Lessons I Learned From 3 Experts at BrightonSEO
Sneak monkeys into your copy, abide by Google, and do the mum test
Carrie Rose
First up was Carrie Rose from the creative SEO agency, RiseatSeven, who was here to talk about how to create content for small brands with no brand awareness and little to no budget. Turns out it is possible through the magical combination of digital PR and content marketing!
She explained that creating stories is crucial in order to reach a wider audience. So here are the Tips and Tricks to achieve the magical combination brought to you by Carrie:
- Catch trends, be timely.
- Add sharable content to your article. You can upload a video from Youtube or you can make a video from scratch using iStock.
- Make sure you position your brand/company/client as an expert in their field.
- Target a highly engaged community. You may use Radarly as a helping hand.
- Use graphics.
- Don’t forget that headlines matter! They either attract your reader or not.
- “Do the mum test!” to see if your title is likely to grab attention.
- Give link-building a try! Kidding! This is one of the most important tips. Invest some of your time in learning more about link building.
- Search data. Once again a great tool is brought to us by Google; Dataset Search.
[Of course, there are many other free data sources like NationMaster, SimilarWeb, DataHub, Internet Archive, World Bank Open Data … Note that this list is the tip of the iceberg and that there are zillions of free and paid data sources available online.]
Jo Walters
Jo definitely loves her words. She talked about her love of words, the importance of a consistent tone of voice for branding, and her crush on Monzo.
If you’re curious why she has a crush on a mobile bank, see Monzo’s take below on tone of voice brought to you by monkeys:
How monkeys can help you spot the passive voice
Add ‘…by monkeys’ to the end of any phrase you think might be passive. If it still makes sense, then it’s passive! For example:
A decision has been made to close your account …by monkeys.
If you try the same thing with the active versions, they don’t make sense. That’s how you know they’re active…
Using active voice plays a huge part if you want to sound authentic and sincere:
- Do the monkey test to ensure you’re using the active voice.
One of the many great pieces of advice from this speech was:
“Write how people talk”.
This is not only great advice on the fluency side of things but also on the SEO side, too. If you use the language people use in your articles, they will find your article when they are searching for content! It’s as simple as that.
Another piece of great advice was:
“Be normal. Be human.”
And you know what? If you are just unable to be normal, just act the part.
This is true on so many levels. By sounding more human in the way that you write, you are more easily able to establish a personal connection with your readers. And this only happens because you are not a bot. Imagine the possibilities.
If you are not sure you have found your voice yet, here’s another practical exercise brought to you by Jo:
“If our organization was a kitchen utensil/sandwich/animal/superhero it would be a ____________because________________________.”
And if you can’t fill it out…
“Ask people; your team, your customers, your mum.”
Julien Picot
Julien talked about how to deal with technical SEO challenges.
You know how you ask your mum everything when you’re in the house… “Mum, have you seen my burrito?”, “Muuuum, where’s Mr. Pinky hat?”(you know, your favorite childhood toy), or “Hey mum, where is my cell phone?”
Well, Google is your mum outside the house. You can ask anything. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s going to find it.
Google’s version of telling you that you don’t have to act like someone else and that you are perfect as you are is by saying, “Be original.” And it’s not always as gentle as your mum. The sentence goes “…or else.” “Else” ranging from your site’s ranking suffering to your site being removed entirely from Google search results.
Google rewards original journalistic content by giving credit to the original publisher. It does not like duplicates. Here’s what they say in their guidelines on duplicate content:
Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results. We’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved.
To avoid that, make sure you follow the content policies of Google.
Wrap Up
It’s fascinating how often mums come in handy when it comes to SEO. So here’s a tip brought to you by Sila:
“Be nice to your mum.”
