Simply put, you should be writing content that your customers need. The goal is for a potential client to stumble across a page on your site and think, “these people know what they’re talking about, I’ll give them a call”. Given that basic premise of content writing, there are a lot of ways to go about getting inspiration for what your customers need to find. Here are 9 quick and easy ways to figure out what you should be writing about, drawing on personal experience and two great articles by localvisibilitysystem and Moz.

1. Google Ads Keyword Planner

This is the default source for most SEOs. Log into Google Ads, “Tools and Settings”, “Keyword Planner”, “Discover New Keywords”, and start firing away. This tool will give search volume for any term you type in by location, which can guide you as you build out content addressing high search volume phrases to start competing in search results. It’s worth a look to check search results for content quality on a given search term to see you if might outperform it with better content of your own. At the same time, this tool is helpful for identifying content opportunities for lower traffic, more specific topics.

 

2. Google Trends

This tool is helpful for identifying popular search terms. I’ve found this to be more helpful on a larger scale, helpful at the beginning of your keyword research to get a general sense for where things are heading. This tool has location settings in addition to timeframe settings. A helpful tip for using this tool is the “Related Topics” section. Whatever keywords you add will be followed by similar but different suggested terms, very helpful when piecing together what you need on your site. Below I typed in “Family Law” and Google Trends came back with a number of specific related terms.

3. “Google Suggests”

It sounds simple because it is. Just type in the beginning of a search term and see what Google recommends you finish it with. These are popular searches that Google thinks you might be going for. Below are a few opportunities for content based on typing in “Family Law”

4. Competitor Analysis

Check out what your competitors are writing about. This will not only give you ideas of where you need to build out content on your site to start competing directly with those pages you find, but can also lead to inspiration for spin-offs and similar-but-different pages for you to start working on.

5. Moz Keyword Explorer

Similar to to Google Ads Keyword Planner, Moz’s tool will give you related terms for inspiration as well as SERP analysis and other functionalities for a new perspective. Unless you’re paying for Moz Pro, this has a monthly quota.

6. Your Own Reviews

Moving on to a few more creative ways to gather keyword research, try checking out your own review. After running down the reviews you’ve been collecting over time in Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, Avvo, or anywhere else, see if you can pick apart any trends. Reviews will tend to mention the things that are important to them in reviews, wether that be a particular type of case, product, or service. It’s often the case that at least a few of the things mentioned in reviews are being sought after by other people and warrant a page of content.

7. Competitor Reviews

Just like your own reviews, competitor reviews can unearth valuable trends. See what your competitors clients liked/didn’t like, and write about that.

8. Competitor’s QAs in Google My Business

The QA section of your own and competitor’s Google My Business listings can bring valuable insights into what people want to know. This is basically a tiny version of a search engine with some users putting exactly what they’re wondering straight to your listing. Trends in what customers are wondering can often be valuable as pages.

9. Directory Categories

Run through some online directories like Avvo, Lawyers.com, or Superlawyers to see what categories they are using to segment out a given practice area. More often than not, these categories are heavily researched by the directories, doing some of the work for you. This can be used as a baseline to make sure any category showing up popular directories is showing up on your website as well.

 

 

Google’s recent core update included a feature, or at least the announcement of an upcoming feature, changing the search engine’s “Opt-Out” policy regarding snippets and website previews to an “Opt-In” policy. The update will give webmasters a variety of options regarding snippet word-count, preview video length, and whether or not to show a snippet at all.

Why

This update, set to launch late-October, is in response to a recently implemented French copyright law requiring search engines to offer “Opt-In” rather than “Opt-Out” options for webmasters. This is the first implementation of Europe’s new copyright laws, which Google is complying with by providing more snippet options.

Will it Affect Me

Users of Yoast SEO don’t have to worry about their Google snippets vanishing and costing them valuable web traffic; Yoast announced a company-wide policy that they will still offer the “Opt-Out” option for their users but will have all their websites automatically opted-in to snippets unless they were opted-out before the update. 

What Should I Do

While Google’s update isn’t set to launch for another few weeks, Yoast SEO has announced its update for October 1st. George Nguyen, in a blog post for Search Engine Land, recommends that Yoast users who aren’t interested in the new snippet features shouldn’t update to version 12.2, and for those who do want to take part in the new features to keep track of their max-snippet limits for each of their pages.

 

 This new update won’t have an impact on your Google rankings but could affect your rich results if you get opted out of snippets. This could affect traffic to your page the previously came from rich results, which is why Yoast SEO automatically opted its users in. If you are a Yoast SEO user who does not want to take part in Google’s snippets or rich results, make sure your preferences say so before or after Yoast’s version 12.2 update. If you do want to take part in snippets, still check and make sure all your preferences are up to date and to your liking after the update October 1st.

The balance of SEO copy with quality content is difficult to find and often misunderstood.  How much copy should be in your content? How much content in your copy? How much should keywords play into what you post? The broad answers to these questions blend together into “it depends on the project and your team(s).” Luckily, we don’t have to leave it there. Here’s how good SEO copywriting can improve organic traffic and conversions.

Navigating Vs. Steering

Imagine a car with a driver and a passenger. The passenger has a map or, more likely, directions on their phone. For them to get where they need to go, the driver needs to trust the passenger’s navigation, and the passenger needs to trust the driver’s steering. SEO should function as navigation and content should be the driver.

If your company has separate SEO and content departments it is important to get them on the same page. They are working for the same goal, and they’ll go further together. It is key to remember that both departments have specific jobs that they excel at, and forcing those in SEO to try and design content or those in content to analyze SEO will only result in failure and confusion. The car will crash if the passenger tries to steer or if the driver tries to read. 

The Role of SEO

As previously stated, SEO should function as a GPS. Let the data show where to go, and don’t stop at your company’s data. Research your competitors, see what’s working for them and either beat them at their own game or focus on areas where they’re weaker. If your competitor is producing a lot of high-traffic content in the form of video blogs but is lacking in written articles: it’s time to get your content department to start writing.  

The Role of Content

Content writing is focused more on producing well-written, enjoyable, and/or useful pieces, as opposed to copywriting, which is aimed at increasing traffic and conversions. The two exist on a spectrum, in that copy needs to be well written in order to have conversions, and content needs traffic in order to be read. A good content department/writer can strike a balance between the two and should be familiar with the basics of SEO. This doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from guidance from the SEO professionals. 

Where They Blend

Keywords and formatting. Before content writers cringe, this doesn’t mean content should be dictated by how many keywords can be stuffed into an article. This leads to clunky writing and ultimately lowers organic traffic. Keywords should be used as a prompt. SEO research can provide content writers with topics consumers are interested in, as well as what formats perform best for that topic. From there the writer can get to work. Ideally, other keywords will naturally fit into the content. 

Good SEO copywriting exists in the gray area between data analysis and content. It cannot exist without collaboration between SEO researchers and content writers, and it cannot succeed without hard work on both sides. 

Just in time to kick off AdWeek in New York City, YouTube has launched Video Reach campaigns; an ad management system designed to improve the advertiser experience on the video-sharing platform. 

The new Video Reach campaigns will allow advertisers to upload three sets of ads under one campaign, as opposed to in the past when advertisers were forced to create separate campaigns for each type of ad. The ads, or asset types, are six-second bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads.  Once the advertiser uploads their assets and begins the campaign, Google will analyze which ads perform better and will optimize the campaign for maximum viewership.

This built-in analysis and access to consolidated asset-types will allow advertisers to run more comprehensive campaigns for a reduced price. 

Early users are already seeing strong results, according to Google’s announcement. Says Google “[Ford] lowered their campaign cost over 20 percent compared to their previous YouTube benchmarks.” 

The Video Reach campaigns promise to save time and money for advertisers as much of the learning from trial and error of advertising is replaced by Google’s machine learning. The built-in analysis paired with automatic efficiency optimization will ease the role of finding the best combination of assets away from advertisers. 

The full benefits and drawbacks of YouTube’s new feature is yet to be fully known but has the potential to improve video advertising experiences for companies everywhere.

Google’s Knowledge Panels and Featured Snippets have led to an increase in what is known as “no-click” search results: consumers will search something, then find an answer without having to click a single link. This benefits the searcher and Google but impedes click-through rates for those producing content. While this is worrying for those in SEO, it doesn’t look like Knowledge Panels or Featured Snippets are going away anytime soon.

A survey conducted by Path Interactive, which covered multiple countries and age ranges from 13->70, found that Knowledge Panels and Featured Snippets are growing in popularity among younger users.  When asked what they do when faced with a featured snippet, 40% of responders between the ages of 13 and 18 said that they considered their search done. Less than 15% of those over the age of 70 answered similarly. Of the almost 2,500 responders, 36.8% said that they considered their questions answered when given a Knowledge Panel. 

 

These numbers are scary for those whose jobs rely on click-through rates, but they provide an interesting opportunity for those who work in SEO: designing content that Google likes enough to be featured. Those featured in Knowledge Panels or Featured Snippets get an almost doubled click-through rate than those not featured. 

The type of content appearing in the Snippets also influences click-through rates. Searches with simple answers tend to have lower click-through rates. 30.6% of consumers concluded their searches on features such as weather forecasts when given a Snippet, while only 13.6% of consumers said they consistently relied on features regarding job searches, local events, or more complicated results. 

 

Google is adapting to better respond to user experience, often at the expense of those desperately trying to increase organic traffic. According to the survey, 93% of respondents said that Google had maintained or improved its user experience over the years. If improved user experience goes hand in hand with increasing challenges on SEO, I don’t think we can expect Google to ease up on those in SEO.

Breadcrumbs have been helping users navigate websites for well over a decade now, and as technology has gotten better, managing the breadcrumbs have gotten easier. A recent announcement by Google has revealed that website managers will now have access to structured data reports of their breadcrumbs and will receive a notification in the case of malfunctions. This will allow website managers to more efficiently identify and fix issues, decreasing any impact they might have on user experiences. 

Google announced the new feature through a tweet with this photo attached

 

With all the competing website-building companies and their desire to make SEO more accessible, building breadcrumbs has never been easier. Hierarchy-, history-, and attribute-based breadcrumbs have made website navigation easier for consumers and are controlled by the website administrators. Well designed breadcrumbs even make it to Google search results, making it easier for consumers to navigate the site before they even click through. 

 

Google’s announcement has made the use of breadcrumbs even more essential for SEO than before.  The increased access to technology means that those who ignore it will be left in the dust.

The most recent in Google’s long list of core updates, September 24th saw the rollout of a new, content-oriented update. Google has ensured webmasters in their announcement that no specific pages have been targeted and that “there’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update.” Self-assessment is advised for webmasters of pages that may see lower rankings, as is a visit to Google’s advice on how to build a high-quality website.

If yours is a website that has suddenly dropped in the rankings, or even if you might want to see your website get higher rankings, Google has provided some updated advice for how to achieve that. This includes:

• Ensuring your site has original content
• Providing comprehensive coverage of the topic 
• Providing an in-depth analysis of the topic
• Making sure you do not just copy and paste from your sources, and that you cite sufficiently
• Your headlines and title pages should relate to the content, not exaggerate it
• If you were just stumbling onto your website, would you trust its information based on its sources, author, and website’s “About” page?
• Making sure all your facts are true and verifiable
• Making sure there are no grammar or spelling mistakes
• Ensuring the web design is pleasing 
• Avoiding mass-produced content
• Developing the webpage with mobile in mind
• Comparing the content to other content that might appear in the same search

 

Keeping up with Google’s core updates can be a challenge, but producing good and original content is a safe way to stay high up in the rankings. For a comprehensive guide on how Google rates quality content, feel free to examine their Search Quality Rating General Guidelines. For a less comprehensive guide (Google’s is 167 pages), check out some of our content-focus pieces here and here, or contact our team and we can talk about how to optimize your webpage.

Google announced Monday an improvement to website reports geared towards fast-paced webmasters. The update, same-day website data, is a response to the “user’s #1 feature request,” according to Google. 

The update will affect performance reports, allowing webmasters to view general statistics on their sites less than a day old. This means that weekend visitor statistics will be available Monday morning as opposed to Wednesday, as it was previously. Webmasters can even view same day statistics; especially useful for holidays or high-traffic days.

Access to these early numbers will help webmasters with website maintenance, international site audience numbers, and early analytics. To keep up with the more recent numbers, Google has also updated its time zone settings, making them clearly visible when choosing a statistical date range. This will help websites with international audiences more efficiently report their local as well as regional findings.

While the same-day website data will help to improve immediate performance reviews, Google stated in its announcement that the fresh data is not yet supported by The Search Analytics API or the Discover performance report. It should also be noted that data points will change and update before being finalized a few days after first being reported. 

These new changes will allow webmasters to update their websites and follow traffic more efficiently throughout the week, making quick fixes and analyses more effective than before.