Chapter 4
Indexing gives you a place on the online visibility starting blocks. Once you’ve indexed your site pages, it’s time to apply some search engine optimization strategies (SEO) to boost your chances of appearing on search engine results pages. Without smart SEO to bolster your efforts, you will have a stellar blog nobody knows about.
SEO.
Three letters that bring dread or delight.
Delight when you get it right and receive an avalanche of traffic for months. Dread when you have no clue where to start or have spent thousands of dollars, but with no results to show for it.
But if you do SEO right, it’s a great ally to personal brands.
However, getting results through SEO isn’t as easy as it used to be. Gone are the days of churning out quick keyword-stuffed 500 word articles and seeing an instant rise in traffic and brand awareness.
Things have become tougher.
Search engine algorithms have become smarter and can sniff out sites that are trying to game the system. Plus, every business is online now, so the competition is fierce. But you can still get outstanding results through personal SEO.
Let me show you how.
What Is SEO And How Does It Benefit Personal Brands?
Search engine optimization, or SEO as it’s popularly known, is increasing the quality of qualified traffic to your website through organic search results.
Note that it’s qualified traffic.
It’s fruitless to get tons of unqualified traffic that doesn’t bring you leads and sales at the end of the day. Qualified traffic is attracting people who suit your buyer persona. Such people are more likely to convert than general untargeted traffic.
SEO has many benefits for personal brands that use it well. Here are some of them to inspire your SEO strategy.
1. Search marketing has a high ROI
Search engine marketing gives you super value for your money. Compared to other marketing channels, its returns are stratospheric. Research by Neil Patel showed SEO brings you a return on ad marketing spend of over 525%.
Source: Neil Patel
No other channel comes close.
2. Cheaper than most marketing channels
Another serious consideration when choosing the right channel to push your brand is cost. How much you will spend to get a quality lead that can turn into a buying customer. Again, when it comes to the average cost per lead, SEO comes out tops as shown by this study by Survey Anyplace.
Source: Survey Anyplace
As you can see, SEO content marketing is the cheapest channel, up to 5 times cheaper than display advertising. This is good news if you are a startup on a tight budget.
3. SEO growth compounds over time
Admittedly, SEO takes a while to gather steam. With pay per click advertising (PPC), you see results immediately. After investing in SEO, you must wait for months to see a return on your investment. But once results arrive, they get better and better with time. Meanwhile, PPC returns remain stagnant or dwindle.
Source: SEOPressor
SEO trumps PPC as it drives more visitors in the long term. Remember, it’s cheaper too.
4. Gives a competitive edge
Imagine this.
Two brands that are in the same niche are neck and neck marketing wise. They sell two equally wonderful products. They have a good product-market fit. Both have websites. But brand A has a well-optimized blog anchored on superb content. Although brand B also has a website, they regard it as an online business card. They hardly post anything on their blog and don’t take the time to fine-tune their site for higher rankings.
All things being equal, brand A will get more organic visitors and earn more profits.
Their SEO expertise gives them the edge over their rival.
3 Types Of SEO
Next, let me get you up to speed about the three types of SEO.
3 Types Of SEO
Let’s jump straight into the three types of SEO.
1. Technical SEO
Technical SEO means fine-tuning the technical aspects of a website for improved crawling and indexing, plus boosting overall search visibility.
It includes things like:
- Crawl errors: identify and fix crawl errors so it’s easy for bots to crawl and index your site.
- HTTPS protocol: switch from the HTTP to the favored HTTPS protocol, which is now a ranking factor.
- Mobile friendliness: make sure your site is mobile-friendly to suit Google’s mobile-first index.
- Site speed: make sure your site loads super fast because the Google algorithm prioritizes load speeds when ranking sites.
- XML sitemap: have a well-structured XML sitemap for more efficient crawling.
- URL structure: use a simple URL structure that’s readable for both people and search engines.
2. On-page SEO
On-page SEO deals with optimizing individual website pages to give them the best chance to rank higher in search engines.
It covers:
- Keyword: include your primary keyword in your title tag, URL, and H1, H2, or H3 tags.
- URL: use a short, descriptive, readable URL.
- Introduction: include your primary keyword in the first 100 words, brownie points if you can do it in the first sentence.
- Image alt tags: help Google understand your images by including a concise description and your keyword in your image alt tags.
- LSI Keywords: use synonymous expressions to your primary keyword instead of repeating the main keyword.
- Links: link to relevant, useful, authoritative external and internal content.
- Meta description: generate more click-throughs to your content by crafting appealing meta descriptions.
3. Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO focuses on actions you take outside your site to boost your search rankings.
Below I summarize what it entails:
- Guest posting: build high-quality backlinks to your site through guest posting on authoritative niche sites.
- Link outreach: reach out to niche sites and recommend a linkable resource to complement their content and get a link back to your site.
- Competitor Analysis: conduct a competitor backlink analysis to see where your rivals are getting their links from.
- Content syndication: remodel your content and share it all over the web.
- Influencer marketing: team up with influencers to get your name out there.
- Social media: be active on social media platforms where your target audience hangs out—share, connect, engage, and listen.
To sum up, here’s a graphic that shows all three types of SEO:
Source: ReliableSoft
Essentially, technical SEO is about crawling and indexing, on-page SEO concerns content optimization, while off-page SEO deals with website promotion.
Boost Your Site’s Domain Rating (DR)
With the fundamentals in place, you can move on to another key feature that determines your brand’s online visibility, domain rating.
What Is DR And Why Is It Important?
Domain Rating (DR) for Ahrefs users or Domain Authority for Moz users, is a measure of the overall strength of a website and its likelihood to rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The DR score ranges from 1 to 100.
DR is important for marketing and PR because the higher it becomes, the more your online influence grows. You can rank for your keywords faster. Also, you attract more people to your brand. Importantly, you get more links organically as people trust high DR sites than low DR ones.
4 Painless Ways To Increase Your DR And Online Influence
Since growing your DR also grows your authority, I’m sure you are wondering how to do it. Here are a few tips.
1. Hike Your DR Through Guest Posting
Publishing content on authoritative niche sites as a guest poster is a proven way to hike your DR. Because you get links from trusted sites that carry a lot of SEO weight, your DR rises rapidly.
That’s exactly what I did at Freedom To Ascend:
- Launched the site in July 2020 with zero DR obviously
- Started an intensive guest posting campaign in August 2020 targeting DR50+ sites.
- Hired top writers to do the outreach and write the posts.
The results?
- DR61 (and growing)
- 273 Backlinks
- 139 Referring Domains
- 137 Organic Keywords
That’s phenomenal growth in just six months.
Because my site now has a decent DR, I’m beginning to rank for my targeted keywords. That’s my focus now.
2. Increase Your DR By Creating Link-Worthy Content
The internet runs on content.
Sadly, trash content clogs the web. So if you can create superduper content, you will attract links organically. Some link-friendly content types include:
- Long-form Guides: people love to reference in-depth guides that explore a topic definitively.
- Infographics: infographics are a shareable and linkable asset because they are visually stunning and info-packed.
- Statistics Posts: stats posts give people a handy resource to support their points so they link to them a lot.
- Original Research: nothing attracts links like an original resource that provides unheard-of insights.
- Useful Tools: if you can create a tool that solves a nagging problem your target audience has, you will get tons of links.
Speaking of tools, the Keto Calculator is an excellent case study of this strategy in action.
Source: Perfect Keto
This simple tool has 3.37k+ backlinks and counting.Not too bad if you ask me. Imagine the SEO impact of this single resource.
3. Better Your DR By Removing Toxic Links
Not all links are equal.
Some are good, some so-so, while others are outright toxic. Toxic links are undesirable backlinks that harm your website and lower your rankings. That’s the last thing you want because a nosedive in rankings leads to a plunge in traffic and revenue for your brand.
The solution is to identify and remove the toxic links the better for your business. In the worst-case scenario, Google can penalize your site because it has plenty of toxic backlinks.
Examples of toxic backlinks include links from:
- Spammy sites.
- Link networks.
- Sites with malware.
- Unindexed sites.
- Sites with irrelevant topics.
- Footers of websites
Jump into your favorite SEO tool for help in identifying To remove the toxic links and clean up your site, you should:
- 1. Reach out to the site owner
The first and best method of removing a harmful backlink is to reach out to the person who linked to you and ask them to remove it.
- 2. Disavow the links
If the first method fails, then use your favorite SEO tool to disavow the link. Disavowing means you are rejecting the link.
4. Improve Your DR Through Link Outreach
If you already have linkable assets on your site, then you can go on a link outreach campaign.
Link outreach is reaching to website owners via email and asking them to link to your content.
Fairly straightforward.
It involves several steps:
- Identifying target sites that are relevant and have a decent DR.
- Scouring their content to identify content that’s a good fit.
- Pitching the target site’s webmaster and asking for a link.
- For higher success rates, reciprocate with something hard to say no to. This is where most link outreaches fail. Link prospectors won’t link to your site for nothing or something they consider worthless.
- Make sure the piece of content you are promoting complements the post you are targeting perfectly.
- Personalize your pitch so that it’s not ignored because it’s generic.
A healthy DR is worth its weight in gold for the growth of your brand. So aggressively pursue it. You will reap the rewards in higher rankings, more traffic, and also become an authority figure in your space.
Optimize Your Social Media Profiles
Few brands seriously think about social media profile optimization. That’s unfortunate because optimized social bios contribute immensely to your brand’s SEO and overall health.
Whether it’s your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter profile:
- Remember to link to your website.
- Include a clear call to action to encourage people to click through to your site.
- Use the same profile picture across channels for instant brand recognition.
- Include social proof so people know you are the real deal.
- Stick to similar messaging and positioning across channels.
See a brilliant example from business coach Lilach Bullock.
First, here’s her Twitter profile.
See a brilliant example from business coach Lilach Bullock.
First, here’s her Twitter profile.
Notice how similar they both look?
The messaging, positioning, headshot, and brand colors are the same. That’s brand consistency for you. There’s harmony across channels that makes her brand stick. That’s what you want.
Repurpose Content Into Slides And Submit It On SlideShare
Earlier we spoke about the power of repurposing content.
In particular, visual content offers a great opportunity. People love it and will gladly link to it and share it with people in their circles. Plus, the new audience you reach with your slides or presentations will follow you back to your site to read the original post and find out more about you.
Slide presentations lend themselves well to:
- Key takeaways from a post.
- Tasty quotable statements.
- Fascinating bits of statistics.
- Infographics.
- Article main points.
SlideShare’s 80 million users can be an excellent source of new traffic for your site if your slides engage them.
Become A Niche Authority Through Rock Solid Content
So, what is topical authority, and how can it benefit your branding SEO strategy?
Topical authority means being regarded as a trusted authority of a whole topic and its ins and outs. Anyone can know bits and pieces about any topic. It takes an expert to have a thorough knowledge of the entire topic and subtopics.
When you have topical authority, Google and people trust you more.
You appear higher in the SERPs for searches related to your topic of expertise because the Google Hummingbird algorithm understands context and the relationship between words better. And when people want to refer to an expert, they link to your site. You win with both people and search engines.
You develop topical authority mostly through your content:
- Write on as many aspects of your topic as you can.
- Go deep in your articles and provide definitive answers.
- Identify and address all your audience questions in your content.
- Package your content in all content types, e.g. text, images, video.
Also, build links to your stellar content. Soon enough, the links will trickle in organically.
Land Interview Spots On Podcasts
Landing interviews is an easy and fast way to reach new audiences and establish yourself as an industry expert. Plus, you also get links to your website.
Getting booked on podcast shows isn’t tough if you know what to do. Follow these steps to land shows on popular podcasts.
- Find an enchanting story to pitch
Show hosts ignore ho-hum stories, but they adore thrilling, unique ones.
Find something uncommon that you’ve achieved in your personal and professional journey so far. It may be a quicker way of doing something or an absurd idea that worked wonders.
Whatever it is, find it, and you will stand a chance of getting the host’s attention.
- Target the right podcasts
You might have a special story, but if you present it to the wrong crowd, it won’t help your business one bit.
Target:
- Relevant shows with listeners that fit your customer avatar.
- Popular shows that have many listeners so you reach more people.
- Respected shows that will help you underline your expertise.
- Craft a captivating subject line
Your pitch lives or dies on the quality of the subject line.
If it’s uninspiring, your pitch email won’t get opened.
To get your pitch email read:
- Be clear, not ambiguous.
- Be specific, not general.
- Be brief, not circuitous.
- Be catchy, not boring.
- Be personal, not generic.
A strong subject line will get your pitch clicked and opened.
- Keep your pitch brief
In the body of your pitch, don’t dilly dally.
Super busy podcasters have no time for that. Go straight to the point.
Introduce yourself and your idea.
Ask to be a guest to share your story.
That’s it.
