15 TIPS TO RANK BETTER WITH CONTENT

Let's try to find Organic SEO in Google, What do we find?

We find people that are searching for organic SEO, but also they want to know how to do it with tips and tricks, no true organic at all. As my grandmother would say " we want our cake, and eat it too", and that just can't be.

SEO is about generating quality content that provokes interest, with a website that solves a problem or satisfies a need, oriented to the way the user is searching this information, concrete or indexable for search engines. That, my friend, is SEO.

If you're looking for shortcuts to be first one on Google search, I can give you a clue: There's None. Or let me correct myself, there's very few of them, not very effective, they are brief, that are a blatant risk for your website and that usually take more work than doing it the proper way. And if you want to generate value, the content will be your best ally in this mission.

If you're still focused on finding fast and easy methods that would work...or not, you're one step away from searching "Black Hat SEO", "Back Link exchange", "Blog Networks", "free articles and press releases" and stuff like that, because this post ISN'T about that, it's about real techniques that would work this week, and the following, and so on, that will make you grow in a sustainable pace that will never EVER receive a penalization or ban.

1. Know your User:

The first thing you need to know is, Who is your audience? Each audience consumes information in a different way.

For example, this post could be called "Techniques on Content Marketing for SEO", but it is directed to a more reduced audience and specialize, and the advises would be totally different. To know what is people searching you could use some help from Google auto-fill tool, Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends.

Of course, not all is provided by a tool. If you have a website about dogs, it will suggest you like content: Dog videos, Dog websites, Dog pictures, or even synonyms like, K-9, Canine, Wolf, or even give you interesting ideas. But maybe you have detected unimportant niches, such as "videos to cheer you up" or "Videos to see when you're sad". Your content solves problems and needs, search which ones are those, how many different ways could this idea be expressed, and create specific content on that.

In other words: Find out which needs you satisfy? How are these searched? Who is your competition? and become the brand everyone wants to see.

You can use the "Persona" technique, that would make it way easier to personalize the content for the different types of users that you could have.

2. Have a Plan:

The content must be planned. You must have a clear and numeric goal - Never exclusively SEO-, a specific audience and a load full of ideas and desire to try them all.

.If you don't plan your content with an editorial calendar, varying formats, specifying which type of user this content is directed to and focusing your users on making a specific function when they visit your web (give you and email, phone, read more posts, follow you on twitter...) it will be hard to know if you're doing it right or wrong and you will depend only of your intuition to move forward.

3. Use your Blog:

Your blog is not just a great tool to create content that lures Google to your website on it's own, creating posts with great ranking, but it also allows you to:

• Generate Links: if you generate an easy-to-share content, people will share it, links included, which will benefit your domain and at all it comes with it. Is not all about the post being good, it also helps that your blog is liable and with a good reputation.

• Build Relationships: It is as simple as linking someone else's links into our web. Millions of people are generating a very valuable content on different subjects, and at least some of them have created a resource that complements your post perfectly: Link Them! Then, if you want to, mention them in twitter, so they know that you talk about them and they know about you.

• Reinforce your Brand: Take care of the aesthetic of your blog, that reinforces the identity of your company or brand, use the side bars, the header, the footer to accomplish your branding goals, and take care of aspects as the color palettes, images, that all elements have harmony with the whole content and brand.

4. Friends-from everywhere:

Let's not fool ourselves, getting as many quality links is about relationships. Not only having a well informed group of friends and acquaintances in the online world -that also- but to know how to generate an impact in the person we talk to so they decide to link us, befriend them.

As always, let events, parties, breakfasts and any other excuse so you can meet these bloggers or people in your niche. It will allow you to put a face on the people online, build relationships, and this will lead you to everything else.

5. Dig deeper on Social Networks:

The organic SEO depends a great deal on the engagement that you get from social networks, first of all because it allows you to establish relationships, it is a ranking factor as is, confirms the link profile and it gives you visibility and branding. Be careful that you don't get links without anyone knowing about you, and if your content doesn't have a brand that is safe to link.

And don't only stay in Twitter and Facebook: social networks such as Slideshare, Google+, Instagram, can be very useful, depends on which niches and brands, and tools like scoop.it or StumbleUpon can help you win a permanent traffic and links. Even blogs and forums on your niche, can be awesome tools, even if they require more investigation, they will get you the visibility for your targeted audience and would be fundamental in getting your first followers. Don't forget about them.

6. Team Think Tank:

Do people like what you do? Try combining with what others do. Alloys are stronger!

It can be working in a static website with all the "influencers" from a blog niche in California, or a niche close to your subject. For example, if you talk about Social Media, why not collaborate with 5 of your friends to create a Tumblr with the mistakes of different brands on social media? or a WordPress with obviously paid tweets?

It will give you visibility asides from your blog, website and RRSS, and it will allow you to leave the routing to experiment new things.

7. Save the Best content for Others:

If you're going to make content, reward those who will give you more visibility.

If you search blogs and ways to participate sporadically -Guest Blogging- try to have a bigger reach than your platform, or that it reached a niche that you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. After, reserve the best content for them. If in your blog you can reach 1,000 people and on the other one you can reach 10,000, try harder in the one that will give you more visibility.

8. Respect Branding as an SEO Tool:

Branding is fundamental in SEO. If nobody knows you, no one will search your brand, remember that SEO traffic keywords with your brand name is also organic SEO. Having a strong brand won't only make people search you more, but it will turn you into a liable source and will increase the click rate of your results and the possibilities of being shared and linked, meaning, SEO benefit everywhere.

9. Video, Video, Video:

The visual content is the most consumed on internet, and video is King. It is the same if you use Instagram Video or if you upload them in YouTube, you must constantly prove that these formats boost your visibility.

First of all, because videos have an easy time when positioning themselves in very competitive searches, and because the video reinforces the textual content like a post and generate more branding, authority and confidence.

Captura de pantalla 2013 08 01 a las 09.18.25 15 trucos para mejorar el posicionamiento de tu web con contenido

One of the best examples are Whiteboard Fridays from MOZ.

10. Change the Format:

There's no one and only winner format. Each kind of target usually have one or two preferred formats, but still one single Persona can consume content in different ways. For example, on weekends you watch some videos on Youtube with your friends, on the way to work you read an e-book, while at work you read interesting articles for your kind of job, you get home and go on Facebook ( Eminently visual ) and Twitter ( Eminently textual) and right before bedtime you laugh a little bit on Instagram, Pinterest and Vine, and if you use so many formats, your audience too!

Work on different formats of content, and try which ones work better with your audience: Is it posting a comic every once in a while? Is it videos? Is it shocking images? Or is it better text, so you focus on posts, whitepapers, e-books and researches? Varying the formats will allow you to reach new audiences, create loyalty with those who already read you and consolidate your content strategy by discovering what works and what doesn't, and your organic ranking will boost and grow as soon as you find the "It" factor.

11. Let Users Help You:

The users are the best way to generate content without doing it yourself directly: You just have to manage it, and it requires time and dedication, but it brings impressive results.

• Comments: Blog comments and, overall, in products, add priceless SEO value when you add semantic related content.

• Blogs: If you have loyal users willing to talk about a certain subject, Why don't you let them create their own blogs? This will be generating an indexable content for search engines and capturing a Long Tail traffic as well as gaining loyalty.

• Forum: For websites with a big community this forum can be a winner strategy. Websites like these rank awesomely in a wide range of keywords and topics at the same time, in a very active community that is is constantly planning doubts, offering solutions and generating matters of discussion, you can be sure this will help you in a great deal.

• Q & A's: If you don't want to manage a forum but you still want to allow community activity, you can accept questions and you would answer them, as long as you are a source of authority about the topic. In the end an important percentage of Google searches are questions.

• Ambassadors: If you have users that are really IN LOVE with you, participate in everything you do and are absolutely faithful, find ways to reward them and allow them to do their job as living proof of what loyalty to your brand feels like, this will get you more followers. From sending them content before anyone else sees it (Premiere content) so they make them viral, to giving them products or mentioning them on RRSS.

12. Create Your Own Images:

If you can, use your own images and use a Creative Commons licence so they are usable under accreditation. Seriously, it's impossible to find good images about certain topics, and ranking number 1 on Google images for a specific post concept, can mean that there's many bloggers linking you, crediting your work, as the best one they found to illustrate their content.

13. Think about the Domain:

Make yourself thing in a holistic way: organic SEO is no longer on one page, but the entire domain. If you create a post about, i don't know, Unicorns in a blog for Death Metal, it would be a lot more difficult that it ranks properly rather than the same content in a child's blog, no matter how good the content is even if the website has good metrics.

This doesn't mean that you have to talk about one subject, but it's good for you to be aware which are your weaknesses and your strengths.

14. Work your Personal Brand:

Even if you invest in your blog brand, your own brand is also important. Invest in yourself, because maybe tomorrow your blog changes, your work changes or even you're in another kind of industry and you're intersected by other topics, so you need the reputation of this blog converges on you.

Giving yourself visibility in your posts, turning your readers into Twitter followers, subscribers, or using your reputation to increase your contact network are the best ways to become a brand yourself, and make more relevant any future initiative.

15. Find a Good Balance between Quality and Quantity:

Everybody will tell you quality over quantity, and they're right, but in many occasions the content of great quality won't generate enough impact, and for it you'd need to dedicate too much time on it.

If you still don't have contacts, SEO traffic or Links, is convenient that you focus on fast and easy to do content, never mediocre, but don't pretend to make a Mona Lisa in every post, because no one will read you. If you focus in a long tail keyword, generate relationships, as for a few links here and there, and exchange some exceptional posts when guest blogging, in a few months you could have a greater capacity, and you must follow the higher quality posts even if this means slowing down the quantity.

Finding the balance is, for most of it, what sets appart a good blogger from the rest.

Bonus Tip: Don't think too much:

Seriously, if someone has made you think that SEO is complex and inaccessible, forget about them. A website with no kind of SEO optimization can get an excellent natural ranking as long as they have good strategy, offer a unique and relevant content and that considers of high importance relationships and branding.