Whether you had a plan or not for 2021, it is never too late to boost your site’s online ranking. What better way to start the New Year by organizing your website and content for 2022.
Regardless of your business, pretty much any industry can benefit from the following tips we are about to share with you. And from our own experience, as well as, helping others, it works.
These three steps can and will help your online ranking grow and boost your market presence if followed and executed properly. Here is how to get started.
Step One – Take A Step Back And Check Your Site
That’s right. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab a notepad & pen, and give your digital storefront a look over. It’s time to thumb over every page if possible and take notes.
Outdated content and errors
You’d be surprised, but most small businesses have numerous errors throughout their site. From grammatical errors to inconsistency with formatting and casing. When was the last time you looked at your footer?
What is the copyright year? 2019?
Do your social media links work? Have you added new ones since?
Are your call to action items up-to-date?
All of these nuances may seem trivial, but how many potential clients do you lose because of them? It is well worth the time to make a list and go through every page. Make any minor or major tweaks necessary. An even better practice would be to spend half of that time going through on a smartphone or tablet. How easy is your site to navigate on these devices? If it is difficult you might want to make some overall changes considering most sites traffic comes from mobile devices.
How Does It Hold Up Against Your Competition?
Okay, now that we have gone through and cleaned up all of the typos and miscellaneous errors, how does your site hold up against your competitors? Though looks aren’t everything and functionality ultimately is the most important, some things are hard to get past. If your site looks like it was built on GeoCities from the 90s, it might be time to hire a professional designer to bring it up to date.
Also, you should never rip off or copy your competitors, but at the same time there are tons of brilliant ideas out there for every industry and most of them got it from somewhere. Seeing what is out there can also help you add action items or ideas to your site. Turn it into something original that fits your brand and make it your own.
Step Two – Create A Content Schedule
Now it is time to get into where all the organic magic happens, the content. Regardless of the industry, content reigns supreme when it comes to SEO and boosts online rankings. Whether it is FAQs, blogs, resources, videos, or Q&As all of these are the core elements of growing your Google ranking.
As we continue to talk about content and SEO, having a plan is important. You don’t want to fill your site with junk, you want actual quality content that is going to benefit your visitors. More isn’t always better. That is why having a calendar outline of each piece of content you are going to produce for the whole quarter down to the day when each piece will get published is crucial to executing quality content.
Keyword Research
Before we dive right into just pumping out content we need to do our research first. Did you create any content for 2021? Which items were hits and which were duds? Can the ones that were a hit be recreated for 2022 with new information or is it the same? Do people actually search for this content?
The last question is probably most important and can help you figure out why some of your other pieces of content might not have been a hit. There are many keyword tools out there that can help you identify how often a topic is searched and some will even list relative search phrases as well. One such tool that we love to use here at Zenatta is Mangools.
Spend the time to make a list of what is being searched in your industry and also see what the competitors that are ahead of you are indexed for.
Turn Those Keywords Into Content
Now that we have a list of keywords, come up with topics to write about each keyword. Get creative and have fun with this! If you are in an industry that can play around certain holidays use that to your advantage. Remember, we want to boost that online ranking with quality content.
Listicles are always an excellent choice to get content out in a way that is both informative, catchy, and easy for readers to digest. Such as “10 Ways To Cook A Turkey” or “7 Delicious Side Delicious To Cook For The Holidays”.
After you make your list of content you are going to create whether it is a blog or video, organize the release date for each in a way that makes sense. Once you organize it, go through it, do you have any topics that might overlap on ideas? If they are different enough, jot down a note to refer to that other article. Having your own content refer to other content within your site is always a huge plus.
One big common mistake is you only want to use a keyword once on your site. So, make sure you have some sort of document or way of tracking which keywords are used on each page you create.
Step 3 – Maximize Your Reach With The Content You Produce
Ok, so now that we have all of this content created and being posted regularly, share it! Yes, social media reigns supreme when it comes to pushing information out there, but there are other ways often overlooked.
Be Active In Your Industry’s Community
There are so many ways to get information today that we often overlook other platforms instead of social media to push that information. It is time to be a keyboard warrior and flood the other channels with your information. Get on Reddit, get on forum boards & YouTube channels related to your industry, and spend the time to go through what people are posting and questions they are asking. You’ve got this database of content use it! Answer people’s questions on these message boards or leave them a comment like “Hey, we wrote this article that I think will answer all of your questions” and drop in the link.
The more relative places you can drop your resources the better. Spending 15 minutes in the morning to go through a handful of forum boards relative to your business is time well spent in more than just one way.
Which Social Platform Aren’t You On?
Why? Sure not every platform fits every businesses model, but at the end of the day, they are all free. And with excellent Social Media Management Solutions such as Zoho Social why not push out to as many different audiences as possible.
We could easily write a whole other article on social media alone. But the most common mistake is not using # and @ as much as you can. If you don’t and you have a minimal following, you aren’t going to get much traction if any. See which # is trending in relation to your topic and use them.
Want Help?
If all of this sounds great and you want to start 2022 off by pumping out content, but don’t have the time. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Drop us a line and we would be happy to help you get your new year started right.
