Thursday, November 12, 2015

Creative Strategies for Unique SEO Content








SEO is the bread and butter of online marketing, even though it is the sometimes underestimated and overlooked tactic to pump up your website’s ranks. However, as under appreciated as content may be, producing unique and captivating content is vital to the success of your website. In the reality of SEO, content is king, but it is important to keep in mind that not all content is created equal.
There are many concepts of content creation, but there are some key principles to creating unique content that can help your site continue to grow. Tandem Interactive uses only best practices for creating unique content for our clients and has a few tips to share.

·         Bring perspective, originality, and captivation to your SEO content. There are more than hundreds of thousands of content pieces written on similar topics as yours. You need to be asking yourself what you can do to make your content stand out and, best case scenario, be better than any piece of content ever written on that subject.

Bring unique perspective to the topic. Play up your own experience in dealing with the given subject using personal anecdotes. Provide a unique spin on the information that the user cannot find anywhere else by using a personable approach that users will relate. Use info-graphics, photos, charts, and anything else that is visually appealing for users. Grab their attention! Make it quirky, funny, easy to understand, etcetera. Make users want to continue past the first sentence and paragraph, and make it something that they want to share.

·         Evoke your reader’s emotions. There is a growing trend for purposefully writing content that will touch a reader’s emotions, and titling the post with a captivating headline that will draw users in. If your title is boring no one will want to read it and no one will click on it to even view your content.

Marketing messages have shown to be two-times more effective when they touch the reader on an emotional level. There are many emotions to play on when writing content, be empathetic when you are writing original content and place yourself in the consumer’s position.

There is a reason why a post of a dog that is best friends with a dolphin is getting over a million likes and shares on social media – it’s cute, it’s unique, and most people have never experience it so they are curious.

·         Write concise and pointed content. Eliminate all of the fluff in your content, which can be challenging, but will make for significantly better composition. A lot of online marketing agencies will fluff the crap out of the content they create for your company – look for one who won’t. If you notice that your content is being fluffed with nonsense, bring it to your marketer’s attention so that they can fix it and create a better strategy. Fluffed content is not typically original or unique, or engaging.

A brief, short, and to the point piece of content that is filled with information is better than a longer blog post. Users have a short attention span and you have limited time to tell them what your major points are – so do it wisely.


·         Communicate your message better with images. Everyone learns differently. Some people learn better by reading or hearing, while others learn better visually. An important thing to keep in mind is that no one learns any less through visual aids. Using visual aids such as pictures, videos, or diagrams can help illustrate the point of your content. Add images that add value to your content and that are interesting. 

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Pubcon Las Vegas 2015: Branding, Mobile, and Beyond

Pubcon Las Vegas 2015 Registration Booth
Tandem Interactive's Organic Search Manager/Editor Kimberly McSweeney at Pubcon Las Vegas 2015.

This year, I was fortunate enough to attend Pubcon Las Vegas with Joe in the beginning of October, and to say that I learned a wealth of knowledge during those short four days would be an understatement. For those who may not know much about Pubcon, it is the world’s leading online marketing conference and has been named a must-attend conference by Forbes, and I have to say – they hit the nail on the head.

If you missed Pubcon you arguably missed the largest sharing of SEO/SEM and PPC knowledge to ever take place under one roof. With daily speakers, such as the leaders of the search marketing industry, this was the place to be for those who do SEO and/or have a business or startup.
After day one at Pubcon, it was clear that the theme for the year was branding. Pretty much, if your company is not creating content that serves consumers and gets your name out in the world as a reputable company that is not just there to take your business, you are not doing enough to meet the needs of users. Users don’t only want answers to their questions, they want answers that exceed far beyond the question they asked. Although this may sound impossible, with amazingly engaging content – it isn’t. As Founder of Seer Interactive Wil Reynolds put it, if you are not creating the best piece of content ever written on a subject, you are not doing content right. Users want content that will serve them in a way that will make them better. They want to read your content and be able to take something from it that makes them better, smarter, and…well…serves their egos.

“People don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.” – Wil Reynolds

Once you have the most amazing piece of content created – you need to socialize it. Coupled with creating the best optimized content, socializing content will help build your brand. If you write amazing content and no one can see it on multiple social media platforms, your brand is not going to be engraved in their brains. Users’ minds need to constantly see your ads, your helpful content that answers their questions, your videos, your photos, and logos on Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and whatever the new social media platform will be, in order for them to build awareness of your brand, as well as trust.

Of course, every business with a website wants to know about mobile. As the industry leaders put it at Pubcon, if you are just now thinking about mobile, you are behind. If you are thinking that mobile is going to be big, you are behind. Mobile is here. Mobile is now. If your site is not mobile-friendly you can bet that users are going to your competitor who is mobile compliant. Not only should your site be mobile- friendly already, but if your mobile load times are slow – you can bet users are moving on to a competitor. It may be sad for you and your business, but it is true. With every new generation, attention spans are decreasing and demands are increasing – you need to take the heat and turn it into fire for your company, or get out of the kitchen.

Pubcon Las Vegas 2015



Pubcon Las Vegas 2015 featured the following keynote speakers and hyperlinked is Tandem’s live-blogged coverage for each:

Rand Fishkin: Founder of Moz:  SEO In A Two Algorithm World

Gary Illyes: Google: Generations XYZ

Wil Reynolds: Seer Interactive: The High Cost of Free Traffic

Daune Forrester: Bing: Data is the New Oil

John Brown & Richard Zippel: Google AdSense: Open Format Q&A


Other Pubcon Sessions Covered by Tandem:



Jeffrey Eisenberg (chief Executive at BuyerLegends.com) and Alex Harris (creative director at AlexDesigns.com): High Conversion Landing Pages and the User Persona, The Most Popular Tools for Creating Landing Pages and Campaigns, 8 Measurement Terms for Buyer Legends



Michael Gray (Atlas Web Services president and owner of GrayWolfSEO.com): Top WordPress Plugins to Clean Up and Speed Up Your Site

Barry Adams (founder of Polemic Digital): Barry Adams: Crawl Waste & Optimization