As I write this, the world is still dealing with a pandemic that has required the implementation of lockdown measures and radically changed how businesses operate. Traditional office environments are still not viable for most, so people are working remotely, but the changes don’t end there: we should also consider the current uselessness of real-world marketing for law firms. Here’s how to generate high-quality links from one blog.
If your business has been able to endure the shift to remote working and the collapse of various supply chains, then it might be stable — but how can it grow in the near future? The competition online continues to ramp up as old-fashioned businesses try to adapt, so while there’s perhaps even more money to be made with people bored at home, it’s no easier to make it. For video editing head to VEED.
The key to online growth hasn’t changed throughout the pandemic, because it’s still brand development, but the best way to approach it might have. At the moment, my suggestion is that you invest in the creation and distribution of guides. Why is this, and how can you use them to great effect? Allow me to explain.
People are looking for guidance during tough times
Guides have always been useful for online marketing, and we’ll get to why, but it’s particularly worth investing in them now because we’re all doing more searching online than ever before — not only because we have more free time at home, but also because we’re still unsure about what’s happening and looking for guidance on so many things.
At this point, you might be looking for a guide to different types of COVID-19 test, or to how long it typically takes to receive a second vaccine dose. You could be looking for information about when you can realistically expect international travel to open up. You may decide that this is the perfect time to take up a new hobby and want to find a guide to run you through the basics. If the online guide format were a stock, it would be way up right now.
Now, guides don’t need to be written: in fact, almost every form of informational content (there’s a solid range of options) can be suitable. Infographics don’t quite work, but blog posts, videos and podcasts can all make excellent guides. This means you can get fairly creative in how you approach your guides, coming up with tactics that really suit your style.
Using guides to rank for vital keywords
Working on SEO is always important, and guides can really help you rank for high-priority keywords because they naturally support focus and repetition without being spammy or contrived. Look at it this way: if you’re trying to pick up some traffic for the high-value term “Electric shaver”, simply cramming it into regular content would be odd and risk attracting a Google penalty as a result. A guide to electric shavers, though, would be a different matter.
You could fill it with instances of the primary keyword, particularly in the subheadings: “What is an electric shaver?”, “What are the advantages of an electric shaver?”, “What kind of electric shaver should you get?, and other such constructions. Each one would be a useful long-tail keyword as well, getting you even more traffic.
The next time you visit a guide to a niche topic, look closely at the level of search optimization. See how many times the primary keyword appears in the content. A great page of significant length might have that keyword appear 20-30 times, if not more. Is that too many? Well, no. There’s no real risk of attracting a penalty because that’s the subject of the page. When you’re going all-out to rank for a competitive term, you need to commit to it, and the guide format allows you to do that in force.
Showing expertise to establish authority
The next big tactic for marketing through guides is building up brand authority so your target audience trusts you more than anyone else in your industry. Choosing between comparable products or services isn’t generally fun: it’s more annoying than anything else, trying to pick through the details to make a decision that you might end up regretting. It’s easier to have just one company that you trust enough to view as your default option.
If you can create just a handful of guides around key matters in your field — and, most importantly, ensure that they’re better than any others you can find — then you’ll build up a positive reputation for being insightful. When people want to know other things about related topics, they might come to your website first, or pick your posts specifically out of search results even when they’re not prominently positioned.
Earning valuable backlinks through outreach
Lastly, guides are powerful assets that you can use very effectively when you’re engaging in outreach for link-building. Earning backlinks from high-authority domains remains a core part of ranking for tricky terms, and the easier you can make it for someone to link to your site, the more likely it’ll be that they’ll do it.
Writing guest posts like this one can be very effective for building up your profile, but things like guides (or eye-catching infographics) make it possible to pick up links with minimal effort (once they’re produced). With a guide finished, you can send the link to various sites via email or social media message, simply suggesting that they check it out.
If it’s truly an exceptional guide, there’s every chance that the people who visit it will want to link to it in their regular content. Referring their followers to great content will elevate their perceived expertise, after all. You get some fantastic links, they get bolstered credibility, and their followers get valuable content. Everyone wins.
Creating guides on topics you know very well is an outstanding way to showcase your knowledge and build up your brand. If you’ve never assembled one before, check around to see what your rivals have to offer. If you think you can offer a better account of a given matter than anyone else, do it: the results will be worth it.
