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All SEOs have been there before, no matter what you propose or how much you pay an expert to write a great piece of content, your client never thinks it is worthy of placement on their website. There are a number of different reasons a client may see your content ideas this way which we will discuss. However, for as many reasons not to post something on your site there are an equal amount of counterpoints. As SEOs our job is to convey this message in a way so that the client sees value, allowing us to do our job and bring results, creating a long term relationship and client for life. Reasons Your Content Ideas Aren’t Getting Past the GatekeeperHyper-nichesSome clients operate in such a specialized industry that as an SEO or content writer, you will never have the expertise to generate valuable content to the searchers. Finding writers for these niches can cause your margin to disappear completely, forcing you to raise prices before you even get going. They’re worried about misinformation being posted on their site before they can correct it and risk embarrassment to legit customers or the competition. No SEO Priority InternallyNo matter what business the client is in, they will need to provide some notes for content creation. Additionally, they usually want to approve all posts before going live with any new information on the site. Having no internal contact with a priority on SEO can cause a backlog of content pieces waiting for posting but never getting the final approval. YouThis is usually the cause. The way you present the data and the opportunity to rank is not clearly laying out the time-cost benefit. SEOs constantly get lost in the ambiguity of search engine algorithms and can over explain certain metrics or not provide enough context on the ones that matter. SolutionsHyper-nichesIf your client operates in a hyper niche like a specific medicine or law, getting good content up and then building links can take so much time, effort and money that you risk losing the client by not delivering in a reasonable period of time. Instead of shelling out to have a 5,000 word blog post written that takes up half your budget and will take months to rank, consider leveraging the staff at this business. If there are any interns or lower level employees that show promise, these could be your keys to content success. The following are a list of content ideas that a touch point inside the business can provide you which you can then turn into a SEO masterpiece with some on-site work and link building:
No SEO Priority InternallyThis is the hardest of the three to overcome because a lot of it lies out of your control. If there is no SEO priority internally you need to have an “intervention” style meeting and let the client know that a workflow for content needs to be approved otherwise efforts on all sides are wasted and you are better off bowing out of the project. Tools like Surfer SEO can help put your new content pieces into easily read and transmitted SEO focused documents that can do a lot of the hand holding for approval. We have also heard of agencies who have stipulations in their contracts that allow them to post content on the client's site within X number of days. YouThis can really be the cause of both issues above. If the client doesn't believe you can put out relevant info in their hyper-niche that falls on you. If the client is unmotivated by SEO, again, that falls on you as the service provider. The best way to convey your message early on in the onboarding process of this pesky client is to show real world examples of what you have created and how it has brought users to that site which ultimately converted into sales. If you are new at SEO you can use tools like ones we have discussed in this blog to show an example of someone else who has used content similar to that which you are proposing to propel their business. Metrics Business Owners Care About (in our experience):
SEO is not a game of hitting numbers like word count, backlinks, and search volume. But you’re not selling your services to SEOs. The last 4 bullets in the list above are some of the best metrics you can use to convince someone a piece of content is worth pursuing. Use these to get the ball rolling and then introduce things like authority of each link and heading structure after the client is excited and see the benefit in this new content. ConclusionAt the end of the day if you aren’t creating content regularly that has a purpose, your SEO efforts will struggle to amount to much. There is often a fountain of convincing information that lies in the sites of the competition. Combine all 3 tactics above for success: present the information through a value lens, build a workflow with the client that works for everyone, and find a touch point inside the business that can help move these SEO efforts along.
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Anchor text is the text that contains a clickable link on a webpage. This is anchor text. Anchor text requires thought and attention in link building and is something that should be looked at through a data driven lens. In this article we will highlight different types of commonly used anchors, how to create your own anchor text data specific to your niche, and what the future of anchor text will be. Enjoy!
Different Types of Anchor Text
Branded Anchor Text
Branded anchor text uses the exact name of your business. i.e. Mad Mango Marketing Exact Match Exact match anchor texts use the exact target keyword of the page it is linking to as the anchor text. i.e. Search Engine Optimization Services Partial Match Similar to the exact match anchor text, partial match includes the target keyword of the page it is linking to but it is mixed along with other words. i.e. Website Menus impact on SEO Naked Links Naked anchor texts use the exact URL of the target page as the anchor text. i.e. https://www.madmangomarketing.com/ Long-tail Long-tail anchors are longer than partial match anchor texts and contain more words/phrases that are relevant to the target keyword. i.e. Average Price of Search Engine Optimization Generic Generic anchor texts use generic words or phrases. i.e. here, read more, learn more Latent Semantic Index keywords or "LSI" LSI is the name of the method that search engines use to predict what users will type into the search bar. LSI is what happens when I type in “What is Search Engine” and Google populates guesses as to what the rest of my query will be. The benefit is debatable to say the least. These are some of the common names you will read or hear about as you familiarize yourself with SEO. At the end of the day, creating anchor text that tells the user what to expect when they click a link to any page, internal or external, is the best approach. Build Your Own Data
Do not rely on aggregated data from around the web if you can avoid it. Instead, use software like ahrefs to analyze your closest competition. This will make your research much clearer and impactful for your specifically desired rankings.
Ahrefs will show you the exact percentage split that your competition uses. Search for the terms you want to rank for and put the link of the ranking page into “site explorer”. Look at the spread that they have and mark how many fall into each of the categories above. This is in no way a guarantee, but it more likely than not shows what Google will tolerate & rank. The more competition, the less webpages you will need to compare due to a higher link count. If you are in a service space many of your competitors may not even have a backlink to a ranking page. What to do if you are local?
Local businesses should be most focused on local links. These rarely present the opportunity to dictate how your link is placed. Luckily, what the data shows to work the best are Branded and Naked anchor text. This makes sense from a user and search engine point of view when pointing to your homepage so keep all links pointing here Branded or Naked.
For your content and service pages you should take the advice above if you are engaging in a link building campaign that goes past your local area. Does Anchor Text Optimization Have a Future?
Search engines are getting crazy intuitive! It would make sense that someday soon Google would discard obviously built links with questionable anchor text (especially exact match). The issue lies in the fact that people will always need to refer to off site content when they don’t have the time or expertise to explain or present a concept. A backlink is giving credit, that will never go away. This ambiguity means other metrics need to be taken into account like the value of the content on the rest of the site, site traffic, and even the backlink profile of the site itself.
For the foreseeable future, anchor text will still be a variable considered when ranking your page or site.
Conclusion
If you are looking to dip your toe in the water experimenting with anchor text the first thing you should do is learn the percentage split your competitors are using and match that. Once you have this base established, let Google get used to reading your site like this for a couple months and start making adjustments favoring one type of anchor text over another. Compare quarters at a time if you are in a site with low traffic and months at a time for higher visited sites. Find what works for your site, monitor and adjust slowly.
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AuthorAll blogs are written by our incredible staff here at Mad Mango Marketing. Your Connecticut SEO, App Development, and Online Advertising experts. Archives
September 2021
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