile devices?
• Which of your pages are scoring maximum and minimum clicks?

Using the above data, you can improve your mobile targeting, keyword strategies, HTML, and site architecture. 

While all of this might sound too technical to your marketer ears, it’s a fact that SEO, design, and marketing need to be perfectly aligned in the digital world. When you align your page content and structure to Google’s expectations, your search performance is bound to excel.

Additionally, if you monitor the report periodically, you can spot peaks and troughs in rankings, traffic, clicks, and impressions. Correlating the data with other reports, you can figure out why your rankings dropped and how you can get them up again. 

By keeping pace with Google, you can diagnose rank drops caused by sudden algorithmic changes. 

Is that all?

No way.

Not only Search, but you can also edge your way into Google’s Discover as well. Unlike Search which throws up content based on queries, Discover shows content based on the latest news and user behavior trends. Traffic from Discover can supplement your organic search traffic. 

Regarding Discover, Google says this:

“Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T).”

Google Search Console’s Performance Report tracks your Discover content’s performance and helps you build brand authority.

Reason #5: It Helps Crawlers Index Your Pages Better

Last, but perhaps the most important application of Google Search Console, is in site crawling. It dictates how Google crawlers find and index your pages, which has a direct bearing on your content’s visibility.

From a marketer’s perspective, there are many aspects of site crawling that are relevant.

For instance, the Coverage Report and URL Inspection reports show the errors crawlers encountered when they attempted indexing your pages.  Here is a sample report for you:

You can check out Crawl Stats to understand which of your pages were indexed by Googlebot in the past 90 days.

Ideally, the number of downloaded pages will be high and the download time will be as low as possible. If that’s not the case, you may need to overhaul your site’s architecture, content, and/or experience.

Marketers can also utilize the “Fetch as Google” feature to see how Googlebot views their pages vs. how a visitor sees it. At a glance, you can spot discrepancies between both views. 

From the sample report below, you can see that Googlebot couldn’t access the banner and panel images. If these images are opaque to crawlers, it means they won’t be indexed correctly.

Proactive marketers would plug the gaps so that their site’s ROI is not impacted.

Ready to Use Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a goldmine of data that marketers can use to sharpen their strategies. It’s more user-friendly than Webmasters Tools and completely free of charge. By using it as I’ve explained above, you can ensure maximum visibility of your websites, ads, and content pages. You can also nail your technical SEO game.

Do you have any questions about this article? Please write them in the comments below. I’ll be back with the answers as soon as possible.

The post How to Use Google Search Console: A Marketer's Perspective appeared first on RELEVANCE.

There’s a lot more that goes into creating shareworthy content than that. You need to create content that your audience loves and wants to share with their friends.

In this post, we have created a seven-step guide for you to create content that gets shared. This is in no particular order and you can choose to follow all or a few of these to create shareworthy content.

So, let’s get started.

1. Write on Trending Topics

If you want your content to be shared more, write on current and trending topics. When it comes to content marketing, it pays to keep up with the trends. So, it is a good idea to formulate a content marketing strategy that incorporates current trends.

But, how can you do that?

Well, the first step is to conduct through content and keyword research to find out what is trending. You also need to keep your target audience in mind. Your target audience might not relate to every topic that is trending, so filter out the topics by niche.

Create a list of topics and keep updating this list on a regular basis, to ensure that your content is fresh and shareworthy.

2. Create Infographics

Infographics are one of the most shareable types of content as they have a perfect mix of informational content and visuals. Moreover, you can share your infographic to multiple websites, without making any changes to it.

It is an engaging type of content that most people like to publish on their websites. So, if you create one well-researched, relevant, and useful infographic, you can share it on multiple websites.

Moreover, infographics are fun to read and easy for your audience to share. This makes infographics one of the most shareable types of content.

3. Leverage Visual Content

Adding visuals to any content makes it more engaging and shareworthy. But, if you make entirely visual content like a video, then it makes it much easier for your audience to share it.

Unlike still photos, videos can have a lot more information and can be used for a variety of purposes.

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The best part is that you do not need to start a YouTube channel to leverage videos, but can do so right from your blog or website. Just publish a video, with a short description, and add social sharing buttons to encourage people to share it on social media.

USA Today, for example, has a whole section of video content on their website where they do exactly this. Here’s an example of a video from the website.

Image via USA Today

The social sharing button is added in the video itself, making it very easy for their audience to share this video.

4. Make Your Content Scannable

One quality of shareable content is that it is easy to read. This means that readers can simply scan through the content and extract all important information.

Here are some tips to create easy-to-read content, that is shareworthy:

• Add a mix of text and visuals
• Structure your content well into sections and sub-sections
• Create listicles with proper, informative headings
• Use simple language and short sentences
• Add and highlight statistics, examples, and other important information

Try these tips and create easy-to-read, scannable content. The easier it is to read and understand a piece of content, the more shareable it becomes.

5. Write Compelling Headlines

One notable and common characteristic of viral content is a catchy and attention-grabbing headline.

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And, the more people who read your content, the more it will be shared.

But, crafting the perfect headlines is not everyone’s cup of tea. You need to hire good writers with substantial copywriting experience for this. 

If you have the required resources in-house, then that’s even better. You can follow these tips to create compelling headlines for your content:

• Keep it short and crisp
• Use words that evoke emotions
• Use a statistic to get people’s attention
• Add surprising or controversial statements
• Use numbers

Try these tips to create compelling headlines and get more people to read and share your content.

6. Add an Element of Surprise

The best way to get people to read and share your content is to surprise them.

[bctt tweet="Share a piece of content that is contradictory to popular opinion or is a lesser-known fact. " username="relevance"]

People tend to share content that shocks or surprises them. In fact, content like this often tends to go viral. News and media websites often use this tactic to create sensational content and make it go viral. This does not mean that you need to create conspiracy theories, but use actual, lesser-known facts to surprise people.

Here’s an example from BBC Breaking News where they have shared a fact to gain the audience’s attention. This tweet was retweeted more than their other regular news tweets.

Image via Twitter

7. Create Content That Evokes an Emotion

Adding to the point above, it not just surprise or shock that entices people and makes your content shareable, but any emotion. If your content can make people feel things—be it happiness, sadness, and any other emotion—they are more likely to share it.

The key is to write good-quality, relevant content that is targeted at your audience and evokes certain emotions in them. You can use third-party tools to create good-quality content, but you need a human touch to make it emotional.

You can use humor in your content to make your audience laugh and share that joy with their friends. You can also write or share a heartwarming story that people can relate to and want to share with others.

This is often reciprocated by them sharing your content with more people.

Conclusion

These are some of the best ways to create content that is worthy of being shared. However, you cannot simply rely on good content, you also need to promote it and make it easy to share.

The former can be achieved with the help of content marketing tools that can help you amplify the reach of your content. 

For the latter, you can add social sharing buttons on your blog or website. If you have a WordPress website, you can use the “click to tweet” feature. Also, ensure that the sharing buttons are strategically placed and clearly visible.

The post 7 Steps to Create Content that Gets Shared appeared first on RELEVANCE.

These activities are time-consuming but essential for the success of your content marketing campaigns.

Now, imagine a scenario in which you don’t need to carry out most of these activities but just need to fine-tune them. That is exactly how AI is transforming content marketing campaigns. It helps perform mundane tasks so that you can concentrate on high-value activities that can drive business growth.

MarketsandMarkets found that the artificial intelligence market is set to reach $190.61 billion by 2025. Deloitte also found that early adopters of AI expect it to transform their industries. 83% of market leaders said they had achieved substantial to moderate benefits using AI.

Here are the primary benefits of AI for companies:

Image via Deloitte

Let’s now try to understand how AI can help improve your content marketing campaigns.

AI in Content Marketing Campaigns

AI is transforming how brands and marketers create and distribute content. Advanced AI systems can both read and write human language. Every time they do so, they learn a little more and improve.

As a result, they’re able to read, analyze, suggest, and write content like, or better than, humans. They can analyze previous information and learn fast. AI can thus play an effective role in handling many repetitive tasks to help your team save time.

AI also allows you to create, brainstorm, promote, and optimize your content marketing campaigns.

It provides you with valuable insights from the data collected. These can help you make data-driven decisions that can positively impact your content marketing campaigns.

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How Does AI Help You Optimize Content Marketing Campaigns

How can marketers optimize their content marketing campaigns with AI? Let’s take a closer look.

1. Discover Hidden Insights

To improve your content marketing campaigns, you need information on your past campaigns. By understanding the shortcomings of those campaigns, you can optimize your current campaigns. These insights are the key to the success of your marketing efforts.

AI extracts useful information from the data of your past campaigns and effectively separates the insights from the noise. These insights can help you take steps to improve your current campaigns. AI can also help you carry out competitor analysis and create campaigns that perform better.

2. Create Great Visual Content

Your content marketing team may have access to many visuals that they use for campaigns. AI analyzes these visuals and identifies appropriate content for your target audience. It provides marketers with insights on what the consumers buy, click on, and share.

Cortex, for example, uses AI to consistently help marketing teams choose the best visuals for their brands. The tool analyzes images, colors, hashtags, keywords, cadence, timing, and more to help you identify the elements your audience loves the most.

Image via Cortex

Adobe Sensei is yet another AI tool that can help you identify what’s in a photo. It can analyze style, context, and quality. Through this tool, you can search for images in Adobe Stock with ease by using search terms that are relevant to the pictures.

3. Predictive Analytics

Accenture found that 91% of consumers are likely to shop with brands that remember, recognize, and provide appropriate recommendations. 83% of consumers will also share their data if it means that they get personalized experiences.

AI can help you accurately predict customer behavior and provide relevant content by leveraging consumer data.

AI uses consumer data to predict and recommend what consumers want. It powers content recommendations by analyzing consumer content consumption habits.

The systems become better at studying user actions and can better predict what the consumer wants to listen to, watch, or read next. This can help you deliver superior quality experiences to your consumers.

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4. Content Optimization

Content production is only one part of content marketing. You need to ensure that the content you’ve produced drives consumers to perform the right actions. AI can help you get your content in front of the right people.

Additionally, AI tools can help you discover the characteristics of great content. They also provide insights into how to improve the performance of your content.

The tools analyze your content and compare it with that of your competitors. They then offer topic recommendations to help you figure out which content will perform better. SEMrush, for example, enables you to conduct topic research, and find new content ideas and headlines that resonate with your audience.

The tools also identify channels through which you can engage consumers, depending on their stage in the buyer journey. You can curate content that is of greater value to the target audience by analyzing schematics and keywords in real-time. AI also identifies trending topics by tracking internet conversations.

AI can not only help you create new content but also help you optimize your existing content. The tools read your existing content and identify improvement opportunities.

AI can help you identify:

• Additional or new keywords
• Related topics to cover
• Related content you can link to
• SEO strategy updates to help improve rankings

AI tools also allow you to leverage the power of personalization. Through this, you can create content that can start conversations and improve the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

5. Automate Repetitive Tasks

Content marketing involves evaluation and data analysis, both time-consuming tasks if done manually.

AI can automate most manual and repetitive tasks, including content research. You can identify the best topics and use real-time data to determine engaging content formats.

Other tasks you can optimize using AI include SEO, aligning content with user intent, and proofreading. With AI, you can measure, analyze, personalize, promote, plan, and optimize your content too.

Freeing your content team from repetitive tasks gives them time to curate content that drives action.

Conclusion

AI is indispensable, especially in this data-driven age. It can help you optimize your content marketing campaigns by giving you powerful insights. Additionally, it can take care of repetitive tasks so that you can concentrate on improving the results of your campaigns.

You will no longer have to depend on your instincts to design content marketing strategies. Instead, you will have access to data-driven insights in real-time.

Based on these insights, you can also deliver personalized recommendations by analyzing user activities and behavior.

The future of content marketing lies in leveraging AI-powered tools to research, personalize, and create content.

AI content stands out and gives you a competitive advantage. It simplifies the way your content team works while providing the customer with an attractive experience.

Are you using AI to power your content marketing efforts? Do you have any tips or insights to share? Let us know in the comments.

The post How to Optimize Your Content Marketing Campaigns Using AI appeared first on RELEVANCE.

You need to future-proof your branding strategy to keep atop of your competition. For that, it’s necessary to know the latest trends in branding and how they affect you.

Let’s look at some of the latest trends defining branding strategy in 2019 and beyond.

1. Shapeshifting Logos

One of the latest branding strategy trends is that of changing logos. Gone are the days when marketers followed the “never change your brand’s logo” strategy. It is common to see brands come up with new, shapeshifting logos. 

You need to have a wide variety of logos at your disposal so that you can use them wherever required. Simple logos might be needed for your mobile app and online branding. Similarly, you may need minimalistic or black-and-white logos for some aspects of your branding. There can be a number of uses for your logos, and you need to figure out how many you may need. 

Ensure that your logo is adaptive, contextual, and variable. This will help you do your branding effectively across multiple platforms. 

For instance, brands such as Walt Disney, Chanel use such shapeshifting logos.

Image via JUST Creative

2. Importance of Chatbots

Chatbots have become fairly popular already, and through artificial intelligence, you can use them to solve your customers’ queries. With chatbots, you can ensure that your customers don’t have to wait to speak to your brand. They also eliminate the need to have a customer service representative unless extremely necessary. 

Through chatbots, you can create a complete artificial experience for your customers and give them the feeling of interacting with your brand. You can control everything that the chatbot will communicate. This gives you the advantage of putting your brand’s persona out there through the chatbot. 

The chatbot should be able to represent your demographic. Additionally, brands should also be careful in assigning gender and personality to the chatbot. It’s a great idea to have it all outlined when developing your brand’s voice. 

Mastercard, for instance, has added a bot on Facebook, which can help their customers do simple tasks. These include checking account information, monitoring spend levels, listing purchase history, and more.

Image via Facebook

3. Geometrics

Geometrics have become especially important now, and this trend is going to stick around in the future as well. This form of branding involves different shapes and lines. However, you need to ensure that your geometrics are fun and more approachable. 

For this, you need to fill them up with bright colors that can add cheerfulness to the gloominess of the geometric designs. You must also ensure that you don’t leave edges as they are. Instead, you can add a few curves around to make the design more playful and inviting. Through this method, you’ll be able to incorporate straight lines and curves both to give you the best of both worlds. 

For instance, Airbnb modified their logo to use geometric shape with curves instead of the bulky text that they had earlier.

Image via Lucidpress

4. Organic Influencers

According to Gartner, influencer marketing has become a well-known form of marketing among consumers today. In spite of knowing that the influencers are marketing products to them, they continue to consume their content. Additionally, it’s a more affordable form of marketing. A single sponsored post by an Instagram influencer with more than 1 million followers only costs about $1405!

Image via Influence.co

While influencer marketing is already a popular branding strategy, it’s expected to change slightly in 2019 and beyond. You can expect influencer marketing to become a form of marketing where brands collaborate with the right influencers for longer-term campaigns. 

In this form of influencer marketing, the posts won’t be sponsored posts. Instead, the influencer will create regular posts with organic mentions of the brand. 

They will be a part of a broader strategy and will be brand activates rather than just one-off influencers. You must, of course, be careful about what they post as they’ll be seen as extensions of your brand. 

Beats by Dre used influencer marketing to reach out to their target audience. They sent out free pairs of headphones to artists and asked them to provide feedback on the product. When they launched Beats, they put these artists in their ads and Beats in their music videos. This helped them gain quick traction.

Image via Single Grain

5. Vintage Designs

Another trend that can help define your branding strategy is vintage designs. This is expected to be mainly for logos and packaging. To come up with vintage logos, you can keep a few guidelines in mind. 

These logos usually revolve around the primary image. This image could be hand-drawn and can include the name of the company in a font that seems like it’s hand-written. It’s necessary to understand the psychology of colors and fonts to master these designs. You may also choose to add your slogan to the logo if you wish to. Vintage logos also contain the year of establishment; you can choose to add that as well. 

As for vintage packaging, you can start with the colors. The colors have to be natural and should give off an old-fashioned look. Take care while creating the typography as well; you need to make it appear vintage too. The choice of how vintage you want your branding to look is totally up to you. You can choose to use a mix of modern and vintage elements too.

Final Thoughts

Branding is a must for every brand. It gives an identity to your brand; one which your customers can recognize and relate to. Just like marketing, branding changes by the moment as well. By keeping up with the latest branding trends, you can fuel your brand’s growth and define your branding strategy. Adopt new logos, bring in vintage looks, utilize influencers, and use modern geometric designs to improve your branding. 

The post 5 Trends That Will Define Your Branding Strategy [In 2019 & Beyond] appeared first on RELEVANCE.

If you’re willing to compromise on quality, you can create hundreds of lackluster posts easily. But that  can damage the reputation of your business. To solidify your brand image, pillar content is essential. By producing pillar content, you can become the ultimate source for great content in your industry.

Before we delve into how you can create pillar content, let’s first understand the topic.

What Is Pillar Content?

You can think of pillar content as the foundation of your overall content. In simple terms, pillar content is a piece of content that covers key areas in a niche. You can further break down your pillar content into related subtopics.

For example, let’s focus on the digital marketing niche. It’s a broad topic. Email marketing, SEO, PPC advertising, and other topics are all covered under it. Within each of these sub-topics (also known as topic clusters), there can be further derivative sections as well.

Image via HubSpot

Suppose you decide to create articles on a quality backlink strategy and how to research keywords. The broad category “SEO” unites both these sub-categories. So, that becomes your base for pillar content. Furthermore, if you have a single page that combines these two categories, it will be called a pillar page.

Generally, you’ll see pillar content in the form of blog posts, reports, guides, and ebooks. While infographics, videos, and photos aren’t examples of pillar content, they can help to provide context to the pillar content.

What Are The Benefits of Pillar Content?

For a very long time, SEO experts have emphasized the importance of keywords to get better search rankings. Of course, it’s an essential factor to get ahead in the SERPs. However, the way people frame their search queries is changing.

Image via Backlinko

Through long-tail keywords, Backlinko boosted their organic traffic by 19.79% in 2 months. That’s because the search volume for long-tail keywords makes up a massive chunk of all Google searches. Furthermore, they’re low on competition but high on conversions.

Not just that, 70% of requests made to Google Assistant are expressed in conversational language, not with keywords. So, instead of looking for the best restaurants, people are more likely to ask, “Where can I go for Chinese food?”

To keep up with the changing search behavior of users, you need to shift to the topic clusters model. By focusing on creating content based on topics and sub-topics, you can make your site more organized.

Through this, you also make it easier for Google’s algorithm to understand your site architecture and find related content. Topic clusters help web crawlers make connections in your content. Ultimately, this can boost your visibility to search engines.

In this model, you’ll need to link each topic page or cluster page to the same pillar page. Similarly, the pillar page links back to each cluster page. Because of this web of internal links, when any page performs well, the whole cluster benefits from it. As engagement and search rankings increase, you can become an authority on the topic.

How To Create Pillar Content

Pillar content differs from your standard blog post in many ways. It is unique, high-quality, comprehensive, and focuses on providing value to the reader.

So, it’s evident that creating pillar content requires a lot of extra effort. If you’re interested in creating your own pillar content, here is a short guide for you:

1. Research Your Audience

Creating content for a successful blog is always about what the reader wants. You need to create content that resonates with your target audience. To find out what appeals to your readers, you need to first understand your audience.

What is the age group of your audience? What are their interests? What are some of the issues that they face? What are they discussing on social media?

You need to find answers to these questions.

You can use tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics to find out who your audience is. Next, try to get a glimpse into your audience’s mindsets. Look at the kinds of posts they are sharing and what they are discussing on social media.

Try to put yourself into the shoes of your audience. Think about the time when you were an amateur in your industry.

What were the questions you had? What were the problems you faced? Through these questions and insights, you’ll find ideas for your pillar content.

2. Check Keyword Search Volume

While keywords shouldn’t be your focus, you can’t completely ignore them. Once you’ve listed your audience’s interests, you can check the keyword search volume relevant to each topic. The results will give you a better understanding of what exactly people are looking for.

You can use a standard keyword analysis tool to find monthly search volume for each keyword.  Use keyword clustering technique to find other popular keywords that you can use in your pillar content. Keyword clustering will immensely help you to stay ahead of the pack in the rapidly changing world of SEO.

3. See What Your Competitors Are Doing

For any topic or niche you pick, it’s evident that there is a lot of pillar content on the web already. Before you finalize your pillar content idea, make sure you know what you’ll be competing against.

Which means you need insights into your competitors in terms of their content and keyword strategies. To make your task easier, you can use a more specific competitor research tool such as SpyFu.

Image via Spyfu

You can also look at your competitors’ sites and see the kind of content they have created. See the way they have structured their topic clusters and look at their most popular posts. This will help you understand what kind of content works well.

Of course, you shouldn’t copy what they’re doing directly. Remember, your pillar content needs to be unique. So, while it’s great to take inspiration from, producing the same content would be counterproductive.

4. Create a 10x Pillar Page

SEO expert, Rand Fishkin, is credited with coining the term, “10x content.” He defines it as content that is 10 times better than the other content available on the same keyword or topic.

After you’ve created the first topic cluster for your website, it is a good idea to work on creating your own 10x pillar page. Your 10x pillar page should focus on a core topic and explore it in-depth.

The focus of 10x content is not to create viral content but to answer the questions of your audience. Quality and reliability are essential components of good 10x pillar content.

The format for a 10x pillar page is similar to that of an ebook. Simply put, it’s like a comprehensive guide that allows people to download or save the page’s content.

The best way to create your own 10x pillar page is to focus on creating a downloadable resource. For this, you can combine a series of related articles that fit well together. For instance, you could combine articles about on-page SEO and off-page SEO together for a guide on SEO.

Just like topic clusters work, your 10x content pillar page can help you boost your search rankings. With a 10x content pillar page, Bright Gauge, a business intelligence platform, was able to rank on the first page of Google.

Conclusion

Creating pillar content and better inbound links would increase your website authority. Since, you're competing for attention with your competitors, a stronger website authority will help you rank higher on search engines. It will also help you increase credibility and trustworthiness of your content.

Have you used pillar content as a part of your content marketing strategy? Please share your views in the comments section below.

The post How to Create Your Own Series of Pillar Content in 5 Steps appeared first on RELEVANCE.

This is where guest blogging comes in. And if someone told you that guest blogging was dead, they were misinformed

Guest blogging for high authority websites using quality content is one of the best ways to build valuable links. However, your primary goal from guest blogging should be to build authority and grow your readership.

If you focus simply on building backlinks, you might end up with a bunch of links from low-quality websites. This can do more harm than good. So how do you build links effectively with guest blogging? Let’s find out.

1. Find Relevant Opportunities

First things first. In order to leverage guest blogging for your link building, you need to first find relevant sites that accept guest posts. There are quite a few different ways to do this.

#1: Use Google Search

Many websites that accept guest posts have a separate section or page that talks about it. These are the pages where they list their guest posting guidelines.

So the simplest way to find them is using Google Search. Just type in your niche or industry followed by “guest blog,” “write for us,” “become a contributor,” and so on.

For example, if you’re in the travel industry, you could search for:

“Travel” + “guest post”

“Travel” + “guest blog”

“Travel” + “contributor”

“Travel” + “write for us” and so on.

To find the websites that don’t necessarily have a separate page soliciting guest posts, you can search for:

[Keyword] + “This is a guest post”

[Keyword] + “Contributing Author”

[Keyword] + “Guest Columnist” and so on.

These searches will help you find websites that have accepted guest posts at some point. So even if they don’t proactively seek guest posts, they still might accept them.

#2: Analyze Your Competitor’s Backlinks

This can work best if the competitor you’re analyzing has a small or medium-sized website. For bigger sites having thousands of backlinks, analyzing them can be almost impossible. However, you can use tools like Moz Link Explorer and go through the links on your competitors’ sites.

For example, while going through the link profile of a travel blogger, WanderlustingK, I found a link from www.atlasobscura.com.

Image via Moz 

On inspection, I see that this is indeed a guest post she has written for that website. This indicates that Atlas Obscura is a website that accepts guest posts.

   Image via Atlas Obscura

#3: Search by Influencers

This is another great way to find opportunities for guest blogging. If you already know of an influencer in your niche who writes a lot of guest posts, you can simply target those sites. Simply search using their names on Google and you might be pleasantly surprised with the results.

For example, here’s what I see when I search using my own name.

And, voila! You now know some more sites that you could approach for publishing guest posts.

2. Refine Your List of Targets

Once you have a identified some websites in your niche that accept guest posts, you need to refine the list further. Why? Because some of them might not be good enough to help you build quality backlinks.

What should you check for precisely? Here are some parameters that you can use to refine your list of websites:

• Domain Authority: Roughly, any websites with a Domain Authority of more than 50 should be a good place to start. The higher, the better. In general, you should not be targeting sites that have a DA lower than 40.
• Quality of Content: Go through the site to check how often they post, and what kind of content they post. As a reader, if you think their content is valuable, definitely keep them in your list. Also, check for the engagement on their posts. The higher the number of comments and shares, the better.
• Author Bio: Check if the guest posts on these sites provide a prominent placement to the author’s bio. Also, check out some profiles of other guest contributors to get an idea of their DA and quality.

You should now have a solid list of websites that you want to pitch to.

3. Brainstorm Content Ideas

It is important for you to come up with a few content ideas that are relevant to the websites you’ll be pitching to. A great way of researching content ideas is to leverage platforms like BuzzSumo. It will give you a  clear idea about what’s trending.

Based on those ideas, come up with a few post titles. You can use tools like CoSchedule to come up with really good titles. Make sure to have a mix of beginner-level and advanced-level content ideas. Depending on the kind of website you’re pitching to, these will come in handy.

4. Start Your Outreach

The simplest way to contact blog or website owners is to check their “Contact Us” section on their website. Try to look for an email address if possible. If not, you can use their contact form. Services like Interseller or Anymail finder can also help you find email addresses.

That’s really the easy part. The more difficult part is to get your message across to high-authority blogs or websites. A cold outreach email is unlikely to give you a favorable outcome. Why? Because they receive hundreds of such pitches everyday and likely have an existing publishing calendar too.

Here’s where you need to start building your relationships. Or at least get yourself on their radar. You can follow them on social media and engage meaningfully with their content. That is a great way of making yourself visible.

However, bear in mind that this won’t be easy or quick. You need to really invest a lot of time and effort into building these relationships. Feel free to send them constructive feedback and appreciation for some of their posts.

How to Create the Perfect Pitch?

Here are some general rules of thumb that you should keep in mind when pitching to websites:

• Use a warm introduction and craft a personal message. You can refer to a recent article of theirs that you liked.
• Do not beat around the bush. Be straightforward and let them know why you are reaching out.
• Mention a few post ideas, keeping in mind who you’re writing to.
• Share examples of your work or any other guest posts you have written.
• Offer to promote the content within your social networks for greater visibility.

Most importantly, make sure that your email looks like something you’d want to read and be interested in.

5. Create Your Posts

As soon as you start receiving replies, work on creating those guest posts. A few key things to be kept in mind when writing these posts are:

• Follow the guest posting guidelines of the target website.
• Focus on SEO and try to optimize your posts accordingly.
• Include a link back to your website or a relevant web page, but make sure that it’s non-promotional.
• Pay close attention to the readability of your post, as well as spelling and grammar.

6. Track and Measure

Guest blogging is time-consuming. To make sure that you’re able to do it efficiently, don’t miss deadlines, and follow through with all posts you’ve committed to writing. It can be helpful to maintain some sort of tracking system. This could be something as simple as a spreadsheet where you keep track of whom you’ve pitched to. Include details of your interactions and deadlines for post submissions.

Finally, measure the results of your guest blogging activity and its effect on SEO using Google Analytics. This will help you understand how much of referral traffic you’re getting. And how your link profile improves with time. A free tool like Pro Rank Tracker can help you analyze how your search rankings change over time. Such analysis will help you plan a better SEO strategy and help you keep track of your competitors as well.

Final Thoughts

Guest blogging is certainly one of the best ways to build backlinks. However, you must remember that building links should not be the primary goal of your guest blogging.

Instead, focus on building authority by guest blogging for top websites. Then quality links will be a natural outcome.

Can you think of any other ways in which you can use guest blogging to build backlinks? Let us know in the comments below.

The post 6 Ways of Using Guest Blogging as a Link Building Technique appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Who are Micro-Influencers?

If you’re not familiar with the term “micro-influencers,” you might have some trouble understanding which influencers can be classified as “micro”. Simply put, a micro-influencer isn’t a traditional celebrity but an individual who is considered knowledgeable in a certain niche. Whether it’s in the fitness industry, beauty, fashion, tech, or even gaming, these individuals are truly passionate about their field. Consumers normally view them as an authentic and trusted source for purchase recommendations pertaining to their related industry.

Micro-influencers may not even have millions of followers. Some may even have as few as 1,000 followers. However, their recommendations are considered to be more authentic. They have a strong relationship with their follower base. That means they also have the ability to generate higher engagement rates compared to mainstream celebrities. These micro-influencers may be anyone from bloggers and vloggers to comedians and sportspersons. The main idea is to work with someone relevant to your brand and products.

Why Micro-Influencers are Important

You may be wondering what makes micro-influencers so special, and you may be questioning the claims made in the previous point. The truth is that these aren’t just bold claims made by an enthusiastic marketer. These claims arose as a result of extensive studies conducted by a number of experts. Expertcity, for instance, conducted a study which found that micro-influencers have a much more significant impact as compared to an average customer. Here are some interesting findings from the study:

• Micro-influencers engage in buying conversations 22.2 times more often than the average consumer. These conversations include product recommendations.
• 74% of micro-influencers tend to be direct in their recommendations and encourage people to “buy or try” a certain product.
• 82% of consumers say that they are highly likely to act on a micro-influencer’s recommendation.

• 94% of consumers believe micro-influencers to be a credible and believable source of information, meaning consumers trust their opinion.
• Micro-influencers are also perceived as having extensive knowledge in their respective categories by 94% of consumers. 92% of consumers also say that micro-influencers have the ability to properly explain how the product works or how it could be used.

These stats point to the fact that micro-influencers are considered to have a much more significant impact on other people’s opinions as compared to the average consumer. So, working with a micro-influencer allows you to take word-of-mouth marketing to a whole new level. Instead of just focusing on your average customers, you’ll be leveraging your efforts with the help of a more trusted and influential medium.

Micro-Influencers vs. Top Influencers

You know by now that influencers have a huge impact on the purchase decisions of the general public. But there’s a debate about which influencers have a bigger impact – micro-influencers or top influencers. Top influencers have massive reach with millions of followers, thereby guaranteeing better visibility and brand awareness. But does that necessarily translate to higher conversions and brand loyalty?

A  Takumi Study seems to point towards micro-influencers having a much higher engagement rate than top influencers. The team analyzed 500,000 Instagram profiles and took note of the average engagement rate determined by ratio of followers liking or commenting on posts. The results showed that there was a drastic decrease in engagement rate as the number of followers rises.

As you can see in the image above, those who had 1,000 followers or fewer were able to garner around 9.7% of engagement from their followers. Users with somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 followers were able to engage about 4.5% of their followers. For users who have 4,000 to 100,000 followers, the engagement rate dropped to 2.4%. As for users with more than 100,000 followers, the engagement rate was only 1.7%.

Markerly also conducted a similar study that involved more than 800,000 Instagram profiles. They streamlined their study by ensuring that a majority of the users analyzed had at least 1,000 followers. The team discovered that users who had less than 1,000 followers were able to get likes on their posts about 8% of the time. Those with more than 10 million followers were only able to get likes about 1.6% of the time. This Markerly study also noted the same downward correlation between number of followers and engagement rate as the Takumi study did.

Micro-Influencers Changing the World of Traditional Advertising

Now that you understand how exactly micro-influencers impact the purchase decisions of the general population, imagine what this means for traditional advertising. The facts and figures pointed out earlier give marketers a reason to switch from traditional advertising to marketing through micro-influencers. Some may even go so far as to combine the two channels seamlessly. To help you understand this impact better, here are some excellent examples of brands that are opting for micro-influencers as opposed to traditional advertising:

Dixie QuickTakes Campaign

Popular household brand, Dixie,  worked with micro-influencers to promote their QuickTakes container products. With the help of Markerly, Dixie managed to connect with influencers in the food and parenting niches because they wanted to focus on an audience who could really value the product – parents. The QuickTakes products were promoted through blogs like Smart Savvy Living and A Thrifty Mom.

These niche bloggers reviewed the product and provided their audience with valuable information about Dixie QuickTakes. They talked about what they loved about the product and which features could use improvement. That proves to their audience that they’re providing an authentic opinion despite the post being sponsored.

The results of the campaign were impressive with Dixie QuickTakes making $1million in media value and a combined reach of about 77 million. Between 2014 and 2016, the number of blog post reads jumped to 447,900 from 64,223. And there is also an increased number of pins, from 37,404 to 234,101.

Normally, these household products would have been advertised on TV or on billboards. Some brands may even advertise these products through a newspaper spread. But Dixie decided to switch from those traditional methods to something a bit less conventional in the form of micro-influencers.

MVMT Watches 

Another excellent example of brands working with micro-influencers is how MVMT Watches collaborates with a mix of top and micro-influencers to promote their watches. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, the watch brand decided to optimize their visibility through top influencers while engaging with an audience through micro-influencers.

Several Instagram influencers are provided with a unique discount code that will give their followers a 10-15% discount on any watch from the brand. MVMT Watches also created a unique hashtag #jointhemvmt, which the influencers promote through their sponsored posts. Their choice of influencers included model and fashion blogger, Hannah Akinyemi, who has more than 50,000 followers on Instagram. Her post promoting an MVMT watch managed to get more than 2,500 likes.

Fitness coach Shawley Coker, who has more than 44,000 followers on Instagram, was also part of the #jointhemvmt campaign. This influencer managed to get more than 3,500 likes for the post in which he’s promoting a watch from MVMT.

The #jointhemvmt has been able to generate more than 34,000 posts on Instagram alone. So you see that even micro-influencers can generate significant brand exposure in addition to engaging potential customers.

Instead of promoting themselves through fashion and luxury magazines like most watch brands used to do, MVMT decided to break the status quo. They understood how most consumers are looking for the trust factor before making a purchase and how glossy magazine pages don’t really enable that trust factor. Instead, they worked with real people who have a significant impact on other consumers.

The Bottom Line

Micro-influencers offer startups and smaller brands a cost-effective alternative to influencer marketing. For bigger brands, working with micro-influencers can be an excellent way to form a stronger relationship with their customers. This group of influencers proves to be advantageous in a number of aspects for different types of brands and has changed the way brands are connecting with their audience. Do you have any questions about influencer marketing or working with micro-influencers? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

The post How Micro-Influencers are Impacting Traditional Marketing appeared first on RELEVANCE.