Is SEO a Dying Sector?

The same question is posed to digital marketers year after year. ‘Does SEO have a future?’ Is it a dying trade?’

When this rhetoric rears its ugly head at the end of the year, it astounds me. I’m wondering why SEO is getting so much attention. The unequivocal response is no. The SEO industry is not extinct. In fact, I believe SEO will grow in importance over the next 5-10 years. As more firms move to an online model, and as more governments encourage SMEs to learn more about digital tactics, SEO will become more valuable. Digital marketing is a mash-up of numerous channels, and I feel SEO has been and continues to be neglected.

The SEO sector has been tainted with a brush that should have been left in the early 2000s, whether due to a lack of expertise or otherwise.

Why are people claiming that SEO is no longer relevant?

The simple answer is a lack of comprehension. SEO, which was quickly followed by SEO specialists, has become enormously sophisticated. And I understand why. Some aspects of SEO are exceedingly difficult to understand. When you mention faceted navigations or PWAs, the ordinary site or business owner’s eyes will start to glaze over.

These are the topics that lead the general public to feel that SEO is a dying industry. Another factor to consider is that individuals want to rank at the top of Google without having to pay for SEO. I believe that SEO is underappreciated by the general public (IMO). They’re simply too complex for individuals to absorb in a short period of time. The simple alternative is to switch to PPC, social advertising, or email marketing. All of those play a significant role in any SEO campaign.

Likewise, vice versa. SEO is a black art, which I believe should be abandoned. Only a few will be able to use it. It isn’t only for the rich; it’s for everyone. But, like with anything, not everyone has the time, and not everyone is interested in studying it.

Is SEO still relevant?

When the official announcement of COVID and lockdown 2.0 came about, digital marketing (and marketing spending) came massively under fire. However, SEO demonstrated how valuable it could be to an organisation when physical store visits were forbidden.

The outcomes you can achieve from SEO are sustained by allocating a monthly budget to it. So, if you decide to lessen your on-page SEO or link-building activities, you should expect a drop in organic traffic and ranks. Obviously! So, yes, absolutely, SEO is especially vital. Even during pandemics, Google will remain the most popular search engine.

Do the major search media outlets make mistakes?

Every journalist has one goal: to get as many people to look at their work as possible. Does this imply that the SEO sector makes mistakes from time to time? Absolutely. It’s the same as any other industry throughout the globe.

If one popular search outlet publishes an article proclaiming, ‘Is SEO Dead?’ – trends will arise. It’s entirely natural. During these moments, I recommend paying attention to the search engine result pages (SERPs). If you’ve been watching your competition all year, you’ll notice any changes to their SEO approach.

Forbes would not be my first option for determining whether SEO is dead. I’d rather experiment with firms like Search Engine Journal. Alternatively, you can rely on prominent Twitter feeds to acquire the most up-to-date information. You can find the official Google Twitter feed in this article I wrote about the Google algorithm…

It's not only about keywords and rankings.

It isn’t, believe me. I know at least 20 SEOs who are experts in extremely specialised areas of search engines and their signals who would disagree with this statement.

SEO is the process of developing a website for a company that solves all of their target audience’s needs. It’s all about the experience, whether it’s with a product or service, or with useful content. Conversions, traffic growth, increased rankings (yeah, it’s a component of it), brand exposure, PR, online authority, and income are the end results of that experience.

You’ll never realise the benefits of SEO if you look at it in isolation. You could, but it’s not the whole picture. SEO has helped millions of businesses thrive online all over the world.

Paid marketing vs. natural search

When the debate over PPC vs. SEO comes up, I always find it fascinating. I won’t go into too much detail concerning PPC vs. SEO because a fast Google search will tell you everything you need to know. But here are my two pence…

SEO and PPC (or any type of paid marketing) should be used in combination, not alone. If you need short-term traffic to a page that you’ve just spent a week creating and optimising for SEO, PPC can help. If you want to gradually eliminate your reliance on paid ads and rely solely on organic visitors, SEO can help.

That brings me to my next point….

Paid search and SEO are linked via KPIs.

What is your primary objective as a marketer? Whether you work for a client or in-house? My goal is to get as many visitors as possible to visit my website or specific pages. What I do should be determined by the best path for growth. Whether I used PPC and paid social in conjunction with SEO, or whether I employed e-mail marketing. It makes no difference.

SEO continues to play a significant role in driving revenue and growth. However, no marketing channel should be considered in isolation. Everything should function as a whole. You’ll obtain considerably better outcomes if you focus on your company’s key performance indicators (KPIs) rather than specific rankings or budgets.

Is Google suffocating the SEO industry?

This is something I can believe in.

Since I began my practice more than 4 years ago, there has been a continuing struggle between Google and SEOs. The power struggle and mystery surrounding Google’s algorithms has long seemed to put SEOs on the defensive. Google has worked hard to improve its algorithms in order to make organic search more credible for users. Google wants consumers to search for a question and get the best answer possible. On the surface, that appears to be quite straightforward.

You’ll win if you create exceptional content that addresses your customers’ questions. You’ll do exactly what Google requests. I wouldn’t have a job if it were that simple. SEO is interesting because of the subtleties of search engines.

However, it is far from dead, and Google is merely attempting to improve the user experience, whether or not at the expense of an online business. They are unconcerned.

Why isn't SEO a dying industry?

COVID has shown that maintaining your business online might mean the difference between profit and failure. With a significant increase in online commerce, it exposed the companies that invested in SEO and those that did not. This demonstrates that SEO is not dead. It’s just not as popular as Google Ads. Or perhaps Facebook advertisements.

What you should realise is that SEO is an essential component of any digital marketing strategy. Sometimes you don’t realise how/why, which is why SEO and Google’s algorithms education is critical.

Survival Advice

My advice for dismissing headlines that proclaim “SEO is a dying industry” is to simply ignore them.

Don’t be concerned about what journalists or other SEOs say. Concentrate on what works best for you and your company. Whether you own a small, medium, or large company, there is always room for growth. Is SEO usually the best (or first) option? No. No, not always. But, do I believe it is always present? Absolutely.

SEO's Future

At best, the future of SEO as an industry will be stable, but I expect massive growth in the next 5-10 years. SEO will become a more widely understood marketing practise. I anticipate there will be an influx of organisations that want to include SEO into their operations or individuals who want to learn the art of website ranking.

If you’d like to schedule a 15-minute chat with me, I’d be happy to show you how SEO may improve your business.

How does the Google Algorithm Work?

Google’s search algorithm is one of the most important technologies ever made. 5.6 billion Google searches are made every day, so it’s safe to say Google has a big impact on the world and on your business as well.

But what is the Google Search Algorithm, and how does it work? And, most importantly, how can you get more people to come to your site regardless of it.

This guide tries to make sense of the mysterious Google Search Algorithm trying to answer common questions such as;

What is the Google algorithm for search?
How does the Google Search Algorithm go about its business?
When people search for things on Google, what are the things that make them show up?
A note about changes to Google’s algorithm.
Where can you find Google’s official news?

People talk about the Google Search Algorithm when they talk about how Google ranks things. Many factors are taken into account when it comes to ranking a website. These include keywords, usability, and backlinks.

SIDENOTE. Google has a LOT of different search algorithms that work together to give the best results. People talk about Google’s search algorithm a lot when they talk about its ranking algorithm, and we think that’s what most people mean when they say that.

How does the Google Search Algorithm go about its business?

Google’s algorithm is very complicated, and it’s not clear how it works. It’s thought that there are more than 200 factors that go into how a website is ranked, but no one knows them all.

There is always a new algorithm, so even if they do, it doesn’t matter. Google usually makes changes to its algorithm six times a day. Up to 2,000 times per year.

Google, on the other hand, does give some tips on how to do well in its search. You’ve just got to stay with your finger on the pulse!

When people search for things on Google, what are the things that make them show up?

What comes to mind when you think of a “search algorithm” when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)? In other words, how does Google decide which pages to rank and in which order?

If we look at Google’s “How Search Works” page, we can see some of Google’s most important ranking factors:

Backlinks
Freshness
When someone talks about a certain word,
A user’s experience
Subject matter experts

Let’s break these thing down a bit…

First, there are back links.

Google wants to show pages where “well-known websites on the subject” link to the page. In simple terms, it wants to see backlinks from well-known websites that are also relevant to your topic.

Link building is what you do to get these links, and it’s one of the most important things you can do to get Google to trust and show your site. This has always been the most important thing for Google to look at when deciding whether or not a site is trustworthy.

The backlink profile of your page and the backlink profile of your competitors can help you figure out if links are keeping your content from getting more traffic.

The first thing you need to do is enter the URL of the page you want to rank into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. You’ll see how many backlinks and referring domains (websites that link to your page) it has. If you visit the site explorer you can see a demo on how it works.

Once you’ve done that, go to Ahref’s Keyword Explorer and enter the main keyword you want to rank for on that page into the search box. Then, scroll down. You’ll find the SERP overview section, where you can see how many backlinks and referring domains your competitors have. You can also see how many backlinks and referring domains your own site has.

The more backlinks that your competitors’ pages have, the more likely it is that you need to focus on getting more links to rank above them.

Here are some ways to start building links:

Guest posting.
Making things that can be linked to (“linkable assets”)
Links that don’t work (AKA “broken link building”)

MY EXPERT TIP:

In order to learn more about the backlink landscape of your keywords and what kind of links you need to rank, look at what domains your competitors have that you don’t. This will help you figure out what kind of links you need in order to rank. In Ahrefs, type in the top three competitors for your target keyword into its Link Intersect tool, and your page into the “But doesn’t link to” box.

In the “Show link opportunities” box, hit “Show link opportunities.” You’ll see all the sites that link to other pages but not yours. These are the first places you can try to get links from.

Expertise in the field (AKA “Topical Authority”)

If a lot of people like a site for a certain type of search, Google wants to show it. Those are the sites that have more, important information about queries that are related to the one being looked for.

People “seem to value” backlinks, but Google doesn’t say what it means. We’re safe to say that topical backlinks are a part of it. So in addition to writing a lot of related content, you also need to get links from sites that are relevant to your topic.

Suppose you want to rank for “best protein powder.” If people also come to your site for content on topics like the following, Google may be more likely to rank you for it!

Best time of day to eat protein
Is it OK for pregnant women to have protein powder?
How is protein powder made?
What are the benefits of protein powder

In addition to having content on these topics, you should also try to get backlinks to the content that are relevant to them.

Google and its users may think you’re an expert on the subject if you write a lot of related content and link to other content that’s relevant to the subject. This could help you get more traffic from search engines. There are a lot of things to think about when it comes to how your site is going to be ranked.

Fresh is best!

“Content freshness” refers to how “fresh,” or up-to-date,” the content on your site is. When did it last get updated?

This factor is more important for some queries than others. Search engines like Google usually put results that have been published in the last 24 hours at the top of the list when people search for news.

It doesn’t matter if you search for a topic that doesn’t need to be updated very often, though. Things like “storage units”

The reason for this is that good storage unit needs today are a lot like they were two years ago. So it doesn’t make as much of a difference how recently it was written or how old it is. If you write a guide like this one you’re currently reading, it is called “evergreen content.” That is, content that won’t need to be changed very often, or for a long time.

When you’re trying to figure out how important freshness is for the keywords you want to target, you should always look at the SERPs for that keyword. Is Google seemingly giving more weight to new content? If so, you’ll need to keep the piece up-to-date to have any chance of staying at the top.

When someone mentions a certain word (“keyword mentions”)

It’s one of the things Google looks at: “the number of times your search terms show up on the page you want to rank.”

If you can, try to use your exact keyword several times on the page, including in places like:

The page name/title.
Subheadings -you must have at least one of them.
The page’s web address, its URL
The first paragraph.

However, I don’t think you need to worry about keywords after that. This is because you’ll naturally use the keyword you’re trying to rank for in your content as you write about it.

The words “evergreen content” appears many times in my post on evergreen content even though I didn’t do anything to make this happen. It just…comes out in natural “conversation”.

Instead, pay more attention to making sure your page meets the searcher’s needs and answers their question. In other words, make sure that you’ve covered everything that searchers might want to know about your site.

In its “How Search Works” page, Google emphasises how important this is. This is why…

A lot of people don’t want a page with the word “dogs” all over it. That’s why, when algorithms look at a page, they look for other things that are related to the word “dogs,” like pictures of dogs, videos, or even a list of dog breeds.

To do that, you can use Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool to find subtopics of a given keyword that you should talk about on your page. Click “Content Gap” on the left. Plug your site into Site Explorer, then click “Content Gap.”

Next, go to Google and search for the keyword you want to target with your page. Pull the top three to five URLs that match the goal of your page (e.g., if your page is a blog post, choose other blog posts).

So that you can see what keywords are used by your competitors, plug in their URL(s)…. Then, click “Show keywords.”

Plus, when you do this kind of content gap research, you might also come up with ideas for new articles that are related to the one you’re working on.

The user experience

Whether the page has a good user experience is what Google says it is interested in. But what makes for a good user experience?

There are a lot of things that make up user experience (UX), like the following:

The speed at which a page loads (Google recommends under two seconds)
Interstitials like ads or pop-ups aren’t taking over the screen
Internal links and navigation that are easy to use
Mobile-friendliness
The design of the site itself
Having a meta title and description that match search intent (meta tags etc)
And so on…

Speed has become more important to Google in the last few years. In the summer of 2021, Google made a big change. CWV (Core Web Vitals) is a kind of speed test that Google has made more important.

Using Ahrefs’ Site Audit, plug your site in, and then click on the “Performance Report” tab. You can check your CWV and learn how to improve your site’s performance. CWV scan must be turned on in the setting. At the top of the report, you’ll see a note about this.

Make sure CWV can use the Google API. Then run another scan of your site. When it’s done, you’ll get a report that shows which pages need work and which pages have mistakes.

When you click on the number next to “Needs improvement” or “Poor,” you can see those pages. There is a tool that will show you which pages don’t meet the Lighthouse Score or the CrUX performance. These are page speed scores from the CWV report.

If you want to learn more about how to make your site better for users, contact me for a more in-depth chat

A note about changes to Google's algorithm.

Google changes its algorithm almost every day, and it releases major updates two to three times a year that can have a big impact on how well your site is ranked.

Things change. If you don’t know what Google is looking for when it comes to ranking your site, you might not be able to get on the first page of the search results and could even have your site penalised!

Some of the most important Google changes are:

Update on Intrusive Interstitials
Mobile-First Indexing (also known as “Mobilegeddon”)
RankBrain
Panda
Penguin
Hummingbird
Pigeon

This is FAR from an exhaustive list – these are just the main ones I’ve encountered where clients have typically had major issues!

Where can you find Google's official news?

There are a lot of different ways that Google tells people about changes to its algorithm, here’s just a couple that I use to keep up to date, and be able to advise clients properly…

If you want to stay up to date on what Google is doing with its algorithm, it also has regular office hours called Google Search Central, which you can sign up for. There, people like John Mueller, a senior webmaster trends analyst for Google, will be able to answer your questions right away.

The last thing…

There are a lot of moving and complicated parts to the Google Search Algorithm, and it changes all… the… time! However, its main goal of giving the best results for a search query hasn’t changed at all.

In spite of all of Google’s changes, the basics of SEO haven’t changed much since search engines first came out. If you pay attention to the information you learned about in this article, you will be able to get on the SERPs eventually!

In short:

Content that is high-quality and well-formatted should match the search intent of your keywords.
When you write something, make sure it’s up to date.
Make sure your site is easy for people to use.
Build links that are relevant to the subject at hand, not just general links.

According to Google, these are the things it looks for in a search algorithm.

Feel free to share this with whoever needs to read it, and if you’d like more help with your own SEO, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to share my expertise!

How to Use Surround Sound SEO

You’re probably familiar with “Surround Sound” audio, which refers to the effect generated by multiple speakers configured to create an immersive sound experience, making you feel like you are inside the action. That’s a large part of what makes watching a movie in a theatre special!

Part SEO, part PR, you can use Surround Sound marketing to envelop your potential customers in information about your brand all along the path of the decision-making process, making your brand the obvious choice when they’re ready to buy.

What Is Surround Sound SEO?

The term Surround Sound Marketing, coined by HubSpot, refers to a strategy that prioritizes being found in as many of the top-ranking pages as possible versus simply getting your own domain to rank at the top of the results.

In other words, the goal is to make sure your brand is visible every time someone searches for a relevant keyword, and for potential customers to see your business mentioned in as many of those top-ranking pages as possible—even if those pages are not on your own domain.

So, Surround Sound Marketing Involves:

Figuring out where your customers go online while making a decision to purchase.

Finding a way to appear on as many of those destinations as possible.

Why Use a Surround Sound SEO Marketing Strategy? Surround Sound marketing enables you to be everywhere your customers are searching online.

Get Found in SERPs.

Traditional SEO prioritizes getting our own content to rank. With over 4 million blog posts published daily, gaining a top spot in the search results for important keywords can be tough. Sometimes it’s near impossible. The great news is that you don’t need to own those top spots in order to succeed, you just need to be included in the existing top pages!

Take a look at the top organic results for “best meal delivery services.” Not one of the top results is owned by a meal delivery service company. The competition is just too great. Instead, we see results from large publications such as NBC, CNET, and Good Housekeeping.

You will not outrank them.

What you may be able to do though, is to convince these publications to include a mention and a link to your website on those pages of theirs that do rank for the applicable keywords. Now you’re starting to achieve SERP coverage without your website ever directly appearing in those top results.

Surround Sound marketing helps you identify potential gaps in search coverage and pursue new growth opportunities.

Buyers Are Doing Their Research – Be Where They Are

Studies show that people visit an average of three websites before making a purchase. And the more websites they visit before making a purchase, the more they are likely to spend. Think back to the last few purchases you made. Did you do one Google search and choose the first result you saw? Did you go directly to a brand site and buy? Or did you ask friends and acquaintances for recommendations, search for reviews and review articles, check Amazon for top-reviewed products, and check social media posts and comments for the brand and product you were considering?

If one brand shows up in all of those steps (in effect being endorsed by 3rd-party sites) how much more likely are you to choose it over a brand that only appeared once along the way? This is your goal—be everywhere they’re looking.

Be Seen Repeatedly

One of the oldest teachings in modern marketing tells us that people need to be exposed to your brand messaging an average of seven times before they make a purchase. And while the actual number of interactions or brand messages required varies, Surround Sound marketing greatly increases the number of opportunities buyers have to see and engage with content about your brand.

Get Trusted Sources To Talk About You

Consumer trust in brands is waning. A 2021 study found that only 34% of 1,000 consumers polled said they trust the brands they use, while 81% said that trust is a deciding factor in purchase decisions. What consumers DO trust is unbiased 3rd-party information. This is what you’ll be building when you use Surround Sound Marketing.

Ad Costs Continue To Increase

In July of 2021, Business Insider reported that Facebook and Instagram CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rose 89% year over year. YouTube CPMs also reportedly increased an incredible 108%. As targeting options and audience size decrease with new regulations and increased competition, this trend is likely to continue. Ads also present a trust challenge. Only 19 and 38 percent of people surveyed say they trust social media and search engine advertising.

Surround Sound Marketing Works

HubSpot coined the phrase “ Surround Sound Marketing” and implemented it for their own brand. Over a period of seven months, they gained an increase of over 40% in their SERPs coverage for the keywords they targeted. What would that kind of increase mean for your business?

Building on Rented Land?

What about the argument that you “shouldn’t build your house on rented land”? That’s all well and good if you have buyers showing up at your house in droves. Otherwise, it pays to meet them where they are! Maintaining your own “house” is still important, but with Surround Sound marketing you’ll also make sure that people can find you wherever they’re looking.

Who Should Use a Surround Sound Marketing Strategy?

Many businesses benefit from more coverage in keyword search results, but the Surround Sound strategy becomes practically mandatory if:

Your business is new
Resources for content and content distribution are limited
Your industry is competitive

This strategy works for local businesses, and brick-and-mortar businesses (small and large). Early results show that it works well for D2C (Direct to Consumer) and SAAS (Software as a Service) companies, too.

How to Create a Surround Sound SEO Strategy

There are several important steps to creating a Surround Sound marketing strategy but the good news is, you likely have much of the work done already. Let’s get into it!

Map Out Your Personalized Buyer Journey

Understanding your customers’ unique buyer’s journey is key to showing up just when they need you. This buyer’s journey can typically be broken down into three stages, and you want people to be able to find you at every stage. That said, Surround Sound marketing is especially useful in the consideration and decision stages.

Awareness: The stage where a prospect is determining that they have a need or a problem that’s related to what you sell. At this time, they’re not looking for solutions, just figuring out the extent of their problem.

Be a reliable source for information, creating valuable content that focuses on the problem. If you can easily acquire mentions on popular pages for these keywords, by all means do so. However, these keywords tend to be a bit removed from the decision stage. Search example: “how to eat healthy with no time to cook.”

Consideration: The stage where your buyer is committed to researching all the available solutions to solve their problem.

You want to be found in as many of these information sources as possible. Get mentioned in content about the solution. Search example: “Meal delivery services.”

Decision: The end point of the journey when a prospect has narrowed down the list of solutions, and they are looking for confirmation that they’re making the right choice.

Make sure you are mentioned in content that answers your customers’ questions about your product or service. Search example: “Best meal delivery services.”

Determine Where Your Customers Are Searching for Solutions

When it comes to figuring out where you need to appear, there is no substitute for asking your existing customers where they heard about you.

If they don’t remember, you can ask something like, “Where do you go or who do you listen to when you’re researching or deciding on a solution for xxxx?” You’ll likely hear about podcasts, social media platforms, blogs, and other publications that they trust. A simple survey tool such as Typeform makes it easy to collect and analyze this information. You’ll want to appear in all those places from their first search through to the recommendation or review that finalizes their decision.

Find the Keywords You Should Target

Identify the keywords your potential customers use when making a decision to purchase. There are three types of keywords to consider:

Variations on your product or service – “Meal planning,” “meal prep services,” “meal delivery service,” might be some examples.

These are the kinds of words you would use to ask your friends, search on Amazon, or when looking for products on Google

Review and list keywords -“Best meal delivery service,” “best meal prep options 2022,” “highest-rated meal delivery,” for example.

You could also tie in some of your unique features or value propositions, such as “best meal delivery service for vegans,” “most affordable meal prep service,” or “best kid-friendly meal delivery service” Alternatives to something they may have considered or used already—“best Green Chef alternatives”

You could use the Semrush Keyword Magic tool to find related terms and variations with high search volume. This tool also allows you to filter by intent (here we see keywords with a commercial intent). Create a spreadsheet or an Airtable and list your keywords, monthly search volume, and difficulty score.

“Best Meal delivery service” has a keyword difficulty score of 85, which means that without a substantial effort in content promotion, SEO, and link building, you have very little (to no) chance of ranking for this keyword.

HOWEVER—you’re not trying to rank your own site. You’re trying to get the existing top-ranking sites to mention you. With Surround Sound marketing, you CAN target that keyword.

Prioritize Target Keywords

Not all keywords are created equal! Appearing in 40 results for a keyword with 100 monthly searches is not nearly as useful as appearing in 10 searches for a keyword with tens of thousands of monthly searches!

To account for this, subtract your visibility score from one and multiply it by the monthly searches (“volume”) for each keyword. This spreadsheet will do that for you. This represents your additional SERP coverage potential opportunity for that keyword.

Examples:

If you appear in 15 of the top 20 search results for “best meal delivery service,” which keyword has an average of 33,000 monthly impressions, you’ll divide 15 by 20 and then multiply by 33,000. That gives you an opportunity score of 24,750.

Compare that to “best meal kit delivery service” where you appear in 10 of the top 20 results and the average search volume is 4 thousand monthly. That looks like (1-.5)*4,000 for an opportunity score of 2,000. Sort your results by opportunity and start with the highest numbers.

Identify the Specific Pages Where You’d Like to Be Mentioned

Here you’ll be identifying pages that link to your competitors and NOT to you. Determine How Well You Rank for Those Important Keywords Today

To check your rankings manually, do an incognito Google search for each keyword. Open the top 20 pages and search for mentions of your brand and links to your domain. In your spreadsheet, enter the number of mentions you find, whether the page includes a link to your site, and whether or not your competitors are mentioned. The spreadsheet will calculate your visibility score (% of mentions in the top 20 SERPs).

This is a pretty tedious step, but vital to the process. It’s a great task for a virtual assistant. Keeping your keyword list pared down will also save you time. Surround Sound marketing is even easier with our new tool, aptly named Surround Sound! Get access here or apply for a free Surround Sound strategy session.

What If Your Brand isn’t Mentioned in the Top 20 Results?

We all start from zero, so if that’s what you’re seeing, don’t lose hope. This just means that your possibilities are endless! And starting from nothing means that every new SERP exposure can be tremendously impactful.

Sentiment Matters – What If Some of the Mentions Are Negative?

Maybe your competitor published something unflattering. Or perhaps a product review was posted before you refined it to its current state. There’s not much you can do about competitor content aside from outranking them in search results. Fortunately, you know how to do that now.

For a fair negative review, whether in a blog post or on social media, see if you can start a conversation publicly or via email. Apologize for their less-than-ideal experience and offer to let them try (for free) your new and improved product. They may be willing to update their review if they have a better experience this time.

Get Top-Ranking Publications to Mention You

As you’re evaluating the pages where your competitors appear but you do not, you’re likely to spot some patterns. Many of the sites and pages are likely to be:

Review sites
List articles
Shopping sites
Social platforms
Big publishers

If you want a busy marketer who is in charge of a blog, online store, review site, or social presence to consider your request, you’re going to need to provide value. Some ideas that may get their attention (and cooperation) include:

Offering to send free products. You may even send more than one person would need—giving them the pleasure of sharing. This is often the most compelling offer.

An offer to promote their content or engage in mutually-beneficial co marketing.

Offering to write content for their site. When it’s well written, doesn’t need editing, and provides value to the reader, marketing teams love free content! Just make sure it’s better than the page they have that mentions your competition so it can outrank that page.

Sending an email or social media message out of the blue might not be the best way to engage with the people in charge of these sites. You can warm up your targets on social, engaging with their content in an authentic way that adds value. When the time is right, send an email or direct message with your offer, but make sure it is obvious that you have researched them and you understand their goals and needs. Make your offer/ask, but also invite them to get on a 15-minute call so you can find out exactly what they’d like to get from you. You may have to send more than one email or message to get their attention.

Get creative and try to avoid “I’m bumping this to the top of your email,” subject lines, as they may have an effect opposite to that desired. HubSpot has some great resources for writing effective outreach emails.

Keep track of the emails you send to each company in a CRM or your handy Airtable or spreadsheet. And of course, keep track of partnerships scored and make sure to follow up regularly to keep it active.

Fore more information on how to benefit from surround sound SEO, drop me a line!