Yes, I’m back…and on fire (as per usual)! Busy days at SassySEO.com, but never too busy to share with you the utter importance of creating quality content.

I am proudly a broken record on this topic as more and more content farms create sub-standard content for ranking purposes only. This is not right. Your services, your site & your community rely on you to provide value.

I’m stumbling upon more and more articles about content farms – more companies are providing shoddy content and people seem to be okay with it. Don’t go along with it. It’s a short-term solution that will have long-term negative effects. Stay true to your mission. Be brave and find your niche & put your effort into providing something worthwhile to your community.

But I digress…here is the article from Outspoken Media: Content Farms & The Death of Remarkable Content by Lisa Barone.

Lisa is saying “keep to the code” (love Pirates of Caribbean) – the code of creating quality content. Write content that is worthy of people linking to – linking strategies are still important – but again, quality links over quality. Fly right and give your customers, prospects, vendors and partners a reason to link to you, to visit your site often and engage with you (socially & professionally).

The Sassy SEO Says: If your business is your passion, this shouldn’t be too hard.
Here are a few simple tips to help upgrade your content.

1 – Write from the fire in your belly. Let your passion guide you.
2 – Always know what you want the reader to take away before you start – have 2 or 3 key points that are explicitly presented (like this numbered list).
3 – After you write your post, edit the post and naturally sprinkle in a few keywords to ensure relevancy of your post.
4 – Edit your title to include a keyterm.
5 – Always always always have at least on call to action to engage your audience in the sales cycle – call for bookings, buy now, download the ebook, etc. Don’t leave your captive audience hanging.

Lastly, enjoy yourself! Since content is one of the most important aspects of your site – you are in it for the long haul. A content strategy is key to developing quality and valuable content for the long term.

If you need a content strategy, call me at 0427 326 013 or email me at Kristin@SassySEO.com. I will help you.

You can also watch the latest episode of SassySEOTV on Content Essentials to get ideas on what to write.

Cheers & Happy Optimising!

Every few weeks, I will share interesting research and statistics that may help validate the importance of investing the time and dollars into optimising your site. I meet so many people who think SEO is not a priority – my goal is to help you prove that it is.

Here goes…

According to internetnews.com, “Online Marketing Eats Into Traditional Media, ”

“Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21 percent of all marketing dollars spent in 2014 as advertisers shift money away from traditional media to search marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, social media and mobile promotions…”

This comes as no surprise, but it does prove that each of these elements (search, display, e-marketing, social media & mobile) are important, work together, and should be considered for every site/online strategy. The tools will change but tactics remain. Ask your SEO/Marketing specialist what will work best to attract the best leads for your business.

The post talks specifically about Search Marketing (my favourite):

“Search marketing continues to do well, in both adoption, today 80 percent of marketers use it, and money spent. “Search marketing accounts for 59 percent of the overall interactive pie. We project spend on paid listings, which includes paid inclusion, and search engine optimization (SEO) to grow at a CAGR of 15 percent, to $31 billion by 2014,” according to the report.”

This means it’s important to keep an eye out for relevant places to have your site listed. The key word is relevant – be careful when getting involved in a network that will list your site in all directories, not just ones that are pertinent for your business – especially if you are paying for the listing. Building a good reputation online is crucial and should be a priority to every SEO specialist.

This excellent article gives some pretty nitty gritty stats for SEO.  From intraspin.com, the post “10 statistics that demonstrate the value of SEO” reports this:

“77% of search users choose organic over paid listing when searching, 67% choose organic search when purchasing.”

More reason to ensure you are successfully optimising your site. But don’t just plow your key terms all over your home page. The Search Engines catch on and change their algorithms periodically. Refine your key terms (3 – 5 word phrases), refresh and add to your content, build your links internally and externally and figure out how you can better interact with your customers/prospects online.

One more stat from this post:

“When the searcher is purchasing, organic click-through generates 25% higher conversion rates than equivalent Pay-Per-Click (PP) click-through.”

Wow! Another reason to have someone (within your company or by using an SEO specialist) who is always keeping their eye on your site.

That’s it for now…I’ll keep digging and you keep reading!