Highlights
Are you stuck in a loop? You’re trying for the same keywords, but your competition will beat you every time?
You may not be targeting the right keywords, or you’re paying too much attention to ads and paid strategy. What are you doing to create quality, attractive organic traffic?
If the answer is “nothing new”, you need this guide. Learn how to spice up your rankings below.
1. Repurpose or Rewrite Old Content
You know that Google Crawls your sites often, looking for new information and quality content. But it’s normal to feel like you’re banging your head against the wall, trying to come up with your 1000th blog article on a niche topic.
It happens to everyone. Even if you’re usually a brainstorming machine!
If you feel like you have no new ideas or you need a break from the constant creation cycle, look through your old content. You can update old blog posts and get “new-ish” content, that Google sees as new.
Not only will Google now re-crawl that old page, but I’ll see that you’ve updated the article with more information.
Even if that more information is a two-paragraph header at the end of the post titled “2019 Update”.
If you want to do more than that, you can have another writer or staff member write a different take on the same article. Now you have built-in internal backlinks. You can link to the old article in the new one, and update the old one by linking to the new perspective.
It’s a win-win – given that you have someone to write the new angle.
Now you have more organic content that people can click on – without reinventing the wheel.
Social Post Reuse
The same goes for your social media – you can reuse some of the same posts or content, a year or even six months later. Your customers aren’t going to remember that you posted something similar, we can almost promise.
Refresh Your Keyword List
This is an issue we see often, actually. People have a keyword list of things they’re targeting and they made it three months ago. With the speed of the SEO industry, you need to constantly check for new or over-used keywords.
Update your list at least every month, if not every week. That way you won’t be spending money on a keyword that suddenly has a 49 competition/difficulty when it had 12 when you last checked.
Refreshing your keyword list allows you to find new keywords too. That could mean finding niche local keywords, or jumping on a new trend right as those terms start to pop up.
Make this part of your weekly strategy, like something you do every Monday morning. You’ll save more money over the long run and will get more cost-worthy conversions.
Run Co-Marketing Campaigns
There’s power in numbers – there’s a reason you know that saying. It’s true! And that power can come from other, complementary brands.
Complimentary, as in, they’re not your competition. Nike and Fitbit, for example, would make a good pair. Fitbit doesn’t sell shoes, but they encourage running/exercise, which is usually done in the type of shoes Nike sells.
You can find your complimentary co-marketing match too. To do so, think through the user process when they’re actually using your product. This depends highly on what you sell – so we can’t tell you what that perfect match is.
To get to the conclusion you need, think about else someone needs when they’re using your product – like shoes to track steps on their run.
The benefits to co-marketing are that you get to share the cost and get exposure to new audiences. This other company has spent probably the same amount of money and time building their base, as you have yours.
Share the love and get their customers to join your base and vice versa – without losing any customer loyalty.
Build a Tool
Tools were a big keyword at the beginning of 2018, at it seems the reporting SEO media has forgotten about them. But they’re still as useful and valuable to your SEO and your customers as ever.
If you’re a company that does something, like, weight loss (sticking with our Fitness watch example) – you can offer a weight loss time calculator. How long would it take someone to lose weight at this rate, over time?
People will use your tool, and hey – they might even check out your site while they’re there.
Almost more importantly, you’ve now built something that other sites can link to, organically. It’s not only a tool, but it’s now a link asset. Two birds, one stone.
Be Creative When You Look for Content
You don’t have to come up with content by yourself. You should always be checking relevant Reddit threads or even Quora for questions/trends in your niche.
In fact, many keywords start off as questions on user-generated sites like those, which is where some of the big names find them.
You can also engage with organic traffic, as the official company you work for, on those sites. They may not be profitable, but they give you visibility, which is basically the same thing.
Organic Traffic 101
If you do all these things and never try to “trick” Google – you’re on your way to a solid stream of organic traffic.
Just because it’s not paid traffic, doesn’t mean you don’t have to put money into it, though. That research and content do not create itself.
Spend the money on creating quality, and the clicks will come.
If you need help with strategy or other content management, let us know.