Identifying your target keywords is only the first phase of a successful SEO strategy. In order to actually increase search traffic to your website, you’ll need to strategically include those keyword phrases in your website content in order to rank in the SERPs.

If you have not yet completed the keyword research process, make sure to visit our complete guide on finding keywords for SEO. Then, signup for a SearchAtlas account to get full access to our easy-to-use keyword research tool.

What is Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the words and phrases that your target audience is using when searching for products and services like yours online.

By conducting keyword research, you have likely already found some keywords that you would like your website content to rank for.

Some of the key metrics you should have on hand from your keyword research include:

• Keyword Ideas: These are the keywords that you have identified as relevant to your website content
• Search Volume: This is the total number of searchers your keyword ideas receive each month from Google
• Keyword Difficulty: This is the estimated competitive difficulty to rank for a keyword. Learn more about Keyword Difficulty here. 
• Cost-Per-Click: The price that advertisers are paying per click in Adwords to rank at the top of the SERP

By understanding which keywords your target audience is using to search for information, you can then create content that is more valuable and relevant to their needs. 

So I Have My Keyword List…Now What?

If you’ve already gone through the work of identifying your keywords, it’s time to start the search engine optimization process.

Here are 5 next steps for how to move from your keyword list to earning real website traffic from search engines.

1. Organize your Keywords with your Website Content

To maximize the total keywords your website ranks for and earn the highest amount of organic clicks, each web page of your website should be optimized for a different keyword or keyword group.

The content should be distinct enough that Google sees the pages as different and therefore promotes the various pages for different sets of keywords.

For example, let’s say your business is a B2C business like an online dog supply store. You will want your homepage to rank for keywords that are similar to the primary purpose of your business, so keywords like “dog supplies” or “dog supplies store.”

If you do your keyword research in SearchAtlas, you can easily organize similar keywords into lists, like seen below:

When it comes to how to best organize your keywords and content, here are a few tips.

Tip #1: Think About your Website’s Topic Areas

Although your website likely has a primary topic area, there are likely many different subtopics that also have relevance to your products or services.

In our example, “dog supplies,” is the primary topic area of the website. But subcategories include the many categories of products sold on the website, such as dog food, dog leashes, dog toys, dog training aids, and more.

Depending on how your category pages are set up (or if you are another type of business, you’re primary service pages) you will want to match up your keywords and your content accordingly. For example:

• https://www.dogsupplies.com/dog-food/ = “dog food brands,” “top brands dog food,” “dog food brands best”
• https://www.dogsupplies.com/dog-toys/ = “dog toys,” “good dog toys,” “dog chew toys”
• https://www.dogsupplies.com/dog-training/ = “dog training products,” “dog potty training products,” “dog training products online”

By optimizing these individual pages for the most relevant keywords, you will be promoting the pages on your website that are the most relevant to the user’s search intent.

Tip #2: Target Long-tail Keywords with Blog Content

During your keyword research, you may have noticed that there are hundreds to thousands of ways that users may be searching for products or services like yours.

For example, instead of a keyword like “hr software,” a users may use a keyword phrase like, “best hr software for mid size teams.”

Search queries like these are called “long-tail keywords,” because they are usually longer and represent users near the top of the marketing funnel. Long-tail keywords are often lower search volume, but they are often less competitive and still show strong conversion potential.

Writing and optimizing blog content is a great strategy for ranking for these types of long-tail searches. Blog content provides valuable information to users and answers their questions while still showcasing your unique products, services, or value propositions.

2. Prioritize Keywords By Value and Competitive Landscape

So which keywords on your list are the most important to target? Well, the keywords that you should be prioritizing are those that you have the greatest potential to rank for.

For example, a keyword like “dog supplies near me” is highly relevant to my dog supplies website, but it is also very competitive.

If I were a brand new website, it is unlikely I would be able to rank on the first page for this competitive search term.

So instead, a search term with lower Keyword Difficulty, but similar search intent, would give my website a better chance of ranking, and therefore driving organic clicks right away.

Although lower search volume, the lower Keyword Difficulty score means my new website has a much better chance of ranking on page 1 for this keyword. After my website increases its Domain Authority, I can target more competitive keywords at a later date.

Two other important factors to consider when prioirtizing keywords are: 

• Search Intent: Transactional and commercial keywords are likely to have higher conversion potential than informational or navigational keywords, as those users are ready to buy soon, rather than informational searchers that are still in the research phase
• CPC: Cost-per-click is a good indicator of the value of a keyword. If advertisers are paying a high price to rank for a keyword in an Adwords campaign, then that keyword likely represents qualified audiences or users

3. Include your Keywords in your Website Content

Once you organize and prioritize your keywords, it’s time to include your keywords in your website content.

This process is called on-page SEO, and it involves strategically incorporating keywords and variations of your target keywords into metadata such as:

• Url slugs 
• Page Titles 
• Meta Descriptions
• H1s-H6s
• Image Alt Text

Google looks to these on-page elements to understand what your website content is about and when to promote it for users. 

If you are using a plugin like Yoast SEO, you can easily add in your keywords to your title, slug, and meta description and also ensure optimized character length.

These elements will form the blue, clickable link of your search result and can impact your click-through-rates. Although Google may display your title tag and meta description slightly differently, it is still essential to include your target keywords in the metadata to increase ranking potential.

However, don’t overdo it on the keyword inclusion, as your content should still read naturally and proiritize bringing value to users. It’s best to include variations of your keywords, or other keywords within the same keyword cluster, rather than the same keyword again and again.

4. Optimize your Content Using a Content Optimizer

To increase the potential of ranking for your keywords, your website copy also should be high-quality, in-depth, and explore all of the various subtopics related to your keyword.

A content optimizer tool can help you create higher-quality content by suggesting key terms that you should include on the page. 

When optimizing a web page, simply enter the keyword from your list and the SearchAtlas SEO Content Assistant will suggest key terms, phrases, subtopics, and questions that should appear somewhere in your content.

Adding in these terms and improving your content score can mean higher rankings and better performance for your content. 

In addition to focus terms, the SEO Content Assistant will also suggest:

• Related keywords: Similar keywords that you can also target in your content
• Common Questions: These are questions users are asking in relationship to the keyword. Including them on the page can increase your web pages appearances for People Also Ask or other featured snippets
• Suggested Internal Links: Other relevant pages on your website that you may want to link to. More internal links helps Google find and index your other pages and understand how your website content interrelates.

5. Track your Keywords in a Rank Tracker

After your optimized content is published live on your website and indexed by Google, you should track how your content is performing for your target keywords.

Remember that SEO does take time. If your content is properly optimized, you should start earning impressions within 1-2 weeks, however, it may be a few months before you start ranking in higher positions. 

But in the meantime, use the rank tracker in SearchAtlas to add keywords from your list and start tracking them.

Using a rank tracker is a straightforward process. Simply enter the keywords that you want to track, and the tool will provide you with an instant report of you current ranking positions and any changes that occur over time. This allows you to stay ahead of your competition and make data-driven decisions that boost your content’s visibility in search engine results pages.

To speed up the process of ranking on the first page, consider investing in link building services. Although high-quality, optimized content is essential to ranking for your target keywords, backlinks are also an important ranking factor. 

For the best results after keyword research, consider implementing both on-page and off-page strategies!

Conclusion

Now that you know what to do after keyword research, why wait? Identifying the right keywords is an important part of the SEO process, but you will actually have to make changes and updates to your website content in order to achieve your goals of driving organic traffic.

If you need help along the way, our team at LinkGraph specializes in on-page optimization and backlink building. We can help speed up the process of ranking and getting more eyes on your website content, products, and services.

The post What to Do After Keyword Research: 5 Next Steps appeared first on LinkGraph.

The truth is, many of the common traits of niche businesses resemble what Google values in the long term – such as specialized expertise in primary topic areas. That means niche brands have an amazing opportunity to absolutely dominate search engine results.

The below guide to niche-driven SEO will break down why SEO can be so effective for niche businesses. It will also cover the unique advantages and common challenges that niche businesses may face in ranking. Lastly, you’ll learn how to execute an SEO campaign that helps your niche business grow in online visibility, website traffic, and revenue.

What are Niche Markets?

Niche markets refer to specific target audiences or customer segments with unique needs, preferences, and interests. These markets are characterized by a narrow focus and a high level of specialization. 

Niche markets are often overlooked by large companies that tend to cater to broader audiences, leaving room for small businesses and startups to enter with products and services that cater to the specific needs of these audiences.

Some defining characteristics of niche markets include:

• An ability to generate substantial profits due to their highly specialized focus

• Customers that are willing to pay a premium for products and services that cater to their unique interests and needs

• A higher level of customer loyalty, as customers within these markets are more likely to become repeat customers.

In today’s competitive search engine environment, identifying and targeting niche audiences can be a key to success, particularly for startups that are looking to make inroads in their respective industries.

What is Niche-Driven SEO?

Niche-driven SEO, also known as niche-focused SEO, is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on targeting a specific audience or niche with specific keywords and content.

The objective of this approach is to drive organic traffic to a website that is relevant and valuable and ultimately converts leads into customers.

Through careful optimization and strategic planning, businesses can create a niche-driven SEO campaign with sustained growth and success.

Common SEO Challenges for Niche Markets

For those marketers working in niche markets where the competition is low and the target audience is specific, there are some challenges that may end up arising in an SEO campaign for niche markets.

Finding Relevant Keywords to Target

Unlike larger industries with numerous keywords, niche markets have a limited range of keywords, making it difficult to rank for a high number of search queries. As a result, businesses may have to opt for long-tail keywords or use industry-specific jargon to reach their target audience. Also, relevant keywords may also have low search volume, as there are just fewer searchers familiar with those keywords because your products are niche.

Low Domain Authority

Building backlinks helps to establish authority and trust with search engines, but it is tough to attain for niche businesses. Websites in popular industries attract more natural links, and it can be challenging for niche businesses to compete. However, by producing high-quality and unique content and promoting it effectively, businesses in niche markets may be able to increase their backlinks, because other websites in your niche industry will want to link to it.

Limited Resources or Budgets

Finally, limited resources can be a significant challenge for businesses in niche markets. Niche businesses often operate with a limited budget, workforce, and tools, making it harder to execute some SEO practices, such as keyword research, content creation, and link-building. However, it’s essential that niche businesses invest time in identifying and prioritizing the most valuable SEO strategies, so they can overcome their limitations and achieve success.

Advantages of Niche SEO

Despite the challenges, there are some advantages for niche businesses that want to use SEO to leverage SEO to gain new leads and customers. In particular, other marketers in your niche may not be investing in SEO because of the more nuanced, careful strategy it takes to succeed.

Specific Keywords and Clear Search Intent

Firstly, since niche products cater to a specific audience, it is easier to target keywords and optimize your content accordingly. This means you have a better chance of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords. Additionally, since the competition for niche products is lower, your chances of ranking higher for those keywords are also higher.

Valuable, Highly-Specific Content

Secondly, when people search for niche products, they are often looking for specific information about that product or industry.

By creating valuable and informative content around your product, you can attract potential customers and establish yourself as an authority in your niche. This can lead to more conversions and sales in the long run.

Loyal Customer Base

Finally, niche products often have a dedicated following of customers who are passionate about the product. By utilizing SEO, you can reach these customers more easily and create a community around your brand.

Overall, SEO can provide significant advantages for niche products. By targeting specific keywords, creating valuable content, and reaching a dedicated audience, you can establish your brand as a leader and thought leader in your niche and increase sales in the process.

How Can I Use SEO to Grow in My Niche?

There are a few tried and true SEO strategies that will you get your content in front of the exact audience looking for your niche products or services.

1. Target Jargon or Keywords Unique to your Industry

One of the first steps to utilizing SEO for your niche is conducting thorough keyword research. 

This includes identifying the keywords and phrases that your target audience is using to search for products or services in your niche industry.

Thankfully, niche markets often have very specific keywords, meaning strong search intent. This is because not very many people are searching for these terms, or because these terms require some type of specific knowledge to even be searching them in the first place.

When doing keyword research using SearchAtlas, you can use CPC as a guide for what keywords are the highest-converting in your niche, and don’t let lower search volume deter you.  If competitors are willing to pay a high price for certain keywords in a PPC campaign, that means those keywords likely represent qualified audiences.

2. Make Sure Search Engines Understand What Your Website is About

Search engine crawlers look at all of the content on your website to understand what your website is about and who it is intended for. Don’t be afraid to leverage the jargon of your niche, as that shows Google that your content is designed exactly for those users searching for similar same terms in the search bar.

You can also use some of these other elements to help communicate to Google the purpose of your website:

• A sitemap: A sitemap communicates to Google what web pages on your website are the most important and how they relate
• SEO HTML Tags: Including your niche keywords strategically into your website’s content, including titles, meta descriptions, headings, and body copy helps Google’s crawlers understand your website content
• Social Profiles: Adding links to your social profiles from your website, and vice versa, can help Google easily identify your social profiles and rank them for your brand name
• Author Authority: Your creators should be experts in your niche and show strong experience with your topic areas. Make sure to communicate that you have expert creators through author bios on blog content and author pages

The site auditor tool in your SearchAtlas dashboard is a great tool for confirming proper sitemap implementation, open graph tags, Twitter cards, and optimized metatags. 

Run a site audit report and see which issues may need to be resolved before your niche website can start ranking higher and more often in the SERPs.

3. Regularly Write and Publish Highly-Specific Content

One of the best ways for niche businesses to leverage SEO is through highly specific and informative content.

Google loves to see long-form, helpful content that explores a topic in-depth. Creating content that explains important concepts, terms, subjects, or trends in your niche not only provides value to your current and future customers, but it shows Google that your website is an expert in your niche area.

High-quality content helps with establishing your website as an authority in your industry and increases its organic visibility. The more high-quality content that you create about relevant topics in your niche, the more opportunities you have to connect with your target audience.

For better content, use the SEO Content Assistant to help you with the content creation process. Add in the suggested Focus Terms, internal links, and questions to ensure that your content has the highest ranking potential and provides the most value to your niche audience.

Getting on a consistent publication schedule with blog content is one of the best ways to develop your online presence in your niche. Blog content can also be shared across multiple platforms, driving more traffic to your website which leads to even more opportunities for visibility and branding.

4. Earn Backlinks Through Thought Leadership Content

Backlinks are absolutely essential to ranking in search engines, as they are one of Google’s number one ranking factors. 

But earning backlinks can be really hard work, particularly if you are a newer provider or bringing a new product to your niche. 

One of the best ways your niche company can earn backlinks is by providing thought leadership content to online publications in your industry. Likely, your target audience is reading and engaging with these publications on a consistent basis and looks to them for industry news, trends, and insights.

These publications are often looking for writers or creators with experience and expertise who can help them create content. Simply reach out to the editors or content managers at these publications and see if they are interested in a guest post.

Doing this type of manual outreach for multiple publications can mean regular opportunities to build backlinks in a safe and effective way.

Common Niche SEO Services

When you’re trying to increase your website’s visibility and reach more potential customers, it’s important to have an informed and consistent SEO strategy in place. Depending on your specific business needs, there are several common niche SEO services offered by an SEO agency like LinkGraph that can support your niche SEO efforts.

Page Speed Optimization

Regardless of your industry, having a fast-loading, high-performing website is essential to ranking in search engines. If your niche website has a lot of images, videos, or resources to help educate visitors about your product, you might be more susceptible to slow-loading pages or poor responsiveness.
Investing in page speed optimization can have an immediate impact on your keyword rankings across all of your web pages. If you’re not sure about the speed and performance of your website, passing Core Web Vitals and high PSI scores is a good signal that your website is performing well for visitors.

Link Building for Niche Markets

One of the most effective SEO strategies, and most immediate, is high-quality link building. By building backlinks to the highest-priority pages on your website, Google will see that your domain is trusted by others in your industry.

High-quality link-building will involve original content creation and manual outreach to relevant, industry-specific publications. Be wary of those services that promise backlinks overnight, as the backlink-building process takes public relations outreach and content creation and often takes a few months to secure. At LinkGraph, we operate at scale, and with our network of existing publication relationships, are able to earn backlinks within 30 days.

Technical or B2B Blog Writing Services

Because high-quality content is such an effective niche SEO strategy, investing in content writers with industry experience is a must. A blog writing agency can work with your team to identify the high-value topics and keywords that your target audience is using.

Then, they will create high-quality, long-form articles that provide in-depth explorations of important topics related to your niche. Remember, with every new blog post you publish, you can earn hundreds of new keyword rankings.

Although working with freelancers can be affordable, they might not always have the technical knowledge necessary to write about niche topics. Outsourcing your content creation to a content writing agency with skilled technical writers may be the best option to help you create the high-quality content it takes to rank.

Enterprise SEO Services

If you are in a highly competitive niche industry, you may want to consider enterprise SEO services. This type of SEO strategy is designed for large companies with complex websites and a lot of competition. 

Enterprise SEO involves a detailed analysis of your website’s structure, technical issues, and backlink profile, followed by a comprehensive strategy for improving your rankings and visibility.

Ultimately, the right SEO services for your business will depend on your specific needs and goals. Hiring a professional SEO agency or consultant can help you determine which niche services will be most effective for your business and help you achieve your SEO goals.

Final Thoughts

Just because you’re in a niche market doesn’t mean you should avoid the power of SEO. In fact, your niche status might actually serve as an advantage that helps you drive organic traffic in less time!

If you are interested in working with a skilled team of SEO professionals to develop a manged campaign for your niche, reach out to our team today for a free strategy session.

The post Niche SEO: A Guide to SEO for Niche Markets appeared first on LinkGraph.

You just onboarded a new public relations client whose brand you truly believe in. Not only does this brand fit your ideal client profile, but it also has concrete plans to scale. The problem? The director wants a future-proof PR plan, stat.

They’re ready to get the word out about their new product launches and store openings and expect a plan by the end of the week. They’re looking to you to create a PR plan that’ll attract influencers, media reps, and customers who can help spread the word about their new venture — and if you can’t do that, they’ll look for someone who can.

Enter: The importance of a future-proof PR plan template.

When you’re pressed for time, you need a template to help you get your strategy together. If you’ve come across this article, chances are you don’t have one ready, and you’d like that to change.

The good news? After today, you’ll never be stuck wondering how to put together a future-proof PR plan quickly and effectively ever again.

So, bookmark this guide in your web browser, print it out, or make a copy and edit it to fit your needs.

And if you want to skip ahead, here’s the exact process you’ll need to create your PR strategy (plus some helpful tools) for any new client you may onboard now or in the future:

Future-Proof PR Plan Template Overview

1. Outline who you’re trying to reach

2. Highlight your top PR goals

3. Conduct research for a deeper understanding

4. Define the key messages you want to communicate

5. Choose appropriate channels and mediums

6. Set specific objectives and plan your PR timeline

7. Solidify the types of content you’re going to use

8. Measure your results

Helpful PR tools and platforms

• Respona: A communication tool to keep in touch with and respond to people you’ve engaged with

• Critical Mention: A media monitoring tool for news, radio, TV, podcasts, and social media

• MuckRack: A media relations tool to help pinpoint specific media journalists invested in your industry

• HARO and Terkel: Journalist communication tools for backlinking

• Cision: A media relationship management tool to help monitor your online presence and review advanced PR analytics and reports

• PRWeb: A distribution network to help you manage and structure your press release distribution

• SearchAtlas SEO Content Assistant: A comprehensive and user-friendly SEO platform for optimizing press releases. 

• Meltwater: A media monitoring tool to help you follow media coverage across nearly 300,000 news sources

• Grammarly and Writer.com: Proofreading tools to edit your press releases, value-driven statements, and content marketing assets

• LinkedIn: A networking tool to help you connect with industry professionals.

1. Outline who you’re trying to reach

Who is your new client trying to reach? What are their dream connections, and would these connections feel aligned with their new venture? Why or why not?

In step one, be ultra-specific about who your upcoming PR strategy needs to attract.

Consider relevant influencers, media reps, and target customers that are in alignment.

For instance, if your client is looking to scale their storefronts across multiple states, make sure to get a firm grasp on each of their target audiences and corresponding segments.

For example, that could be:

• Single parents and caregivers in New York City
• New parents and caregivers in Miami, Florida
• New parents and caregivers on a limited budget in Dallas, Texas
• Parents and caregivers in Austin, Texas, who take care of Autistic children

Be sure to research additional influencers, affiliate marketers, journalists, and other public figures your client hasn’t outlined yet to help you advance your messages. More on messaging in a bit!

2. Highlight your top PR goals

Your client wants to attract influencers, media reps, and customers who can help spread the word about their new venture — great! That’s goal number one.

What other top PR goals are they looking to meet? Grab your planning team and meet with your new client to get into the nuts and bolts of their expectations.

Before going into the meeting, consider creating a framework to help you conduct a more intentional meeting.

For instance, Robert’s Rules of Order framework was designed to help board directors conduct orderly, systematic, and goal-oriented meetings. You can follow this particular framework or consider previous meetings you’ve had and focus on carrying over the aspects that worked well.

For example, maybe in previous meetings, your clients found your goal creator slide deck helpful, or maybe you created a template that helped them refine their goals in three steps.

Whatever the case may be, go into the meeting with a plan and make sure you leave with a clear understanding of their top PR goals.

3. Conduct research for a deeper understanding

Now that you’re clear on your client’s goals, conduct research to understand their industry, target audience, and growth goals in a profound way.

Deepening your understanding is crucial to making wise decisions your clients can depend on.

For instance, consider calculating lead scoring points to determine which influencers, reps, and customers have the best chance of converting. Then, take a look at which specific publications love to publish content and press releases relevant to your client’s niche and growth vision.

Both of these strategies can help you put your eggs in the right baskets, so you don’t waste valuable outreach time on leads and media outlets that are misaligned.

This is also a crucial time to use analytics to conduct a deep-dive business review of the brand you’re advocating for. Who are they really? Why should the public care? Why do you care to help them advance their goal? Who are their competitors? What do their current customers think about them?

Believing in your client and knowing how they can impact the world for the better can not only help motivate you to keep pushing, but it can also help you focus your messages on what matters most.

And speaking of focusing your messages …

4. Define the key messages you want to communicate

What key messages do you want to communicate on behalf of the brand you’re representing?

Are they launching a new green initiative the world has to know about? Will they be introducing new self-service options their customers have been asking about? Are they revolutionizing the cybersecurity landscape? Did customer feedback drive ‌new product innovation?

Hone in on the details and craft short, compelling pitches and value-driven statements that define the key messages you want to communicate.

Here’s an example of PR efforts:

“Virtual Reality brand NextChance just dropped their latest invention of virtual reality headsets to an economical rate of just $99, a whopping 90% drop in price compared to its previous A1 and A2 models. The discount expires in 48 hours, after which the price will increase to $249, which will stay until the next model launches. Tune into the NextChance podcast today at 11 am for more details!”

5. Choose appropriate channels and mediums to communicate your messages

Review the research you conducted prior and narrow down the channels and mediums that would be the most effective at helping you communicate your messages.

For instance, if your client serves a B2B audience, then you might discover that LinkedIn, Twitter, industry-related conferences, podcasts, PPC, and guest posting on high authority sites are your best chances at communicating successfully.

6. Set specific objectives and plan your PR timeline

What’s your end goal for each channel and medium?

Once you’ve narrowed down your channels and mediums, make sure to set specific objectives for each one. Then plan a detailed PR timeline to help you meet your objectives.

Start with the end in mind and then craft milestone goals to help you tackle your long-term vision in digestible chunks.

Here’s a quick example:

Specific objectives per channel/medium:

• Guest posting: Build authoritative backlinks that raise ‌domain authority to DR60 or higher
• LinkedIn: Build meaningful relationships and connections with industry peers
• PPC: Drive 10% more sales using PPC ads alone by the end of Q3

Timeline milestone goals per channel/medium:

• Guest posting: Secure 10 guest posts for month one, 20 guest posts for month two, and 30 guest posts for month three
• LinkedIn: Send 15 connection invitations to relevant industry peers Monday through Friday, every week
• PPC: Hire a renowned copywriter to conduct A/B testing and write high-conversion copy in batches each month

7. Solidify the types of content you’re going to use

What types of content assets will you create to help you meet your objectives for each channel?

Aside from using the latest AI for content creation, investing in a solid content writing team with subject-matter expertise is also a great idea. AI tools can be helpful for light editing, plagiarism checks, brainstorming, and topic ideation, while subject-matter experts can give your content the depth and human touch it needs.

When contemplating the types of content you’ll be creating, consider who you want to reach with your content, your objectives, and the medium or channel you’re using. You want each asset to feel native to the platform you’re promoting it on and have a clear goal or reason for publication.

For instance, sharing thought leadership content and industry-related tips works great on LinkedIn. And producing content based on search intent is a strategy you can always count on when guest posting.

So, grab your channel/medium list, and note the content assets you’ll be producing for each one according to your unique objectives.

8. Measure your results

As you work through your public relations timeline, analyze and measure your results and course-correct when needed.

Keep your client updated as your timeline progresses, and be sure to note any wins you experience — big or small.

If you notice anything in your PR plan that could set the timeline back, strategize solutions, and notify your client as soon as possible. Make sure they know you have a plan in place to get the timeline back on track.

As you notice initiatives that are working, invest more time and content assets in nurturing those tactics and reduce time spent on efforts that aren’t producing results. Just remember that some initiatives may require ongoing, consistent action before you’ll see the results you’re looking for.

Be sure to also set realistic time constraints and revisit client expectations if needed.

Helpful PR tools and platforms

Did you make it through the PR plan template? Congratulations! You’re on your way to making big things happen for your new client and boosting brand awareness.

Need an extra leg up on your public relations strategy before you go? Here are some PR tools and media channels you might find helpful:

Respona

Use Respona to stay in touch with and respond to the people you’ve engaged with on your PR campaigns.

Critical Mention

Use Critical Mention to monitor news and current events via news outlets, radio, TV, podcasts, and social media.

MuckRack

Use MuckRack to help you pinpoint specific media journalists invested in your client’s industry. The goal is to build media relationships with these thought leaders.

HARO and Terkel

Use a combination of HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and Terkal to respond to journalists’ requests for a chance to score authoritative backlinks and up your media strategy game.

Cision

Monitor your online presence and review advanced PR analytics and reports with Cision, a media relationship management tool. Understand if you are meeting your business goals.

PRWeb

Use the distribution network PRWeb to help manage and structure your press release distribution.

SearchAtlas SEO Content Assistant

The SearchAtlas content optimizer is a powerful tool that can help you create press releases that rank. 

It provides valuable insights on relevant keywords and actionable recommendations to optimize your content, enabling you to create top-notch SEO content in a fraction of the time.

Meltwater

Follow media coverage across nearly 300,000 news sources with Meltwater, a media monitoring tool.

Grammarly and Writer.com

Proofread your press releases, value-driven statements, and thought leader assets with Grammarly and Writer.com. Use the plagiarism checker to ensure your content is 100% authentic and the readability checker to make sure your copy is suitable for the average reader.

LinkedIn

Use LinkedIn to connect with industry professionals in your client’s niche. For your own career development, build long-term relationships and create a mutual value exchange with media reps, public figures, and influencers.

Wrap up

And that’s it!

You officially have everything you need to launch your new future-proof PR strategy.

Call your new client back and let them know you have a treat in store for them — you made the deadline in time!

Here’s to your success!

About the Author

Jeremy Moser is co-founder & CEO at uSERP, a digital PR and SEO agency working with brands like Monday, ActiveCampaign, Hotjar, and more. He also buys and builds SaaS companies like Wordable.io and writes for publications like Entrepreneur and Search Engine Journal.

The post How to Create a Future-Proof PR Plan (Template and Tool List!) appeared first on LinkGraph.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing, as the name suggests, means delivering a seamless, consistent, personalized customer journey for customers across all sales channels. The channels cover both online and offline, including physical stores, websites, eCommerce shops, apps, social media, SMS, and many more. In this way, retailers can reach and sell to customers no matter where they are and increase their satisfaction. Omnichannel marketing helps you connect the dots and drive purchasing decisions.

This kind of marketing strategy lets companies understand better their customers’ interest behaviors in all channels. Thus, it creates an opportunity to build brand awareness in a new platform, boost revenue, and encourage repeat purchases. Implementing an omnichannel strategy helps you to improve the sales funnel, retain customers, and lower customer acquisition costs.

Why do you need a Marketing Plan for an Omnichannel Approach?

More businesses are adopting an omnichannel strategy in their marketing, and here’re the top reasons to do so:

Improve Customer Lifetime Value

Since the cost to acquire new customers is higher than retaining existing ones, you should pay attention to maintaining the current customers. In an omnichannel experience, customers are placed in the center and get incentives to stay with businesses. The right marketing strategy can help you extend lifetime customer value by keeping them engaged with the brand and making more purchases, thus you can increase revenue in the long run.

Reach New Customer Segments

Omnichannel marketing can expose your brand experience to new customer segments. You can reach more customers by being present in different channels and leading potential customers to purchase. It’s important for eCommerce marketers to attract and convert customers so that they can build a larger audience base for growth.

Increase Operational Efficiency

Another benefit of omnichannel marketing is increased efficiency in-store operations and reduced costs. Since all touchpoints are integrated, you can gather all data about customers to serve them better. It also minimizes the guesswork while enabling you to deliver a consistent experience for each customer across all marketing channels. Thus, you can save marketing resources, and boost efficiency.

Improve Inventory Turnover

Overstocking and understocking are huge problems for retailers. But omnichannel can help you avoid them by offering 360-degree visibility into your inventory and your order fulfillment capability. You can know which products to stock in which quantity to optimize the carrying costs and meet customer demands. In this way, you can make smarter replenishment decisions, and never miss a sale opportunity.

5 Best Practices for Omnichannel Marketing

To make the most out of omnichannel marketing, check out these top 5 recommendations:

1. Personalize the Shopping Experience Across Channels

Since customers buy across platforms at their convenience, commerce personalization is essential for your brand to be distinguished. Personalization strategy motivates purchasing decisions and enhances customer loyalty. Segment revealed that 49% of customers would be likely to become repeat buyers if a brand offers them a personalized experience.

With omnichannel marketing, you can track consumer behaviors and create complete customer personas. Once you gain an understanding of customers’ interests and preferences, you can devise a personalized shopping journey for each individual. It also enables you to cross-sell products or services that are relevant and complementary to customers’ orders.

Here’re some ways to personalize customer experience:

• Leverage and connect multiple platforms to personalize the shopping journey and sell seamlessly across channels.
• Allow customers to create an account on your site to track customer interactions, order histories, and payment information. The data can be analyzed to give you valuable insights and determine what makes customers happy.
• Customer accounts also facilitate wishlists and reordering for customers.
• Display banners or pop-ups throughout your online store to feature new products, best sellers, or promotions that may interest customers.
• Optimize the buyer journey for mobile devices by using an intuitive and 100% responsive interface
• Show products that are often bought together at checkout to encourage upselling and cross-selling.
• Offer incentives for bulk purchases such as free shipping or a coupon for the next purchase.
• Use email or SMS marketing to follow up with customers in the post-purchase stage. You can also push relevant product recommendations to a customer based on their previous purchases.
• Push notifications when customers are in nearby locations to your physical store
• Offer O2O strategy like click-and-collect to create the most convenient shopping experience.

When you design an omnichannel strategy, think about how users will interact with the content and navigate around your site or store. Consider the user needs at every touchpoint of the process to provide a positive experience from the moment they click on your website until they place an order. Keep the buying journey consistent and reliable for customers to return next time.

2. Expand with Social Commerce Tools

Shopping on social media, or social commerce, has become increasingly popular. The social commerce industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26% from 2021 to 2025, reaching $1.2 trillion by 2025.

Social media platforms are one of the top choices for brands to engage with customers and lead them to purchase. It supports user-generated content, increases the impact of influencers and KOLs, and facilitates shoppers to explore and buy new products. Selling with social commerce helps businesses connect with a new, wide range of customers and boost revenue.

Social media is also a great communication channel for customers to connect with brands and develop their brand love. Once a person feels connected to a brand, they will tend to spend more for the brand over other competitors.

There are various methods to leverage your social commerce. You can start with building awareness with your target audience, strengthen your brand image, and use social selling tactics to nurture leads and develop trust with them. In addition, sync your social media platform to your eCommerce store to create a storefront and create a unified shopping experience. Display QR codes of your social channels at the checkout counter or eCommerce store, so that customers can scan and follow you on social media.

After customers complete a purchase, use an email or SMS message to follow up with them. You can ask them for a review or invite them to join a loyalty program to get exclusive offers. User product reviews on social media contribute significantly to building trust among your customers and be used as testimonials in your eCommerce store or email marketing campaigns.

3. Simplify Payment Across All Channels

Customers want to have different options to pay, whether they’re buying online, in-person, or through text messages. Some popular payment methods include debit and credit cards, but digital payments and buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) are rapidly gaining their positions as modern transaction methods.

It is projected that from 2021 to 2025, there will be 6.5 million new mobile wallet payment users per year, and Gen Z will account for 4 million of them. This number reflects the trend of mobile payment that retailers must capture to provide a seamless purchasing experience. Give them multiple payment options to choose from to reduce the cart-abandonment rate and ensure your checkout is consistent across platforms.

Here are some suggestions for payments:

• Offer Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Afterpay for both online and in-person checkout to give customers quick checkout options.
• Provide payment links on social media channels, emails, or text to lead customers to your checkout page.
• For the temporary physical locations, you can apply QR codes to take customers right to your online checkout page to make quick purchases.

Implement a POS solution to synchronize both online and in-person payments for all channels to create a flexible checkout experience to sell anywhere you do business.

4. Use Loyalty and Discount Incentives to Drive Sales

Applying the right promotions, discounts, and loyalty programs can help you reach customers across channels and make your brand stand out. Discount incentives can convert visitors into customers, and loyalty rewards can retain those customers into repeat transactions. Leveraging these programs will encourage customers to buy more and positively impact your revenue. Here’re how you can do it:

• Generate digital coupons and send to customers via text or email, or social platforms to drive traffic to your physical stores or eCommerce stores.
• Offer discounts to motivate shoppers to take a specific action, such as placing their first orders, leaving a review, or signing up for newsletters.
• Advertise your promotion campaigns in all sales channels, including in-store, online site, or a marketing campaign.
• Once a customer makes a purchase, ask them to join your loyalty program to accumulate tokens and receive rewards or exclusive offers. Consider what makes sense for your business and customers, and what types of incentives will drive sales.
• Promote your loyalty program across channels and persuade customers to join by giving them a taste of what they can expect if they sign up.

5. Launch a Retargeting Campaign

Not every customer is willing to open their wallet at first glance at your store. Therefore, retargeting is crucial to remind the customers of your brand. The more they see your brand, the higher chance they will convert to buyers. Make sure when customers have the need, your brand is at the top of their minds.

Retargeting can drive more traffic to your website, improve your conversion rate, and boost your overall ROI as well. Let’s explore some ideas for retargeting:

• Use website banner ads and social media platforms to show the product that a customer just viewed or just put in the cart.
• Advertise your brand using physical banners in crowded places to get the most visibility
• Use email as a retargeting channel to push relevant product content to customers or remind them of products left in carts
• Apply lead nurturing techniques to send personalized and useful content to your leads. Depending on which stage they’re in the marketing funnel, you can develop suitable tactics to retarget ads on social media or send emails to recover abandoned items in the cart.
• With retargeting, you can track consumers’ behaviors outside your website and gain more understanding about them, even if they didn’t buy anything yet.

To Wrap Up

As customers are expecting more from brands, omnichannel marketing now plays a key role in delivering a seamless user experience for retail businesses. Now that you know the best 5 marketing approach for omnichannel, let’s incorporate them into your strategy to stay ahead of competitors and make customers impressed with your products and services.

The post 5 Best Omnichannel Marketing Tips to Increase Your Business Sales appeared first on LinkGraph.

What are Topic Clusters?

For starters, topic clusters are a popular content marketing strategy used to create an information hierarchy that is easily navigable for readers. They are made up of the main page, known as a pillar page, and several other pages, known as cluster pages. The pillar page serves as an overview of a specific subject while the cluster pages provide more detailed information.

Topic clusters are connected by internal links, which allow readers to easily find other topically-related content. This also helps to keep readers on a website as well as improve their understanding of the subject. 

For example at LinkGraph, we have a topic cluster on our website centered on link building, which is one of our agency services. Our link building page is considered the “pillar page,” and we have created a variety of “cluster content,” that explores that main topic more in-depth. Some of the blog posts in that cluster include:

• “12 Link Building Strategies for This Year”
• “How to Choose the Best Quality Link Building Services”
• “White Hat Link Building Versus Links to Avoid”

All of these blog posts link back to the primary pillar page, helping create a cluster of content that Google understands is topically related and full of in-depth information about the topic of link building.

Topic clusters can help to increase website visibility in search engines, as their algorithms tend to favor websites that are well-organized, authoritative on a topic, and have a strong internal linking profile.

Examples of Topic Clusters

As an example, let’s say that your business is a personalized travel agency catered toward ethical tourism. 

One of your pillar content pieces would include a page optimized for the keyword “ethical travel companies.” Within the pillar content pieces, you’ll also want to target keywords like “ethical travel agency” or “eco travel company.” The total number of topic clusters on a website will be determined by the services the business offers.

For example, you can create pages about sustainable travel packages or reasons why ethical travel is important. Your business can also create another content cluster around a larger topic, such as how to become a more “sustainable traveler.” This cluster could potentially explore the following topics:

• How to Fly Sustainably
• Tips for Respecting Local Cultures as a Traveler
• 4 Ways to Travel Ethically
• How to Become a Responsible Traveler

This is just one example of how you can create a well-structured, easy-to-scan cluster. This makes it easier for searchers to crawl, and it makes it easier for potential customers to browse your cluster topics. It’s all about diving deeper into the informational side of your services and showing a search engine that you can provide value to your target audience.

Do SEO Topic Clusters Improve Rankings?

Yes. In the past, websites would simply create blog posts to match popular keyword phrases. Each webpage would be optimized to rank for a specific keyword, and there was no attention placed on the content of the site in its entirety. 

But search algorithms began to change. The updates made them better at determining the expertise of a website. Now, they search for in-depth content, shifting their focus from keywords to topic areas. As a result, content strategists have now moved toward using topic clusters to organize their content. By building a content plan and implementing it appropriately, strategists have learned how to create a significant impact on SEO results, improving overall site authority.

With the current state of algorithms, not using a topic cluster strategy would put your webpage at a disadvantage, particularly if your competitors are enterprise-level. Topic clusters exhibit the quality indicators that Google looks for, and creating content with these qualities will produce the best results.

• In-depth, topically-rich content
• Content that exhibits industry expertise
• Content with internal links to other relevant content
• Created by expert authors who have experience in the topic
• Articles that fall under the website’s primary niche

It’s important to realize that topic clusters are a long-term strategy that allows your site to gain search rankings for broad, overarching keywords. Building a content cluster out on your website won’t happen overnight. In the beginning, topic clusters can help your website gain search traffic for longer tail keywords that are less competitive and elevate the performance of pillar content for more competitive, higher search volume keywords in the long term.

Topic clusters will also help your brand build E.E.A.T. (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) in certain topics so that Google sees your website as an industry leader.

How Do I Use Topic Clusters to Improve SEO?

To create a successful SEO topic cluster, it is important to first research relevant keywords and phrases using a keyword research tool. This will help identify the topics that are most relevant to your website’s target audience. By creating a cluster of related topics, the website’s SEO will improve, as it provides more opportunities for search engines to index and crawl the website’s pages. 

Below, you’ll find step-by-step instructions on how you can use topic clusters to improve your search engine optimization.

How to Build Topic Clusters on My Website

If you want to build topic clusters on your website, here are the following steps to take:

1. Identify your primary keyword targets for your pillar pages and topic clusters
2. Plan out your pillar page and determine subtopics with related terms and smaller search volumes.
3. Create the cluster pages using the subtopics you’ve listed.
4. Build your pillar page for the main hub of content.
5. Start linking your cluster pages and repeat the process.

Look below to find a more detailed breakdown of each step.

Keyword Research

Begin by choosing a topic and doing some keyword research. This topic area should be relevant to your products, services, content, or areas of expertise. For example, if you are a real estate broker, some relevant topics may be “real estate agents,” “commercial real estate,” or “investment properties.”

You can use the content planner tool from SearchAtlas to help you identify possible subtopics for your topic cluster.

For example, the following keyword clusters were provided from the keyword input, “commercial real estate.”

You can also use the built-in AI content generator to help you develop a relevant title for your cluster content. For example, here is a suggested article title for the keyword cluster “small warehouse space.”

Content Creation

Once you’ve identified keywords and a blog topic idea, it’s time to start creating high-quality content. This is essential for every website page, and you’ll want to use the appropriate list of related keywords provided by the content planner. When creating any web page, it’s important to make sure that it’s well-optimized for your target keywords, so make sure to use a content optimizer like the SEO Content Assistant to confirm your content has strong ranking potential. 

This tool will show you recommended focus terms and internal links to include in your content in order to improve its topical depth. If it’s going to rank well, your cluster content will need to provide value and meet the search intent of your audience.

Add Internal Links

The final step is to link your cluster content to your pillar page. This means creating links from your pillar landing page to your other content pages, and from your other content pages back to your landing page. You can also link to other pages within that same cluster. 

Internal linking is an important part of the SEO topic cluster optimization process, as it helps to establish the overall hierarchy of your content. By following these steps, you can create a well-optimized topic cluster for your website. And by doing so, you can improve your website’s search engine ranking and attract more website visitors.

Repeat the Process

You can continue building out topic clusters on your website for as many topic areas that have relevance to your products or services. For example, here at LinkGraph, we have topic clusters related to our primary agency services, including link building, content marketing, technical SEO, and more.

Eventually, your website will look like this:

4 Additional Tips for Creating Topic Clusters

Here are some things to keep in mind to improve the performance of your topic clusters even more.

1. Focus on Creating a High Quality Pillar Page

Creating a pillar page is a bit different from creating a traditional blog post. This page aims to offer well-organized content that keeps visitors on the site longer and provides better signals to Google that your site is authoritative. It’s essential to create a well-thought-out pillar page to drive up engagement, increase page views, and appear as an expert on a particular subject.

2. Link to your Pillar Pages from your Homepage

The entire goal of a topic cluster is actually to elevate the rankings of your pillar pages. Those pillar pages should serve as the top of the cluster hierarchy, and you will want to be sending link juice from your homepage directly to them.

As a general rule, pillar pages should target more competitive keywords while your cluster pages target long-tail versions of keywords that represent subtopics of that topic area. Again, your pillar page is the most important, and you want your cluster content to elevate those pillar pages, not compete with them.

3. Be Careful with your Internal Links

Linking to a pillar page of another topic cluster may confuse search engine crawlers about which page is the most important. Although you may want to link to pages outside of the topic cluster, avoid linking to a pillar page of a separate cluster.

4. Watch out for Keyword Cannibalization

When using a topic cluster strategy incorrectly, it can sometimes result in keyword cannibalization. This occurs when multiple web pages on a single website contain similar keywords or phrases and therefore Google doesn’t know which one it should promote. Search engines will then often prioritize the page with the most optimized content over the other pages, resulting in the other pages not appearing in search results. 

When identifying cluster content, make sure that your subtopics are distinct enough for search engines to understand they need to be promoted for a different set of keywords. If you end up experiencing some type of keyword cannibalization, you can correct this by combining some of your similarly focused cluster content into one page.

Then, add 301 redirects from those old pages to the newer, more comprehensive page.

How to Track the Performance of an SEO Topic Cluster

You can use the GSC Insights tool in your SearchAtlas dashboard to track the performance of your topic clusters. This can help you get a good idea of how your website is performing for the key “topic areas,” that search engine crawlers associate with your website.

Navigate to the “Page Groupings,” feature and start assigning your topic cluster content to the same group as the accompanying pillar page. In the below example, you’ll see I created page groupings for three primary topic clusters that we have built out on the LinkGraph website – Link Building, Technical SEO, and Content Creation.

From the above data, I can see that our link building topic cluster is performing very well, meaning Google sees our website as authoritative in this topic area. If we add new link building content to our website, Google is more likely to promote it, as we have already proven ourselves authoritative in this topic area.

Adding more cluster content to our Technical SEO and Content Creation, as well as investing in link building to those content clusters, will help Google start seeing us as more authoritative in those sub-niches of SEO as well.

Conclusion

Remember that SEO topic clusters do not happen immediately and require consistent content creation efforts. However, taking the time to build out all of these pieces of content can have drastic impacts on your organic rankings and help Google rank your web pages for years to come.

If you need help developing a consistent content creation process for your brand, consider outsourcing your content writing to an agency. 

The post Topic Clusters and Pillar Pages: A Complete Guide appeared first on LinkGraph.