  (last updated 20/08/2021) Before we get into the step by step I just want to take a few minutes to set up WHY, I think this resource is so, so important. And why I think Guest Blogging should be a core part of every female entrepreneur’s marketing strategy. I have analysed hundreds of websites in the Female Entrepreneur space over the last 6 months and I’ve noticed a trend, very few female entrepreneurs are focusing on Search Engine Traffic. Um why not! Is it because it’s too complicated, too competitive, not sexy enough?! Is it because Social Media is more fun? Well, yeah I can understand why it’s more fun to get lost on Pinterest and Instagram, than a keyword research tool! But, Search Engine traffic should not be ignored in a Marketing Strategy and I think it’s super important that we don’t just let all of the big guns monopolize the internet - don’t you?!! Because that’s what is happening. This isn’t just important because the internet should be here for everyone. It’s important in terms of making revenue, your bottom line. Time and time again studies show that Search Engine Traffic converts better than Social Media Traffic (see diagram below). I’m not saying Pinterest & Instagram aren’t useful channels. I’ve seen a couple of pins from key accounts on pinterest send hundreds of leads to my client’s website, so I have seen it work. However, I don’t think that we should focus on those at the expense of search. If there are people searching for your product or service (which there are) then you need to be ranking on the Search Engine for them to buy it. Just check out these ecommerce conversion rates And look at the gap between StumbleUpon & Google. In case it is hard to translate this into real world value let’s put this into figures, if you have 20,000 traffic per month it’s the difference between 4 sales or 320 sales. If you are selling a package for $79, it’s the difference between making $316 or making $25,280 per month. Hopefully by now I have convinced you that SEO is worth a look in! And if you think it might benefit your business then I want to help you as best I can. I’m not going to say I know every single thing there is to know about SEO - it's a HUGE topic and involves multiple, multiple skills including an Analytical & Creative talents. However, I have been working in SEO now for over 6 years for a range of brands and businesses in Finance, Travel, Beauty, Fashion, Healthcare, Wellness, Business & B2B so I do know a thing or two which I can pass on to you. So grab a cup of tea and settle in! Why Does Search Engine Traffic Convert Better? This is the first question to ask - why the difference? Well, it’s all to do with the visitors state. When a person visits your website from a Social Media channel they are in browsing mode. Think about when us girls go shopping. Think back to the last time you went shopping with a group of friends when you didn't have anything particular you wanted to buy, you were just going to try on outfits and have a chat and some fun. How much did you spend? The chances are, unless you happened to come across something you instantly fell in love with, you didn't spend very much.  Now think about when you go specifically to buy something you’ve wanted for ages. You know you want a Jacket for the winter season, and you need a new pair of jeans. You go by yourself this time because you know where you are going and what you need. How much would you usually spend on this trip? When customers visit from a Search Engine they are either researching something specific, or wanting to buy something. I don’t know about you but I would much rather spend time on attracting 100 people who want to buy something from me, than 100 people who are just there for a browse. If that's not of interest to you then no problem, but this probably isn't the right place for you. If it is, then great lets carry on. If you are on the fence & still aren’t convinced about Content Marketing, here is another 10 Benefits of Content Marketing for you to get into. Right! Let's get to it. 6 Steps To Launching A Niche Guest Blogging Campaign In The Female Entrepreneur Space What is a Niche Guest Blogging Campaign? Using guest posts on other websites to drive traffic & leads back to your website. I want to be clear before we begin. Guest Posting isn’t the only way to execute a Content Marketing Strategy or to grow your Search Engine traffic, however it’s the easiest way to get going! Building The Base What is the most important bit to get right when you are making a cake? THE BASE! Without the base the entire thing just crumbles down into a big pile of tasty goop.  When it comes to my outreach base I use tools to make sure I am setting it up right. Without a solid base the campaign doesn’t get results, and without results there are no happy customers. So, this is super important to get right! At this stage it also good to identify what kind of person/personality type you are. If you are a creative, then it might be good to ask someone who is detailed and analytical to check over your base before you move forward. Step 1: Choose Your Keywords Keywords are the words that customers are going to type into Google or another Search Engine to find your product or service. “VA Business In Manchester” for example. There are two types of keywords to think about; Short Tail Short tail keywords are more general & tend to have a higher search volume and are more competitive. For example; “Business Podcast” Long Tail Long Tail keywords are very targeted, they tend to have a lower search volume and be less competitive. For example: “Business Podcast For Solopreneurs” Linking URL(s) Internal Linking Pages (product / service / campaign / blog post) You need to decide which internal pages you want to link to from your Guest Post. This is determined by the keywords you choose for your campaign. Google's goal is to match the search term someone types into the search bar with the most relevant and useful result. You have the best chance of ranking your page, if you have the most relevant and useful content for this keyword. So the subject of your linking page needs to match the keywords you are targeting. Now, here is where it does get a little bit complicated because you also need to think about the intent of the user as well. I don't want to go into depth on that here because this subject goes deep. But you can find more here. I suggest spending a little bit of time on this subject because understanding it will help you to work out if your content has a chance of ranking. Homepage Links In every Guest Post Post I also always suggest linking to your homepage with your brand term. i.e. “Ginger Marketing” > Linking To: http://www.gingermarketinghq.com/ This is for several reasons I won't go into them all now. One of them is that if you link to an internal page it is very likely that page is going to move. Either you decide to update the url, you change your service entirely or your campaign ends. Even if you redirect the url to your new page you have still lost some of the value the link will pass in doing so. So, your homepage is the most stable place on your website, build authority to it! Only linking to your homepage with your brand name means you will very likely find it hard to rank for some of your keywords. So make sure you mix it up! And remember, SEO is not a Science it is an Art. Don’t be afraid to test things out. Set a strategy, execute the strategy and track the results, see what happened & iterate. Anchor Text Tip: Avoid publishing 10 guest posts, linking to the same pages with the same anchor text, this could be seen as a signal by Google that you are trying to game the system. So again - MIX IT UP!! Step 2: Metrics Of Success The final ingredient of your solid base is to choose your Metrics Of Success. A metric is something you can track which shows whether the campaign was successful or not. Ideally you want to track a metric which is tied into your sales however, setting this up and running requires some advanced analytics which we won’t go into now. If you’d be interesting in learning about this then let me know and I can write a tutorial for you. Metrics Of Success:
If I had to pick the most important metric to track from this list it would be traffic & email subscribes. For most small businesses these are the two things that will make a difference to the bottom line of your business, assuming you can convert the traffic. It is a good indicator to know if your outreach efforts have brought you in more traffic either from people clicking from the guest posts to your page, or from Google because you have increased your ranking positions. Always look for both Search Engine Traffic & Referral Traffic in your Analytics report. You should see an increase in both. Step 3: Identify A List Of Websites To Pitch To Niche’s The easiest way to launch a targeted outreach campaign is to focus on one specific group of people / niche at a time. At this stage, to help you pick your niche you need to ask the question; What is the action I want the reader to take on this content? Example Action; I want them to click onto my branding for beginners webinar So, now you know who you want to find. You want to find people interested in learning about branding. Since this is for beginners you are probably looking for early stage business owners so a good niche might be business coaches who specialise in helping early stage solopreneurs. Why solopreneurs? Because solopreneurs who are just starting out tend to be the ones interested in branding. m! One of the first team members a lot of people hire now is graphic designers so if they have a team, likely they don’t want to listen to your webinar! They will just ask their team. But what type of business coach? Each business coach is going to attract a different audience depending on their personality & interests. There are soulful, heart based & spiritual business coaches, there are power house business coaches, there are introverted business coaches, there are business coaches for busy mums, or those that focus on students and young entrepreneurs. It’s important to get to this level of niching because you want to write for websites that have an audience of your ideal clients. If you are not sure about the market you are going to be pitching to then this bit will take some time. Researching will help you. Researching A Niche Google the topic and go onto the websites you are looking at. (be specific here about how they start to follow people) Check out their twitter and facebook feeds, read their content. You could keep at this stage for 7 or 8 days, going in and reading posts and content for 30 minutes a day. By the end of the week you will have a much clearer picture & will be able to select your niche more accurately. It might seem like a lot of work but remember the cake, we are still on the base. Without getting this bit right you will just be randomly emailing a bunch of people and verging on spamming them. Effort here, means the difference between outreach & spam. And it makes the difference between happy replies and pee’d off people who never want you to speak to them again (not to scare you!!). Google Alerts Hootsuite Tracking Just Keep a list of websites in a word doc! Join Some facebook groups Search For Your Target List Once you know who you are targeting you need to find your targets. I personally use software for this, Ninja Outreach. There is also Buzzstream as well however I prefer Ninja Outreach because I find the filter options really awesome (more on that in the stats section), and they give you monthly traffic which is important. However, Ninja Outreach is more expensive starting at $49 a month instead of $24 per month for Buzz Stream. If you don’t want to pay for a tool then you can use good ol' Google and you can use a tool called Open Site Explorer. Nothing wrong with this method, this is what I’ve used for the last 6 years, until I got the software. However, it does take triple the amount of time to build a good list and manage your contacts without one of the outreach tools, so I do advise getting them if you want to use Guest Posting as an ongoing marketing tactic for your business. Searching On Google Example Search Terms Solopreneur Business Coaches List of Solopreneur Business Coaches Business Coach for Solopreneurs Business Coach for Mums List of Business coaches for mums Business coach for work at home mums List of business coaches for work at home mums Chrome add on which helps you understand the metrics of the site's you are looking at: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mozbar/eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp Be careful using this if you are in an office building with lots of people or at least an IT department. We triggered some kind of firewall shut down when we used it at MoneySuperMarket. #funtimes #notreally What does the Moz Bar Do? It tells you the level of the website you are looking at. More about this in the metrics section. But, without it you are just looking at a bunch of website links with no idea how good they are or not. Searching Ninja / Buzzstream Enter the same search terms into the search section of these tools. A list of websites will appear with the stat’s next to them. Using Open Site Explorer With this tool you take a slightly different approach. With this you can really quickly identify the websites that have already covered what you have created. In this case we have created a webinar for branding for beginners. You can quickly create a list by looking at other websites which have linked before to topics about branding. Search in Google “Branding Course” “Branding Webinar” “Branding E-Guide” The trick here is to find a key player in this market. You are looking for someone who is a thought leader on branding. When you find them, enter their website into Open Site Explorer. And it will give you a list of all of the people that are linking to this website. Now, there are a ton of metrics and there is a lot of depth in this tool. But, for now, the only metric I want you to worry about is DA = Domain Authority. This is an indicator of how well the site ranks in Google. Not all websites are created equal. If you are going to put your energy & resource into creating content you need to make sure that the websites you approach are worth your energy. This might sound blunt but we want the best for you!! As a guide, look for Domain Authorities between 28-50. Check Metrics Traffic +2000 per month Check in: Similar Web Ninja Outreach Domain Authority 28-50 Check Open Site Explorer Social Media Ninja Outreach Buzzstream Manual Checking Engagement Manual Checking Ninja Outreach Email Address Looking for: Editorial@ Personal Name@ Info@ Not Sales@ Advertising@ Support@ If you are using Ninja Outreach or Buzzstream make sure you go through and ensure the correct email is saved to the contact. If you are doing it manually then go onto the website Or us an email scraper tool: Step 4: Making Friends Once you have your list of potential targets you need to start engaging with them & getting to know them. Guest Posting is about making long term connections with other website owners for a mutually beneficial relationship. Hopefully you’re going to become partners and colleagues, maybe one day friends! Take your list of targets and follow them. I use twitter for this because you can create a private list. I have lists for; Female Entrepreneurs Productivity Experts Social Media Experts Copywriters Etc, etc And I continuously add to these lists as I execute my campaigns. Every week I go in and engage with the people here. Quality is better than quantity. It can be easy to think of this as a “tactic” and then go into it with a sales kind of attitude. But you don’t want to do that. You want to go in at a human level and just try to have a chat. If you don’t manage your Social Media then ask your social media person to do it, or hire someone for $50-$100 per month to do it for you. Believe me, the cost & time is absolutely worth it. Effective Ways To Engage With Targets On Twitter Retweeting Liking Replying to a tweet with a question Replying to a tweet and adding value Replying to a tweet with a personal account If you want to be even cooler, follow them on Instagram, Facebook & Pinterest as well. Repin & Like posts that you connect with. Not only does this strengthen familiarity between you but you will also get closer to understanding your targets & the things they post about. Heck - you might even learn something as well!! Step 5: Title Creation This is the first bit where we can start to get creative. Writing a good, effective title is one the most challenging parts of the entire campaign. It’s one of those bits that if you fail at, it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of your campaign. The titles needs to be relevant to your audience, it needs to be interesting enough to click on and hopefully share as well. Creating good titles is a constant learning process. Always go back to your guest posts and look at what did well and what didn’t, take notes about what can be improved for next time. Here are some thing to think about when creating your Guest Post Titles. The Trigger Why would someone click on this title? Does it add value to the reader? Your Audience Which group of people are you speaking to? Remember, this isn’t the same as your audience on your blog. Check out a couple of the websites from your list and read a few of their blog posts, get a feel for the audience. Your Keywords Your keywords need to go in your title. If you can’t get them in the exact phrasing that is fine it’s better for it to look natural. Simplicity Wins Could a 10 year old read this and know what the post is about? Step 6: Pitching Now it’s time to pitch! Yep that is right, we are going to pitch without actually having any content written. Why is that? Because if you write some content no-one wants to post you’ve just wasted your time & energy!! Often the website owner will come back with some slightly adjustment and changes and if you don’t have the content you can very easily accommodate. Subject Line Just like the title, the subject line is SUPER important. Your target is likely to receive several hundred emails per day, perhaps 50% being pitches. I use a very straight forward tactic for my subject lines which get a 7-10% response rate. Subject Line: Guest Post Pitch:[Title Of Your Guest Post] The success of this method does depend on your title of course! However, the advantage of this is that when the target clicks through to read your title they have already said to themselves that they are interested in the title. This means they have pre-opted in before they have even read the email making the response a lot more likely. Email Body In the body of the email you need to get across a couple of elements quickly for the target to make a decision. Trust: They need to trust you to make a decision. Always include some stats for your previous posts you have done, publications you have been featured in, talks you have given & stats about your community. This person has never met you before, prove to them that you know what you are talking about. If you can link through to some evidence even better. I often link through to successful guest posts that we have done to show them clear stats about the results we can get for their website. Value: They need to understand the value you are providing for them. Always share what value you are providing them. That your post is going to be high quality, actionable advice 650+ words (unless they have a higher/lower word count). And that you will share it with your audience when it is live. Commitment: They need to know how much commitment they need to make. This is just about stating what you want. “I would like to pitch a guest post for your blog.” Very straightforward, they know where they stand. Mail Merge The quickest way to send out an email to 20-30 people is to use Mail Merge. I have been using it since forever to launch Guest Post Campaigns. I used to use Excel and Word, I know have Google Drive Add Ons & Software. Basically it means you can send out a template email very quickly to a group of people. The sophisticated versions allow you to personalise each email by adding the targets name, or the business name into the body of the email. This makes it seem as if you are only sending a couple of emails out. For sending 20-30 emails the simplest way is to set up mail merge on Google Drive with a free Mail Merge add on. This add on doesn’t allow you to personalise the email but it’s a good starting point for getting to understand mail merge. Tracking The really good thing about this add on is it has tracking included! It will tell you if someone has opened or even clicked in your email. This is really good for starting to understand what is and isn’t working. And for following up. A good place to start with the follow up is to email all of those that either opened / clicked in your email because they are more likely to be interested but then just got distracted. Follow Up Always remember, people are BUSY!! Just because they didn’t get back to you it doesn’t mean they are not interested. If it’s been three days and you haven’t got a reply follow up with those who didn’t get back to you. It takes much less time to follow up than it does to go through the process of launching another campaign. Some people say follow up a third time as well, I don’t do this as I don’t want to annoy people! It’s up to you though. So that’s how to launch a niche guest blogging campaign for female entrepreneurs! Once you get your replies it is all about crafting the content and finding the right visuals and imagery, and that will be one of the next posts I put together. So bookmark us, subscribe or follow us so you get that goodness too! I hope this is a valuable resource for you so you feel confident in launching your own Guest Posting campaigns. Feel free to reach out to me with questions / suggestions and feedback - it will all go into improving this to make it the number one place to come for female entrepreneurs wanting Content Marketing On Demand.
0 Comments
Last Updated 8/08/2021
If you want to hire a writer for your online content it can be a pretty confusing process to enter. One of the first decisions you will need to make is whether to hire a content writer or a copywriter for your project. In this post, let’s go through the main difference between each discipline, we hope this can help you decide which type of writer is right for your project. Let’s start first with copywriters, what do they specialise in, what are their core skills and why should you hire a copywriter? What Do Copywriters Specialise In?
Copywriters are writing specifically to sell. It doesn’t really matter what the format is but their primary goal is to make a sale of a product or service.
For example, an Advertising Agency like Ogilvy will have a team of copywriters who will do the copy for their client’s TV ad campaigns and billboards. A campaign at an Ad Agency for a large client will be themed around a central idea and then delivered to the public through a range of different formats. The best campaigns are delivered so that the target audience sees the campaign multiple times a day, in different places, for several weeks, resulting in a strong product recall and sales long into the future. 
​Brands like Apple, Coca-Cola and Vogue, which rely heavily on selling a concept and an idea to the consumer, spend vast amounts of money on these campaigns. They can do that because once someone starts identifying with a brand at their core being, they will be buying for a lifetime. When it comes to online copy, copywriters will write landing pages and core sales pages, sometimes shopping cart pages too. Any touch point where the reader is close to purchasing something, a good copywriter can increase conversion rates and capture more sales. ​ What Core Skills Do Copywriters Have?
Copywriters need to be creative but also analytical and be able to create content around a central goal and track it. There are a ton of different goals one might have.
For example, Coca-Cola might come to an ad agency and say; “Our market research is showing that consumer behaviour is now preferring healthy drinks, smoothies and juices. How do we position Coca-Cola so that it is still a preferred soft drink and increase our sales by XX?â€. The campaign will be created to shift consumer behaviour and so the creative will be wrapped around this core goal. Another goal could be that a business coach wants to increase the sales of her coaching program by X, by improving her sales page. How can she go about doing that whilst still remaining true to her voice and keeping the integrity of her brand? Copywriters need to be able to take a brief and use market research to back up their concepts and the delivery of their creative. Should You Hire A Copywriter? ​
A good copywriter is not cheap, the work they do is very advanced stuff requiring years and years of education and practice. Hire a copywriter for the really important sales touch points in your customer journey.
If your budget is small then your sales page is the first place to start. A good copywriter can cost anywhere between $1,500 - $2,000 / £1,000 - £1,500 and up for a single sales page. But the value you get in return from increased sales will be huge, so it is well worth it.
When hiring a copywriter, double check that is what they specialise in. Many online writers say they are copywriters when actually they are content writers using the term to add $$ to their pricing.
Copywriting is a specialist skill so watch out for those who say they can do it all! What Do Content Writers Specialise In?
Content writers specialise in writing online content which is produced to educate, entertain or inspire an audience into taking an action. More often than not, content writers are focused less on sales and more on lead generation.
Content writers will be writing the 90% of the web that comes through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, your favourite blogs and online magazines. These could be blog posts, guest posts and social media updates. Content writers focus more on the top of the funnel, they are attracting the first eyeballs into the brand, copywriters will convert them. Content writers will tend to focus more on competitor research, keyword research and positioning the content in a way which will engage the reader and drive a subscription, provoke a social media share or a comment. When it comes to guest posts, content writers will also be focused on link building and improving the SEO of the site they are writing for. ​ What Core Skills Do Content Writers Have?
Content writers also need to be creative and analytical, able to track what is and isn’t working. They need to be able to think quick on their feet and produce a high level of quality, engaging content at a quicker rate than copywriters.
​Copywriters might write several landing pages a month, content writers might be writing 4 or 5 long form pieces per day. They need to have strong attention to detail and be able to think imaginatively and creatively. They also need SEO skills and they should understand the basics of content marketing on the web. Should You Hire A Content Writer? ​
If your strategy is heavily focused on using content marketing to generate leads then you should consider hiring a content writer. They can produce your blog posts, guest posts and all of your social media updates.
​Many can even produce your email newsletter (though if you can afford it I would invest in a copywriter for your newsletter, especially if you are focusing on selling affiliate products or your own products through your newsletter). Good content writers will also have an understanding of marketing on the web and how the content they produce for you fits into an overarching Digital Marketing Strategy. They can provide you with extra ideas and some advice about how to grow your leads and subscribers through Content Marketing. They should also be staying up to date with the rapid changes that happen in the online world. It is very handy to have a good content writer on your team! Do We Focus On Copywriting Or Content Writing At Ginger Marketing?
We focus on content writing, this kind of writing lies at the core of producing quality blog and guest posts.
​However, we don’t just simply ignore copywriting. We spend one day a month learning about copywriting tools and techniques and then write down how we can start practically applying it to the editing stage of our content to improve client results. For us, a key indicator of content success for clients is the engagement. We track how many social shares and comments each piece of content receives. Copywriting tactics can be subtly applied to blog and guest post writing to improve this engagement. Speedy Summary! 
Have you ever hired a copywriter or a content writer? What was your experience?
​ Related Posts How To Choose A Blog Name You Won't Hate In 2 Years 10 Ways To Get Visitors To Your Blog Without Feeling Like A Hamster Why Your Mindset Is In Control Of Your Marketing The Difference Between A Content Writer And A Copywriter   BIO: Chris McDonald is a UK freelancer for Webris, specialising in content marketing. Secretly, he plays rugby for England in his dreams! (It’s good to have goals, right?) He’s passionate about the power of the written word, but when not tapping away at the keyboard, he loves all things health & wellness, advocating to be kind and thoughtful of others. Before we get stuck into the argument of whether you should automate your SEO or not, let’s be clear on something… … manualizing the entirety of your SEO just isn’t feasible. So, when going through the pros and cons of both, keep in mind that a lot of the manual SEO is in relation to things like guest posting & link building. Even so, you may need to strike a balance between the two. Ready? Let’s go… A focus on the key differences between manual and automated SEOLet’s start with the automationAutomated SEO comes largely in the form of tools, whether that’s standalone tools:
and SEO WordPress plugins, like:
Sure, there are more than these, but let’s be honest about them being pretty kick-ass. I’ve used all four of the above and they all nail their jobs really well. On top of this, you’ll also find some contact information scrapers, like Hunter.io. This is where I draw the line, and you’ll see exactly why in a bit! And manual SEO?Since SEO is such an all-encompassing term, taking a manual SEO approach will still need to focus on some tools, such as:
But, there’s a slight twist here. Instead of heavily relying on the data extracted from Ahrefs, Semrush, GA & GSC, you could export them into your own spreadsheet and develop your own database and tracking system. PS. Don’t forget that the main contender for manual SEO is completely avoiding any form of automated outreach.  Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay The argument for automated SEO In a world where we seem forced to strive for synergies and efficiencies, automated SEO definitely has a huge gravitational pull. And it’s entirely understandable to default down that path. But, I still feel you should arm yourself with both the pros and cons of using software… Benefits of using SEO automation Speed, time and money saving wombo-comboI can’t imagine what SEO was like before you could get a list of thousands of relevant keywords within seconds. Image the blood, sweat and tears that would’ve gone into that! With the speed of our current SEO tools, this leads to a time-saving, which also means there's less of an opportunity cost to you and your business. Will deliver business-wide results fasterEverything scales faster with automation, fueling the fire of the business engine. You can then spend more time on bottlenecks in other parts of your enterprise, pushing and pulling resources around as you need. The result? Scaling-up your business faster than expected. Less of a need to outsource your SEOPreviously, being an “SEO specialist” was such a niche skill with high demand and low supply that most of you would’ve outsourced your SEO needs in a heartbeat. Now, having an in-house SEO specialist is a lot easier thanks to the automation that tools bring us. While that person still needs their head screwed on, it’s a lot easier to “learn SEO” than ever. Excellent for planning and schedulingMany SEO tools have built-in scheduling options, enabling you to run the following processes as and when needed:
This further streamlines your project management, aligning tasks in sequence to deliver business and client results. Gone are the days of having to plan your day around researching SEO when you can just hit the button and go off and multitask! (Yes, I’m a guy, and yes, we find multitasking hard!) Perfect for peer review and gap analysisSomething I love about SEO automation is that it opens up the world to analyze your competition, especially in the form of keyword gap analysis. Both Ahrefs and Semrush do this very well, but in Ahrefs, simply hit the “Content gap” link in the “Site Explorer” section:  Then add in the URLs that you want to analyze to see which keywords they rank for that you don’t:  It’ll then churn out a bunch of keywords for you to analyze further. Tip: Starting with a keyword all of your targets are ranking for is a good place to start  Automated SEO isn’t all unicorns and rainbows… here’s why  Might create a bad repIn terms of automated outreach, especially, spamming a site with a generic message can really annoy someone, to say the least. The reason I’m writing this very article is because I reached out to Cheryl here at Ginger Marketing. And I made damn sure to read her requirements, more specifically this one:  By sending the ill-advised and generic “Can I send you some topic ideas”, Cheryl specifically asks for you to send one. Doing the opposite is a big NO-NO (a bit like putting jam on a scone first), and will mean your message is highly likely to be ignored. You can still use automated outreach, but you’ll find yourself tweaking a draft email every single time, which erodes the time efficiency the automation brings. Likely to incur Google penaltiesGoing in like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball and getting links to any site that exists won’t do yourself any favors. We know that toxic backlinks are definitely a thing, and by reaching out to every site and their dog with your eyes shut will land you in hot water. It kinda makes sense when you think about it… why would Google give your site any love if you have one of these super dodgy sites linking to you:
And by using a completely automated outreach approach means you won’t necessarily filter them out. That said, there’s an argument for using something like Guest Bloggers Wanted, which you should totally check out. Learning barrier with some automation toolsI LOVE software. Not in a weird way, just that I find them to be logical. But even so, be aware that you may need to invest some time and expect process destabilization while you get used to some SEO tools. For example, I find Semrush to be quite jumbled and confusing, whereas Ahrefs seems more logically laid out. Coupled with this, you should marry your chosen SEO software to your responsible person’s skills. Just because Ahrefs seems to be more popular, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you…  Outsourcing might still be a necessity Depending on what your business does, it doesn’t really make sense to hire an SEO specialist if you’re not in the SEO space consistently each day. That said, you should still have someone responsible for SEO, such as a marketing manager, but outsource your SEO work to an expert(s). This kind of defunks the need for you to do any SEO automation and to commit to a hefty (depending on your budget) monthly subscription. But I know that some outfits do still buy up all the tools because they like the bells and whistles, but still outsource the main SEO labor. If SEO isn’t your business’ core competence, should you really be doing it? All about manual SEO  Image by Лариса Мозговая from Pixabay To reiterate, I’m not talking about sitting there with a quill and ink, crawling through a website, writing down every word that it contains, then manually adding up how often each one is used to determine the “keywords”. I’m not that insane. Manual SEO is more about using some manual approaches to make your SEO even better. Reasons to consider manual SEONo data/token/report restrictionsSomething I find really frustrating is that, depending on your subscription plan, SEO tools still restrict you with things like:
So, what you can do, especially if there isn’t a huge amount of data to go through, is manually record them in a spreadsheet so you don’t use up your daily, weekly or monthly quota without needing to. I’ve even found that this is quicker, especially if you only need to grab a couple of low-competition long tail keywords that a competitor is ranking for. Going through the rigmarole of exporting the data, removing unnecessary columns and rows, copy and pasting it into your main spreadsheet, re-sorting and then refreshing pivot tables or running macros isn’t always necessary! The power of human contactWhich of the below do you think is going to work better for outreach… Someone using automated SEO to grab any old backlink going:  For starters, using automatic outreach tools leaves you open to making mistakes, such as not completely the {First Name} field. Also, the majority of sites that accept guest posts guide you on exactly what to do, so asking to send over some topics doesn’t always float. More importantly, there is zero personal approach in that email. While you may think that “I’ve just been through your site and I love it” is a personal approach, it really isn’t. Instead, something like this works much better:  I’ve highlighted the personalisation, but actually the whole email is full of it! And yes, I have been to Edinburgh and liked Princes Street, but I’m sure you can find a way of personalising every manual outreach email you send. More control over SEOWith the manual outreach approach in mind, you can completely pick and choose the:
All the above gives you total control over this side to your SEO roadmap. In addition, and this is a severely underrated aspect, networking via this manual approach could lead to further work and “SEO juice” between your two sites, for a long time to come. Backup in case automation failsWhile this isn’t a regular occurrence, sometimes having a manual database of keywords, for example, can save you in a pinch when you can’t log in to our chosen SEO tool. A classic case of this is when you have shared access to Ahrefs and more than one user is logged in, booting the other person out. This can slow you down, but the worst thing is when you can’t get in at all. Having saved reports within the software that you can’t access is nothing short of frustrating. And the same can happen with something like SiteBulb. It’s an exceptional piece of kit, but I love that you can export ALL the data and analyze it further when needed. Why you should avoid manual SEO Like wading through mud  Image by hamperium from Pixabay Imagine taking your SEO 100% manual. You’d been doing it forever! Even a simple task like asking Google to index your new page would be painstakingly slow. And that’s even on a small blog. What if you were to build your dream monster site and pump out a few pieces of content a day? Good luck with that! Even manual outreach is considerably slower than automating it. Restrict business growth Essentially, the more time it takes you to do something, the slower you’ll see results. Caveat: As long as you could’ve generated the same result in a faster method. Not using SEO software’s in-built gap analysis, for example, means you’d have to:
Whereas a decent piece of SEO software will do all of the above at the click of a button. The time taken in the manual approach essentially means a greater opportunity cost to other areas of your business/site/blog. Combine this one small example with a manual approach to other SEO practices, and you’ll definitely stunt your growth. Staff buy-inExpect a heavy amount of resistance! Asking your team to carry out manual processes when they know it can be done more quickly and simply through automation is going to be a rough gig. While you may eventually make them see the light, it won’t be an easy negotiating process. It’s actually more costlyAutomated SEO will bring economies of scale to your enterprise i.e. saving the time cost of manual processes to increase your team’s output. The sheer amount of effort involved in doing things manually may save you a three-or-four-figure monthly saving in not subscribing to an SEO tool. BUT, the time it will take your awesome team of humans to do the same is so far removed that they might as well be on the moon! Do I really have to tell you which is better?Now, you might think I’m going to scream, “AUTOMATE ALL YOUR SEO”, but I actually believe in a combination of the two. And, actually, if you’re a very casual blogger, going manual isn’t so much of a rough deal. But, even if you’re looking to write one post a week that needs some SEO attention, automation is going to be vital. The pure time-saving and removing the need for expertise will have serious knock-on benefits. So, my advice is:
|
AuthorWritten by Cheryl A Clarke Chief Happiness Officer & Content Marketing Freelancer @ Ginger Marketing (unless stated otherwise) Blog CategoriesPopular content marketing postsTotal Social Media Share Count
Top Udemy Courses*Archives
May 2022
|
RSS Feed
MONTHLY QUOTE
Quote Of The Month;
A copywriter should have an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy towards them. George Gribbin
A copywriter should have an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy towards them. George Gribbin