More than a billion active websites and blogs currently exist on the internet. And when we say ‘active,’ we mean that they are continually coming out with new content all the time.
With so many sites already out there and only a few organic listings available on the first page of Google, how are bloggers and content creators supposed to compete against established sites and brands with millions of dollars to spend on their marketing efforts?
In short, it comes down to knowing what works best and putting in the necessary time, work and effort to continue with a working strategy–which is exactly what we are going to be covering in this article today.
How to Win with Content Creation and SEO in 2020 and Beyond
As complicated and important as SEO is, it still really comes down to just three different factors, which are:
- Content
- Backlinks
- Promotion
These three simple methods can take any web site from ranking in the depths of Google’s search results, to ranking for hundreds of new organic and long tail keywords in no time.
Here are some guidelines and tips to help you get there.
Create Better, Longer and More Detailed Content
Take a look at any of the most popular sites and blogs on the internet today. They are either pushing out a ton of new content daily, or simply promoting the best of their content time and time again. Neither of them is correct, yet neither is wrong.
However, one of these methods will quickly suck the life out of your resources, time and money a lot faster–which is the method of posting daily fluff content and trying to promote each article over and over again.
A better solution is to focus your time and efforts on writing content that is at least 2,000 words in length, has a ton of resources and is also evergreen.
By focusing your efforts on this type of content and publishing scheduling, you will see results much faster in terms of rankings, and will only need to promote a small sub set of articles, versus having hundreds of them on your site.
This is a winning combination because you are focusing on valuable long-form content that should ultimately have a lot of backlinks and social promotion to them.
Focus Your Efforts on High End and Relevant Backlinks
Believe it or not, anyone can publish great content on their site. There is nothing magical about it. If you personally can’t write great content, then it can simply be outsourced. Because of this, ‘great content’ alone will not rank in Google.
In order to effectively rank content in Google in 2020 and beyond, your site and articles must have high-quality and relevant backlinks from other sites. And when we say relevant, we mean finance offers should have links coming from finance-related sites and not just a bunch of junk PBNs… as this won’t cut it. If you want to rank an “SEO” article, get backlinks from other SEO and marketing sites.
However, in order to effectively gain backlinks from other sites to your own, you will need to have some pretty amazing content. Some of the best working methods to gain backlinks from high-authority sites are:
- Explore the world of guest blogging and being an active contributor
- Create original infographics and industry reports to be references
- Interview experts and create guides based on their expertise
- Compile a list of top sites within your industry and reach out to each
- Run paid social media campaigns to kick start the social sharing process
- Cold email sites and see if they will link to your updated resource
- Find broken links on other sites and give them a better replacement link
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to gain backlinks–all of which aren’t going to magically happen by themselves with “just great content” on your site. Instead, you actually need to put in the time and work to make them happen.
Master the Process and Replicate Over and Over Again
Once you’ve decided on how you want to create content for your site and how you are going to promote it, you also need to decide on how you are going to scale over time. Remember, it’s not just about writing the content, it’s also about how you promote it.
A perfect example of this is Backlinko. The site only has around 15-20 articles on the site, but they are extremely useful, full of resources and referenced by other sites all the time. And instead of posting new content to the site, the owner Brian Dean, will simply update older ones with new resources and then repromote them all again.
And if you are going to follow this same formula, be sure to link back to all other articles on your site that are relevant. This will help with the Google indexing and link juice flowing through your site as well.
Altogether, this is a process that has worked extremely well time and time again.
SEO: Then Versus Now
As you can see from each of the three recommendations above, there is nothing amazing about SEO and what it takes to rank in Google today. Unfortunately, most bloggers and content creators aren’t willing to put in the time and effort in each area.
Take the time to run through each of the methods we highlighted above and then come up with a solid content creation and promotion strategy for your brand and business.