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[FEBRUARY 2019] SMX Recap: Emerging Local Search Trends You Need to Know

Posted on February 22, 2019January 28, 2020 by Mindstream Media Group

The 2019 Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West was held in San Jose, CA at the end of January. The conference is known for touching on some of the hottest topics in search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO) and local search.

This year, some of the top minds in local search gave presentations to help multi-location brands and local businesses understand what it takes to improve their online presence. If you couldn’t make the conference, here’s a recap of a few of the biggest takeaways to guide marketers’ local search strategies for 2019 and beyond.

The most important local search ranking factor

The New Realities of Local Search session was particularly interesting as it broke down the main factors digital marketers need to consider in 2019 and how these have evolved over the years.

According to the most recent release of Moz’s Local Search Ranking Factors, Google My Business (GMB) signals are the most important ranking factor in local pack results (the map results that typically display toward the top of local search results). The significance of GMB signals increased to 25 percent in Moz’s latest survey, nine points ahead of the second most important factor.

New ways to optimize GMB signals

GMB signals include several factors local businesses can control – like proper category association and including keywords in your business title – as well as some you can’t – like proximity to the searcher. Google has spent the last year adding more GMB features that local business can control as part of an aggressive growth strategy for the product.

As we mentioned last year, Google does not want GMB to be a static product. Google’s goal for GMB is to drive user engagement, and they’ve released or improved several features to help brands engage with local consumers. Here’s a look at a few features to help enhance your local search presence.

Google Posts

Recently, many in the industry have been skeptical about the reduced visibility of brands’ Google Posts. And many local businesses don’t even know about posts. If you’re still unclear, here’s how Google describes Posts:

Posting through Google My Business lets you publish your events, products, and services directly to Google Search and Maps. By creating posts, you can place your timely text, video or photo content in front of customers when they find your business listing on Google.

The main purpose of Google Posts isn’t necessarily to drive clicks, it’s more about gaining visibility in the local pack from consistent posting (although driving consumer engagement is a nice added benefit).

Google Q&A

Many brands are failing at monitoring and responding to questions in the Q&A section of their GMB profile, which is a big missed opportunity. At SMX West, Dana DiTomaso suggested possibly adding your own questions and answers that will offer useful information to the consumer. If you’re not sure what types of questions to add to this section, I suggest exporting a search query report from Google Ads and look for the most common questions consumers ask about your business.

Reviews

The importance of review signals is on the rise – increasing almost 18 percent since Moz’s 2017 local search rankings. Mentions of specific services or products help promote your business and assist consumers looking at your reviews to make buying decisions. While I don’t recommend aggressively soliciting reviews, any business with a local presence should have a program in place that helps you encourage, monitor and respond to feedback from consumers.

Paid Local

For a comprehensive local presence, brands should consider paid search ads. Implementing a paid search strategy allows your brand to conquer more real estate in search results and appear in local, organic and paid results.

There are plenty of advertising features that are perfect for local businesses and multi-location brands. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Use every possible Google Ads extension like location extensions, callout extensions and call extensions to encourage online and off-line conversions
Use location-based (geographic) keywords in your ad copy
Implement pilots, or small tests, to identify which advertising campaigns work best for your brand before making a meaningful ad buy
Leverage “pin ads” on competitor locations for awareness and conquesting

Fighting local search spam

In another SMX West session, Conrad Saam discussed several ways businesses try to trick Google with tactics like photoshopped images, keyword-stuffed business names and fake reviews. For example, because data shows that consumers favor attorneys with offices near them, attorneys without physical locations provide spoofed information to Google to have their listing show as a physical location.

It’s crucial for brands with a local presence to fight back hard against these spamming techniques. If you experience local search spamming, there are a few ways to address the issue (Saam cautions to do so as anonymously as possible):

Report false addresses as spam on Google Maps
Suggest an edit to keyword-stuffed business names
Flag fake reviews on Google

Local search is as important as ever

Organic marketing efforts like local search optimization often take a back seat to paid media efforts. Local SEO is, however, a foundational component of any digital marketing strategy for multi-location brands and local businesses. If your brand needs help getting started, contact Mindstream Media Group today to learn how we crush the local search game for tens of thousands of locations across the country.

How to Increase Brand Awareness With Organic Content

Posted on February 4, 2019January 28, 2020 by Mindstream Media Group

Recently, we looked at the role of organic content in the new consumer buying journey. To help marketers put this information to use, we’re now going to dive deeper into each stage of the buying journey. In this post, we examine how organic content can help increase brand awareness and get consumers moving in the right direction.

An overview of the awareness stage

The awareness stage is perhaps the most critical leg of the buying journey for consumers. After all, consumers have to realize they need to buy something before making any purchase. And, to buy something from a specific brand, consumers need to know that the brand exists.

Using organic content to increase brand awareness

In the awareness stage, consumers are just starting their buying journey and often have a lot of questions about the purchase. When done right, organic content pieces can help your brand answer those questions and build a rapport with consumers. Here are a few examples of organic content strategies your brand should be using to engage with consumers in the awareness stage.

Create informative and optimized blog posts

In the awareness stage, consumers aren’t necessarily looking for in-depth product detail, they typically want more high-level information. Instead of creating content about the features and benefits of your products, try publishing blog posts that answer common questions consumers have about them.

To explain what we mean here, let’s look at an example of how we’ve used this strategy for one of our clients – AT&T Experience. Last year, we worked with the brand to generate traffic to their site ahead of the new iPhone launch. Rather than pushing out content promoting deals or specific features of the new models, we created blog posts designed to answer popular search queries about the iPhone in general.

Months before the launch, we published a blog post with a timeline of Apple iPhone launches. The blog post wasn’t designed to sell phones, it was just an informative piece about the history of the iPhone. There was no paid search promotion around the piece. But, by employing SEO best practices, we were able to earn the post a coveted featured snippet result on Google.

As the launch grew nearer, iPhone-related queries spiked as the post climbed to the top of several search result pages. The result was thousands of new visitors to the site with an average time spent on the page of almost 7 minutes. The influx of visitors and the time they spent on the page indicated there was a lot of interest in the topic and people found our piece valuable. By the time the new iPhones launched, the monthly web traffic numbers to the post were up considerably.

Produce more video content

If you’re still not using video to increase brand awareness, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Today’s consumers are increasingly turning to online video to find information about products and discover new brands.

One of the best examples of a brand using video content to boost awareness is Dollar Shave Club’s introduction video. The relatively low-budget production (the video cost DSC just $4,500 to produce) has racked up more than 26 million views on YouTube to date.

In 2012, the brand entered a crowded marketplace and needed a message that would help them stand out from other razor companies. Producing a generic commercial about the quality of their razors wasn’t going to cut it. So the brand eschewed standard product promotion in favor of a video highlighting their unique personality. DSC used a dancing bear, an upbeat employee named Alejandro and their machete-wielding CEO to differentiate their brand from other razor companies. And, to really make the video stand out, the company introduced a tagline that consumers could not easily forget: “Our blades are f**cking great.”

But if your brand doesn’t have the factory space or access to dancing bears to create a 90-second feature like this one, there are simpler options. For example, here’s a recent video we produced here at Mindstream Media Group. It’s concise, visually appealing and perfect for social media audiences.

Improve your social media presence

Social media platforms are a great place for your brand to engage with audiences of potential and existing customers. But when using social media in the awareness stage, it’s important to think beyond your existing followers since these users are most likely already familiar with your brand. To increase brand awareness on social media, you need to create content that your existing audiences find interesting enough to share, re-tweet and distribute out to their followers.

Here are a few tips to help you create social media posts that grab users’ attention, get them talking and generate a buzz.

Use eye-catching visuals

Social media users typically scroll their feeds at lightning speed, giving you just a split second to grab their attention. To increase the chances of them noticing your message, make sure to add eye-catching images or video to each post.

Tag others to amplify your posts

Tagging people in your social media posts is an easy way to get your message out to their followers and reach new audiences. It also increases the likelihood that they’ll like, share or comment on your post.

Leverage the power of hashtags

Adding hashtags to your posts makes them searchable and easier for new audiences to find. But randomly adding a bunch of hashtags to your posts isn’t good enough. You need to be strategic with which hashtags you use and how many tags you include in each post.

Number of hashtags per post vs. average engagement per post

While creating blogs, video and social media posts are a good start, we’ve only scratched the surface on all the ways you can use organic content to increase brand awareness. If you’re interested in implementing a holistic organic content strategy, contact Mindstream Media Group today to learn how our Content Marketing campaigns can Fast-Forward Your Business.

Three Ways Personalization is Shaping Organic Search

Posted on January 23, 2019January 28, 2020 by Mindstream Media Group

The new year is in full swing and with it comes plenty of exciting changes in organic search marketing along with big expectations for digital marketers. One of the most significant search trends in 2019 is personalization – i.e., consumers’ desire to find the specific information they need as they research buying decisions.

To help marketers understand this growing trend and update their 2019 strategies accordingly, here’s a look at three ways personalization is changing the organic search game.

No. 1: Consumers want variety in their search results

While text-based queries and results were the status quo for Google and other search engines for years, consumers now have a myriad of methods to search for products and services. With searchers increasingly turning to voice search and visual search, text-based results no longer cut it for consumers.

Consider these numbers from a recent study by Slyce.it:

The takeaway for marketers

For marketers (or anyone who conducts cognitive research), these numbers should come as no surprise. Humans are wired to process information visually and it’s only natural that we would default to that preference when researching buying decisions online. Marketers need to create and optimize online content beyond the written (typed) word. This requires publishing visually appealing content like product images, infographics and video.

Marketers also need to embrace the rise of voice search and start thinking of how to optimize content to reach position zero. (For more information on how to reach position zero, check out our post on how to create content that earns featured snippets.)

No. 2: Consumers get to choose their own buying journeys

Think with Google recently published an infographic on how consumers’ search habits are disrupting the traditional marketing funnel. To show how the marketing funnel is changing, Google looked at thousands of users’ clickstream data. The results were telling for marketers and exhibited exactly how prevalent personalization has become.

To illustrate the point, Google highlighted four consumer buying journeys. Here’s a recap of their findings:

The takeaway for marketers

While the graphic above represents a small sample size and the whole point of Google’s research was to show how no two buying journeys are the same, there are still a few general takeaways for marketers:

Unsurprisingly, the more significant the purchase, the more intricate the buying journey. With smartphones providing unfettered access to information, major purchases like headphones and flights now involve extensive consumer research.
Even buying journeys we normally wouldn’t consider significant – like buying candy or makeup – can involve a lot of research and multiple touchpoints for brands to connect with consumers.
Consumer research doesn’t end at purchase. With Ava’s search for flights, she conducted post-purchase research to find information like where to access her boarding pass, how to print tickets and which luggage she could bring.

No. 3: Marketers are turning to AI

Consumers’ ability to choose their own personalized buying journeys is a relatively new dynamic. Smartphones, tablets and other connected mobile devices have given consumers round-the-clock access to the internet. In this always-connected world, consumers expect to easily find information customized to fit their needs.

With more consumers expecting to find customized information as they navigate through their unique buying journeys, marketers are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver the right messages at the right times. According to recent research from BrightEdge, nearly 60 percent of marketers planned to use AI in 2018, up from 43 percent in 2017.

How likely brands are to use AI to develop content marketing strategies

The takeaway for marketers

AI presents an incredible opportunity for marketers to use machine learning to customize their messaging based on consumer intent. There’s a good chance the numbers from BrightEdge underrepresent the percentage of brands leveraging AI as something as simple as dynamic search ads on Google would technically qualify.

There’s no shortage of ways for marketers to use AI in their content marketing strategy. And if BrightEdge’s study is any indication, any brand not at least thinking of ways to leverage AI are already behind in the game. For marketers, this means there’s no time like the present to start looking for strategies to use AI to create the customized messaging consumers have come to expect.

Need help creating personalized media campaigns and content for your target audiences?

Contact Mindstream Media Group to find out how we can give you VIP access to your consumers.

How to Identify Blog Topics People Will Actually Want To Read

Posted on November 27, 2018January 30, 2020 by Mindstream Media Group

The takeaway: There are more than 3 million blog posts published on the internet every day. With that volume, it’s important to develop blog topics that your audiences will actually want to read. This post will help you come up with blog topics that engage target audiences and drive traffic to your website.

Blogging has become a powerful tool in many brands’ marketing repertoire. Publishing blog posts on a regular basis can be an effective way for brands to share their story, answer their customers’ questions, engage with their target audiences and drive traffic to their website.

At first glance, it would appear the more blogs a brand creates, the more traffic their website receives. According to a study by HubSpot, companies that publish more than 16 blog posts per month receive almost 3.5 times more traffic than those that published less than four posts a month.

But that doesn’t mean your brand can churn out subpar blog posts and expect to drive boatloads of traffic to your site. In the blogging world, competition is too fierce for mediocrity. Brands, agencies, publishers and individuals publish more than 3 million blog posts each day. With that congested of a landscape, you need to make sure your brand is publishing high-quality posts that cut through the clutter, grab people’s attention and actually drive traffic to your site.

Creating posts that drive traffic is a complicated process that starts with a basic – albeit demanding – first step: identifying topics that people actually give a damn about. In this post, we’ll cover some of the steps required to get inside your target audiences’ heads to find out what topics they need, want and care to read about.

Create a list of general blog topics

Get the process started by using ideas and thoughts off the top of your head. Once you have a solid base of ideas, continue to refine and polish your list to identify the topics that your target audiences are most likely to read.

Step No. 1: Brainstorm

Like any other brainstorm, this process should happen organically. List out all of the topics you can think of related to your brand and its products and services. There’s no such thing as a bad idea here, the important thing is to just get all your ideas written out.

Step No. 2: Develop buyer personas

Next, beef up your original list by researching your target audiences to find out what kind of content they want to see from your brand. If you haven’t already, this is a great time to create buyer personas (i.e., generalized representations of your brand’s ideal customers). If you need help building these out, here’s a helpful guide to get you started.

Buyer personas will help you answer key questions that will generate ideas for your list of blog topics.

What questions do your customers have about your products and services?
What are the major pain points and challenges of your target audience?
How do your products and services address your target audiences’ pain points and challenges?

Step No. 3: Conduct industry research

Find out what topics other brands in your industry are writing about by reading relevant blogs and publications, including your competitors’ posts. Take those topics and come up with new angles or approaches that address your specific audience’s needs and wants.

Step No. 4: Review historical data

To round out your list of general blog topics, identify top performing content pieces your brand created in the past. To do this, you’ll need to set up a website traffic tool like Google Analytics. Dive into the data to identify content pieces that resonated with audiences and look for opportunities to repurpose that content like:

Refreshing old blog posts by updating stats and data and incorporating new trends
Elaborating on topics that you just touched on in previous posts
Repurposing related blog posts into a longer form piece like an e-book

Refine your list of blog topics

It’s important to keep your blog topic ideas focused. The last thing you want is an amalgamation of semi-related topics stuffed into a single post. Instead, try to narrow down the focus of each post to a central idea. For example, if your company sells iPhones, instead of writing a post like “10 amazing features on your iPhone” write something more specific like “The 10 best iPhone parental control features.”

Step No. 1: Conduct keyword research

Start by finding specific keywords for each topic. Focusing your blog topics on specific keywords will not only keep your post focused, but you’ll have the added benefit of optimizing the content for related Google searches.

To conduct keyword research, head to Google Ads and pull up their Keyword Planner tool (you’ll need to set up a Google Ads account to access the tool). From there, start entering in your general topics and related terms to identify popular relevant search terms.

For each topic, identify one or two keywords to focus your blog post on. Any more than that and the blog will likely lose focus. Choose keywords based on:

The keyword’s length: longer-tail keywords typically have less competition in search results
The keyword’s search volume: choose popular terms that your target audiences are likely to search for
The keyword’s seasonality: don’t just use average search volume, look at the popularity by month to identify seasonal trends to write about

Step No. 2: Find top performing topics

Now that you’ve set yourself up for a search engine optimized post, it’s time to make sure the content will resonate on social media. To get an idea of the most popular topics on social media, you can use a freemium tool like Buzzsumo. The free version of Buzzsumo can help you find related top performing content by entering your general topic into the tool’s search bar.

Organize your blog topics strategically

As you gather ideas for blog post topics, it’s important to keep them organized so you can strategically create and publish the content. One way to do this is to keep a running list of blog topic ideas in a spreadsheet that you can turn into a de facto content calendar.

Step No. 1: Build out a content calendar

Turn your list of ideas into an organized calendar that will guide your content creation. An effective tool for organizing this list is Google Sheets. With Google Sheets, you can lay out upcoming content pieces in a way that’s easy to digest and edit while planning out details like post date, focus keyword, working title, additional notes, etc.

If you’d like to start building out your own content calendar, you can copy this Google Sheet into your own Google Drive account.

Step No. 2: Develop topic clusters

One way to build out your content calendar is using the topic-cluster method. This method makes it easy for search engines to understand that the content is related, crawl individual pages and display the pages in relevant search results. Here’s how it works:

Determine an overarching topic you want to write about to act as your “pillar content”
Develop “cluster content” – blogs and other pieces about subtopics related to the pillar content
Create a pillar page to act as the main content hub for an overarching topic that links out to the previously published cluster content

Once you’ve gotten all your ideas laid out and organized, it’s time to start actually writing blog posts. Make sure to subscribe to our blog for more tips on best practices for creating blog posts.

Contact Mindstream Media Group to learn how we take our clients’ content game to the next level.

How Featured Snippets Help You Conquer Google’s Search Results

Posted on November 9, 2018January 21, 2020 by Mindstream Media Group

Featured snippets: A Google search result displayed at the top of the page featuring information that quickly answers a user’s query.

Marketers are constantly looking for the best ways to get content featured prominently on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs). Whether they are paid ads, local listings or organic results, we want to make sure our content is optimized to the fullest to drive as many clicks to our online properties.

For its part, Google is happy to provide plenty of opportunities for marketers to appear in search results. There are search ads, shopping ads, map listings, Knowledge Graph boxes, standard organic results, etc. But there’s one type of result that rises above the rest (literally) across an array of searches – featured snippets.

If your brand is looking for more ways to dominate SERPs, earning a featured snippet is a great way to quickly answer searchers’ questions and drive clicks to your content. To help you in this endeavor, we’ve put together this helpful guide to explain what featured snippets are, how they benefit your brand and what you need to do to earn them.

What is a featured snippet?

While you won’t find one every time you conduct a search, featured snippets appear at the top of many results as a highlighted box. Google calls them featured snippets because:

“Unlike our regular web listings, the page’s description – what we call a ‘snippet’ – comes first. With featured snippets, we reverse the usual format. We’re featuring the snippet, hence the ‘featured snippet’ name. We also generate featured snippets in a different way from our regular snippets, so that they’re easier to read.”

Here’s an example of what a featured snippet looks like on a desktop search result page. As you can see, the one below is a bulleted list, but the information in a featured snippet can also appear as a paragraph or a table.

Why does Google display featured snippets?

Simply put, Google uses featured snippets to provide quick answers to simple questions.

“We display featured snippets in search when we believe this format will help people more easily discover what they’re seeking, both from the description and when they click on the link to read the page itself,” according to a blog post from Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for search. “It’s especially helpful for those on mobile or searching by voice.”

How do featured snippets factor into voice searches?

Featured snippets play a large role in voice searches on devices like Google’s Home smart speaker. In these searches, the digital assistant that powers the speaker can’t display the answer to the search visually (unless the speaker also has a screen like the Google Home Hub). Instead, the digital assistant uses content that would normally appear in a mobile or desktop search to provide a spoken answer to the user’s query. In these instances, Google will also cite the source in the Google Home mobile app so the user can click to learn more.

How do featured snippets help marketers?

A few years ago, a debate began among search marketers as to whether featured snippets are actually costing content creators like brands and publishers traffic. After all, if searchers can quickly find answers to their queries at the top of the SERP, why do they even need to click into the content?

These concerns have proved to be unfounded, however, as searchers consistently click through to the source of a featured snippet to learn more about the topic.

According to a study from Ahrefs, for searches without paid ads that include a featured snippet:

8.6 percent of clicks go to the featured snippet.
19.6 percent of clicks go to the search result right below the featured snippet (i.e., the No. 1 organic result).

The study also found that, for searches without a featured snippet, 26 percent of clicks go to the top result, meaning, if your site owns the featured snippet and the top result, you’ll get 28.4 percent of the clicks vs. 26 percent of clicks if you only had the top result in a search without a featured snippet.

If your site owns the featured snippet but doesn’t land in the top spot, you’ll still likely see an increase in clicks. The vast majority of featured snippets come from one of the top five results, meaning you’ll “steal” clicks from the No. 1 result with the snippet while still getting a share of the clicks from your standard search result.

Where featured snippets rank in Google’s organic results (by SERP position)

The study was based on millions of search results with featured snippets. Studies that large can seem somewhat ambiguous. To help make this concept a little more tangible, here’s a specific example of how earning a featured snippet helped out one of our clients, AT&T Experience.

Case study: How earning a featured snippet drove traffic for AT&T Experience

First, a little background. AT&T Experience is the largest AT&T authorized retailer with nearly 1,300 retail stores nationwide. The brand’s website is relatively new, and Mindstream Media Group has been helping them gain visibility online with technical SEO and content marketing services.

Our content marketing services have included regular blogging efforts to help drive traffic and increase awareness. In July, we published a blog with a timeline of iPhone launches. For the first couple of months, the post didn’t get a whole lot of traffic. Starting in mid-September, however, the post’s traffic started to ramp up. Initially, we attributed this to the page’s rank steadily increasing in relevant search results coupled with an increase in queries about the upcoming iPhone launch.

In late October, the traffic shot up sharply and remained steady for the next few weeks. It didn’t take long to determine what happened. The post was appearing as a featured snippet for the search “Apple iPhone timeline” – a term that had more than doubled in popularity from July when the blog was released to September when the traffic started spiking.

Not only was our post the featured snippet for the search result above, but it was also the top result in the organic rankings. The post was also ranking in the top five results for a number of related search terms.

This boost in the post’s rankings – including its promotion to featured snippet status – had a significant impact on traffic to the site. If we compare the post’s traffic from the first 30 days after it was published to its traffic from the last 30 days in October, we can see some pretty impressive returns:

The last stat here is especially significant. Visitors to the blog post were spending an average of almost 7 minutes on the page in the second time window. The amount of time spent on a page is a) amazing for a blog post and b) an indicator that people found the content valuable and were reading it all the way to the end.

How do I get my content to appear as a featured snippet?

There’s no magic formula for getting your content promoted to a featured snippet. There are, however, a few simple steps you can take to give your content the best chance possible:

Create high-quality content: When it comes to any type of content you create that you want searchers to find, make sure it’s high-quality. This means the content is well-researched and well-written, includes quality images and graphics and, above all, provides audiences with valuable information.
Answer specific questions: Google often shows featured snippets for searches where the person is looking to find more information about a topic. To give your content the best chance of getting featured, create pieces that answer specific questions related to your brand. The goal isn’t to sell your products and services, it’s to help audiences learn (e.g., like providing a timeline of iPhone launches if your brand sells the devices).
Use a Q&A format: To make sure Google knows what specific questions you’re answering with your content, try using a question-and-answer format. This could include content like FAQ pages or (prepare for a fourth wall break) blogs like the one you’re reading right now that use questions to transition throughout the piece.
Optimize your content: Make sure your blogs and webpages follow SEO best practices by optimizing elements like title tags, descriptions, header tags, structured data, etc.

Need help creating optimized content that dominates Google’s search results? Contact Mindstream Media Group today.

10 of the Best Free Tools to Help You Produce Killer Online Content

Posted on October 30, 2018January 28, 2020 by Mindstream Media Group

For brands, creating online content like blogs, web pages and social media posts is an effective way to build relationships with target audiences. When done right, this type of content delivers a lot of value for brands like building awareness, increasing social media followers, driving website traffic and even helping consumers convert into customers.

The bad news, however, is that creating high-quality content can take a lot of time, especially if your brand doesn’t have the internal talent or resources to do it. If you’re having trouble jumpstarting your content efforts, check out our list of tools below to learn how to:

Identify topics for online content.
Write better headlines.
Edit online content pieces.
Develop concise copy.
Optimize your content for search engine results.
Organize your content creation process.

10 free tools for creating better online content

No. 1: Google Keyword Planner

If you want to know how your target audiences are searching for your brand on Google, look no further than the Keyword Planner. The tool is designed for choosing paid search terms, but it works well for identifying organic content topics, too. As long as you have access to an eligible Google Ads account, you can find the search volume for specific search terms to help guide your online content creation.

In the early stages of creating online content, you can turn to the Keyword Planner to:

Identify topics to write about based on the types of information that target audiences are searching for related to your brand, products and services.
Choose focus keywords for content pieces. If you have a general topic in mind, you can use the Keyword Planner to find specific keywords to focus on when optimizing the piece for search results.
Discover future content topics. When you use the Keyword Planner, keep an eye out for popular search terms on related topics to guide future content pieces.

No 2: BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a great tool if you want to find the online content topics that are dominating social media conversations and earning valuable backlinks. While not as robust as their pro option, the free version of BuzzSumo allows you to check out the top performing content on pretty much any topic.

If you have a general idea of what you want to write about, just enter it into BuzzSumo’s search bar to find top online articles based on:

Facebook engagement
Twitter shares
Pinterest shares
Reddit engagements
Number of links to the URL
Total engagement

No. 3: CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Want to write better headlines for your online content? Check out CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer tool. You can enter your headlines into the tool and it will analyze the text and provide you a score from 1-100 based on factors like:

Percentage of common and uncommon words – common words should make up 20-30 percent of your headline with uncommon words (e.g., awesome, beautiful, etc.) making up 10-20 percent.
Percentage of emotional words – terms that stir an emotional response from your readers (e.g., absolutely, wonderful, danger, etc.).
Percentage of power words – terms that demand readers’ attention and inspire action (e.g., pay zero, will make you, etc.).

No. 4: Grammarly

Grammarly is a freemium app that you can add to your browser or install on your desktop to help you edit online content. The tool detects grammar, spelling, punctuation and other common writing errors to help you create clean, professional-sounding copy.

There are a few ways you can use Grammarly’s free version:

Download their browser app and copy and paste your content into a new Grammarly document.
Use the browser app to automatically detect errors as you create content on other sites like WordPress, social media platforms, Google Docs and more.
Download Grammarly on your desktop to edit content in Microsoft Office products like Word and Outlook.

No. 5: Hemingway Editor

When it comes to online content, writing in a simple and concise manner is always the way to go. The Hemingway Editor helps you sharpen your copy by suggesting edits to complex sentences and phrases. Just copy and paste your content into the editor and the app will highlight portions of the copy that need work.

The Hemingway Editor highlights and suggests edits for:

Passive voice – try to stick with an active voice.
Adverbs – limit the use of these as much as possible.
Complex phrases – opt for simpler alternatives whenever possible.
Lengthy sentences – shorten or split up long, complex sentences to make them easier to read.

No. 6: Merriam-Webster online thesaurus

When you’re creating content, do you ever find yourself using the same tired verbs and adjectives over and over again? If so, there’s a simple fix to expand your vocabulary and add an extra punch to your writing – Merriam-Webster. That’s right, you don’t need a sophisticated browser app or plugin to find unique alternatives to frequently used words and phrases. Just go to Merriam-Webster’s website, enter in a word or phrase into their Thesaurus and browse the synonyms.

No. 7: Pixabay

Nothing can ruin online content like large chunks of text. Adding images to your content will give your readers’ eyes a break and help the flow of your piece. If you don’t have an in-house creative team or the budget for a premium stock photography subscription, try out Pixabay. The website has more than 1.5 million royalty-free stock photos that you can use for a variety of purposes. (There are some restrictions, however, so make sure to read this article before using Pixabay’s images.)

No. 8: Yoast WordPress Plugin

If you’re using WordPress for your website or blog, you should definitely download Yoast’s SEO plugin. Yoast helps you optimize your online content for the search engine results that matter most to you. Here’s how it works:

Enter in a focus keyword for the content piece.
Optimize the piece based on that keyword.
Yoast will provide you an optimization score and tips to improve the content.

No. 9: Google Drive

If you’re looking for a convenient place to save, organize and manage your upcoming online content pieces, look no further than Google Drive. With Google Drive, you can save all the content pieces and tools you need into easy to access folders by:

Creating editorial calendars with Google Sheets to plan out your upcoming content.
Saving blog drafts with Google Docs to research and outline future blog posts.
Uploading images to add to your content pieces later.

No. 10: Google Analytics

Once you’ve created a piece of online content, it’s important to find out if it’s actually capturing the attention of your target audience and driving engagement on your website. This is where Google Analytics comes in handy.

With Google Analytics, you can:

Monitor how much traffic your online content pieces drive to your website.
Understand what sources drive the most traffic to your content pieces (e.g., social media, email, organic search, etc.).
Identify top performing pieces to inform future content.

The most important local search ranking factor

New ways to optimize GMB signals

Google Posts

Google Q&A

Reviews

Paid Local

Fighting local search spam

Local search is as important as ever

An overview of the awareness stage

Using organic content to increase brand awareness

Create informative and optimized blog posts

Produce more video content

Improve your social media presence

Use eye-catching visuals

Tag others to amplify your posts

Leverage the power of hashtags

Number of hashtags per post vs. average engagement per post

No. 1: Consumers want variety in their search results

The takeaway for marketers

No. 2: Consumers get to choose their own buying journeys

The takeaway for marketers

No. 3: Marketers are turning to AI

How likely brands are to use AI to develop content marketing strategies

The takeaway for marketers

Need help creating personalized media campaigns and content for your target audiences?

Contact Mindstream Media Group to find out how we can give you VIP access to your consumers.

Create a list of general blog topics

Step No. 1: Brainstorm

Step No. 2: Develop buyer personas

Step No. 3: Conduct industry research

Step No. 4: Review historical data

Refine your list of blog topics

Step No. 1: Conduct keyword research

Step No. 2: Find top performing topics

Organize your blog topics strategically

Step No. 1: Build out a content calendar

Step No. 2: Develop topic clusters

Contact Mindstream Media Group to learn how we take our clients’ content game to the next level.

What is a featured snippet?

Why does Google display featured snippets?

How do featured snippets factor into voice searches?

How do featured snippets help marketers?

Where featured snippets rank in Google’s organic results (by SERP position)

Case study: How earning a featured snippet drove traffic for AT&T Experience

How do I get my content to appear as a featured snippet?

Need help creating optimized content that dominates Google’s search results? Contact Mindstream Media Group today.

10 free tools for creating better online content

No. 1: Google Keyword Planner

No 2: BuzzSumo

No. 3: CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

No. 4: Grammarly

No. 5: Hemingway Editor

No. 6: Merriam-Webster online thesaurus

No. 7: Pixabay

No. 8: Yoast WordPress Plugin

No. 9: Google Drive

No. 10: Google Analytics

Need help creating awesome content for your brand? Contact Mindstream Media Group to learn more about our Content Marketing solution.