Lead Generation and Growth Marketing

This week, which is my eleventh week at CXL, I started Content strategy and SEO for lead generation. So far, I am glad with all the knowledge I am getting from CXL Growth Marketing Mini Degree. This week was a deep dive in Search Engine Optimization, I enjoyed how the course dived in the specifics of the Search Engine Optimization.

I always use Art of SEO by Eric Enge as a reference for Search Engine Optimization after finishing the book. The book covers every technical detail about Search Engine Optimization. I enjoyed Content strategy and SEO for lead generation as it gave me a new point of view and input about SEO that is new and covers a more specific process.

The output of Search Engine Optimization is variant. For instance, you can tackle research by manual research, or tools like Neil Patel, or by using operators. There is no definitive one that can get you all of the output, you use each one for getting a part of it. I actually like operators and love how two peoples can get two different outputs from it. In the end, it is all about your thinking and how you are going to tackle the process.

After Penguin and Panda updates, Search Engine Optimization is no longer a systematic process that starts with A and ends with Z. Content creation and strategy is getting more important day by day. Since algorithm is focusing more on original content that is being offered by a website, it became more important to set a strategy for your content.

Multiple questions and concern could arise, what is the type of content that your audience would be interested in? how would you define the term original? what should you be writing about? how frequently?

To get an answer, start by researching. Competitive Analysis is a good start alongside with the keyword research, who is your competitor? what is their website authority? and what they are writing about?. Answering these questions will give you a good start with the topics that are being written.

You can use Buzzsumo to give a clear and more broad vision of the content on the web that people are interacting with on every channel available on the Social Media.

Using operators in this point would give you a leap ahead, to know about competitors using specific keyword to rank. Who is using a specific keyword in the title tag? how tough is the competition and who is actually is getting the rank?

There are tools that provided instant result about websites and keywords, Neil Patel, Hubspot, Keyword Explorer and many more. These tools gives you an overview of the keywords that you can use in your website for ranking.

After getting a clear vision of your competitor and keywords, look for the gap, what is the gap that your competitors is not covering? don’t write about topics that are already there. Use operators to know about these gaps. For instance, let’s check a specific topic. What is Search Engine Optimization? let’s assume that someone is searching for the definition of Search Engine Optimization. So, the query could be Search Engine Optimization or what is Search Engine Optimization?. At this moment, Search Engine Land is the first blog in Google search engine result followed by Moz. For the query Search Engine Optimization, it is quite a broad query and not technical. So, imagine if you started a blog topic that covered the same query for Search Engine Optimization by writing about the definition. How hard it is to rank in Google search engine against the other competitors? What else can you add in the blog that is not covered by the other competitors?

Briefly, start by conducting a keyword research to find the most topics that are being searched. Validate these topics by finding competitors that wrote about certain topics using operators, if you can’t add additional information to add that would be interesting for the user then avoid writing about topics that are high in competition. Write about new topics that are being searched and no one provided yet or wrote about. Again, using operators at this point is essential to help you figure out topics.

Along with the content, we can categorize Search Engine Optimization into three parts. First, On Page Optimization. Second, Off Page Optimization and the last part is Technical Search Engine Optimization. If you are willing to know more about each part and dive in details, I highly recommend Art of SEO by Eric Enge.

For On Page Optimization, briefly, it is about optimizing your on page content based on the keyword research and competitive analysis. It consists of Title Tags, Heading Tags, and Meta Description. Each one has an optimal length to be followed. For instance, the optimal length of the title tag is 55–60 characters while including one keyword for the industry and the name of the company in the end of the text. Meta description are no longer important for the search engine ranking but it is relevant with the search result block appearance.

One of the most important parts of Search Engine Optimization is Backlink strategy which is a part of Off Page Search Engine Optimization. Briefly, it means who is going to connect to your website and who are you going to relate to?

When looking at a website for backlinking, it is important to decide on the website relevancy. For instance, imagine you have a website that sells coffee, how it is relevant to get mentioned by website that provide products in the gaming industry? not quite relevant, right?

What if your website is for running shoes and you get a backlink from a fitness training center that mentions your product as the one of the best shoe to wear when running? Relevant, right?

If we are going to evaluate this by looking at the first case and the second case, which one do you think would increase your website authority and which one would decrease it?