The snowball effect is where the real ‘magic’ happens in SEO.
SEO builds a permanent asset, unlike paid advertising where the traffic stops as soon as you stop buying ads. As you invest over time by regularly publishing targeted content, the size and ranking of your site effectively ‘snowballs’.
Here are three steps you should follow to maximize your snowball effect:
1. Publish on a consistent schedule
Search engines prefer websites that regularly produce new content, such as news sites and blogs, over those that never change. For best results, set a publishing schedule (whether it’s three times a week or twice a month) and stick to it as best you can. Quality always trumps quantity; it is better to produce 2 high-quality posts per month than 10 low-quality posts.
2. Use a variety of keywords
It is clear from Google’s recent actions that targeting just a few ‘money’ keywords on your website may be viewed as spam. By engaging in SEO, you automatically increase your site’s keyword diversity and look more credible to search engines.
As we mentioned in part 4, your Google Analytics data is a great source for this data, but it tends to be overwhelming (who can create content for 500 keywords?). HitTail is a great filter for finding the long tail keywords that your website has the highest potential to dominate (remember our fancy algorithm? 1.2 billion keywords analysed and pivoting on 8 factors? It really works).
3. Target one keyword per article or blog post
In general, one targeted article or blog post for each underperforming keyword is enough to begin ranking highly for that search term. Each page should have at least 250 words of quality content — to be safe, we recommend 400 words. If you have two similar keywords you wish to target, be sure that their articles are unique (i.e. do not just swap out the keyword).
4. Spread the word
In an ideal world, you would become an authority in your niche. Google looks at a number of different signals to measure your authority, most of which relate to how people consume and share your content.
Here are a few ways to get your content out in the wild:
- Build a social media presence. If your target audience is engaged on social media, then try to find ways to provide value to your audience by interacting with them. An engaged audience is much more likely to share links than the average anonymous visitor.
- Generate press releases. Press releases are still an effective way to gain exposure and service like PRWeb make them trivial to distribute. You should only put out a press release if you have something newsworthy to share.
- Participate in communities. Find out where your target audience ‘hangs out’ online (e.g. discussion forums, popular blogs, YouTube) and make yourself known by adding value to the conversation.
