What Does It Mean to “Write for SEO” in 2018?
Bad news. There’s a chance that a lot of the SEO copywriting tips you’re following are from 2008 or earlier. Don’t beat yourself up—it’s not your fault. A lot of the major marketing blogs are giving bad advice right now.
Good news. Rand Fishkin is swooping in to solve this problem right here, right now. If you don’t know Rand, you should. He knows everything about modern SEO.
Before we get to writing for SEO in 2018, let’s travel back in time and debunk some myths.
- In 2001, keyword stuffing was a tactic that worked well. If you do it now, Google will see this as spam and drop your rankings.
- In 2008, exact match keywords were really popular. Basically, you’d write two different blog posts. One for “blue watch” and another for “blue watches.” Don’t do this now.
Rand debunks a few other things, but we’ll move on for now. Here’s what he has to say about writing for SEO in 2018:
- Solving the searcher’s query matters most. Essentially, the content that accurately and succinctly helps the searcher solve their task will be ranked the highest.
- Only a few tags are still absolutely crucial to doing SEO correctly. You should prioritize having your keywords in two place—the page title and the body of your text. H1 tags, meta descriptions, URLs, and image alt-tags just aren’t very important anymore.
- Using related keywords and phrases can provide a significant boost. Google understands how things relate to each other. If you’re writing about coffee beans, but don’t mention the roasting process, Google will view this as incomplete. That’s kind of why 10x content is so valuable.
- User experience matters more than ever. We mentioned before that Google RankBrain understands if someone has a bad experience on your website. If they do, you need to fix this problem.
Plenty more here. And hey—there’s a video that goes along with this blog post so you can read or watch. Whatever suits you.
Read
Lead Generation: Website Best Practices
When wizard-of-web-solutions Andy Crestodina writes knowledge on web design, we’re all ears… er, eyes? And he wrote a doozy last week that we just had to share.
A website that generates leads all day, every day is The Dream. But most websites don’t do that. “A lead generation website has a specific set of pages, each with specific elements. Each element aligns with the expectations and psychology of the visitor and the marketing program of the business.”
That’s exactly what Andy is mapping out in his latest blog post. Here’s how that map will flow. You’ll see that he’s broken up the journey into five key pages on your site: (1) Blog Post, (2) Service Page, (3) About Page, (4) Contact Page, (5) Thank You Page.
Inside each section, he outlines the crucial elements that need to be present in order to have a website that generates leads. So, a blog post should look like this, your service page should look like this, etc.
Websites following these best practices will guide the visitor through a series of steps: awareness, interest, trust, and finally action. Ah, ye olde conversion funnel.
Seriously, if you’ve been considering a web redesign or building out your first site, peep this post and take all the notes so you can follow these best practices. It’ll pay off.
Watch
Intuit’s Giant Bro-bot
Did you happen to catch Intuit’s 15-second Super Bowl ad last night? It was refreshingly different from the over-the-top attempts at humor that we saw from a bunch of other brands. We like that. If humor ain’t your thing, don’t try humor.
That 15-second ad that you might’ve seen last night was just a teaser for the full, 4-minute long video. To save you the struggle of searching for it, we’ve got the whole thing right here for today’s Watch.
Intuit, recognizing that humor isn’t their thing, created a heartfelt ad aimed at small and medium-sized business owners. In the full-length video, a young inventor notices that her friend is having trouble with his business. She sets out to fix his problem by building a giant robot, powered by Intuit, who will always have her friend’s back.
No spoilers here, you’ll just have to watch this one yourself.
