In-depth keyword research is central to every successful SEO strategy. Unfortunately, keywords are a finite resource. You may have a list of thousands, but if they're all based on the same topic, your articles are in danger of becoming regurgitated content your readers have seen before.
If you want to stay cutting edge in your industry, you will have to become less reliant on your keyword tools and get more creative with your content strategy. Here are seven ways you can develop a creative SEO strategy to keep your content fresh and relevant.
Help More Customers
There is a saying that the more people you help, the more profit you make. Google is all about providing their users with up to date, relevant, and helpful information in their search results. If your SEO strategy focuses on delivering solutions, adding value, and improving lives, Google will reward your site with better search rankings.
The most straightforward way to help your visitors is to understand what they want to get out of your site when they land on one of your pages. Google gives you all the information you need. Type in a broad keyword phrase you know searchers will use to find your business.
Scroll directly to the bottom of the page and you will find related searches that often dig a little deeper into the topic. Do your articles cover the information your visitors want to know? If not, create a new post, or go over your existing content to add the required information. When you do this, your content will become useful to more people.
If you provide the most accurate and relevant answer to a question, there's a possibility you could score the coveted featured snippet position on Google's search results, which will bring in boatloads of traffic.
Market Research
Forum sites like Quora and Reddit can provide a wealth of information about your customers' desires and pain points. There are thousands of questions asked and answered on these sites every day, on every topic and industry under the sun.
Visit the forum site and search your industry to see what people are asking. You can use the information you discover as a basis for creating more content for your site. However, there is another advantage to using these sites for your market research; you can post answers as an authority and siphon off some of their traffic.
You will need to be helpful and honest in the information you provide. A salesy approach on these sites is not welcome and may even damage your brand. Some users can also be extremely hostile to blatant sales pitches. Provide value and establish yourself as an authority in the field, and you will increase traffic to your site from people who are curious about what else you can offer.
The great thing about forum sites is you don't need to have the exact keywords to use them successfully as a research or traffic generation strategy.
Create Google Alerts
Google may not have specifically created Google alerts for marketers, but it has undoubtedly become a powerful and free tool you can use to up your SEO game.
Use a few of your most popular or competitive keywords to set up your alerts. Google will automatically fill your inbox with the latest information to hit the web about those topics.
You can set up alerts around all types of content and media, including books, videos, and news articles. You can keep yourself up to date with your industry's latest happenings and become aware of trends, new products, and services while receiving a heap of content ideas to fill out your blog. You will also find more than a few examples of long-tail keywords (search phrases of 3 or more words) you can add to your content or create new articles around.
You probably don't want to be overwhelmed with suggestions every time you visit your inbox, so it's a good idea to set your alerts to a frequency you can manage.
Interview Experts in Your Niche or Industry
Interviews with experts are always popular with searchers because the information coming from an experienced professional adds validity. Plus, if you're the expert in the interview, you can make sure you are asked all the right questions based on your keyword research.
Interviews take time to set up and implement so you most likely won't be doing one every day. However, a once-monthly schedule is possible for most business owners. The trade off in extra visitors to your site who look forward to regularly updated content will be worth the time and effort.
There are many ways you can conduct an interview. You can send a list of questions via email or conduct a conversation over a video conference call. You could also interview over the phone and publish it as a regular podcast and gain even more exposure.
Another advantage of interviews is that if you are the interview source, it will be published on an external site. A portion of the visitors will then click through to your site to see more of what you can offer. There is also a good chance you will score a high-quality backlink to improve your search engine rankings.
If you are conducting the interviews, the interviewee's name will likely be a popular keyword that will give you an advantage in the search engines. It's one more way an interview can attract more traffic to your business.
Refreshing Old Content
Every few months, you should revisit your old content to make sure it is still as relevant as the day you first published it. Many industries can experience rapid change, and information that is valid today may not be in a few months. Unfortunately, out of date content can hurt your rankings.
Visitors will quickly notice that a page will not provide the information they need, and they will soon hit the back button. This sort of activity on your website is an indication to Google that your content is no longer relevant, and it will update the search results accordingly.
If you are lucky enough to operate in an industry where your content is evergreen (information that doesn't go out of date), you should still go over your older posts anyway. You can add new content to target different keywords, talk about recent developments, or create a video to accompany the article.
Engage with Your Audience Online and Offline
Regularly engaging with your audience will give you a deeper understanding of their motivations, desires, and pain points. When you take the time to know your audience, your new knowledge will inspire you with new content ideas that address their issues.
Browse the comments sections of your website and your social media feeds. Many of your visitors will use these channels to gauge your business's quality, and ignoring them won't put your company in the best light. Answer every query, address every complaint, and thank people for positive reviews to show your visitors that you care about your business and are responsive to their needs.
You can also use technology to engage with your audience in real-time. Consider getting on for a live video presentation where you can answer questions and chat with your audience about what they need right now. Chatbots are also a great way to engage with visitors who arrive at your site and need more information but don't want the delay and back-and-forth hassle typical of email.
Research Your Competitors
Your competitors will be working hard at pushing you out of the search results. Some of them will falter, but a few will stumble upon ideas that accelerate their results.
Fortunately, it's relatively easy to find out what they are doing by browsing their website for the latest content and visiting their social media feeds.
You mustn't blatantly copy a competitor's strategy, but there's no harm in using what you find as inspiration and then doing something similar but better, faster, or cheaper.
In summing up, it's not only possible to stay creative in your SEO strategy, it's critical to your success. Let your customers' problems, issues, and pain points drive your content strategy, and you will create more profit by helping more people.
SEO can be complicated and time-consuming, but you don't have to let your competitors have all the fun. Reach out to the SEO marketing experts to find out how affordable and profitable a professional and creative SEO marketing campaign can be.
