Before they hired me, this client hired a vendor to help them with some technical implementations. As part of their service agreement, the vendor offered an SEO audit. My client asked me to review this audit for them. They weren't hiring this company for their SEO services, but they still wanted a trained eye to see if the audit held any water.

The audit was fairly sound, but it suggested tactics of little use. There were some good suggestions within the audit for sure, but it was entry-level stuff that would barely move the needle.

This was all coming from an enterprise-level business, one that serves other enterprise-level businesses. This is a company with the strength to offer innovative, advanced strategies, and it came out of the gate offering basically the kind of thing that comes from a free SEO audit tool found on about a bazillion different websites these days.

This got me thinking. There are plenty of these SEO audit tools out there, right? And some even provide a clear view of a site’s technical strengths and weaknesses. Best of all, most of them are free to use (within reason).

My client could have just as easily used a reputable SEO audit tool and received the same (if not better) information they got from this big agency. In fact, if they used one of these free tools, they would have more information about their site’s technical issues and a better understanding of technical SEO as a whole so that when we spoke next, there would be less of a learning curve when discussing new strategies.

Free SEO Audit Tools: Your New Teaching Assistant

Free audit tools have been around for quite some time. I know because I used some of these tools to train myself on the basics of technical SEO. While there’s a wealth of primers, guides and tools out there, I’ve always found that free tools offer a dirtier, more hands-on approach that takes technical SEO and applies it to a site that lives and breathes on the screen in front of me.

In fact, a lot of the free SEO audit tools served as the gateway drugs that pulled me out of the comfortable, accessible realm of title tag and H1 optimization and pulled me into the grasp of bigger, sexier concepts like crawl budgets, indexation and so on.

If they helped me like this, why couldn’t they help others?

Think of it this way: Clients pay a professional to consult and guide them through the weird, weedy jungle of changing search algorithms and ranking factors. Clients pay them to be not just an expert, but a guide who can help them learn more about this evolving industry. Basically, they’re looking for an expert to teach them more about SEO, so they have a stronger understanding of how it can benefit their business.

SEO audit tools can go a long way in explaining what, to some people, could seem like technical mysticism. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that these tools take what can be confusing practices and applies them to an actual website makes for an extremely practical, accessible learning tool for those who need a casual understanding of technical SEO.

In short: When clients can speak more intelligently about the SEO strategies professionals develop for them, everyone wins.

Things to Keep in Mind

Let’s share a few more words before jumping into some free SEO audit tools to share with clients.

1. First, it should go without saying that if you are going to open a client’s eyes to the world of free SEO tools, you should first make sure they’re totally onboard with the idea. While most people will likely be excited to learn more about the techniques used to improve their online business, it’s also likely that the whole reason they hired you is so they don’t need to worry much about it. So always feel out the client and make sure you’re on the same page.
2.  Not all free tools are created equal. The same could actually be said for paid tools, too. The point is to make sure you only recommend a reputable tool that provides only accurate information. This should go without saying, but your recommendations are a representation of your skills, and recommending a bad tool won’t work in your favor.
3.  Using these free tools is by no means a replacement for a thorough SEO audit. I start literally all my engagements with a comprehensive audit customized to the design and needs of each specific site, and, frankly, you should too. That said, once you’ve done that and have provided the findings to your client, these tools are a nice way to supplement your work — not replace it.

The Right Free SEO Audit Tools for the Job

Below is a list of some of my favorite free tools available on the web. I’ve made this list based on some pretty basic criteria:

1. They’re totally free (at most, they may require an email address).
2. They present the information in fairly straightforward terms with a basic explanation and actionable advice.
3. They’re pretty to look at.

OK, let’s dig in.

Varvy SEO Tool

The Varvy SEO Tool is arguably one of the most comprehensive free audit options out there and it’s a great learning tool for just about anyone, really. Not only does it break potential issues into clean, summarized little pieces, it also provides quick links that expand on each issue, providing a truly useful SEO learning experience. Plus, there’s something for everyone on here, even a seasoned developer with exposure to technical SEO may find something new to learn on here.

SEO Site Check-Up

The SEO Site Check-Up Tool has been one of my favorites ever since I got into this business. It’s great because it not only gives a wealth of data — a decent amount more than your average audit tool, in fact — but it delivers it in a very granular way. This approach makes it easy to focus on (and learn) more specific facets of technical SEO, such as page speed. One of the nicest features, though, is that it provides a “How to Fix” button which gives a quick explanation on how to fix the problem and where you can find more information if needed.

Website Grader

HubSpot’s Website Grader is arguably one of the prettiest, most user-friendly audit tools on the web. Not only is the tool quite thorough in the points it addresses, it’s also beautiful to look at and easy to process. Like any tool worth its weight in bytes, Website Grader not only gives a quick breakdown of the issue but also provides a link to posts and tutorials that will help you remedy the problem. One of the nicer features that puts this tool over the top is the prioritized “What Should I Do Next” list offered at the end of each report.

Honorable Mentions

While the three tools listed above are fantastic, there are plenty of other tools out there that work great as learning resources. The ones listed above strike a great balance between providing useful info and being newbie-friendly, but there are plenty of other tools out there worth considering. Though they tend to be geared towards those with a more technical background, tools like Pingdom and GTMetrix are great for finding and explaining some of the more technical SEO issues.

There’s No Replacement for a Good SEO

While these sites make awesome learning tools for those new to the SEO game, there’s still no substitute for hands-on experience. SEO is a pretty tricky animal and getting it just right takes time and expertise. But with the tools above, you can help demystify it a little bit for clients or anyone else new to the world of search.

The post The Hidden Benefit of Free SEO Audit Tools appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Because content is such a creative, artistic endeavor, it's so easy to screw it up. Yes, content should be a creative venture. But it should still be a profitable venture, too. Sometimes, that can make for a tough balancing act during the content creation process—something I’ve learned from experience over the past few years.

Leaning too far to one side of the creation/profit camp or the other, you (and by extension, your team and clients) open yourself to a host of issues that could very easily derail your entire content creation process—which could in turn derail your entire content strategy, and maybe even your marketing goals as a whole.

The following is a list of some of those derailing factors that I’ve encountered in my content creation experience, as well as the lesson I’ve learned from said derailments. Some of these may be no-brainers, some of them may not be—either way, I’ve learned from the challenges these experiences have brought upon me, and I’m hoping you can as well.

Setting An Unrealistic Timeline

Like I mentioned, content is often a creative venture and any creative venture worth doing requires time to breathe and bloom. Because of that, it’s important to make sure you have the time needed to properly dedicate you and your team to a project. By time, I mean not only billable hours, but literally the calendar time needed to properly build and execute content.

Like everyone else in the marketing world, I’ve tried my hand at using infographics as the backbone of a content strategy. On the surface, infographics seem easy: you have some facts and copy laid out over some pretty graphics. You have a copywriter and designer on your team—this should be done in a day or two, right?

Wrong. Surprisingly, a lot goes into an infographic. For one, you don’t just need copy; you need interesting copy—often in the form of facts or statistics. Facts and statistics require research, which requires time. Know what else requires time? Building a dozen unique vector images to accompany each point laid out in the infographic.

Lesson Learned:

No matter how simplistic a content piece may be, it’s going to take time to do it in a way that stands out above the competition. Communicate with your team to get a better idea of just how much time each player needs to create their absolute best work. Once you have that time estimation, increase it by 25 percent to cover any incidents or revisions that will inevitably occur.

Not Setting Up Regular Milestones & Meetings

I listed these first two derailments next to each other for a reason: setting adequate time for a project is the first half of the equation, while setting up milestones and meetings within that timeframe is what makes it work.

I’m a firm believer that the creative mind works best when it’s unhindered by the realities surrounding it. That’s my flowery way of saying that if you want a creative to hand in their best work, you need to leave them alone and let them do what they do best.

That said, one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was following this philosophy to a fault. By not keeping up with copywriters and designers, it’s not only easy to lose track of the project’s progress, it’s also nearly impossible to catch any errors that may occur during the content creation process. Next thing you know, the project deadline is a day away and you have 10 pages of copy on the wrong topic because the copywriter misunderstood an aspect of the project.

Lesson Learned:

In a perfect world, creative minds would get to work in the kind of vacuums they need to develop the best possible work. But it’s not a perfect world and mistakes happen—in fact, they happen all the time. To prevent that, build frequent milestones and meetings into your timeframe.

This is sort of a no-brainer, but most people hate meetings, which make them easy to shrug off in a crunch. By planning milestones and scheduling meetings to discuss said milestones, you ensure that a project is still on track while there’s still time to handle any problems that may crop up.

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

By and large, ambition is one of the best things about working in the creative space. It’s a potent, volatile fuel that burns hot within the creative mind and forces it to push out the kind of work that transcends simple “content” and pushes it closer to being a piece of art.

Unfortunately, ambition can be every bit as dangerous as it is advantageous. I was recently reminded of this when tasked with creating—what else?—an infographic. Where others saw the opportunity to create a by-the-numbers infographic, I found the opportunity to go bigger by creating an animated infographic that would truly express the content while stimulating the imagination of its viewers.

Had I ever created an animated infographic before this? Nope! Was I going to let that stop me? Of course not! I’ve created regular infographics before; How hard could an animated one be?

So, I promised the client an animated infographic in a relatively short amount of time. What could go wrong? Spoiler alert: Everything.

Aside from taking way longer than I should have to establish a workflow and research the information needed for the copy, I also burned through an embarrassing amount of time while trying to master the basic mechanics of the animation. Even after figuring out the process, the actual implementation caused me to push back the deadline repeatedly (something that could have been avoided if I had been mindful of the first derailment).

Lesson Learned:

There is no shame in having limits. In fact, recognizing and appreciating your limits—whether they’re creative or something else—is the first step to surpassing them.

With that said, it’s not really a good idea to test your limits on the client’s dime. It’s not fair to them and it puts you in a terrible position, especially if you fail. If you’re going to push yourself (and your creative team) past your limits, make sure it’s something reasonable and attainable.

Losing Track Of Goals/KPIs

By now, it’s pretty obvious just how much I view content as a creative endeavor. Marketing, of course, is a natural fit for those of us in the creative field, as it provides a lucrative way to do what we love for a living. Unfortunately, that love can sometimes cause projects to derail, especially when creativity runs out of hand and leaves the original goals and KPIs in the dust.

The fact of the matter is, the whole reason a content piece is being created in the first place is to reach some sort of goal and, ultimately, profit from reaching said goal. It may be link building, it may be opening up a new traffic channel, it may be getting more contact forms filled out—whatever the goal is, it’s the sole reason for creating a content piece.

As much as we creative types believe it’s about making artistic and stunning content, the fact remains that it’s ultimately going to be used as a marketing tool. It’s when that fact is forgotten that problems arise such as missed milestones, missed deadlines or delivering a final product that looks much different than originally planned.

Lesson Learned:

Don’t let creativity run out of control. While it may be more enjoyable to let creativity reign supreme over any content creation project, it offers more opportunity to stray from the original, metric-based goal of the content in the first place. Finding that happy place between creative harmony and marketing success is really the key to any successful content marketing strategy, and striking a balance between the two is paramount.

Not Holding Your Clients Accountable

A lot of people feel that the content creation process goes like this: A client hires you to do something and you do it for them. That process is very true to a degree, however, pedantically following that rationale is going to leave both you and the client holding a half-assed piece of content that may never perform to its full potential.

This fact bit me hard a while back. After creating what was a great content piece to use as linkbait, we handed it back to the client as planned. In order for this content to build links as it was intended to, the client needed to be involved in various promotional tactics such as posting it on their site, sharing it through their social networks, creating press releases and more. Instead, they sat on their hands (and the content) and didn’t do much of anything with it.

The content went largely unseen and the client never saw a return on the time and money spent creating it. In retrospect, this all could have been avoided if we had held the client more accountable. When a client hires you to create content, they’re entering into a partnership with you. That partnership should be dedicated to creating the best possible content and making sure it drives in the best possible results. If they’re not holding up their end of the deal, the success of the campaign could suffer for it.

Lesson Learned

The fact of the matter is, nobody knows the audience the content is meant to reach better than your client. Because of this, they can not only offer great insight on the project, but can also elevate its success in the marketplace.

Just because they’re paying you doesn’t mean they should be hands off on the project. Keep them in the loop as much as possible—from conception to execution—and make sure they’re held accountable for their milestones just as you are.

Looking Forward (And Backward)

Whether you’re an independent contractor, working within an agency or part of an in-house team, there’s a lot that can go wrong in the content creation process. Ideally, most creative teams would have processes and practices in place to prevent the sort of issues listed above, but even if they do, it’s still possible to derail the content creation process by overlooking the tiniest of issues.

How do you avoid that? Once a project is done, take time to reflect on it before moving to the next one. Spend an hour brainstorming and writing down whatever thoughts about the project fill your head. Do it as a team if that helps. By taking a minute to breathe and look at the project after it’s complete, you can learn from past mistakes while preventing new ones from occurring in the future.

The post How To Derail Content Creation Without Even Trying appeared first on RELEVANCE.

It doesn’t have to be though. Outreach can be a valuable and—dare I say it?—fun experience, but it’s all about how you approach it.

The Art of Outreach

Writing an outreach letter is one of those things that is both an art and a science. It not only requires creativity, but it also requires data, analysis and some traditional research. Because of this, everyone has their own way to approach email outreach, their own success stories and their own flubbing failures. I like to equate it to making pizza, in that there is really no definitive right or wrong way to go about it as long as it tastes good (although I’ll be damned if you try telling me eggplant belongs on a pizza).

With that in mind let’s examine some of the consistencies I’ve found that often lead to valuable links, new sources for qualified leads and—best of all—budding relationships with the kind of people who can put great content in front of the right people.

Be Short

For the most part, long emails suck. Unless it’s an update from an old friend, nobody wants to spend five minutes (or longer) reading one email when there are likely thousands of others waiting desperately for a click.

Typically, shorter outreach letters tend to get more love and attention than the longer ones. My personal rule of thumb is to keep the letter to 150 – 200 words (though, if possible, I try to go even shorter).

In my experience, I find the following structure works best:

• The Intro: Start with one or two sentences explaining who you are, how you found this person and why you’re emailing them.
• The Pitch: Follow up with three or four sentences expanding on the content you’re pitching. Focus a sentence or two on why it’s worth their attention and then a sentence or two on why you’re the best person or organization to create such content.
• The Close: Finally, end with two or three sentences that bring it all home. This is when you offer to help in anyway possible while thanking them for their attention and being explicit about what you want them to do (your CTA).

As you can tell, this pattern doesn’t waste much time with a long intro or middling details. In fact, it doesn’t waste much time with anything. It spits the point right at the reader so they can scan it and move on with their life (which hopefully includes spreading the word about your content).

Be Honest

Of course, it’s not just enough to have a snappy, easy-to-scan outreach letter; the words you use will mean more than the word count any day of the week. Because that word count is limited, however, you want to make each word powerful, resonate and, most importantly, honest.

Honesty—or rather a lack thereof—is one of the leading causes for outreach letter deletion, in my experience.

In my days as a journalist, most emails I received from marketers began with some variation of “I’m a big fan of your work, in particular your piece titled <ultra specific headline>,” and I would always respond by clicking “Mark as Spam.”

Now, maybe all those marketers reaching out to me really were fans of the specific articles I wrote, but you and I both know that the only reason they brought it up was to try and butter up my ego before they made their pitch. And that’s the inherent flaw in this approach. Most journalists and thought leaders are savvy enough to know that you’re a marketer pitching them on something, so why hide behind forced pleasantries and fluffed-up small talk?

Instead, get straight to the point. Let them know your pitch, let them know your contacting them because they’re uniquely qualified to spread your content and, finally, let them know that you want them to share it. There’s nothing wrong with using total and utter honesty in your outreach letters—the people you’re approaching feel this way, so should you!

Be Enticing

Finally, the last point to consider is probably the most obvious but also the most difficult to pull off: Make your outreach letter (and the pitch within it) so enticing that the reader will have little or no ability to say no.

Yes, this gets to be even more difficult when you consider the different personalities and tastes each of your outreach prospects may have. Despite that, though, there are a few things to consider when creating an outreach letter enticing enough to make them forget about the “delete” button.

Speak Their Language

You wouldn’t necessarily write to an editor at Scientific American as you would to an editor at Sports Illustrated, right? Each of these editors work in a field that has it’s own language, personality and jargon, and if you want any of them to take your outreach seriously, you’ll learn to craft a letter that speaks to them on their terms.

Note I said “learn” to speak that language and not “pretend”—this goes back to that whole “being honest” thing. If you’re going to speak the same language as your prospects, make sure you put in some time researching their industry so you actually know what you’re talking about.

Speak to their Needs

Let’s talk brass tacks: if someone does pick up your pitch, it’s most likely for one of two reasons: Either they legitimately love your content, or they’re looking for some quality content to post before their fast-approaching deadline.

Because the latter is a very common need among journalist and bloggers, take advantage of it. There’s nothing wrong with checking out an editorial calendar before making a pitch or flat out asking a prospect what kind of content they’re looking for and when they’ll need it. In fact, doing so could save both you and your prospect some time – something both of you can appreciate.

Make Their Life Easier

The best way to entice a journalist into using your content is to make it as easy as possible for them to share it. With that in mind, it’s always good to send along as many additional materials as possible. Not only should you send along the content, but also pass over any embed codes, press releases, images or other materials that will make their life easier. The less they have to do to share your content, the more likely they are to do it!

No matter what combination of these tactics you use in outreach, it’s imperative that each step be rooted in research. Don’t send the pitch if the recipient isn’t targeted and in an industry that’s highly relevant to the content. Being succint, honest and enticing all boil down to not wasting their time. When dealing with deadline-driven journalists and publishers, transparency and brevity can go a long way and should always govern your correspondence with them.

The post Grab Attention for Your Content With Honest Email Outreach appeared first on RELEVANCE.

It’s easy to admit the importance in posting only the best content, but all too often digital marketers tend to throw content spaghetti at the wall and watch with bated breath to see if it sticks. Instead of counting on guesswork to figure out if your content is going to connect with the audience, why not take a few extra minutes to find out exactly what your followers want to see? By combining some traditional SEO keyword research with five minutes of legwork, you can see what your audience is searching for and how to create the kind of content they’re most interested in consuming.

The 5-Minute Process

To kick off this speedy process, we’ll need to establish our offering. For the sake of this example, I’m going to pretend we work in the brewing industry.  To find out what kind of content my audience is interested in reading, I need to figure out four key things:

1. What topics are the target audience discussing?
2. What about these topics interests them?
3. Which of these topics are the most popular?
4. How do I create engaging content on this topic?

Once we figure those out, coming up with the right kind of content will be easier than crafting an American Pale Ale (which is actually quite easy, from what I hear!)

What are hot topics with your audience?

There are a lot of ways to find out what your audience is discussing, but one of the best methods for doing this is with the one-two punch combo that is Google and Quora. For those of you not in the know, Quora is one of the largest, most reputable Q&A sites on the web and Google is…well, Google.

By using some basic Google operators <LINK>–in particular, the “site:” operator– you can easily search Quora’s wealth of topic-specific forums to find exactly what people in your target audience are discussing. One of the easiest examples is “<topic idea>” site: quora.com. This site combs through Quora and lists all the questions that have been posted on that topic. You can see the search I did based on this formula: “beer recipes” site:quora.com.

In the above example for “beer recipe,” we can see that the topic has come up in the form of a number of different questions. From here, we have a great basis for our research. Simply jot down some of the variations from the results or, for extra credit, check out the post and try to cherry pick even more terms. These basic concepts will work as the seeds for your content research.

What are they really talking about around that topic? 

Combing through forums can help you see directly what people are talking about, but it provides a limited scope. After all, you’re only looking at specific topics. What’s really going to help you find more ideas is to expand your efforts into more long-tail topics, and there are few ways better to find long-tail topics than Ubersuggest.

One of the best free tools you can find on the web, Ubersuggest takes any keyword or phrase you give it and returns a wealth of long-tail options that are pulled directly from Google’s autosuggest, which, in turn, is pulled from actual search queries. In other words, Ubersuggest takes your key phrase and gives you alternate suggestions based on what people are actually looking for.

What’s great about Ubersuggest (other than it’s super suggestion abilities) is that it lets you check off suggestions you like, add them to a list and then copy them all at once. After you have a nice list of keyword suggestions, you can figure out…

What does the data tell us about the topic?

Now that you have a ton of useful keyword ideas, it’s time to see just how many people are actually interested in those ideas. This is when we bring in the ol’ standby of the digital marketing industry: Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool.

For those who have never tried it, the Adwords Keyword Planner helps you determine the value of certain keywords by providing a number of metrics. One of the most valuable pieces of data it provides is a estimation of just how many people are entering that term into Google. Though the number is just an estimate, it can be used as a barometer to see just how much interest a particular topic idea.

Simply paste in all the phrases you pulled from Ubersuggest and BOOM! You have some quantifiable data to show you just which concepts are being searched for on the web. This is powerful information that could easily help you not only decide if a certain piece of content is worth creating, but also determine new ideas that you may not have thought of previously.

How do I make sure my new content will engage?

You have your topic, your long-tail search terms and your data from adwords. Now you’re ready to actually start creating great social media content. The last step is making sure this new content will actually engage. You know the topic is right, but there’s more than one way to bake a cake, and you want to make sure your audience finds your cake absolutely delicious.

This is where Rival IQ comes in. With this online tool, you can create a Market Landscape of companies in your market, especially your competitors, since they are most likely going after the same target audience as you. It not only shows you metrics like number of fans, social activity and other trending data, but also pulls the top posts sorted by engagement across six social networks. Since we are using Beer for our example, I created a Landscape of four beer companies. And since they are mostly targeting consumers, I looked at Facebook content.

First, I analyzed what types of posts were getting the most engagement, and which days they were getting that engagement. Clearly, I need to include photos or videos in my social media content for Facebook, and Tuesdays and Fridays seem to be the best days for engagement.  Maybe that’s when my target audience is thinking about having a beer versus actually at the pub drinking a beer!

Next, I dug into the actual content. What I learned was my posts need to be simple, fun, conversational – and include awesome photos of BEER! In looking at the past week’s posts, there was a clear trend of tying into the New Year.  This report was just for the past 7 days, but I would probably run a deeper analysis of at least 90 days to really understand what content was working.

The other thing that’s cool with Rival IQ is you can create multiple Landscapes, so I could also create a group of companies going after my same target audience that I don’t compete with to see what kind of content they are creating that really engages.

Ready, Set, Go

It's important to find a balance between totally guessing when writing social media posts and laboring over data for hours on end to craft the perfect message. This method helps you make an informed, data-driven decision in a time-efficient manner. Remember to repeat the process often, too, because hot topics on social media change as often as the direction of the wind. And, go!

This article originally appeared on RivalIQ.

The post How to Join the Right Conversation With Your Social Audience appeared first on RELEVANCE.