Boost your SEO with dictionaries, guides, and how-tos - and become thought leader at the same time
You probably know that SEO - or search engine optimisation - is an important part of online marketing. Google is the go-to place for many people, both when they shop online and when they need an answer to a question. That’s why it’s good for business if you appear among the top search results. But how do you do this?
When working on keyword optimising your website, you should do two things: 1) put yourself in the customer’s place and 2) use a complete keyword analysis instead of just guessing. The second point is actually the most important one. You can use Google’s keyword planner for this. It’ll tell you how often a word or phrase is searched for - and it even suggests related keywords. These are words and phrases that you want to work into various texts on your website.
The first point can help you come up with new content ideas. Of course, you should always make sure you have good product and category descriptions on all pages, but you can do more than “just” that. This is when thinking like the customer is important - what are they considering, searching for, or needing help to when using (or buying) the product you sell?
If you’re selling something creative, you could make a universe packed with patterns and guides for creative projects. You can even ask your customers to share some of their creations and use it to inspire other customers. On the other hand, if you’re selling something very technical, making a bunch of how-to guides covering both set-up, maintenance, repairs, use, and other topics is a brilliant idea. You can also make a dictionary that explains all the complicated terms used in connection to the product you’re selling. Again, use Google’s keyword planner to figure out exactly what problems and questions your target audience has.
All these content ideas have one thing in common (in addition to boosting SEO) - they help your target audience. This means that you could potentially become the go-to place when people look for help on topics related to your product. That’s a really good strategy because if people feel like they benefit from visiting your side, there’s a good chance that they will recommend it to others. Another benefit is that you’ll raise brand awareness among people who haven’t bought anything from you yet. But if they always get their information from your site, you’ll be top-of-mind when they are looking to buy new products. So, it’s worth considering - even though it can be expensive and time-consuming, it can really pay off!
One business that had great success with this strategy is the Danish company Dinero. At the end of 2017, they started a huge project - Denmark’s biggest accounting dictionary.
Dinero and their dictionary
Dinero is a Danish company providing an accounting software. Even though more than 200,000 businesses have tried their program, they’re always looking to get new users. They’ve decided to use a dictionary to lure in these new users. Not all business owners know a lot about accounting. That forces them to resort to Google for all their accounting-related questions. Dinero’s plan was to make a single page where people could find the answers to all accounting-related questions - and like that become the go-to site for Danish business owners.
Dinero sat aside a lot of time and money for this project, but because they needed more than 500 articles, it was too big a job for their own team. They started to look at the possibility of outsourcing the project - but they faced three obstacles:
- Hiring professional content writers for 500 articles was expensive
- Not a lot of content writers are accounting experts
- Not all freelancers are good at meeting deadlines
They decided on contacting three established content agencies in Denmark and test them all out. They evaluated both quality, price, and ability to deliver large volumes.
As it often does, it turned out that the most expensive solution was also the best. They were chosen and guidelines were decided upon. All articles went through a quality check to make sure both language and accounting facts were perfect. During the following months, the articles were published and the organic traffic started increasing - slowly, but steadily. It still increases each month.
It was quite a project, but we haven’t regretted a thing. Cause who do you think people, who found an answer on our site earlier, will choose when they decide that they need an accounting software? Bingo. The company that helped them a while ago, and who they coincidentally remember the name of because they’ve seen ads from the company over the past few months.
- Patrick T. Rasmussen, CMO at Dinero
Remarketing
It’s pretty straightforward making a dictionary, but making one that is so comprehensive that it covers an entire industry and all the customers’ needs is not easy. It involves a lot of research, a lot of work, and, not least, a lot of time. But is it worth it then?
Yes - because when you’ve made this insanely good dictionary, you’ll be able to do remarketing. You can install a remarketing pixel on your site, which enables you to show ads on, let’s say Facebook, to everyone who has visited your dictionary. Your visitors will continually be exposed to your brand, which will increase the chances that they’ll end up becoming your customer.
When it comes to SEO and content marketing, it’s all about being creative. Use keyword planner and put yourself in your customers’ shoes - what are their needs? And how can you satisfy these needs with different texts? It’s a time-consuming process and the quality must be on point if you really want it to pay off - but the investment can easily be worth your while!
