SEO Content Length: Why Longer Content Isn’t Always Better

“More content equals better SEO” is a trap. Period. And unfortunately, it’s one that many innocent websites fall victim to. 

If you’re churning out endless blog posts, stretching every sentence to hit an arbitrary SEO content length, hoping to appease the almighty Google, you know exactly what I mean. 

But a recent Google Core Update has only confirmed what many smart SEOs already suspected – that it isn’t just about quantity (or really about some magical SEO content length at all), it’s about quality.  

Google wants to see content that’s genuinely helpful, informative, and engaging for users, not just a jumble of words designed to game the system. 

So, what’s a marketer to do? That’s where we come in. In this post, we to debunk the myth of “more is better” and help give you a more nuanced understanding of SEO content length.

Google’s Official Stance on SEO Content Length

The message is loud and clear: Google doesn’t have a magic minimum or maximum word count.  

Alongside their Helpful Content update, Google released the following key recommendations on creating what it considers Helpful Content:

• Avoid search engine-first content. Don’t just write for algorithms. Write for people.
• Focus on value. Create content that genuinely helps, informs, or entertains your audience.
• Don’t chase trends. Write about topics you’re knowledgeable about and that resonate with your existing audience.

Notice what’s missing? Any mention of specific word counts or some minimum SEO content length.  

In fact, the documentation specifically says that “Answering yes to [this] question below is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content”: 

Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t.)

Even Google’s own Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the once-secret playbook that Google staff and contractors used to evaluate web pages, don’t explicitly mention content length. Instead, they focus on substance and value. 

According to these guidelines, high-quality content often requires “significant effort, originality, and talent or skill.” It might involve in-depth analysis, comprehensive coverage, or expert insights.  

And yes, that might naturally lead to longer content, especially for complex topics.  

But it’s not about length for length’s sake; it’s about achieving your purpose and demonstrating expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). 

Don’t chase SEO content length or arbitrary word counts. Chase quality.

What Data and Studies on SEO Content Length Reveal

We know what Google says about word count, but we know Google isn’t always an open book when it comes to their search algorithm. Quite the opposite, in fact. So, we can’t just take the above at face value. 

The good news is that third-party research does back up what Google has told us when it comes to SEO word count. 

Backlinko, in collaboration with industry giants Semrush and Ahrefs,  analyzed millions of Google search results and found that word count was fairly evenly distributed among the top 10 results, with an average of around 1,447 words. 

Another Backlinko study found that long-form content tends to attract significantly more backlinks and social shares than shorter articles. That means longer content can help you build authority and visibility, which indirectly boosts your SEO. 

However, there’s a catch. Backlinko also found that the benefits of long-form content start to plateau after the 2,000-word mark. So, while longer content can be valuable, there’s a point of diminishing returns.

Arefs’ own study of nearly a billion web pages also found a moderate positive correlation between content length and organic traffic — but only up to 2,000 words. Beyond that, the correlation turned negative, suggesting that excessively long posts might hurt your SEO (more on why that might be later). 

Longer content can be beneficial, but it’s not a magic bullet.  

The key is to find the sweet spot where your content is comprehensive enough to provide value and attract backlinks, but not so long that it overwhelms or bores your audience.

Analyzing Our Own Blog Data

At TrafficSoda, we’re all about putting theories to the test. So, we took a deep dive into our own blog data to see how content length correlates with SEO performance. 

Looking at our top 15 blog posts for organic traffic over the past year, we found that the average word count was a respectable 2,016 words. On the flip side, our bottom 15 performers averaged a mere 949 words. 

But hold on, don’t jump to conclusions just yet. There are a few caveats to consider. 

1. Time relevance is playing a role. When we first started out, we aimed for shorter blog posts, so many of our older articles naturally fall into that category. These older articles aren’t all as relevant as they once were, and this is influencing their performance.
2. Our longer posts tend to delve deeper into topics, offering more detailed information and analysis. We’re not just adding fluff to reach a certain SEO word count, we’re providing genuine value.

This reinforces the idea that longer content isn’t inherently better. While longer posts can perform well, it’s not a guarantee. The real key is to create content that’s comprehensive, informative, and engaging, regardless of its length. 

When Longer Content Can Hurt SEO

While longer content can help, there are several scenarios where excessive length can hurt your SEO efforts instead.

1. User Experience and Engagement

No one likes landing on a webpage that’s a never-ending wall of text. It’s overwhelming, right? It causes cognitive overload.  

When users are bombarded with too much information without any visual breaks or clear organization, it becomes difficult to process and retain anything.  

This leads to frustration, a quick exit from the page, and a potential ding to your SEO.

2. Dilution of Key Information

Longer content also runs the risk of burying important points or answers to specific user queries.  

If your readers must scroll endlessly or struggle to locate the information they’re looking for, they’re likely to abandon your page and seek a more concise and user-friendly source. 

This can also impact how search engines understand your content. If your core message or purpose gets lost in a sea of words, search engines might struggle to identify the main topic and relevance to user queries, potentially hurting your rankings.

3. Technical Issues

Let’s not forget about the technical side of things. Extremely long content, especially if it’s loaded with images or videos, can slow down your page load times. And nobody likes a slow website, especially Google. 

Plus, long content tends not to be optimized for mobile devices, leading to a poor user experience on smaller screens. With more and more people searching on their phones, this can significantly impact your SEO. 

Finally, there’s the risk of keyword stuffing and thin content. To reach a high word count, some creators resort to tactics that can actually hurt their rankings. Quantity over quality is always a mistake. 

So, before you start churning out those 5,000-word blog posts, take a step back and consider the potential downsides. Longer isn’t always better.

Key Takeaways

1. Forget about chasing arbitrary word counts or SEO content length. Instead, focus on creating content that genuinely addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. Do your research, offer valuable insights, and present your information in a clear and engaging way. It’s not about how much you say, but how well you say it.
2. Match your content length to the specific purpose and user intent. A simple “how-to” guide might only require a few hundred words, while a comprehensive white paper on a complex topic could easily run into the thousands. If you can answer a question concisely, do it. If you need more space to explore a topic in depth, take it.
3. Break up your content with clear headings, subheadings, and bullet points. Use visuals like images, infographics, and videos to enhance engagement and make your content more digestible. And don’t forget about page load times and mobile friendliness. A slow or clunky website can send users running, regardless of how great your content is.

Your audience craves content that’s informative, engaging, and genuinely helpful. Search engines reward content that demonstrates expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. 

So, as stated earlier, stop chasing an arbitrary SEO content length and start chasing value. Craft content that resonates with your readers, answers their questions, and solves their problems. That’s the key to SEO success in today’s digital landscape. 

Need help developing a content strategy that delivers results? Our team of SEO experts is here to guide you every step of the way. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your online goals.

7 Questions to Ask When Developing Your Lead Generation Strategy

Are you throwing away hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month on online advertising with little to no results?  

Still can’t figure out how to attract more of your ideal customers cost-effectively?  

You might’ve been told that pay-per-click advertising is the answer – but like most things in business (and in life) it’s not as simple as the ‘experts’ make it out to be. 

As you’ve probably noticed, there are literally hundreds of step-by-step guides out there claiming to hold the secrets to lead generation success. Thousands of so-called marketing gurus who say they’ve developed a foolproof method to get your business – any business – more leads than you can handle.  

And that is mistake number one. 

Now, we can’t speak to your situation specifically…but from our experience, this is one of the biggest reasons why so many advertising dollars go to waste: a generic, paint-by-numbers marketing strategy that doesn’t account for foundational facts about your business.

Why You Need to Stop, Think, Ask and Answer

We know you’re eager to hit the ground running. You need new customers, and you want to start acquiring them as soon and as efficiently as possible.  

It can be tempting to believe you can skip ahead to the ‘execution’ phase (aka, the fun part).  

But it pays – literally – to put in the work and ask the right questions early on, because the result is a powerful lead generation strategy that puts the right messages in front of your ideal customers and turns them into real leads.    

These aren’t necessarily easy questions. Developing a lead generation strategy isn’t like a personality quiz. They are, however, crucially important and well worth your time to answer. 

We can’t take you through all these questions right here and now, but we would like to introduce you to 7 of the most fundamental questions you must ask when developing any lead generation strategy: 

1. What is your lead acquisition cost and average order value?  
2. What is your marketing funnel? 
3. What is Happening in Your Market? 
4. What Are Your Business Goals and Are They SMART? 
5. Does Your Current Strategy Measure Up to Your Goals? 
6. Is Your Copywriting Converting Prospects to Customers? 
7. How are You Qualifying and Nurturing Leads?
   
   

1. What is Your Lead Acquisition Cost and Average Order Value?  

Developing a smart and cost-effective marketing strategy to scale your business is no easy task, especially if you are unaware of the costs associated with lead acquisition (cost per lead) and average order value.  

But first, let’s start with defining what a lead is. A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.  

Now, let’s define what Lead Acquisition Cost and Average Order Value are and what they mean to your business.  

Lead Acquisition Cost (LAC) are all costs associated with getting one lead, i.e., getting a potential customer.  

Average Order Value AOV) tracks the average dollar amount spent each time a customer places an order on a website or mobile app. To calculate your company’s average order value, simply divide total revenue by the number of orders. 

Wrapping your head around these important metrics can change the way you perceive your business, and how you approach a new cost-effective marketing strategy. Without these numbers factored into your strategy, you could find your business spending substantial amounts of marketing dollars on the wrong initiatives and not producing favourable results.  

The good news is that Lead Acquisition Cost and Average Order Value can actually be pinned down to the cent, and TrafficSoda can help, so you don’t have to feel around in the dark for these numbers.

2. What Does Your Marketing Funnel Look Like? 

The buying process has multiple stages.  

Most people are not ready to buy the moment they see your ad, and for that reason, it is important to warm your customer up so they can go from being unaware and uninterested in your business to engaged and ready to buy.  

At TrafficSoda, we specialize in determining the shortest pathway from your advertising dollar to your sales funnel. To do so, we first start by researching our clients thoroughly in what we call the discovery process. By understanding all aspects of your customer audience, market perception, competitors and sales process and marketing – we can develop a hypothesis, test and refine.

3. What is Happening in Your Market? 

Creating a strategic lead generation strategy starts with taking a close and honest look at who you are as a business. 

What do you do that provides unique value for your customers?  

Have you investigated the full scope of your business and have insight into your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?  

Researching what is happening in your market, what customers are saying about your business and competitors, and the actions your top competitors are taking to stand out, and better align with customers, is a great place to start.  

With this information at hand, you can then produce the right market messaging that resonates with your target audience. 

4. What Are Your Business Goals and Are They SMART? 

Goal setting is an important component when crafting a new marketing strategy.  

What are your current sales like?  

How much would you like to scale as a business?  

What are your timelines for achieving this growth potential?  

By mapping out a clear picture of your ideal business situation and your plans to support this growth internally, you and your team will know exactly what you are working towards. Setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound (SMART) can help you set marketing goals that align with your overall business goals.

5. Does Your Current Strategy Measure Up to Your Goals? 

This is a loaded question, so we at TrafficSoda like to focus first on the current number and quality of leads your business is interacting with.  

From here we like to look at overall lead generation strategy, and how it’s managed, monitored, optimized AND nurtured. 

Quality lead generation does not mean you can have a “set it and forget it” mentality. Regular monitoring and tweaking of your marketing is essential to its performance and overall impact.  

What types of data are you collecting and how are you using it to make data driven decisions and improve your overall strategy?

6. Is Your Copywriting Converting Prospects to Customers? 

Is your copywriting aligned with customer needs or is it more ‘You’ focused as a business?  

Copy can almost always be refined to better communicate your unique value proposition to the customer.  

We cannot stress the importance of good copywriting enough when it comes to marketing strategy! Without it, all the time and money associated with your marketing will prove ineffective in converting prospects to leads and leads to paying customers.

7. How are You Qualifying and Nurturing Leads? 

How do you nurture leads? 

Do you currently have any nurture campaigns?  

In the customer buying process, also known as the buying decision process, the customer journeys through multiple stages before making the decision to purchase your product or service.  

Customers online are interested in conducting thorough research, weighing their options and taking their time before making a purchase. This means that you have a unique opportunity to entice, connect, build trust, educate and promote the value of your business. Through constant communication with your audience and helpful email automation.  

It is important to evaluate where your customers are in their decision making and understand the potential objections or setbacks to why a customer may not invest in your business – and address them honestly while providing value.   

Lead nurturing is essential, and in many instances your own sales representatives need to take an active role to ensure that warm leads don’t go cold mid-funnel. It can actually take between 7 and 12 points of contact before getting a sale, so as a business you really want to deliver as much value as you can in advance so there is little to no doubt in a customer’s mind that you are the obvious choice.  

An automated email path is a great way to nurture your leads, build a relationship and humanize your company and brand. If a customer is no longer engaging with and opening your emails after a couple of weeks, it is safe to say that they are no longer a ‘warm’ lead and can be removed from future email marketing.

Start Building an Effective Lead Generation Strategy NOW

Ready to attract more of your ideal customers?  

We want to help you produce the maximum number of sales from your marketing strategy. Contact TrafficSoda to build a powerful lead generation strategy that fills your funnel with quality leads and helps your business scale. 

Beginner’s Guide to Creating Quality Content Using SEO Practices in 2019

What did you last type into Google? Chances are whatever the question, it recommended a blog or article on the topic.

In 2019, search engines like Google care about solving the intent of the searcher. This means that the viewer’s attention must be grabbed, the information was helpful, and the article had steps in place to engage with the company.

Do you want to learn about how to write a quality blog post that helps your relevancy on search engines?

Here’s a beginner’s guide to everything SEO to optimize your next blog post.

Creating Effective Content

Your goal as a writer is to keep people on the website.

Content that is overly complicated or boring will cause readers to abandon your page. The experience that your audience has is an important one.

You aren’t the only one writing a blog today. Countless blogs are posted every day, so how do you grab people’s attention?

Well, it all starts with creating meaning content that educates or inspires your readers. How do you do that?

The first thing to do when creating compelling content, is to find a compelling topic to write about.

Choosing A Topic

The best thing to write about are things that both relate to your services and educational topics. Simply put, people find blogs by searching for questions they have. So, answer them!

The easiest way to identify this is to think like your audience and ask the following:

• What do they want to know about?
• What will they identify with?
  

This isn’t to say you should never write about your own business when it makes sense. Your company just won an award or was featured in a major new article? Perfect opportunities to write about what your company can do for the masses!

But for most blog posts, it’s best to focus on the industry’s questions. This is largely due to the fact that the people you are hoping to reach don’t know about you yet! If you only talk about your business or yourself, people won’t be able to find you by searching.

Are you stuck for ideas or have writers block? Consider talking to other people in the company in different departments or that have unique perspectives. They could be a gateway to ideas!

Here are some questions to ask regarding potential leads to topics:

• What are frequent questions from customers?
• What does our audience need help with?
• What do people wish they knew regarding our industry?
• What are others in our industry talking about?

It may be beneficial to start with a very broad topic. As you research and write, you’ll likely find subtopics that could be expanded on. Try to approach the broad topic in different ways to create different avenues for expansion.

Keyword Research

Keywords are the words or phrases that are commonly typed into the search engine. They are the main words people are looking for information on.

What are the words that your industry uses all the time? If you run a company that repairs air conditioners, your keywords could be “air conditioner repair.”

The concept of keywords is not to completely overwhelm your content with a keyword every sentence. It actually negatively impacts your search engine optimization because it’s considered stuffing.

Think about incorporating them naturally in the headlines and body, as if they were a conversation.

Language allows us to say the same thing differently. Maybe your keyword can be said a different way. Instead of repeating “air conditioner repair”, use a synonym. This can also help search engines to pick up on different nomenclatures because not everyone searches for the same thing the same way.

Develop a Long-tail Keyword and Title

Long-tail keywords are very specifically targeted keywords.

They typically are 3 or more words and contain a head term combined with more generic search terms. The head term should relate to what you want your company to be known for and what topics you want to provide knowledge on.

A good practice is to develop and focus on a single long-tail keyword.

Why are Long-tail Keywords Useful for Titles?

Often times the title is the opener for a question to be answered. Those who search for long-tail keywords will be the most likely candidate to read your post in its entirety and pursue your company further. They are the ones who will click down the conversion funnel.

Make a Working Title from a Long-tail Keyword

Everyone reads the title before committing to the rest of the blog. That means you have to make sure people are interested enough to continue by catching the viewer’s attention.

A working title is something you base the direction of your post off of. For example, using the broad topic of “video advertisements”, the working title could be “How to Optimize Your Video Advertisements in 2019”. We took the very general idea that could have been pretty much anything and made it specific.

Once you finish the post, go back to your title and rework it to align better with the end result. Your title should help people as well as search engines to decipher what the post will contain specifically. Readers will identify what they can get out of spending their time viewing your post.

Shorten Your URL Slug

A post slug is typically a viewer friendly URL name of a post or page.

They ensure clarity of the topic. For example, website.com/blog/our-first-blog.

Your slug doesn’t have to be the title of your blog. When slugs are overly long or complicated can be confusing and not memorable for users to find later.

It is also useful to have a consistent slug if the title changes. For example, if you intend on trying to better optimize your title to gain traffic, you don’t have to then also change the slug.

Best practice is to exclude years or numbers in general, this way you don’t have to change it if you update the page.

It’s important to keep the URL slug as short as possible without losing key information.

Optimize Image Alt-texts

It’s crucial to incorporate images throughout your blog to provide a visual interest.

Search engines can’t see images like we do, so you can’t optimize for actual images. What you can optimize is the alt text or name.

An alt name is information regarding what the image is about. From a search engine perspective, the best descriptions will better the results.

It’s an easy thing to forget but can ultimately help if you include them. Consider creating an alt text for your images based on your long-tail keyword or working title.

Additionally, including these will help with accessibility for impaired users and allow you to increase your reach.

Create an Interesting Meta Description

What’s the next thing users see after they read the title? The meta description.

The meta description is the brief synopsis of your article found right below the title. It is used by both viewers and search engines to provide information regarding what you intend to talk about.

Meta descriptions don’t directly affect your SEO; however, they are useful for including keywords. Searched information is often bolded if your article uses the keywords or the meta description does.

They should not mislead people into clicking on something they weren’t looking for. It’s good practice to use words that indicate what you want viewers to gain from reading further. This could be words like:

• Get
• Use
• See
• Learn

If you’re ever stuck on what to write to think of it as a headline. How would you get the attention of the viewer?

Including Strategic Blog Links

With more traffic, you’ll be able to develop better relationships with your viewers. You want users to feel that they can trust you.

So how can you create that trust with an informational blog? By being credible.

Including links to your sources throughout the blog will showcase that you have researched the topic and know what you’re talking about.

Now, including a link for every paragraph is not what you want to do. It’s best to sprinkle your sources only where it makes sense.

Likely at this point, you’ve got a few topics in mind for what you could write about, so plan accordingly! You can incorporate hyperlinks, Call to Actions (CTAs), to other blog posts of yours on related topics.

Have you already explained a topic that you mention? Link to it! This is good practice because if someone finds your content useful, they could find your services right within the blog.

Don’t Just Use Text

Plain text that all looks the same is frankly just boring.

By offering other types of media like images or videos will greatly increase the amount of time people spend on your article.

Including videos, especially near the top of your article, increases your chance of being on the front page of Google by 53 times. Why? Because people that take the time to watch your video, increase your bounce rate.

In the eyes of search engines, if people just view your page and then leave, it didn’t really help them. When people click to watch a video embedded on your blog, Google sees that as people finding valuable resources on your site. And it is more likely to recommend the article to people.

Most people would rather watch a video than read text, and giving people the option, puts value in your content.

If you’re just starting out on your blog or if you’re just looking to better your blog writing, this is an excellent map to creating quality content.

Make the most of every post on your site by incorporating these tips!

7 Universal Content Strategies to Increase Audience Engagement

Content is a contest. Whether you’re writing blog posts or cutting videos, there’s always someone else out there who wants to win over your audience as bad as you do. These content strategies can help increase audience engagement across a variety of mediums to help get your message out there.

1. Gauge the Competition

Who’s winning the race for your important keywords?

Finding ways to outrank those competitors will help bolster your share of the audience.

One important step in increasing engagement is finding (and fixing) gaps in your current keyword strategy.

You could be falling behind in areas where your competitors already have plenty of content. There could also be high-volume keywords the competition hasn’t covered yet, leaving an opportunity for your site to fill in the gap.

Conducting a keyword gap analysis requires a strong grasp of your site’s current standing and where you want to improve: how people are finding your site now, which keywords are most valuable to you now, and what your competitors are doing better.

Tools like SEMRush’s Keyword Gap Analysis can help, but it’s only useful if you understand what keywords are and which keywords matter to your business.

2. Optimize Metadata

To most people, metadata is an afterthought.

For anyone with a website, it shouldn’t be.

Metadata refers to two types of information: basic descriptions of digital files (file author, date crated, file size, etc.) and descriptions of webpage content. Both types of metadata play a role in your content’s search engine visibility.

Search algorithms use metadata to help determine what a webpage is about. When metadata contains relevant keywords, it gives the page a better shot of ranking for those search queries.

Optimized metadata may not increase audience engagement alone, but it can help give well-crafted content the boost it needs.

3. Increase Page Speed

Slow loading speed is one of the biggest barriers to audience engagement.

Nearly half of all internet users will not wait longer than three seconds for a page to load. It doesn’t matter how great a blog or video is if it’s dragged down by a slow-loading site.

If you’re not sure of your site’s speed (or can’t figure out why it’s slow), Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can give answers. Beyond that, there are lots of big and small fixes to increase page speed.

4. Boost Presentation

Looks matter, at least when it comes to boosting audience engagement.

The nicer the page presentation, the more likely people are to view the content, share it with others, and link back to it — all important ingredients of attracting and engaging an audience

Overall site design plays a big part in this (which is one reason to redesign your site periodically). But there are also many smaller steps you can take to make your content easier and more enjoyable to consume.

• Break blog posts into short paragraphs with a logical flow, adding bullet points and lists where applicable.
• Add relevant images. Blog posts with images get an average of 94% more views than those without.
• Embed a video. Video increases the average time people spend on a site by 105%.

If you do add supplementary videos and images, be sure to optimize them with keyword-rich metadata.

Speaking of different mediums…

5. Use a Variety of Content Mediums

Radio didn’t bring an end to libraries. Film wasn’t the death knell for radio.  And the Internet hasn’t dampened the popularity of video (only changed how we see it).

Why? Because different people like to consume information in different ways.

Some of your audience will always prefer a long-form blog post or whitepaper to a video; others won’t give text the time of day when there’s a visual alternative.

Using a variety of content broadens the appeal of your site to a wider audience. Blogs, eBooks, videos, case studies, infographics, and podcasts can all help to build different segment of an engaged following.

6. Be an Authority

Authority is one of the biggest factors in how search engine algorithms choose which sites make the front page. To increase audience engagement, you’ll have to show that you’re an authority in your industry.

Being an authority doesn’t mean you’re the be-all and end-all for your industry. Rather, it means you have a take on the topic that is more in-depth, more authentic, and more current than the competition.

For future content, focus on quality and relevance over quantity. As for older content that still performs well? Keep it current!

7. Send the Right Content to the Right Audience

Instead of blasting all your content to everyone at once, take a precision approach. Aim for where you know it’ll connect.

There are lots of ways to make sure your content reaches the right people and get them to engage with it:

• Starting an email list is a great initiative for anyone looking to build an army of loyal followers.
• A/B testing provides guidance when it comes to making the best possible first impression on visitors.
• Retargeting visitors with content you know matches their interests brings wayward audiences back into your sights.

The point is, different content will resonate best at different points in the marketing funnel. Once you’ve figured out your funnel, you can begin to weave it into your content strategy.

Getting Audiences to Engage with Your Content

No content creator can produce a viral masterpiece every time, but these steps will help put it on the screens of audiences that matter.

It all starts with strategy. We’d love to help you find yours.

Find Out What Else We Do

Reusing Blog Posts for Social Media: Time-Saving Tips on Remixing Your Best Content

Ever wondered how brands come up with fresh content to post on social media every single day? Their secret is remixing. Instead of creating brand-new content from scratch, many smart brands leverage their existing blog posts into fresh content for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

There are lots of practical reasons to reuse blog posts for social media content:

1. Save time. Rather than spending hours writing great blog posts and crafting social media content, you can produce multiple forms of content for your site and social media platforms simultaneously.
2. Drive traffic to your site. Building content from your blog posts lets you re-share old URLs in a new context, driving more traffic to the original post you so carefully crafted.
3. Maximize your audience reach. Some people love to hunker down for a good read, while others would rather consume quick bites of content in videos or graphic form. Turning a blog post into different social media content gets your message out to the broadest possible audience.
   
   

Which Blog Posts Make for Great Social Media Content?

You know your content better than anyone, so you probably have some idea of which ones would make for great videos or images. But keep in mind that the blog post should be:

• Relevant to your audience. Some posts age better than others; don’t choose a post that is outdated or no longer interesting.
• This depends on how you measure blog performance. If your number one goal is site traffic, use Google Analytics to find out which posts have generated the most user sessions; if brand-building is your focus, see which posts incited the most social media engagement.
  
  

Ways to Remix and Reuse Blog Posts for Social Media Content

To get you started, here are a few time-saving tips on reusing blog posts for great social media content.

1. Videos

We have written previously about the benefits of using video on social media. People are more likely to view and engage with videos than any other form of content, and there are lots of free tools that can help you make captivating videos out of blog posts. One of our picks is Lumen5, which automatically pulls content from articles and turns it into easily customizable scenes.

2. Quotes

One of the quickest ways to turn blog posts into social content is this: pull the juiciest bites of information from the article and share it in the form of a brief text post or image. It can be an authoritative statement, an inspirational quote, an impressive statistic, or a compelling question. Choose something that will stop users in their tracks and entice them to click through.

3. Graphics

Bold, colourful visuals boast universal appeal across social platforms. Social posts that include images always grab more attention than text alone. You can condense the main points of the blog into one image or break them into a series of images that each highlight a point.

4. Infographics

Turn an information-heavy blog post into an easily digestible infographic. While they do take longer to create than one-off graphics, the potential return on investment is high; an eye-catching infographic can catch on and spread to all corners of the web. Be sure to include your brand’s logo and a link to the original blog post somewhere on the graphic.

If you haven’t got a knack for graphic design, use a free template available with tools like Canva or Piktochart.

5. Live Video

Have more to say about a particular post? That’s a great opportunity delve deeper into the topic or host an audience Q&A in a live video broadcast. Live videos on Facebook are most likely to appear at the top of the news feed, and your followers will get a notification letting them know you are on-air. It’s free, simple, and gives your audience a chance to connect with you and your company on a more human level.

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The Gutenberg Update: What You Should Know About the WordPress Overhaul Coming in 2018

The world’s largest website management system is about to change. How will the Gutenberg update impact the 60 million websites that run on WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) on the web. The platform powers over 29% of the top 10 million websites, including heavyweight publishers like The New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.

WordPress is also the CMS of choice for millions of bloggers and small businesses worldwide — including yours truly.

The key to its popularity can be summed up in one word: flexibility. As an open-source platform, WordPress is open to extensive customization.

If you look under the hood of a well-crafted WordPress site, you’ll find an assortment of custom WordPress plugins, themes, and HTML codes. In fact, while WordPress itself is free to use, there’s an entire industry around developing premium WordPress themes and plugins for businesses.

But that’s all about to change in 2018.

Last year, the development team behind WordPress announced Gutenberg, a project in WordPress 5.0 that will transform how we build and manage WordPress sites.

While there’s no release date for Gutenberg yet, it’s time for bloggers and businesses who use WordPress to start thinking about how to adapt to Gutenberg.

What is Gutenberg for WordPress?

Gutenberg is a coming update to the WordPress post and page editing interface that replaces many of the plugins and widgets we use today with elements called Blocks. As of March 2018, the project is still in the beta phase. There is an optional Gutenberg plugin available to any WordPress developers who want to give feedback before the big launch.

Eventually, the Gutenberg editor will replace the editing interface WordPress users have come to know. The WordPress team has yet to say when this will occur, but the plan is to merge Gutenberg into WordPress 5.0 and launch by the end of 2018.

And that’s just phase one. According to the Gutenberg project page, the team also has its sights set on simplifying custom page templates and, ultimately, full WordPress site customization.

About Gutenberg’s Block System

Blocks will enable users to insert rich content like forms, social media posts, and multimedia within the WordPress post editor itself. The system resembles the editing interface on sites like Medium, which uses a similar drag-and-drop system for inserting rich content into posts.

The idea behind Gutenberg blocks is an ambitious one. Blocks are meant to simplify the patchwork of formatting elements used to build custom WordPress posts today, like plugins, widgets, and custom shortcodes.

Say you’re building a site for your business on WordPress. You want to create an ‘About Us’ page with employee bio’s. Rather than searching for a theme with a fitting template, or installing an ‘About Us’ plugin, you could ideally insert an ‘Employee Block’ that automatically embeds a photo, name, and biography.

Or, if you’re a food blogger, you could drag and drop a ‘Recipe Block’ that generates fields for ingredients, instructions, and photos into your posts.

There’s lots of potential in Gutenberg Blocks. But it also raises a big question: what will happen to all the custom WordPress sites out there today?

How Gutenberg Will Effect Your WordPress Site

 “Will Gutenberg break my website?”

That’s what many developers are asking ahead of the coming change. And it’s fair for them to worry. After all, many of the custom elements they rely on are set to become obsolete.

The good news is, Gutenberg will not break the part of your website users see when they visit. The update won’t change the WordPress front-end.  In other words, it should not impact your customers’ experience on your site.

The back-end is a different story. If your site relies on custom meta boxes and plugins, you may encounter issues the next time you edit a post. It will be up to the developers of your chosen plugins to bring their product up-to-speed with the changes, and if they don’t, you will have to find another solution.

One alternative is the Classic Editor plugin, which restores the classic editing interface and enables any WordPress plugins that extend it. The plugin can entirely replace the Gutenberg editor or add alternate “Edit” links that let you open a single post or page in the Classic editor, acting as a failsafe to keep the back-end of your site working as it should Gutenberg update drops.

Preparing for the Gutenberg Update

While the change has some developers wary, others are embracing the opportunity to modernize. The devs behind the incredibly popular Yoast SEO plugin are already talking about how to use Gutenberg to improve the user experience.

We’re still waiting on an official launch date, but there are things you can do in the meantime to prepare for Gutenberg:

1. Download the Gutenberg plugin and test it on your site. This is the best way to see how the Gutenberg update will effect your site. The project isn’t ready for production, but it will help you predict whether you will encounter problems when it’s
2. Review the Gutenberg FAQ and documentation. The official documentation answers many of the common questions people have about the Gutenberg update.
3. If your site relies on plugins, follow the development process. Popular plugins with a large user base are likely to be brought up to speed by their developers, but smaller ones could go obsolete. Now is a good time to review your plugins and make sure they’re up to speed.
   

We’re big fans of WordPress over here at TS, so we’re keeping a close eye on Gutenberg as it develops. We’ll be sharing our ongoing insights on this through our newsletter.

Contact TrafficSoda to Help with Your Content Creation

Blogging For SEO

Blogging may seem simple, but there’s a lot more to content SEO than just putting words to a page. Just because you’re able to write doesn’t mean your content will do well on the internet. Years ago all that mattered was what you said (i.e., keywords), but modern SEO needs you to pay close attention to how you say it.

If you want your content to rank, of course it needs to be optimized, but search engines are getting smarter every day. Google can tell when content is well-written, engaging, and informative by analyzing your content and monitoring how people interact with it. If you take nothing else away, remember this one key: content SEO relies on good writing.

Long tail Keywords

Before getting started, you need to decide on the keywords you want your content to rank for. The best way to think about this is to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and think about what they would type into their search box.

Of course, some keywords will be harder to rank for than others. If you sell t-shirts, you’ll never rank for the term “t-shirts,” but you might rank for longer keywords more relevant to your business. These are called “long-tail” keywords.

Instead of “t-shirts,” your long-tail keywords could be “custom designed t-shirts in Toronto.” The longer the search input, the more unique it is and the easier it is to rank for it.

Titling Your Blog Articles

There are two things that you need to think about when deciding on a title for your blog article:

1. Making it catchy and attention grabbing
2. Optimizing it for search engines

The best written blog is nothing if no one stops to click on its title. To grab your readers’ attention and make them want to click, figure out what would be appealing to somebody stumbling around on your site. Try to pique your readers’ curiosity with catchy words and a captivating concept.

Optimizing your title is relatively simple: just make sure your long-tail keyword is present. Search engines, not surprisingly, put more weight into a title when deciding where your content fits.

And don’t forget about subtitles. While not as important as the title, Google also uses the subtitles to decide what your article is about.

Writing a Blog Introduction

The introduction of your article is, arguably, the most important part. Unfortunately, it’s also often the weakest for new writers.

The introduction needs to set up your entire article, and be interesting and captivating enough to get someone to decide to continue reading. The best advice is to figure out why someone will stop to read your blog, and quickly tell them exactly what they want to hear. If you’re writing about how to clean a

carburetor but begin your article with a history or guide of all the engine components, you’re going to quickly lose your reader.

If there’s any part of your blog that you should focus on, it’s the introduction. Unless you can read it and picture a reader saying, “and then what?” or “oh wow, this is going to tell me exactly what I need,” you need to go back and rewrite.

In terms of SEO, Google also weighs the introduction of your blog heavier than any other paragraph in your article

Writing the Body

This is usually the easiest part for a writer. You already know what needs to be there, you just need to get it on the page in a way that’s easy to read and absorb.

Here are some quick tips for SEO writing:

• Avoid being wordy. This is a sign of an inexperienced writer. Sentences that are too long or have unnecessary words are extra work for the reader. Be short and to the point.
• Do NOT keyword stuff. Keyword stuffing is using the same key terms over and over again. This is not only bad SEO, it’s bad writing. Writers will always try to avoid using a word more than once. Why limit yourself when there are so many words in the English language? If you’re hyper-focusing on optimizing every word— don’t. Google and other search engines are smart enough to know that different words can have the same meaning. Your keywords should be in your blog organically. If they aren’t, your blog article has taken a wrong turn somewhere.
• Use your subtitles as an outline. Without an outline, it’s easy for a blog post to go off the rails. Keep yourself on track by creating an outline and sticking to it.
• Longer is not always better. Yes, longer content is better for Google, but not at the expense of readership. If you’re saying the same thing repeatedly, consider cutting out the fluff.
  
  

Proof Your Articles

It’s incredibly easy to write the last sentence of an article then sit back and think you’re done. Just read over a piece you’ve done this with after a few days or so and you’ll see the error of your ways. No writer has ever been happy with their first draft, and for good reason. A first draft of anything will always have errors, omissions, and poor wordings.

Editing and proofing is an absolute must. Not only will Google spot your errors, online readers are notoriously ruthless for jumping on any errors they find. Read over your writing out loud. It’s the best way to catch spots that don’t sound quite right or sections that seem to ramble on.

And if possible, get someone else to read it over. It’s not an easy task to catch all your own mistakes. That’s why even professional writers have editors.

Improve Your Writing with Practice

If you’ve finished high school, you’re probably confident in your ability to write. But even though we’ve all learned the nuts and bolts of writing, as with any other skill, you won’t just be good at something because you know how to do it. Do you think Tolstoy just decided to start writing one day and put together War and Peace?

Being a good writer takes practice, and becoming a great writer requires a lifetime of writing.

4 Ways to Connect With Your Audience Using Visuals

Storytelling can take on many forms. A blog post, a social media announcement, a website, an email blast, a presentation or a book. Whether your purpose is to inform, educate or entertain, adding visual content is core to how you can connect with your audience. People respond more to what they see than any other form of stimulation.

1. Break up text

In this age of “Big Data”, we are literally bombarded with information. Visual assets such as videos, photography, infographics and illustrations cut through all the noise and leave a powerful impact.

Are people just lazy readers?

Many readers will scan through large sections of text, picking out words, here and there, stopping at headlines, and maybe at an image or video that captures interest. It’s not that people are lazy readers or would not find your writing interesting. It’s just that there is such a large volume of available information, they have to move quickly to capture what is relevant to them. A reader will be more willing to read an article when colourful images are used.

2. Be more memorable

Blog posts with images and videos are more engaging to visitors.

• Web pages with more visual content rank better
• Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets

With 90% of information transmitted to the brain being visual, and a retention rate at 80%, it only makes sense to use visuals to their advantage.

Using visuals across all the major social platforms—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest, increases the:

• Number of visitors,
• Level of participation, and the
• Reach of your post.

What makes an effective visual?

A good visual will reach out on an emotional level and leave a long-lasting impression. When you connect with your audience on an emotional level, they associate it with your brand and it nurtures a feeling of trust.

Effective visuals are relatable and sharable. The right infographic can transform a complex or large amount of data into a more manageable format.

3. Set a tone

Sketchy, trendy, artistic, dark or funny—the right image will set the tone or mood for your writing. Open the door and invite your reader in.

A brand’s values and unique personality can be defined by:

• Logos
• Use of colour
• Typography
• Use of icons and relatable imagery
  

4. Implement a visual content strategy

Keep in mind that competition for your audience’s attention is high. A strong visual content marketing strategy is key to attracting internet users and building brand credibility. Just as important as headlines, and calls to action, visual content deserves more than a second thought.

Remember to:

• Show, don’t tell
• Use testimonial videos
• Share feedback
• Show customer reviews as images
• Drive content production with polls

Engage employees

• Share behind-the-scenes activities
• Encourage sharing of staff picks
• Capture celebrations of your big moments

Increase reach and visibility

• Use social media cover images
• Design your call-to-action
• Offer downloadable white papers, or e-books
• Make your images sharable
• Use a feature box on your blog

Optimize

• Change your visual’s file name
• Add a text transcript of your visuals
• Optimize file size
• Watch your embed code strategy </>

Digital Housekeeping: Keeping Your Website Competitive

Keeping a clean house is one of the first lessons you learn from your parents. Unwanted creatures can invade and take residence, style can become outdated and structural problems can ensue, if you fail to maintain and update your home from time to time. Wait too long, and even your friends won’t want to visit.

A website is not so different. Much of the focus in digital marketing revolves around content creation: consistently generating articles and other materials of relevance to send a consumer to the client’s site. However, it is imperative to also maintain your website structure and update its look and functions as needed to make sure user experience is smooth and enjoyable.

A website is often the first way that a potential customer encounters a company. If it looks disorganized, outdated, or neglected, they will likely move on to a competitor instead. If the user experience suffers in any notable way (e.g. slow page load times or other issues that cause delays), your functions and layout almost certainly need a re-vamp.

Once you have decided that a redesign is in order, here are some things to keep in mind:

Stay Current

Make sure the information you have on your website is up-to-date, applicable, and correct. Customer loyalty manifests itself in confidence, so if you do not have appearance of accuracy and professionalism, the customer will not feel confident you can give them the best service for their money.

Check your content

If you are changing or updating content, be careful of drastic changes in site size.  A website that goes from full and informative to skeletal suggests to regular users that there are behind-the-scenes issues.

When making changes to site content, your keyword usage can suffer if you are not careful in your planning. Make sure your edits don’t remove high ranking keywords, as it can impact ranking you have worked hard to earn. That is the equivalent of throwing a grand re-opening party and only sending out a tiny number of invitations.

Test Your Pages

On top of content changes, it is also essential to maintain the back end structure of your website. Have you made sure there are no dead links? Do all your function buttons work properly and within a reasonable amount of time? Google Analytics Experiments is an excellent free tool to check these functions.

Another program to employ is SEO PowerSuite’s Website Auditor, which identifies technical issues that prevent the site from attaining your desired search ranking. Once your changes are completed, SEO PowerSuite also makes sure that your pages are fully available for indexing in search engines.

Your page load time should not increase as a result of any changes. If so, then additional reformatting is required.

Design Scheme

Aesthetic appearance is another facet of your website that can always be updated and experimented with. Keep up with the latest analysis on what sorts of design both attract casual surfers and cause them to continue investigating the site. Create two or three different design approaches and run tests. Ask participants to answer questions as to what did or did not appeal to them, what sorts of colours were inviting, etc. (Curious about what colours are the most effective for attracting an audience? Check out our blog on Colour Psychology.)

Always remember: not all pages are created equal. While each on your website pages deserve attention, your home page is key. If it fails in its mission, then the remaining pages will almost be inconsequential.

Preserve your URLs

Finally, the most important rule of website redesign – never, ever, never, ever change your website URL. URLS are part of your site and company identity. Past customers likely have you bookmarked and use that method to return. Changing your URL will result in dead links, consumer confusion and can lead to a hit to your ranking.

When your redesign is complete, you will likely see an improvement in your standing. SEO PowerSuite includes a Rank Tractor that makes it easy to keep tabs on the status of your numbers. Keep an eye on this tool to see what worked well, and what could still be improved.

Updating or improving a website is just good business sense. If you can accomplish both simultaneously, you are making excellent use of time and resources.

Image: rawpixel / 123RF Stock Photo

Six Reasons Why Content Marketing is Essential for Digital Growth

Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action by changing or enhancing consumer behavior.

Joe Pulizzi

It is almost 2017, and if you are not incorporating digital marketing strategies into your traditional customer acquisition and marketing plans, you are falling behind. But why is including digital content so important and how do you get started? Find out why this method keeps you ahead of your competitors online.

It is becoming difficult to find anyone who does not have some form of social media. To ignore this easily accessible market is to loose a great opportunity for direct contact and feedback from loyal customers and potential clients.

Plain and simple, content marketing just works. It increases sales, provides costs savings and develops quality customers who have brand loyalty. When you create relevant content that focuses on what an audience is interested you are rewarded with customer retention and loyalty.

Here are 6 reasons why content marketing is essential for digital growth:

Let Content Tell your Story

Content provides a convenient and creative means to tell the story of your brand. Whether you post a blog, video, photo, interview, or podcast, this content gives the customer a window into the details of your company, and the causes you care about! When a customer knows your story, they become warm to your business and are more likely to invest in your product or service. When people get to see the personal touches of your story they are more likely to be empathetic and compassionate to your brand.

Add Value at Every Step of the Sales Funnel

The purpose of content marketing is to add value beyond just your product or service. Creative digital content can target the needs and concerns, challenges and pain points that a customer would feel throughout every part of their purchasing process.

Consider this example. A company that makes baby bedding could make a post with ideas about what to put in their new child’s nursery. Though this post does pitch the product of the bedding company, it still addresses a great concern that a new mother might be having. When you post content that is about subjects that surround your brand, you can appeal to a broader group of people. Even though they may not have been looking to buy your product initially, when they are introduced, entertained or informed by your content they are more likely to consider your brand. Content like this can answer questions that people don’t even know how to articulate!

Content Creates Relationships with Consumers

One of the greatest features of digital content is that is provides an easy avenue for customer engagement. When you are posting valuable and relevant content that customers consistently engage with, you create a community of loyal followers. This relationship is beneficial for both parties. Customers return for material that appeals to their needs and desires and you are there to provide them with the critical information that informs their purchasing decisions.  This warm audience feels loyal to your brand and will come back time and again for your relevant content!

Own Your Material

In traditional advertising and marketing, the campaigns you wanted to show to your audience had to be presented through a third- party media such as TV or radio. With digital marketing, you are able to own and control the space that presents your message. Without interrupting or having to buy an audience, you can bring customers straight to your website. You are the one who creates the content, and you are the one who benefits from the direct contact your audience with your website. Content marketing is about attracting an audience to an experience that you own, build and optimize. In content marketing the brand owns the media!

Leverage Social Media

It may seem obvious, but every digital marketing campaign must include social media. Social media provides a built in pre-existing audience, and provides a way for brands to keep directly in contact with their audience. You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ to amplify your creative content and reach massive amounts of potential customers. The more engagement you have with your most, the more successful your pages will be, so providing your followers with quality relevant content will only improve your brand. Social media is an excellent distributor for content and is vital to the success of your content marketing efforts.

Increase Your SEO Ranking

Great content that appeals to your audience contributes to a better ranking within Google. As Google continues to update their algorithms, it has become more and more clear that quality content means high rankings. When users interact and engage with your material, you build more social clout which increases your position. Social clout, quality back links and quantity of shares are all considered by Google when determining a website ranking. By incorporating relevant content that appeals to your audience, you will increase your overall rank on Google.

People are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages a day. If you provide quality content, customers feel refreshed by the break to their saturated email inboxes, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds.

People know when they are being sold to and have a greater appreciation and affinity to good creative, entertaining or informative content. In the long run, content marketing creates more loyal and quality customers who appreciate your content as much as you appreciate their purchases.

Think of it this way. What if your customers look forward to receiving your marketing? What if they are eager to share the advice with friends and spend time absorbing the content?

Copyright: ellagrin / 123RF Stock Photo