SEO Help

20 Practical Steps to Power your Content Creation, Marketing and Branding in the new AI world of Google Search

David Amerland

• Publisher: Cool Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781844810369
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

The original SEO Help kicked off the trend for down-to-Earth, practical SEO advice that helps your online business succeed. The previousedition of this book won Book Authority's "Best SEO Book of All Time" award.

Substantially revised with 80% new content this edition builds on the tradition of practical, actionable SEO tips and practices that take full advantage of changes in Google's search to help your business succeed. This edition of SEO Help, tells you what to do, when and how in order to make sure that every item of content you create, whether that is text, video, podcast or graphic; works in your favor.

In this edition of SEO Help you will also learn:

• How the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning affects search, marketing and branding (and how to take advantage of it all).
• What the fragmentation of search means to your brand and your business and how to make the most of what you currently do.
• What to do to make your brand stand out from the crowd without increasing the output of your content creation efforts.
• What to do to increase trust in your brand and the content you create in a time of negative news stories and fake news.
• How to better use Google’s Knowledge Graph (KG) to increase the trustworthiness of your digital presence.
• Why marketing and branding cannot be separated from search and your business’ SEO practices.
• How to leverage the fragmented social media landscape to your advantage.
• How to future-proof your business against constant changes in search.
• The true impact of Google’s mobile index on your digital business.
• What feasible shortcuts exist in search marketing and branding.

Like before, each chapter is thin on theory and heavy on practical steps you need to take. Like before, each chapter ends with a full practical-steps guide you should be implementing to make sure your business stays viable.

Step #1

Create a Google Account

# A Google Account is central to the success of your online identity.

If you are still wondering whether to create a Google Account or not you should have one already!

There is some debate in the SEO industry whether giving access to your privacy to Google is a good thing or not and whether Google still is a “Do not be Evil” company as its motto used to proclaim. The fact that Google quietly removed that motto from its website speaks volumes about the way the company has changed and the web, itself, is evolving.

I have an opinion about that informed by my dealings with many companies and online businesses but in this context it’s immaterial. There are two things right now that you need to keep in mind. First that Google’s recently updated privacy guidelines are no different to those of Microsoft and Yahoo and they are heck of a lot better than Apple’s and Amazon’s and second that the moment you get online to work you should give up any serious expectation of privacy.

That doesn’t mean that everything you do should be on the web but you should not expect anything you put on the public web to be hidden for long.

If you have not got a Google Account point your browser at: http://accounts.google.com/ and create one.

Make sure you fill it out completely and, incidentally, subscribe for, at the very least: Gmail, Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Docs, Google Maps, anything, in short, you find of value amongst Google’s services.

There is a good reason for that and it’s based on the fact that Google uses all of this to accumulate data about yourself, who you are and what you’re doing. It is suitably anonymized so only the patterns of your online behavior are logged in. It all, however, goes to automatically fill in Google’s understanding of your online profile and generate the trust Google places in your digital presence.

For the same reason you should be logged into your Google account when carrying out Google searches and when interacting with others on social media networks.

The ‘social signature’ you generate is very much part of your digital footprint and Google uses it to show you results in search that are relevant to you. More than that however, Google uses the data to assess your importance and influence on the web.

If you are ever going to be successful in the new search reality that has developed, you will need to have an online presence that is capable of acquiring a little ‘weight’ at least and leveraging some influence, if not your own then that of others. To achieve any of this you need to now establish a visible online identity.

If you are new to all this you will see that upon signing up for a Google Account, Google will most probably require you to also sign into Chrome, as a web browser. Do it! Again, I am not going to debate the right and wrong aspects of this. Right now what you want is to be able to promote your business online and have your site rank high on Google search, in response to relevant search queries. Use Chrome as your browser and, if you can, take advantage of some of the SEO tools that come as extensions to it.

One last word of warning. If you’re tempted to create more than one Gmail account thinking that it will help amplify your presence and ability to market, resist it. You may have more than one Gmail address for personal and professional use but the days of creating multiple accounts and online identities to use to artificially boost a website or a promotion are now behind us.

Google can see all this activity even if you have not linked anything in any obvious way. So treat your online identity with the same care and attention that you treat your offline one. As a matter of fact use the way you behave offline as a guide on how you now need to behave online. 

Before semantic search came along you could safely assume that what happened on your website (or the social media network where you spent most time on), it stayed there. This is no longer the case. The web has become transparent. Data has become portable. By the same token the sense of authority and expertise you project have also become transparent and portable and that impacts directly upon your reputation. Reputation leads to trust. Without trust no business can ever take place. So developing a sense of trust in the online world is key to succeeding as a business.

Semantic Search Action List for #Step 1

1. Create a Google Account – go to: (http://accounts.google.com/)

2. Create a recognizable Gmail Address. Do not create anything spammy like [email protected] – go instead for your name and experiment for ways that make it easy to remember. Think about how easy it will be to type it without making any spelling mistakes. This is particularly important if you have a name that is unusual or too long. You may want to experiment with ways to make it more user friendly.

3. Use Chrome as your web browser. I won’t go into any detail here as it is covered in Chapter 3.

4. Allow Google to have access to your location (this is important for the quality of a number of Google services). Location-awareness in your Google account helps Google establish who you are and what you do a little faster. It has ramifications in a latter stage of search-promotional activity. I am assuming, here, that you will be actively involved in your website and online business promotion. If not, you can skip this, though it may be a good idea not to if you want to establish an online identity that Google search takes seriously.

5. Start thinking about what you need to do in order to establish as much “data density” as possible in your online presence. This includes thinking about the type of information you will put on your website and the kind of presence you will have to develop across the web, as a whole, through your social media profiles. Data density is not so much volume as consistency which can be easily cross-referenced. So, when you place, for instance, your address on your website and have an entirely different address where you do business on your LinkedIn account this creates ambiguity on the trustworthiness of the visible data about you, which affects how search assesses it.

6. You will need to think about shooting a couple of high-quality, head and shoulders shots of you. Approach this the same way you would offline: think in terms of the impression you want to create in your target audience when they see you for the first time. Also think in terms of “brand recognition”. You want the visual of you to be clear and consistent. If possible, avoid the sunglasses look in avatars. You may think it is a cool look in real life but in the context of an online connection it only makes you look shifty. 

7. In your Google Account you will need to set up Security (http://goo.gl/uN50Hu). This is really important. It is best if you set up two-step verification (http://goo.gl/ikveoX) and install Google Authenticator (http://goo.gl/cvl2Y) on your device(s). A hacking of your Google Account could seriously compromise everything you do online, just as identity theft can compromise your offline presence.

8. Set up backups. Link up and verify your cell phone to your Google account (if you haven’t done so already) and put in place at least one more (if not two) alternative email addresses where you may be contacted.

9. Add a nickname. In the “Personal Info” section add a nickname you are known by, if applicable. This can be a pen name, if you are a writer, a stage name for an artist or actor or a name through which you are commonly associated with on forums.

10. In the “Languages” section of your Google account input any other languages that you understand. If you speak French or German, for instance, put that in there as well. Make sure that the information you place here is the same as with all other places where you are found (LinkedIn, Twitter etc).

Step #2

Establish your Identity

# Establishing your identity is key in the semantic web.

Whether you are promoting yourself (as a microbrand) or your company as a full-blown brand the key requirements are the same. In order for you to establish your identity you need to take some practical steps.

Over time these may change a little so I will start with a brief explanation and a guiding principle. Semantic search works by joining up every piece of information it can find in order to form a picture of who you are. In this sense it is no different to how we have worked, since the beginning of time, as individuals, in the offline world. In order to achieve this goal semantic search requires a simple thing: data density which, really, should be called semantic density as data without connections and association to other data are very difficult to understand.

It’s no longer enough to just ‘be’ online if you cannot also establish the credentials of who you are and what you do through the independent emergence of your name and brand on social media platforms, other publications perhaps, citations (if required) and as many favorable mentions as possible on the social web.

Whenever I mention this I get two reactions and they are both understandable: the first is a resistance to doing more work than is already being done, citing reasons of privacy, available resources and time. The second is the response that everything that can be done, is being done.

I understand the objections. None of them is an excuse and neither is entirely true, either. This is where the idea of semantic density comes in. In the offline world, because there is no real choice, we subconsciously do everything we do in a carefully considered way. The way we set up the physicality of a business, the buildings, décor, lighting, logo, colors, fonts and even merchandise positioning has a logic that resonates with the target audience.

In the offline world semantic density arises as a matter of course because we do not have to focus on the structure of the building, its building materials or the way the plumbers and electricians connected everything behind the scenes so that power flows along the wires and water runs from the taps. These are taken care of; for us, so we can focus on the things that really matter to our business. 

Online, unfortunately, we acquire X-Ray vision. We see everything that is involved in the construction of our websites. When that happens it is distracting and it becomes difficult to know where to look at first. I have seen cases where website owners obsessed over getting pixels just right, trying to align banners and display items and then completely forget to address the real reason anyone would want to visit their website. Make sure then that its content, navigation, ease-of-use and the specific way it helps an online visitor do something they need to get done are at the center of your focus. 

If you are setting up a website (or if you have one already) here are three things you should do to make sure it works the way it should:

1. Check the Design. Colors and pictures and clever scripts are great but they need to work to establish something specific that the target audience will appreciate because it helps them do what they want to do, more easily. If every design element on your website does not help guide the online visitor to do something that will help him or her, you may want to reconsider using it. If the way the website is set up visually does not immediately establish your brand and identity and appeal to the first-time visitor in an easy-to-understand way, you may want to reconsider some of its aspects. You really need to be ruthless here and choose to err on the side of function over art. 

2. Check the Content. In the past you needed content because you needed content. The number of words (and by association the number of relevant words) played an important role in itself. As a result many websites ended up containing content that was thin in value but rich in keywords that were repeated in all their possible variations at every opportunity. Avoid this trap. The content you place on your website has to really work for your online visitors, delivering real value to them. Whether you’re writing an “About Us” page or explaining something complicated, it really has to be unique in terms of tone and voice and explain exactly who you are. It also has to work in tandem with all the other copy you place on all the other pages so there is no page where you will ‘optimize’ for landing and have copy elsewhere that does nothing or, worse still, works at odds with your ‘best’ pages. 

3. Make it flat. Website architecture is something that’s frequently overlooked. I’ve seen websites with great content that had it buried several levels deep and had, on top of that, failed to include a site search that would make content easier to find. The flatter your website structure is, the easier it becomes for the visitor to find what they are looking for and the easier a search engine spider indexes your site.

While the three steps detailed here seem to have little to do with identity they actually force you to think about how you want to work online. What is your ‘style’, what will drive your content creation, how will you project that? These are all identity questions.

Semantic Search Action List for #Step 2

1. Design your website to help your audience, not yourself. Your online success really depends on how good you are at being helpful to those who find you. Create a list of the questions and problems that trouble your target audience. Then assign design and content choices you have made on your website to the questions and problems of your audience. Do this right and you have a quick marketing win on your hands.

2. Plan before you write anything. Work out who your audience really is. Create content that answers the burning questions your audience has. Break down what you do in specific, related themes or one overarching theme (whichever is most suitable). Then use a thematic guide to help you be as detailed and thorough as possible in your content creation. This way you can create articles that can actually reference each other to provide greater depth on a particular question you are answering or a subject you are tackling.

3. Provide accessibility. Obstacles, however small, lose you customers and hurt your business. Streamline everything and work hard to understand where possible access obstacles reside in your website, your copy, the style of your communication, and so on. Then work to remove them.

4. Create a strategy before you do anything. I know it’s basic but getting things done on the web takes time and effort. We all want to see a website being created and a business begin to work. Before you get to that stage take the time to think carefully why you’re in business. What is it that drives you before the obvious need for money? Once you have that clear (and you will need to articulate it in writing) consider how you will make it clear to those who find you online.

5. Details are important. Put in as much data as possible about you and y...