APRIL 14, 2023

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Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs.

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You can’t go door to door (virtually or in person) to scale your audience. So how do you get your target audience to discover your content? Search engines.

While Google (and other smaller behemoths) control the algorithms to surface content on their search platforms, you can take steps to help things along. You should know first how Google values content. And that starts with this acronym – EEAT – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. (Last year, they added another E because they wanted to value experience, too.)

With that in mind, here are five things to do to get your content noticed by Google, and ultimately, new audience members.

1. Create an easily navigable website: A clear and simple site structure is a must. It improves the user experience and decreases the bounce rate from the website.

Make every important page of your site accessible within no more than three clicks from the home page. This is called flat site architecture.

2. Perform keyword research: You may think you know the words and ideas used by your target audience, but you don’t until the research is done. Conduct keyword research to identify what words people use when searching for content like yours. (Here are a few free and paid SEO tools to help.)

But don’t just pick the most popular keywords to incorporate into your relevant content. Analyze the sites that already rank for them and think about how you can create different content (because if you create something similar, you likely won’t supersede what’s there). Or consider targeting keywords with lower monthly search numbers that are keenly connected to your content tilt. These niche searchers could be more valuable than a massive group of searchers.

3. Promote content from your site on your site: Internal links are an often ignored but powerful SEO strategy. They encourage the visitors to click to go to another page on your site that contains content that they might be interested in.

Internal links can take several formats:

• Anchor text adds an internal link to other content to relevant words or phrases in originally noticed content. (Google says it looks to the hyperlinked words to understand the relevancy and context of the linked page. Use descriptive, not generic, words, so Google will understand what it’s all about.)
• Related content mentions appear as links in a callout box or other standalone feature that highlights other helpful content.
• Category sidebars allow visitors to easily click to see the subject matter they’re interested in.

4. Create and submit a sitemap to Google: Make it easier for search engines to understand which pages are more important on your site by creating a sitemap. You don’t have to be a coder or tech expert to create helpful sitemaps. If you’re a WordPress user, you can create them using plugins like YoastSEO, RankMath, etc. Then go to Google Search Console and add the plugin-created sitemap URL.

Don’t forget to submit your sitemap to other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuck Go, etc. Here’s an article from Ahrefs on how to submit your sites to search engines.

5. Convert your search audience for the long haul: OK, this really isn’t a tip on how to get your content discovered. It’s about how to get your search audience to stay connected to your content business. That should be the overall goal of your search strategy.

Let your audience know what you’d like them to do by publishing value-oriented calls to action within your content and on your site pages. Among popular actions – sign up, join the community, work with me, and download this content. Just don’t forget to provide the context about what’s in it for the audience to motivate them to take action.

Resource:

• ​SEO for Content Creators Who Want To Build an Audience​
• ​4 SEO Tools for Content Creators​

Want more SEO tips? Creator Economy Expo has a whole track devoted to SEO/Conversion. Join us next month and use coupon code TILTNEWS200 to save $200 of any in-person pass!

Want to guest blog for The Tilt? Here are the guidelines. Have a question? Ask Ann.

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Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Pam Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Marc Maxhimer, and Dave Anthony.

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