License: Creative Commons image source
A lot of the SEO articles I come across I don’t read. Of course I’m very interested in SEO, and I consider myself a big fan of tech and enjoy following the industry news and developments. I also realise just how important it is to stay up to date with these developments if I want to be good at what I do – imagine if I hadn’t heard about Penguin or Panda? That would severely compromise my ability to get articles into the SERPs. But while my eyes are always scanning over the headlines, rarely do I actually stop to fully read any of those articles and to spend more than a minute on a page – which of course is what all those writers are trying to get me to do.
So why don’t I read these articles if I find the topic interesting and relevant? Well because for the most part – I’ve seen it all before. How many articles have you seen with titles like ’10 Ways to Boost Your Traffic Today’ or ’5 SEO Mistakes to Avoid in the New Year’? If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably seen at least a few of them a day, and like me you probably know exactly what they’re going to say – ‘don’t cram your keywords’ and ‘write regularly’. Yawn!
So that’s why I don’t usually stop to read the full articles, and it might also be why you could be getting high bounce rates on your own sites. But the question is, what could you do to change this? What kind of articles would people read?
Better Topics for Your SEO
Well of course there is no one answer here, but there are a couple of things that will increase your likelihood of getting a read and give your articles a bit more flavour. The most effective is of course to cover some breaking news or to react to it in a way that hasn’t been covered yet. When Google first launched Panda for instance then writing about that would be a fantastic way to offer your visitors something new that they need to know about, and for a few weeks after that there’d still be a lot of fresh angles to find.
But go longer than that and you’re starting to become routine and predictable. A ‘Top Lessons From Panda’ is no longer particularly interesting these days, so you need to be on the constant look out for the next big thing that will shake up the industry.
But what do you do between these big announcements? Well now you need to start giving your articles more of an emotional hook, or offer a slightly different angle on your regular topics. By emotional hook I mean something that will massage the reader’s ego, that will be controversial or that will actually relate to their daily life. Search optimizers and webmasters have a lot of common interests and a very specific lifestyle, so rather than just writing another ‘ten tips’ why not write something that challenges or helps that lifestyle? And for different angles, think about the problems and challenges people don’t often think about when they do SEO – the related issues like waking up on time when you’re self-employed, or taking great pictures.
For instance why not write an article on ‘what kind of person’ gets into SEO? (People love reading about themselves) Or how to deal with jealous friends? Or how to dress and kit yourself out like a true entrepreneur? Any of these ideas will catch the attention of someone who is living the SEO lifestyle and it will offer them something a bit more substantial than ten tips they could have written themselves.
About the guest author: Mike is an internet marketing consultant by profession. He loves blogging about random topics in his free time. He has been freelancing for the website wisdek for the past two years.
This is an original article published on SEO Desk with exclusivity.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Special Offers
Marketing Plan e-Book
Detail your objectives, identify your target market and connect with your customers with a successful marketing plan!
Show Up on Every Search Result by Formulating an Effective Marketing Plan.
ONLY 16.00
Twitter
Technorati
StumbleUpon
RSS
Warrior Forum
Facebook
