Guest Posting - An Effective Way to Gain Credibility With the Search Engines

Google's been very good to us. Without it, our lives would be pretty dull. Now that we know how to use Google and its plethora of tools effectively, we can utilize its power to improve our marketing efforts and get more out of our brands.

Why Are We Optimizing For Google?

You might be wondering why we would want to optimize our websites for Google, and the short answer is: everyone does.

When it comes to seo and digital marketing, Google is the behemoth. It holds a near-monopoly on the search engine market, and thanks to the increasing number of digital nomads flocking to the digital marketing job market, it's never been more in demand.

The truth is, regardless of whether you sell clothes online or you're just running a fun blog, you're going to attract traffic from Google. So it only makes sense to optimize your site for the search engine.

The Basics Of SEO

If you're new to SEO, don't worry — we're not going to overwhelm you with information. That's what Google Forms are for. Instead, let's dive right into the meat of SEO and what you need to know.

Keywords

Keywords are extremely important to SEO because they help search engines figure out what your site is about. In the simplest terms, you can think of keywords as "search words" that people use to find content on the web. When you enter these search words into the search bar of Google or any other search engine, you'll see links to websites that match your search criteria.

The first step to figuring out the right keywords is to enter your content into the Google Keyword Planner. Just remember: This tool is not designed for competitive analysis. Enter your keywords into the Keyword Planner and leave the rest at the default settings.

Content

Just like with our website's keywords, we need to ensure that our content is relevant for the search engines. Relevancy is measured with the Ahrefs content analysis tool. This analysis scores your content on a scale from one to ten, with higher numbers meaning your content is more relevant. For example, if you're writing about running, the score for your content will be high. If you're writing about fashion, the score might be lower. But the main thing is that you're consistently creating relevant content.

Links

One of the most important factors that affect a website's ranking is the number of links that point back to it. Luckily for us, creating links is one of the simplest and least time-consuming tasks on our list. This is because we have a lot of free platforms that automate the link-building process for us. You can use Google's free platforms to easily find and connect with websites and bloggers that are relevant to your niche.

How Do I Get Started With SEO?

If you're completely new to SEO, the first thing you need to do is to pick a niche. For instance, if you're an entrepreneur who specializes in helping other businesses get started, you might want to look into SEO for new businesses.

Once you've determined your niche, you can start with the basics: keywords, content, and links.

Then you can move onto more advanced strategies, like guest posting and video SEO, which we'll cover in more detail below.

Guest Posting

One of the simplest and most effective ways to gain credibility with the search engines is to guest post on authoritative blogs in your niche. Guest posting is when you write an article for an established blog and the blog's owner publishes it on their site. Because of this, you're able to attract the targeted traffic that the blog is known for attracting.

To get started, head over to the Guest Posting section of Google Search and enter your keywords into the search bar. You'll then see a list of blogs that are relevant to your niche. Choose a few that intrigue you and begin your guest posting strategy.

YouTube SEO

One of the most effective and simplest ways to gain credibility with the search engines is through video SEO. YouTubers are incredibly influential in the digital world and can give your videos exposure to a much wider audience. To make sure that your videos reach potential viewers, you need to incorporate keywords and tags into the copy and visuals of your videos. Additionally, you can use the analytics tools available on YouTube to track the performance of your videos.

Video SEO

We all love to watch videos on YouTube, so why not take advantage of this by incorporating video content into your SEO strategy? Videos are a fantastic way to captivate and engage your audience. Moreover, people are more likely to click on videos than they are to click on text-based content. To effectively use videos in your SEO strategy, you need to incorporate the following into your plan: keywords, tags, and analytics.

SEO For Brand Marketing

Now that we know the basics of SEO, let's discuss how we can utilize it for brand marketing. As we've established, everyone is doing it, which means there's no clear-cut, go-to-marketing-strategy when it comes to SEO. But that doesn't mean there aren't tactics that work for some industries and brands while ignoring others. Consider these tactics when planning your SEO strategy for brand marketing:

1. Create content for all platforms

It's important to remember that the SEO landscape is constantly changing. Even though everyone is utilizing the tools and following the tactics that we've discussed so far, the successful implementation of your SEO strategy will depend on the platform you're using.

You need to have content that's cross-platform. This means that your content will work on any device or platform, from small tablets to large screens. For example, if you're planning on creating a Facebook page for your business, you'll want to make sure that your blog posts and website content are also posted to your Facebook page effectively. If you don't own a blog, you can use a service like WP Blogger to create one in less than ten minutes. Plus, you can use the free Blogger template to get started.

2. Focus on the long-term

As we mentioned above, the search engine landscape is constantly changing. Because of this, it's important to keep a healthy perspective and remember that the short-term gains you make now might not be what you get in the long term.

You might see rapid growth for a while, but as the engine changes and your site becomes "optimized" for the new algorithms, you'll see gradual declines in traffic. Unless you have a clear link to an authoritative source like the Google Guy or the Google Queen, it's best to avoid using very high-risk strategies that could put your business in jeopardy. Just like health insurance, SEO is a risk that you take for granted until something bad happens.

3. Measure your results

If you want to improve your results, you need to measure them. Thankfully, Google makes this very easy. Just sign in to your Google Ads dashboard and you'll see a small orange symbol next to each keyword you've used. Click this symbol and you'll see a small table that summarizes your results. Just to give you an example, if you used the keyword “law firm” in a campaign set up for paid advertisements, you'll see a table that looks like this:

• Cost per click
• Clicks
• Conversions (i.e. sales)
• Average order value

As you can see, this little table tells you exactly how effective your SEO strategy was in generating leads and revenue. Don't forget: You can also find similar data for all of your keywords and campaigns in the Google Keyword Planner. Just remember: this table will only provide you with general data and doesn't factor in quality or performance. To get an idea of how well your SEO strategy is working, you can also look at the sales of your competitors. The more people that buy from your competitors, the more your competitors are hurting your sales. This means you can either up your game or down it as far as necessary. Sometimes, we need a little nudge to get things going.

4. Learn from the best

There are a few very authoritative sources you can turn to for information on SEO. While you're not expected to copy everything that these sources say, you can use their insights to effectively improve your own SEO strategy.