However, you must also avoid harmful practices like keyword cannibalization, which occurs when too many similar terms and phrases are used throughout a website. This can cause your site to rank lower in searches, which then prevents customers from finding you. Taking the right steps can hone your keyword strategy and ensure you’re not inadvertently making it harder to find your business online. Here are a few methods to try.

 Combine Similar Content

A good web page will offer lots of useful content to visitors. If you notice that some of the pages on your site use similar keywords but lack valuable content overall, now is the best time to consolidate them. Combining similar pages helps you avoid harmful keyword practices, but it can also provide more value to your users thanks to the boost in content. Keep in mind that search engines are primarily concerned with user experience when it comes to ranking, so pages with a lot to offer tend to take priority.

Develop New Landing Pages

Landing pages are designed to compel visitors to take a specific action, such as buying a product or scheduling a service. Developing a new landing page allows you to link it to pages with similar content, which can help with your search rank. The search engine will now have an authoritative page containing relevant information, which means it will be better equipped to rank the page correctly when it comes to keyword usage.

Perform New Keyword Research

Keep in mind that it’s often necessary to update your keyword approach over time. In this case, you can remove the duplicate keywords and replace them with new ones to improve your reach within your target audience. For instance, long-tail keywords are more conversational, which means they’re often linked to voice-based searches conducted on mobile devices. By adding long-tail keywords to your online content, you eliminate the negative impact of keyword cannibalization while also expanding your site’s reach.

Thanks to our decades of experience, SonicSEO.com can help our clients avoid harmful practices like keyword cannibalization. Our team uses research-backed processes when it comes to keyword selection, which is a crucial principle of search engine optimization. Contact us today so that we can discuss your current keyword strategy.

If you’re iffy on the whole company blogging thing, think about this:

Blogging Establishes you as an Industry Expert

Blogging gives you the opportunity to do more than plug specific products and/or services. You often need to explain why your services or products are necessary or how your products and services are superior compared to your competition’s. By blogging about the “why,” “how” and “so what” about your business, you establish your authority on these topics.

Blogging Expands Your Reach

As an established authority, people start to turn to you for reliable information about trends in your industry and evolutions in your own product/service line. When people get good information, they share it.

Blogging Enhances Your SEO Performance

Blogging can boost SEO results because blogging does what search engines are looking for:

Creates Fresh Content

Search engine algorithms can sniff stale content. Blogs add new content connected to your website regularly (how regularly is up to you—daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)

Generates backlinks

Quality blogs are shared, and that creates respected backlinks (i.e. links from other authoritative sites/sources that point back to your site), which have been among ranking criteria for years.

Drives Interest

Quality blogs can drive interest in your products and/or services, and interest means traffic…and high-traffic pages (and pages viewers stay on) are good for ranking.

When your blog keeps your website fresh and interesting, you, your business, and your products/services stay relevant to your customers. That means your brand is always at the top of their list to share with their friends—online and offline—and that’s free marketing that you can’t pass up!

What Should You Write About?

While many businesses admit to the clear benefits of blogging, it’s the challenge of actually creating text that often gets in the way. So, what should you write about?

Of course, we can’t dictate topics specifically. But when you are looking for ideas to blog about, remember that you’re writing to human readers, and what interests them? Stories. Tell the story of your company, your challenges, your commitments to new developments or industry advances. Tell customer success stories (or invite customers to guest blog to add their own voice to your blog). Tell stories of epic fails that led to improvements in your products, services and/or customer experiences.

Your company has a lot of stories to tell…and when you can’t think of them, then fall back on reminders—why they need your products/services and why yours are the best.

And if you are still plagued by writer’s block, fall back on the blogging and reputation management services provided by SonicSEO.com.

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Quality Content Is…

Because no search engine is revealing how their algorithm determines what is/is not quality content, there is no one definition and no one formula to follow to create it. Quality content can present itself in a number of ways, such as:

• Long (like thousands and thousands of words long) informative pieces
• Shorter but frequently updated content (like blogs, news stories, etc.)
• Short video that hits “the sweet spot” (it was posted at the right place at the right time, and the end is another Internet cat meme)
• Any combination of these

Not every site needs every type of quality content. In fact, part of what makes quality content for your site is creating content that will match your users’ search intent and provide information that keeps them on the page.

Short is Not Always So Sweet

Just as “you need quality content” is a tenet of SEO, so is the knowledge that Internet users don’t want to read. Seems paradoxical, right? Closer to the truth may actually be that Internet users don’t want to read useless stuff, but they will invest the time to further scan, read and click-through content that is relevant to their needs.

So, websites with minimal text trying to cater to non-reading viewers may actually be compromising their SEO performance. Quality content needs words—lots of them. The key is making any and all words on the page relevant to a specific topic and that topic relevant to your users’ search needs.

One word of caution: quality content must be original content. Indexing history will tell the search engines where content first resided, so if you found quality content on someone else’s site and copied it to yours (even if you got permission from the original author), that’s duplicate content, a penalty-worth search engine offense. Even original text that you wrote used on multiple pages can be deemed duplicate content. Quality content needs to be unique for each page.

Implied Keywords

Keywords will never be dead, but gone are the days where choice phrases used multiple times on a single page meant top rankings. Today’s search engine algorithms are so sophisticated, they read like humans. You don’t necessarily have to use the words your page is about on the page. In other words, keyword phrases may be implied by the rest of the content. Sure, explicit use of phrases you’d like to rank for will not hurt as long as they appear naturally.

Quality Content Courtesy of SonicSEO.com

Creating quality content may feel like hitting a moving target, but SonicSEO.com has sharpshooters. The key to creating quality content is to not game the system but to focus on what your target audience wants and needs. We do that for you when we first create your website and as needed to maintain your ranking performance.

While this scenario is perfect for the novice chef or busy housewife, a Web site needs a bit more TLC. You can’t simply throw some content with a hint of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and a dash of Web design into a magic pot and wait for the clients to come calling. In order to have an effective web presence and target your niche market, your site needs to be properly optimized by a professional SEO team.

There are over 100 components that make up the SEO process, and each one needs to be completed expertly. From copywriting to link building, Web design to analytical research, SEO is more of a gourmet team effort than a pot of partially cooked solo ingredients.

Without maintenance, updating, and improvements, your site will start to look like stale bread—and no one likes stale bread. By investing both time and advertising dollars in SEO, you can enliven your Web site, impress your audience, and watch your ROI rise.

A professionally optimized site needs constant attention—no setting and forgetting here. If you are interested in developing a solid Web presence and reaching out to clients online, carefully strategize your Web site’s design, content, links, and structure with an experienced SEO firm.

The best way to get clients to your site is through search engine optimization. Once potential clients start finding your site, the best way to develop a trust with them is to understand their wants, needs, and expectations. There are several things to keep in mind as you write for your clients:

Keep It Simple

Although most, if not all, businesses have jargon, acronyms, or lingo pertaining to their particular field, your clients probably won’t know what it means. Avoid using technical terms on your Web site that make your clients need to use Google to understand what you’re saying. Keep your content clear, concise, and simple.

Get to the Point

Even though it’s nice to showcase your talent, experience, and expertise, your clients do not want to see 20 pages of you. They are interested in your knowledge of the business, and they want to be convinced you are the best business to meet their needs. Use “you” language to speak to your audience’s needs in a way that highlights your strengths and the unique value you offer.

Make It Scannable

When people read websites, they are not interested in reading lengthy paragraphs or complex sentences. They are looking for pages that are easy to scan, find the information they need, and take action. If clients have to trudge through heavy content to get one piece of information, they’ll go elsewhere to find it more easily.

Be the Expert
As the owner of a business, you are the expert—not your client. If they wanted to read pages of intricate details about your profession, they may be your competition. Clients want to know that you understand the business, and they don’t have to.

Ask for Action

Tell people what you want them to do after they visit your site. Do you want them to call you? Fill out a form? Sign up for a newsletter? Email you? You definitely won’t see the results you want with your website if you don’t clearly state the action you want people to take…and back it up with compelling reasons why they should take action.

When writing content for your site, your audience is the number one consideration. If your clients realize through your copy that you are experienced, knowledgeable, and trustworthy, it will be easier for them to take the action you have set forth. Talk to them, not at them.