Link building isn't dead, and it's not likely to die in 2016. If you want to build authority for your website to increase organic traffic, link building is still a crucial component of SEO.

The problem is, you may not be aligning your link building efforts with the standards that will lead to success in 2016.

In this post, I'll step you through a few of the ways you can get your link building hat back on straight to see more success than ever before!

Get Your Goals Straightened Out

Goals are an essential part of link building. Like anything else in life, listing your link building goals will help you strategize a path to help you accomplish those goals.

The big question to ask yourself: Why do you want to build links?

You might think that's a dumb question to ask, as the answer is basically the same for everyone: get more organic traffic. The reason you need to ask yourself this question is the follow-up question: Are you willing to do it right?

If you had to think about that for more than even a second, you're likely going to fail with link building. I say that because this hesitation probably means you know you're not doing it right currently or are looking for some sort of shortcut.

Okay, so how do I do it right?

That's what we're going to get into below, so read on!

Create Content Worthy of Links

Without great content, you won't earn great links. You can go toward the dark side and pay for links to crappy content, but you're still missing half of the equation (and taking huge risks). Google doesn't want to rank great content without links, and it doesn't want to link to crappy content with a ton of links. If you want to see a ton of organic traffic growth, you need this balance.

But what kind of content is worthy of links? How do I even begin?

Before deciding what you're going to write about, you should research your targets. By digging through high-authority sites in your niche, you'll be able to better understand the type of content they link to and figure out what might be missing from their site. Using this information, you can craft content that will be a perfect fit for certain sites instead of blindly hoping your current content is worthy of links.

Here are a few examples of the types of content most sites look for in link-worthy content:

• Go In-Depth on a Specific Topic (e.g. Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing)
• Answer Questions (e.g. Is SEO More Effective Than PPC?)
• Create Fun, Engaging Lists (e.g. 10 Facts Every Marketer Needs to Know About SEO)

One of the biggest mistakes most marketers make with content is thinking that all they have to do is create some content and the success will follow. "If you build it, they will come" does not apply to link building.

Sure, you have to get started or you'll never succeed; however, you need to spend just as much time strategizing and researching content as you do actually producing content.

Content success is all about execution, but without a proper strategy there's simply no way to execute at a level high enough to actually see results. You don't just earn links by chance; you have to put in the time and effort.

Shoot for Quality Over Quantity

You might be sick of hearing about quality over quantity at this point, but it's not something you should overlook with link building. In regards to content, you can see success with quantity; however, the quantity mindset just doesn't work with link building.

Why can't I shoot for quantity with links? Isn't it better to have more links?

Unfortunately, that's not how Google operates. It's not as if the algorithm looks for a specific number of links before ranking your site for a specific keyword. You can't gain traction without links from high-quality sites. One of the easiest ways to tell a high quality site from a low quality site is to use Moz's Domain Authority as your key metric.

Using Domain Authority, you can better gauge targets based on their quality instead of older, outdated metrics like PageRank. Domain Authority is updated between 4 and 12 times per year, giving you the most up-to-date look at a site's overall quality. DA primarily uses your backlink profile to give your site a rank of 0-100. A site that's just getting started will likely have a DA under 40, while more established sites will easily have a DA score of 70 or higher.

By primarily targeting sites with a 70+ DA, you'll likely achieve better results than you would if you ignored DA and just concentrated on earning links from any and all sites. Beyond the quality reasoning for getting links from DA 70+ sites, these sites are much more likely to receive organic clicks from users. You may find that these links become a huge source of traffic and potentially sales.

Optimize Your Outreach

Outreach is easily the second-most important part of link building, eclipsed only by content quality. The sites you contact, how you contact them, and how you follow up all have a huge impact on your success. This is why it's so important to optimize your outreach once you've gone through the other steps mentioned in this post.

You start by organizing your targets. Don't just start contacting sites without a plan, as it's easy to lose track of important information or lose sight of your goal. The easiest way to organize your targets is to start a simple spreadsheet. Use it to organize sites by topic, DA, and other essential metrics. (You can also use this to create a system for follow-ups.)

To keep your outreach running smoothly and efficiently, cut out any bad targets before you add them to your list. Sites that aren't regularly updated or lack specific contact information are very, very unlikely to respond, and even less likely to link to your site.

You'll find your success rate will be higher by sticking to this method, which will not only result in better results but an increase in motivation as well.

At the end of the day, your link building success all comes down to the hours you put into it. There's very little automation that can substitute for high quality work and still achieve the same results. So forget the shortcuts and start doing things right if you want to reap the benefits!

Originally Published to the Wikimotive Blog on December 28, 2015

"I couldn't sell my boss a pen if he was trying to cash a million-dollar check!"

Selling your boss has very little to do with the fact that they're tough or often balk at the idea of adding new expenses. Those are things you tell yourself to help soften the blow when you don't get your way.

To help you change your thinking and sell your boss on SEO, I'll step you through a few of the ways you can break through and make your boss see the light.

Ask Questions and Let Them Talk

One of the easiest ways to sell your boss on SEO is to simply ask questions, let them talk, and listen.

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

You've probably heard that phrase, made popular by Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, on more than one occasion. This is essential advice for solving problems, as well as getting what you want in this type of situation.

In order to understand things from your boss's perspective, you have to take yourself completely out of the equation. You have your own preconceived notions of SEO, and those will likely not line up with those of your boss. So instead of just going back and forth, trying to convince him to see things from your point of view, you need to really listen and truly understand your boss's position.

Doing this, you'll likely hear something you'd otherwise block out or forget by the time it's your turn to speak. This will allow you to think more clearly and openly, helping to make your point in a way your boss can understand.

Break it Down into Understandable Terms

When you're trying to explain a highly-technical form of marketing, you can't talk to your boss the same way you would another marketer. You have to break things down so they can understand the terms and comprehend the concepts.

I'd suggest thinking about the key points that matter to your boss and creating talking points with simple explanations. Some that come to mind include:

• What is SEO? - An easy way to explain this is to compare it to advertising, as SEO is the opposite of advertising. Instead of broadcasting a message in the hopes of reaching people that are in search of your products or services, you make it easier for those people to discover your business over your competitors.

• How SEO Works - Once you've got them up to speed with SEO, tell them how and why it's done, and what happens as a result. They need to be able to visualize all of this in order to truly understand it.

• Quantifying Results - Let them know how results will be measured so they'll be able to see for themselves that the business is seeing an ROI. Many business owners are skeptical about SEO because they've been pitched too many products and services that fail to deliver. If they know that they'll have some level of control, it will put their mind more at ease.

Provide Examples of Successful Campaigns

As an automotive SEO company, Wikimotive uses examples from our own campaigns to show prospects examples of the success they can achieve with our services.

This is your best selling tool, especially when the example is one within your own industry. It's not only a relevant example, but it's also a way for your boss to better connect the dots and see the value in SEO.

Don't just jump in and expect the examples to do the work for you, though; take the time to break down everything. Explain what was down, how it was done, and give detailed answers as to why these efforts work and translate into results for the business.

If your boss can see the work in action, grasp the concepts, and see the potential for themselves, you should have no problem getting the green light on SEO.

Don't Bring Up Cost  Until it's Necessary

The cost of complex and labor-heavy services like SEO can derail your hopes of selling your boss unless you wait until your boss is already on board.

"How much did you say?!" is the type of reaction you can expect if you don't think about this before your (or your preferred SEO company's) presentation.

Your entire pitch should be centered around the value of SEO, working up to explaining the price. Whether that means you want to bring on a dedicated SEO professional or hire a company, you have to first make sure your value proposition was heard loud and clear.

Let me be clear: you're not trying to pull one over on your boss; this is simply about the presentation. If the first thing out of your mouth is "Boss, I want to spend $4,000 a month on SEO services," you're setting yourself up to fail. Not because the price is too high, but because you have to properly transition into talking about cost.

At the end of the day, selling your boss on SEO really all depends on your boss. Some may simply not be interested in it at all and others may be open to it with a proper pitch. But be prepared to fail the first time around. Stay on top of the latest happenings in the SEO field so that you can be ready to create another pitch down the road.

Search isn't going anywhere, so if you can be the person who helps your boss get started and succeed you'll gain trust and grow right alongside the company.

Originally Published to the Wikimotive Blog on December 21, 2015

SEO and realistic expectations don't go well together. On both sides of the aisle, there are issues that harm the digital marketing campaigns of businesses across the country and cause doubts about SEO as a viable and ROI-driven service.

The problem starts with SEO vendors. For years now, the focus has been on achieving "#1 rankings" and "dominating" specific markets. Unfortunately, these claims can't be backed up, even by the largest marketing companies out there due to changes made to Google's algorithm. Some may actually be able to follow through with certain promises, but they really have no guarantee until the results actually appear. And oftentimes they don't.

Because of the claims and marketing from vendors, many businesses associate SEO with keyword rankings and other face-value metrics. Despite being advised otherwise, they simple won't take organic traffic increases, conversion rates, and other key metrics into account. Everything comes back to individual rankings, which are becoming less and less important as Google provides each user with a more customized experience.

If you're the market for SEO services, here are a few things you need to know in order to be more realistic with your expectations and hopefully find a vendor that provides quality results using the most up-to-date techniques.

Get to Know Your Market in Search

What do you know about people searching for your products or services? Is it a niche in your area or do you serve a large market with a lot of activity?

The reason this is important is your expectations are tied to your business's search visibility. If there are only 1,000 unique searches per month that relate to your business, it would be ridiculous to think that you could go from 800 to 1600 unique organic visits per month. Unless you know something the world doesn't, searches don't grow on trees.

Larger businesses have more opportunities to grow from search traffic, but that likely comes with increased competition.

Using the Adwords Keyword Planner Tool, you can look at search trends to back up or help you modify your expectations for SEO results. When there's an increase decrease in search traffic for your market, you can then cross reference that with your own analytics to see how that change has affected you.

Focus on Better Conversions, Then Traffic

When it comes to SEO, businesses tend to be really aggressive and want to see a lot of green arrows going up. That's more than understandable, but if you're struggling to see results from organic you probably have more problems than just a lack of traffic. The worst of those problems is a low conversion rate.

This means that the number of people submitting leads or purchasing directly on your site is lower than the average for related businesses. That's never good news. And sure, more traffic will help you get more leads, but you're still ignoring the elephant in the room.

Wikimotive often advises our automotive SEO clients to switch website providers in order to see better results. This is because most car dealer website platforms are years behind current web standards, so switching to a new, modern platform will not only increase conversions but immediately boost traffic as well.

If a client does not want to make a switch, however, we're still able to execute a strong SEO strategy that helps increase conversions and traffic. Our recommendations are based purely on the fact that we want clients to succeed.

Don't Even Start if You're Looking for Quick Results

Are looking to SEO because you want quick results?

This isn't an interrogation, but knowing this lets an SEO company know up front whether they're going to succeed or fail. We're all optimistic at the end of the day, but miracles are few and far between in digital marketing.

A modern, diversified SEO strategy takes at least 6 months to show real growth compared to the previous time period. Some businesses fundamentally get SEO, but others are grabbing for the dice in the hopes that everything works out.

If you want quick, easily-quantifiable results there are plenty of options out there in the digital marketing space; SEO is just not one of them. Think long and hard about that as you make plans and meet with companies.

SEO is something most businesses can find value in, especially as the world moves to doing more and more research and communication online. As long as you understand the upsides and the downsides, you should be able to bring your expectations back down to reality and hold yourselves and anyone you hire rightly accountable for success and failures. Good luck!

Originally Posted to Wikimotive.com on December 14, 2015

Content Marketing is one of the fastest growing forms of digital marketing employed by businesses in 2015. Where traditional advertising (even online) has its limits, content marketing's only limit is your business's creativity.

But with all sorts of options out there for creating content, where do begin?

In this post, I'll give you a quick guide to help you focus your efforts and create the best content possible to generate more traffic, leads, and sales.

Get Your Money Pages Right First

What the heck are "Money Pages?" you're probably asking yourself.

Money Pages refer to the main navigational content used to pitch prospective buyers on your services or sell your products. These are typically optimized for a specific set of keywords and contain contact forms, methods to capture leads, or allow a user to navigate to an actual product page.

These are easily the most important pages on your website, as they have to be done right in order to rank well and convert users into paying customers.

But how do you do that? What makes a great money page?

There's no secret formula to creating the best money pages. It's different for each and every business, as the needs of different types of customers can vary. What's important is to follow these three simple rules:

• Go above and beyond to pitch your product and/or company.
• Design pages to be user friendly.
• Make it really, really easy for the user to convert.

Supplement Money Pages with Highly Informative Pages or Blog Posts

Many small businesses can succeed with a few well written and optimized Money Pages; however, if you want to attract more customers, rank for more high-volume or high-converting keywords, you'll need to do more for your site.

One of the most effective ways to build authority is to supplement your money pages with highly informative pages or blog posts. The goal is to create pages that can be linked to as resources and attract regular search traffic via interesting and in-demand topics related to your business.

Many businesses, such as Moz and Buffer, have benefited greatly from a content strategy of providing resources for digital marketers. This has helped the two companies build a customer base with limited traditional marketing; instead, their content contributed greatly to word-of-mouth, SEO, and brand recognition.

Have the Right Intentions for Each Piece of Content

"What are your intentions with my daughter?"

I'm sure many of us have cringed remembering the odd situation of meeting a girlfriend's father for the first time as a teen/young adult. Well, you need to think of yourself as the father of content and ask yourself:

"What are my intentions with this content?"

Luckily in this situation you don't have to construct a lie or pander to an angry-faced father. You just have to be truthful with yourself.

You need to figure out the purpose behind each piece of content you publish to your site. Is it there to sell a product or service? Is it there to inform future buyers in the marketplace? Is it there to attract links or media coverage from industry-specific sources?

The worst thing you can do for your content efforts is to write something and not admit your true intentions. Think of it as one of the deadliest sins you can make in SEO and digital marketing as a whole.

Don't Settle for Low Quality Content

One of my biggest pet peeves is the disregard for quality when it comes to business content. Your website is likely one of the first (and sometimes only) ways people interact with your business, so you shouldn't act as if people don't read it or it's only for search engines.

Yet it seems perfectly acceptable for many small to medium businesses to simply write a few paragraphs on each page without any regard for intent or quality of information, mix in a long list of keywords, and call it a day.

Don't let this happen to your business. Not only will you not be helping your site, but you'll ultimately be hurting it by not providing Google with what it wants: quality content.

What do you mean by quality content?

Quality content serves a specific purpose and is written well. Whether that purpose is to answer a simple financial question, provide commentary on a complex social issue, or sell cat toys: quality content is defined simply by doing what it was meant to do.

There are a lot of paths to get this done, but don't get stuck believing that it takes some secret skill to produce quality content. As long as you concentrate on providing value instead of cutting corners or thinking that things will just work themselves out, you'll have a leg up on a lot of your competitors. (Especially if you're a local business.)

If there's one thing you take away from this post, it's the importance of understanding your audience. When you get to know the people you're trying to convert into customers or subscribers, you will understand what makes them tick and be able to create content that they'll find valuable.

Last Time on Navigating SEO: Beginner's Guide to Search Intent

As Google releases more and more updates, the search engine becomes capable of understanding intent behind different search queries at an advanced level. This leads to an increased need for online marketers to review their SEO strategy to ensure it aligns with Google's constant updates.

The most important thing you can do right here and right now, however, is to master search intent yourself to target the right keywords, gain more traffic, and reel in more customers.

In this post, we'll go over the fine details of search intent and provide examples to help you identify and capitalize on more opportunities in your niche.

What is Search Intent?

Every search query has an intent behind it. Whether you're looking for information out of curiosity or want to buy something, there's an intent that drives you to search a specific query.

Google understands (and is constantly getting better) at understanding the intent behind a searcher's query. This allows the search engine to supply results best suited for the user, instead of just relying on signals like keywords and links.

To provide better results for our businesses and clients, it's extremely important to understanding the exact intent behind queries and keywords we'd like to target. Without this information, you may be left wondering why your bounce rates are high and people simply aren't converting. (Hint: Google wants to serve the best results, but if you're aren't matching the intent it won't be able to help you.)

Search intent boils down to the purpose of someone's search. If I look up someone's name, I'm likely looking for information about them. But if I add another word at the end of my search, such as "age," "twitter," "book," a deeper intent is revealed.

The two most important intents to distinguish are "informational" and "transactional." In business, these make a huge difference when trying to convert search traffic into leads or purchases because knowing the difference in intent allows you to make changes to your site that help you rank for and convert more traffic from transactional-based search queries.

Informational vs. Transactional Keywords

It might seem simple to distinguish between someone looking for information and someone trying to buy something, but keywords can sometimes be deceiving.

Here's an example: Let's say I'm in the market for a used car, but I don't know exactly which car I want. I turn to Google and search "Best Used Cars." I'm not looking to buy just yet, so landing on a list of cars for sale wouldn't do me much good. What I'm looking for is information on recommended used cars from a high-authority in the automotive industry.

So if you're a car dealer trying to focus on improving your search visibility for used cars, "Best Used Cars" is not the type of keyword to target. Again, this is because the search intent is not aligned with the content you're providing.

In this situation, it'd be more advantageous for you to target keywords like "Used Cars for Sale" or "Used Cars in [City, State]." These keywords show that the intent is to find cars for sale and cars in a specific city. Those users aren't looking for information; they're looking to buy.

Stop thinking about SEO and keyword targeting in these situations and put yourself in the mind of a search user. When you look at a keyword, think about what the results you'd like to see if you were performing that search. Is your site providing the right information, or are you just trying to optimize for more traffic?

Aligning Intent with Content

Now that you know the basics of search intent and how to identify keywords that fit your site and content, how do you go about creating new content with all of that in mind?

First off, you don't write a single word until you've completely identified the intent you want to target and have a list of keyword that match it. The next step is to outline your content from start to finish to ensure you stick to that intent without deviating.

This means that if your intent is to get someone to buy from you, don't regurgitate information found on your product information pages. You can briefly mention facts, but keep in mind that if someone made it to a product page or another type of lead-gen page, they've likely done their research. Now is the time to take off your "informing" hat and put on your "converting" hat.

And it's the exact same for informational content. If you're giving advice or providing facts, don't use that as a platform to try and sell. This is the biggest problem most businesses have when it comes to SEO content. If users search for information, that's what they want to find. By mixing in transactional content, you're taking value away from the information you've already provided.

You'll find that it's less likely Google will rank this content highly and that building links will be move difficult because the information isn't genuine. Google wants to provide people with genuine information that's not motivated by profit and people want to link to information that can be trusted.

"So what's the point in creating this content?" you're probably asking.

Well, not all SEO content is meant to convert customers. Informational content should link to transactional content, but it's typically the informational content that gets traffic, links, and helps boost the ranking of your transactional content.

You need to start thinking about the buying process in two different ways: research mode and purchase mode. Your informational content is targeted at prospective customers who are still in research mode. They're not ready to buy; they just want to see what's out there and get advice. Once they enter purchase mode, however, they'll find their way to your transactional content and will be more likely to convert because you've properly separated the content.

Learning from Results or Lack of Results

At the end of the day, each of our situations are different; don't rely on what you see here as the only way to strategize. Instead, experiment as often as possible and learn from the results or lack of results you see.

You won't find a single person in SEO tell you that they haven't learned anything knew because they've seen it all. This field is constantly changing and evolving; the only way to see continuous progress is to take notes, make changes, and keep going.

Good luck!

Originally Published to Wikimotive.com on November 30, 2015.

Navigating SEO is a weekly blog series by Timothy Martell, President and Founder of Wikimotive, that provides advice and insight into SEO for business. 

What do you want from SEO? If I had to guess, I'd say "more traffic" or "more leads" are at the top of your goals list.

The problem is, those things don't just happen on their own.

One way to accomplish these goals is to pursue link building by creating amazing content. Links are one of the most important signals Google uses to rank websites. They act as endorsements and help Google understand how sites are related and which pages offer the best information on any particular topic.

Below, I'll provide a guide to help you better understand link building, learn from the success of other sites, and create content that people want to link to from their sites. Using this strategy, not only will you be creating quality content, but the links earned will translate into more targeted traffic within your industry or niche.

Understand Why People Link to Others' Content

Sites don't link to other sites; people link to other people. When beginning a link building campaign, this is the most important thing to keep in mind. Because if you pick the wrong person to reach out to, you're only wasting your time.

You can't just expect any and all sites in your niche to link to your content just because they're a little similar. Each site is unique, with a unique writing/editing staff and their idea of great content might not be the same as yours.

Even if your content isn't a fit for every site, it doesn't mean that it's not high quality or that your content is awful. It just means you have to adjust your work and expectations depending on the person you're targeting.

But how do you do that? How do you know which person or site is a fit?

Research! You have to get your hands dirty in order to succeed with link building. Blindly contacting site after site may get you some results, but the best results come from taking your time and executing based on the information you acquire.

This is accomplished by getting to know the people who manage, edit, or write for a specific site.  If it's an individually-owned blog or site, there's less research involved in understanding what kind of content they like; you just have to browse the site. But in the case of larger sites that have editors and various writers, knowing who likes what gives you a huge advantage.

For example, if you're trying to get the word out about your new business, you'll want to target the editor/writer who is directly in charge of content about new business or whose writing history reflects that interest.

You can then customize your email to show that you're contacting them for a specific reason. This is important because people hate being contacted in an impersonal way, especially when a request is involved. It doesn't matter how amazing your site or content is, unless you're able to win over the person on the other end of your email message.

Ultimately, the reason people link to your content is because they find it interesting, it's a fit for their site, and you reached out to them as a person instead of a website. Keep this in mind as you begin your next link building campaign and you'll see better results in less time.

Research and Learn from the Success of Others

The great thing about link building is that it's very easy to research and learn from the success of other sites. Using tools like SEMRush and Moz Pro, you can determine where a site's links came from and which pieces of content achieved the most links.

This information will give you an idea of the type of content certain sites like to see, allowing you to create your own link building roadmap. To help you on this journey, here's a step-by-step guide to analyzing a site's content and links:

• Use Moz Pro (Subscription Required) - To begin, you'll need a subscription to Moz Pro, a $99/month service. A free 30-day trial is available for new users, so take advantage of that if you'd like to test the service with this exercise.

• Open OSE and Enter Your Target Site - OSE (Open Site Explorer) is a Moz Pro tool that allows you to retrieve inbound link data from any site on the web. It even includes information that grades sites (0-100) based on how they'd rank on search engines; this is called Domain Authority. To start, enter your target site in the URL field at the top of the page.

• Click "Top Pages" on the Left Side of Page - This will generate a list of your target site's top pages based on Page Authority, the grade given to an individual page. To go in-depth with this data, you can download a CSV file, but for this example let's just take one of the top pages (ignoring the homepage).

• Enter the Page URL into the URL Field and Click Back to Inbound Links - Instead of analyzing the inbound links of the entire site, you'll now only get a list of the top pages from the chosen page. Now we can see which sites are linking to it in order to better understand the context.

• Analyze the Content and its Inbound Links - Now that you've got an example page, open it up and read through it. Once you've down that, go back and click through to some of the high-DA sites linking to that page. Why is that site linking to that page? What value does it add? Answer these questions and you can emulate that on your own site in order to create great content that attracts links.

Use the Skyscraper Technique to Create the BEST Content

Conceptualized by Brian Dean of Backlinko, the Skyscraper Techinique is the idea of taking content that's proven to attract links and building upon it. That means updating it with current information, digging deeper into the topic, creating a better page design, using more/higher-quality images, and anything else you can think of to one-up the original piece of content.

Once you've got all of this planned out, the only thing left to do is execute. There's no secret sauce to creating amazing content; you simply have to understand the process, create a plan, and take action.

You've probably heard the saying, "You are your own worst enemy." This is especially true when creating content. Because while you are competing with other sites to create the best content, the only person stopping you from doing it is yourself.

Keep this in mind the next time you complain about not being about to create better content than a competitor!

Originally Published to the Wikimotive Blog on November 23, 2015

If you follow the SEO industry, you'll know that there's a constant debate about whether or not the practice is really "SEO" (search engine optimization) anymore. Because for the most part, it's not. Sure we still do on-page optimization that helps create search-friendly pages, but that's only one small part of what most SEO companies provide moving into 2016.

Instead, most of what Wikimotive does as an SEO company boils down to one core principle: creating value. There's no room for outdated, time-wasting SEO tricks anymore. You either add value to everything you do or you won't succeed.

But if you're looking for a little advice on how you can succeed with SEO, you're probably wondering how to go about creating value on your site or your client's sites. Below, I'll discuss two of the most important components of SEO and how you can use that core principle of creating value to do better work each and every day.

Your Content Needs to Create Value for Readers and Potential Customers

Before you, or anyone who writes for you, ever starts writing a piece of content for your website, they need to take two things into account: the audience and their goals.

What does that mean?

Think about content like advertising. You wouldn't start an advertising campaign unless you knew the audience you were targeting, would you? Of course not! Especially not online, where you have the most advanced targeting tools at your disposal.

You need to define your audience in order to properly discover ways to better serve their goals. If you were to simply start writing based on the information you have on the subject, you wouldn't be able to add a personal touch that grips readers and convinces them to convert.

Doing this also aids in your fundamental SEO goals, as the closer you align your content with what people are searching for, the more relevancy your content gains within the target topic. You'll find Google is better able to decide where to rank you if you simply focus on satisfying the needs of the end user.

But what does this process look like?

If you're confused about how to analyze your audience and discover their goals, here's a quick step-by-step guide to getting started:

• Start with Keyword Research via the Adwords Keyword Planner - Don't think of keyword research as something you'll use to just insert high-volume keywords into your content. When the focus is value, the purpose of the practice goes much deeper. We're looking to discover what people are searching to paint a bigger picture of their search intent. This means discovering the difference between informational and transactional keywords, so that we can target the right audience with our content.

• Create Two List of Semantically Relevant Keywords Related to Your Topic - Once you've got your research going, start singling out keywords that are related to your topic. These should be keywords that are nearly interchangeable in search--meaning that they should return the same results. You should create two lists during this exercise: one for informational keywords and one for transactional keywords. Informational means the user is specifically looking for answers to questions or to gain knowledge on the topic. Transactional keywords are the types people use when looking to make a purchase. An example of an informational keyword is "buying a new car," while an example of a transactional keyword is "buy a new car." A small difference in phrasing, but a big difference in intent.

• Audit and Analyze Your Keyword List -Your two lists don't have to be hundreds of keywords long, but it's nice to have 10-20 on each in order to gain the best idea of what people are searching. Take a good hard look at each list and try to analyze the differences in how people word transactional searches vs. informational searches. This will allow you to fine-tune your writing to match the goals of your intended audience.

• Create a New List of Goals Searches Have When Using Those Keywords - What do those keywords tell you about your audience? You should be able to come up with at least a few ideas of what the average searcher is after just from reviewing those keywords. These ideas will allow you to piece together the bigger picture of intent to get your content started.

Once you've gone through this exercise, don't just set the data aside and start writing. The best way to actually apply it is to create a content outline that utilizes the goals you addressed and presents the content in a way that reels in the intended audience.

From here, you'll have a set-in-stone guide that allows you to succeed with each and every piece of content.

Your Link Outreach Needs to Create Value for Prospects

If you're having trouble with link building, your failures likely come down to one core problem: you're not thinking about adding value. You're reaching out to potentially hundreds of sites--potentially in an automated way--without thinking about what you can do for them. That's because your goal is to have them do you a favor.

But why would they do you a favor by linking to your site? What do they gain? Absolutely nothing.

Instead, start thinking like your prospect--just like you'd think like a search user to create great SEO content. Ask yourself: what would motivate this person to link to my site? What problem can I solve for them?

Here are few of the link building tactics you can motivate someone to link to your site by solving problems:

• Broken Link Building - While not a new concept, broken link building is probably one of the least used tactics out there for earning links. The idea is simple: find broken links, contact the owner, inform them of your site and/or offer it as an additional resource. By helping out a site's owner, you solve a problem and provide them with the motivation to fulfill your request.

• Guest Posting - Yes, guest posting is in the SEO doghouse; however, it's still powerful when done properly. Take a look at your target's content and figure out a way to contribute something original that blows the site's current content out of the water. If you don't have the time or resources to write content up front, email the target and let them know about your idea and why it'd be a great fit.

• Influencer-bait - Influential people, like any of us, love to hear their names mentioned. So what's the best way to get the attention of online influencers within your industry? Mention them on your site. Could be in a list of quotes, list of top influencers, or a story about a specific person. Once you've got that content, let the influencer know you mentioned them. They could reward you with a link on their site, or at the very least a powerful tweet that sends relevant traffic to your site.

• Infographics and Videos -While infographics have certainly lost steam in the past few years, they're still a great way to build links to your site from similar high-authority sites. The process boils down to three steps: tackling an interesting content, creating a well-designed graphic, and picking the right sites to target. You can take this same method and apply it to videos as well. In fact, given the reach YouTube provides, it's more advantageous to create videos nowadays. (That is, if you have the resources. These methods aren't one size fits all.)

Regardless of the tactic you use, it's important to always keep value in mind. Think of it as the content creator's mantra. Because the second you slide back into old habits, you allow your content to slip in quality. And unless you're happy with subpar results, you can't allow this to happen.

Good luck!

Originally Published to Wikimotive.com on November 16, 2015.

Navigating SEO is a syndicated blog series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways car dealers and other local businesses can improve their SEO, offering insight into how it will benefit business. This week's column was written by Wikimotive's Mark Frost. 

Whether or not you like fantasy football, there's no denying its hold on American football fans. According to American Express, nearly 75 million Americans plan to play fantasy football in 2015. This is up from the reported 57 million U.S. and Canadian players that participated in 2014.

With numbers that high, I'm willing to bet good money that a few of you reading this column are in a fantasy football league. And if you've managed to land on this page, that means you're also interested in SEO. Whether that means you're just learning to build new skills, better market your business online, or have taken a more expansive marketing role within your company, SEO can help.

The only problem is, SEO is a complicated practice. Breaking it down isn't simple either. To help with this, I'll use something that millions of people are familiar with (fantasy football) in order to help you better understand the advice you'll read and actually learn to apply it to your own work.

Here's what fantasy football can teach you about SEO:

Rankings Aren't the Most Important Factor

For a lot of people in SEO, rankings are everything. But rankings don't always translate into huge traffic increases and are not reliable as a metric for success.

One of the biggest reasons is because unique, longtail searches are becoming more important. These searches make up more than 70 percent of total queries on Google and will only increase as the search engine becomes more capable of properly handling complex searches.

In fantasy football, rankings play a similar role. It's a great metric in deciding who's the best play based on overall performance, but it's not the only metric to take into account.

For instance, matchups play a huge role in deciding who to play week-to-week. You can start your best players all of the time, but it's likely you'll lose a lot of the time simply because your opponent decided to play the matchup and work their bench.

The idea here is simple: don't just use one metric when determining whether or not your SEO has succeeded (or failed). Take a look at the whole picture and you'll be able to tell where there's opportunity to grow.

Low Hanging Fruit Pays Huge Dividends

You can draft an amazing team at the beginning of the season, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking for ways to improve your lineup. Because as the season progresses, certain players value goes down and others go up. Could be from injury or it could be due to performance. So you always have to be on the lookout for low-hanging fruit: players who are on their way up.

Bringing this same mindset to SEO can pay off big time. For example, Wikimotive's car dealer clients receive new models each year. Every few years, most of those models are redesigned to stay competitive. During the redesigned model year, vehicles receive an uptick in searches and general inquiries from buyers. To us, this is a huge opportunity to get results for our clients.

Instead of waiting for the model to be officially released to publish content, we jump on the chance as soon as details are available, updating pages with new details as time goes on. Because of these efforts, our clients see an increase in targeted traffic from interested buyers in the area, many of whom submit leads right on the page itself.

These opportunities provide fast, quality results that help our clients do what they do best: sell cars.

Diversify Your Strategy for Better Results

While season-long fantasy leagues are the most popular form of Fantasy Football, DFS (daily fantasy sports) is growing in popularity in the U.S. Unlike league format, DFS provides a set budget, allowing users to create lineups from all available players during a particular week. From there, users enter lineups into individual contests (typically for cash) and the player with the most points wins.

The catch with DFS is that not all players are priced equally. This means that you can't just draft the top-ranked players, as everyone would come in with the exact same strategy. Instead, you have to analyze matchups and decide how to create the best lineup of the week with your allotted budget.

But it's not a simple thing to do, which is why the point gap between the top 1 percent of lineups and the average lineup is so high. The best DFS players diversify their lineups, accounting for the risk, in order to better their chances of scoring big and winning a ton of cash.

In the same regard, diversification of efforts allows for better results in SEO. You should be consistently creating content, building links, and working to perfect your local SEO. On top of this, there are the little in-between tasks, such as technical SEO and metadata optimization.

Your strategy won't provide the best boost if you're not looking at each part of SEO as small pieces that work together to create the big picture.

You'll Fail Unless You're Willing to be Patient, Learn, and Adapt to Change

No one wins in fantasy football on draft day. Yes, you can make some amazing picks that look great on paper. But no one knows what's going to happen until the players hit the field on game day.

Injuries happen each and every game, so you really can't predict that your best players on week 1 are going to still be your best players during the last week of the regular season. On top of injuries, there are plenty of round 1 picks that just fail to perform once the season gets going.

So what wins fantasy football championships? Patience, learning, and a willingness to change. You need to know when to be patient with certain players, learn who's up and coming, and be willing to make great picks on the waiver wire and drop your hopeless players.

The same principle applies to SEO. Long-lasting results don't happen overnight, so you have to confident in your strategy and practice patience in order to see results.

But how do you know you're applying the best strategy?

This is where learning comes into play. Just as you need to keep up with up-and-coming players, you need to stay up to date with changes in the SEO world. That means knowing when Google makes updates to its algorithm, listening to advice from experts, and noticing fluctuations in your own results.

Using this information, you can change your strategy effectively to stay on top of your game and receive the best possible results from SEO.

While fantasy football has absolutely nothing to do with SEO, I hope these parallels have helped gain a bit more perspective on the practice. To learn even more about SEO and how it relates to car dealers, follow the Navigating SEO blog series on Wikimotive.

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

When publishing content to your website, there are plenty of questions to ask yourself:

• Are there any spelling or grammatical errors?
• Is the information factual?
• Is it formatted properly?

While these three questions are extremely important, you're probably not thinking about the SEO implications of your content. But Google has the power to label your content "poor quality" and could punish you as a result. This is why it's important for car dealers to understand exactly what Google likes and dislikes, in order to prevent penalties that could cost you traffic (and sales, as a result).

Below, we'll go over a few important points that could save you from future issues and put you on the right path toward SEO success.

Avoid Duplicate Content

If you follow my writing, you know that I mention duplicate content quite often when referencing problems with car dealer SEO. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't changed today.

It's of utmost importance that you avoid duplicate content across all editable pages on your website. What I mean by this is, you should only have unique, original content written for your website. Don't just rely on the content provided by your website provider. Here's why:

"It's just not feasible for a website provider to write unique content on every page for every dealership," DealerOn's Greg Gifford said in a recent forum post here on DrivingSales.

So before you go live with a new website, you need to ensure that ALL of the content on the site is written specifically for your dealership, as it's not something all website providers offer.

Now, there are certain types of duplicate content that Google deems "non-malicious." This includes the type of content seen on VDPs. Google understands that sites with "store items" often feature the same content across multiple websites.

The search engine doesn’t want to accidentally punish a site for this, so they came up with a solution: canonicalization. This allows you to tell Google that the page has duplicate content and point the search engine to the original source of this content. For car dealers, the source of a VDP would be the SRP. So the best practice for  new Dodge Challenger VDPs would be to canonicalize all new Challenger VDPs to the SRP that displays all new Challengers. 

Many modern automotive website providers offer this out of the box, but it's not something that's caught on with most of the big players in the industry. Next time you have a meeting with any website provider, ask them about their canonicalization integration. This will tell you whether or not you're going to get an SEO-friendly platform to work with.

Go In-Depth When Possible

If you're creating informational content on your website, be sure there's actually value behind the content before publishing. This content needs to go above and beyond to provide the best and most in-depth information to your site's visitors.

Unfortunately, many SEO companies, as well as independent content creators, will focus on creating the bare minimum in order to build out a large number of pages. I have no doubt that these services are cost effective, but they will not provide results. In fact, they could be hurting your website's SEO.

In its Search Console Help section, Google provides this information regarding thin content:

"Some webmasters attempt to improve their pages’ ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content. Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other cookie-cutter pages that don't add substantial value to users."

For example, you can have a page on your site that talks about oil change but doesn't provide any actual value. This means it doesn't include unique information, answer questions, or serve any purpose other than to rank for certain keywords. Avoid that at all cost.

Instead, always be sure your dealership is…

Create Content Based on User Intent

The key to creating great content is matching the intent with that of the user. That's why you need to think about WHO will visit a page before you even create content for it. The more you start thinking about intent, the better your content will be and the better conversions you'll receive across your website.

Let's use the Service page as an example, as it's something each and every franchise dealership has on their website. Ask yourself these questions:

• Who's going to be viewing this page? (People interested in service at your dealership.)

• What do they want from this page? (Information on your services, why they should visit, and a way to contact the dealership to schedule service.)

• Does my current content provide them with what they want to know? (If your current service page doesn't provide visitors with the information mentioned above, it needs to be updated.)

You can use these questions to gauge the intended effectiveness of every content page on your website. And unless you're fine with not providing potential customers with the best information, I suggest you make this one of your top priorities, as it effects both SEO and website conversion.

At the end of the day, Google is looking out for its users. It wants to provide them with the best results possible with little to no effort on their end. If you provide Google with the type of content it wants to provide its users, the search engine will begin to reward your site. That translates into more traffic, more conversions, and more sales!

Read Last Week's Column: Why Dealers Need Content to Succeed with SEO

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Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

As multifaceted as SEO is, there's a crucial part of success that most car dealers don't seem to take seriously: content. A few pages written here and there is one thing, but you won't consistently increase organic traffic or win over customers without a solid content strategy in place.

To help you understand why content is so important to the success of your dealership's SEO, here's a look at many of the ways content affects your website, rankings, sales, and overall authority online:

Content Creates Authority

While we'll be looking at a number of reasons why content is a crucial SEO element, the biggest reason is that it creates authority. That's not just amongst search engines, though; it's amongst users and the marketplace in general.

With a stream of new, quality content relevant to your products and services, Google will start to better associate you as a resource as well as a business. You'll not only see traffic increases, but conversion increases as well. Users will appreciate the depth of information and are more than likely to do business with you based on the help you've provided through your site's content.

Content Builds Trust

As car dealers, you know how important trust is when it comes to building a customer base. If they don't feel they can trust you to provide them with the best prices or quality service, they'll go somewhere else.

Using content, you can build trust with customers before they even step foot on your lot. You can convince them that you're the best dealer to do business with, and that choosing a different dealership would be a life-altering choice. (You don't have to go that far, but you can leave car buyers with the impression that you are the absolute best dealership in the area.)

But how do you do that with content?

Here are a few ways you can build trust by simply changing how you think about content on your site:

• Have a Thorough "About Us" Page - Many of Wikimotive's clients have long, exciting histories in the automotive industry. They detail their stories on these pages, providing readers with more insight into their dealership, as well as ways to connect with them as people instead of just businesses. Think of ways you can add new and interesting information to your About Us page, as well as on other pages that detail your dealership's services and other offerings.

• Go Above and Beyond to Explain Services - It's typical for a dealership's website to have pages for the service department, financing, and likely the new and used car business. The problem with your average dealer's site is that the content is minimal at best. Most have cookie-cutter content, poor imagery, and provide no incentive for customers to visit over any other dealership in town. Think of what makes your dealership special and convey that to the customer through your content. People want to be confident in the fact that they're choosing the best of the best today thanks to internet, and if you're not helping them make a decision, another store will.

• Design is Extremely Important - Not only does design affect how users interact with your site, which ultimate affects conversions, it also affects their opinion of your business. Car buyers are visiting multiple dealer websites before ever visiting a business in person, so your website is essentially the face of your company. Do you want it to stand out in their mind, or blend in with the crowd? With a unique and modern design, customers can trust that your dealership is the real deal.

Content Aligns with Social

At this point, most car dealers have adopted at least one social media site to connect with local users and potential customers. For most of you out there, I'm sure that site is Facebook, as it provides not only the largest pool of active users, but the best tools for businesses to better target and reach local users.

The biggest problem most dealers have with Facebook is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to use it to reach car buyers. Now, I'm not going to derail the topic of content and SEO to detail a full social media strategy, so I'll just say this: start sharing website content on Facebook!

I'm sure most of you use Facebook to make announcements about specials, show off happy customers, and occasionally post links to new inventory. But are you posting website content regularly? Well you should start, and here's why:

Facebook users don't like seeing content that's clearly marketing something. They want to see content that's interesting or entertaining. The more you provide them with that, the more you'll see positive engagement, natural shares, and an increase in page likes over time.

Below is a screenshot from a Wikimotive client's Facebook page. This was promoted through a paid campaign, but that only puts the content in front on people. Their engagement with the content is purely organic, including the 27 shares this particular post received. The reason the shares are so important is that you don't pay for that exposure. Users are telling their friends: "This piece of content is awesome, and you need to read it!"

Content Attracts the Best Links

There are plenty of SEO companies that provide link building services. Like any business, some are good and some are not. But what separates the good from the bad is how they actually acquire links from authoritative websites in order to give your site a boost in rankings.

A bad link building service disregards content, and likely focusing on paying for links in order to achieve quick results. Not only is this practice immoral from a business standpoint, but it's completely against Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and could have extreme negative consequences for your website, and business as a whole.

In contrast, a good link building service is based around achieving link placement based on the merit of content on your website. This means creating content that will not only add value to your site and its current users, but be worthy of links from relevant, high-authority sites.

With Google cracking down on unnatural and paid links, it's more important than ever before to concentrate your efforts on quality content and effective outreach to build links instead of risky shortcuts.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Leave the Sales Mentality at Home - You're not trying to gain customers directly through this content. This is meant to be informative, interesting, and entertaining in order to attract links from automotive and other related sites.

• You Don't Have to Reinvent the Wheel - While originality is important to help your content stand out, it doesn't make or break a link building campaign. By taking a topic and creating content that's more informative or entertaining than anything else out there, you're able to work around a proven, successful concept and stand out at the same time.

• Put Yourself in the Shoes of a Site Editor or Publisher - Creating content that attracts links is all about thinking like a site editor or publisher. Ask yourself: "Is this something I'd want to see on my site if I were this person?" Be honest with yourself in this situation. No amount of outreach is going to make up for poor content, so start thinking of ways you can create content that these types of people will fall in love with at first sight.

Content Generates Sales

After telling you to leave your sales-driven mentality at home, now all of a sudden I'm telling you content generates sales?

Yes, and here's how you can make that happen:

• Target "Transactional" Keywords - A transactional keyword is one focused on making a purchase rather than finding information. For example, "2016 Chevy Camaro" and "2016 Chevy Camaro Miami" have two completely different types of intent. A user searching just 2016 Chevy Camaro could have a variety of intentions, but is more than likely searching for information. Someone searching that same keyword with "Miami" at the end, however, clearly wants to know where they can find a 2016 Camaro in Miami. By targeting keywords that have transactional intent, you'll be able to drive traffic with higher conversions than ever before.

• Create and Supplement Sales-Focused Content - Once you've got a few targets in mind, you'll need content that's tailored to rank for these keywords. Remember to keep the intent of the keyword in mind when creating this content, as that will not only affect conversions, but rankings as well. After this content is live, you'll want to supplement it by creating informative pages/blog posts related to the target topic and linking to the original sales-focused page. For instance, if you create a page targeting "2016 Chevy Camaro Miami," you could write a comparison of the 2015 and 2016 Camaro, or even create an in-depth list of facts about the new model. The goal of the supplementary content is to be sharable and less-focused on sales in order to pass authority to our main content.

• Format Content to Better Capture Leads - With the ultimate goal of capturing leads, formatting pages for maximum conversions is not just important, but mandatory. Work with your SEO vendor or website provider to create unique designs or page templates that can be used for pages like this. Make sure you have a solid call-to-action integrated so that none of your traffic goes to waste.

Content is the single most important part of a solid SEO strategy in 2015. Search engines are pushing for sites to take less shortcuts to rank, create better quality content, and provide users with a simple browsing experience.

By following the advice on this page, you'll not only be on track to increasing organic site leads, but you'll also begin laying the foundation for the future.