If you had to list one growth metric for the next six months, I bet it would be rank better on Google in order to generate more leads.

Everyone wants to bring more attention to their brand, their site, and ultimately their product or service page. At Sterling Content, we’ve built an entire business on helping companies grow their online presence, improve user journeys, and climb the Google rankings.

But before we can think about increasing your web traffic, we have to think about how people currently find you online.

  • They could type your company name directly into Google, but that’s for an audience you already have. You’re looking to generate attention from people who haven’t discovered you yet.

  • You could pay for traffic by placing tons of paid ads through AdWords which can be prohibitively expensive especially if you’re in a competitive market. And the second you run out of money, your traffic stops coming in, too.

These days, Google users are very discerning, and they often know what they’re looking for. A search engine user will often enter a question into Google like “where can I find [This Product] in [This City]?”

For example, if a company routinely posts blog articles about the challenges of completing a college degree as a working adult especially in large, expensive cities like New York, then Google will be more likely to rank them on the first page for any query about “adult education in New York.”

A company website that rarely or never posts new content, on the other hand, gets ignored by Google completely.

Which would you rather be?

If you optimize your site through Search Engine Optimized (SEO) blog content, then users who are already in the market for your product or service will discover you organically, simply by using Google.

The algorithm privileges companies that have put in the time and effort to have the content on their site regularly indexed by Google.

Blog curation strategy therefore requires a comprehensive plan to improve organic search results. This plan should include competitive keyword analysis, long-tail keyword research, as well as regular reporting as keywords change month over month.

Better Keywords Make Better Content

If you’re trying to bring more people to your website, there’s no point in having a blog unless it is optimized for search engines, and this means keyword research.

Every day, Google scans hundreds of thousands of blog posts that are published online, and its algorithm determines what these articles are about and ranks them depending on how helpful they are likely to be for users based on the search terms they are entering.

If you want to appear on the search engine results page when people enter terms or phrases adjacent to your industry, you need an expert to conduct the research that identifies exactly which buzzwords people are using. The right search engine optimized blog curation company keeps up with Google’s algorithm and knows how it actually works.

How Does Google Work?

A proper content curation strategy takes a few months before delivering real results. You need to be publishing regular, buzzworthy articles on your website for Google to determine that you are a regular, contributing source of expertise in your industry.

Then, after 3-6 months of writing informative, intelligent, articles that people actually want to read, Google privileges your website as part of its database, and naturally leads users to you.

Google actually puts content on hold for a period, only labelling it as relevant once it begins to appear as part of a pattern.

You can’t just create a batch of content, drop it on your site all at once, and expect it to rank quickly. You need to create weekly or bi-weekly content consistently, in order to incentivize Google to pay attention to your articles, getting them crawled and indexed quickly.

Once Google determines that your company’s blog is producing regular, relevant content, it will begin to tag and collate your articles as necessary to the user journey.

Because Google wants its users to find the right answers to their questions immediately, your blog needs to have the user journey in mind. This is how you use the search algorithm to your advantage, bringing more interest and traffic to your site.

So how do we optimize such a blog?

Conduct Keyword Research

An expert blog curation company like Sterling Content will sit down with you and develop a content road map before any articles get written.

First, we’ll target keywords your competitors are using, and build a blog campaign around the most relevant search terms in your industry.

Keyword research can also narrow down what exact questions people are already asking online around those keywords, and then tailor articles that present answers to those questions.

Add Helpful Visuals

Search engines like Google value visuals as they are a key part of the engagement process.

A stellar blog management company will include striking images, helpful infographics, original photos and videos, and descriptive alt text with every article.

Consider the following:

  • Visual content offers a ton of value for your website.
  • It can boost critical statistics such as time on page.
  • Visuals guide the reader through your content more smoothly.
  • They make your content more consumable and increase sharing.
  • Google loves images that are optimized for search.

One stat Google absolutely adores is engagement, or what used to be called “time on page” or “dwell time.”

The longer someone stays on your site (and even on a single blog article), the more Google thinks that content is relevant and worth privileging on the search engine results page.

By placing a video in the middle of your written content, you can keep people on the page longer. Check out the video above to see what I mean!

Include an Enticing CTA

What’s a blog post without a call to action? The purpose of a CTA is to lead your reader to the next step in their journey through your blog.

Often, these calls-to-action lead to things like free ebooks, whitepapers, fact sheets, webinars, trials, or basically any content asset where someone might need to share their contact info in order to proceed.

If people are looking for info, you don’t want to bring them directly to a product page, as that could spook them and make them feel targeted. But if someone who wants a product that you sell (but doesn’t know your company exists), naturally finds your blog because it presents a solution to a pain point, they are now 10 times as likely to take the next step.

Once they make the connection that what you offer is the answer to their need as a user, they’ll open their wallets.

That’s the science of SEO-driven content in a nutshell.

Think of the process like this:

A. User enters a relevant question into Google and discovers one of your blog posts on the SERP.

B. User reads you blog because the meta data is targeted to their needs or interests.

C. User sees call-to-action for a free offer.

D. User clicks call-to-action and gets to a landing page with a contact form that lets them access the free offer.

And now you’ve just generated a lead.

A Great Blog Generates Big Time Results

If you want to drive more traffic to your site, you need to put in the effort to make your web content attractive and informative. If you’d like to learn more, give us a shout and we can share the whole run-down with you. (See! That’s our call to action link right there!)

And keep checking in to the Sterling Content blog for more pertinent posts about blog management and content creation.