After spending some time utilizing search engine optimization techniques, one thing will become clear: the most productive thing you can do is come up with content others want to read. Sure you should edit your META and ALT tags, but if you want to help promote your site to it’s full potential, you need content other people actually want to look at.
So you are 6 months into content management, cranking out a blog once a week and not understanding why you aren’t seeing the ranking results you are hoping for. You check your WordPress blog daily and notice there are never any pingbacks, comments, or social sharing for any of these blogs. Why is this?
One well written, designed, and formatted blog can have a more positive impact on your site than a hundred blogs written without much thought and insight.
Aside from well made content, link building is obviously key. The thing is, link building will come with well crafted content. If you create a to-do list, infographic, take beautiful photos, or create a tutorial all you need to do is get the content out into the public and it can go viral and build links on it’s own.
This is one of the main reasons infographics have become so popular with internet marketers. Infographics are those cool visually appealing graphics that show informative statistics in a way people like to look at. An example of one is the Bike to Work infographic that The Greenfield Group help made. One well made infographic can impact your search engine rankings more than dozens of blogs and social media posts.
Here are just some techniques to help your posts go viral and increase your rankings:
- Create a Youtube Video: Crafting a well made video explaining a topic others care about will do wonders. Create a tutorial for something you are skilled in, piece together other videos into an informative matter, or show the viewers around your store. Make sure to include a link to your website both in the description and somewhere within the video to help prevent others from reposting your video without giving you credit.
- Create an Infographic: If you are not skilled in photoshop, making an infographic can be difficult. If you are able to find help or craft one yourself, these can do 6 months of work for you in a week. Find a good case study with informative facts that have to do with your target audience, and make it visually appealing. From there, just follow the social sharing techniques below
- Post Visually Appealing Photos: If you have a good camera or just find yourself in a situation where a funny or beautiful photo can be captured, take it! Posting the image to your blog and social media can go viral without much effort.
- Create a Step by Step Guide: Are you an expert in a certain field or do you just have a trade secret other’s would want to know about? Create a step by step guide, and if it is information people want to know, these guides can be viewed for years to come
As you can tell, these techniques do not involve writing a 1000+ word blog. Sometimes these can be beneficial, but the posts that catch the most virality are the ones that are quick and easy to see and read. Many readers are instantly turned off by lots of text on the screen without any images or something visually appealing to keep them there. This post, for example, will turn away plenty of people, but the purpose is to educate those who are in similar situations.
Once you have a good blog entry (can take only a few minutes with a well timed photo, or 20 hours with a well made infographic), there are a few steps required to help it get shared:
- Post to your Social Media Sites: I assume you either have a following or are attempting to grow it, so make sure to post your entry or photo to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and other accounts that you have a following.
- Post to Reddit: Reddit can do real wonders for your site, but DO NOT overuse! If you only post entries from your blog you will be marked as a spammer and may do more harm than good. Create a Reddit account if you do not have one and do not post anything about your website for a month or two, just commenting on other’s posts and posting information you find interesting. Once you get some karma points, then you can post your new cool blog post. Do not overly post something that other’s wont find interesting, since you will get voted down very quickly. Success comes from finding a very specific subreddit for your topic (ex: posting to bicyclecommuting subreddit will get you different results than just the bicycle subreddit). If your post is well made, this may be the only step you need to do. If you would like more of a Reddit tutorial, here is a great link on the Beginners Guide to Reddit.
- Add to StumbleUpon: It’s always hard to tell what will go viral on StumbleUpon, but it doesn’t hurt to add your well made blog entry to their site. You do not have to be as careful with StumbleUpon as you do Reddit
- Email Relevant Blogs and Companies: There are TONS of blogs out there for every topic imaginable. Find relevant blogs by either using the Google Blog search, or any crawling/scraping tools you may have installed on your computer. Find contact information for them, and write a well written email explaining your inquiry. Be informal, explain how you made this video/infographic/tutorial that you spent hours on and think their viewers may be interested in as well. Give them an easy way to repost it or tweet it to their followers and do it all in 1-3 paragraphcs.
- After getting reposted or retweeted, make sure to connect with the organization that shared your information. ”Like” them on Facebook and “Follow” them on Twitter. Make sure to connect and follow any individuals who shared your post through them, since this will help build your following
One infographic that we have made (located here) for a finance client with no email subscribers and a website that was inactive for the 3 months previous saw a drastic change. Within just one week he had gained nearly 50 email subscribers,was reshared on over 100 like minded websites and gained over 10,000 hits to the previously dead website. Only the tactics above were used and only about 10 blogs were actually emailed. Within one day, any words used in the title of the post or keyphrases in the anchored text saw his site ranking on the front page. These type of results he couldn’t imagine with a year of constant blogging.
The key thing to remember with each post you make is, “would I want to spend the time to read this blog?” If you yourself would find no interest in the blog you are making, then it is likely no one else would. If you take a picture you love to look at or a tutorial that would have helped you at one point, share it, because there are like minded individuals out there who would love to see it as well. When writing, always have a real human as your target market, and not Google crawl bots.
Author: Sean Aranda
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