Shownotes: A content marketing strategy is the focus of this Success Unscrambled podcast where we will look at article writing.  The podcast is broken down into 11 areas including:

1. Website Hierarchy


2. Keyword Research


3. Article Length


4. Call to Action (CTA)


5. Article Title


6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)


7. A 6-24 month plan


8. Frequency of Writing


9. Images


10. Taking Things Up a Level


11. Social Sharing

Hello, ladies. Alvern here. For today’s podcast, we are going to switch things up a little, and we’ll be looking at content marketing strategy. We will be focusing more on article writing. So, if you are planning or thinking of creating articles for your blog, today we’ll be looking at that in a little bit of detail, just to give you a better understanding of how best to take advantage of content writing, or creating content for your blog.

The five … Actually, it’s more than five, isn’t it? There are about 11 areas we’ll be looking at. In the podcast today, I’ll be covering website hierarchy; keyword research; the length of your document or article; the CTA, or call to action; the article title; search engine optimization; the 6-24 months plan; frequency of writing; including things like photographs, or charts, or whatever kind of pictorial representation; taking things up a level; and then, the actual marketing, sharing it, or promotion, should I say. Sharing it on different areas of the web.

Website Hierarchy

All right, let’s start on the first topic, which is website hierarchy. So, you decide that you want to start a blog, or you already have started a blog, and maybe you’ve thought about this before, I don’t know. Just in case you haven’t, it’s really, really important before starting a blog, or even very early on after you’ve already started it, to think of the hierarchy of your website, in terms of from sort of a search engine optimization point of view, or from the whole business strategy point of view.

What is the focus of the website? You could be deciding to create a news website. Then, probably, there isn’t a specific focus, but you probably have several subcategories or categories across that website. However, if it is you deciding you want to go into your specific niche or sub-niche, then sometimes you want to carefully consider because it affects you or the website. Maybe not in six months’ time. Maybe not in 12 months’ time. But in maybe 36 or 72 months’ time down the road, where you realise that there isn’t a specific focus for your particular website or blog.

The reason for that is, if there is no specific focus, then in terms of driving traffic to your website, when people get there, they probably wouldn’t know exactly what it’s about, especially when it comes to blogging. Of course, things like podcasts, you don’t have to do that too much, because it depends on the type of podcast that you’re running. But anyway, let’s not dive into that, get distracted. Let’s not get distracted.

Say, let me give you an example. Say, for example, you decide you wanted to be in the dog training niche, or you wanted to be in the DIY niche, or, say, for example, garden furniture niche, or outdoor gardening, or cosmetics, or makeup. Whatever your niche is, your broad niche, it could be even relationships. Whatever your broad niche is, there’s a very big, broad niche, and you can’t really do everything on a broad niche. So, you may want to sort of focus down into a much more narrow, focused niche.

So, say, for example, dog training. You want to decide to focus on golden retrievers, or Siberian Huskies, for example. Or if you wanted to do things on pets, or fishes as pets, instead of focusing on all types of fishes, like catfish, and all different kinds of tropical fishes, you wanted to focus, maybe, only on koi, and your garden pond, how to take care of those.

If it is, for example, you wanted to look at the relationship niches, a very big, broad niche. Instead of just looking at just relationships in general, you wanted to focus on long-term relationships. What other era did I mention?

If it is you wanted to do something like social media, for example. Probably if you’re looking at social media, you probably know already, but we need to narrow that down and say, okay, I’m going to look at social media as it relates to Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever that is.

So, it’s really, really important that you know what niche or sub-niche you’re going to go into, because it will help you structure the actual website so that you can set the internal links, as well as external links, properly so that the traffic flows really nicely around on your website, right?

Three things I want you to remember when it comes to website hierarchy because I don’t want this podcast to go on forever. Is there one specific focus? If there is, what will the internal linking look like? Again, most Importantly, future plans. So, in five years’ time, if you can look at what your business website, or your website, just your website, for example, would look like in five years’ time, how would it look? What would be the areas of focus? What would be the different sub-niches, for example, or areas that you focus on?

Keyword Research

In order to do that leads me nicely into the next subtopic, which is keyword research. In order to get a really good idea of how to lay out your entire website, you need to do a bit of keyword research. Probably not just a bit, but maybe a lot. That, in collaboration with looking at what other websites are doing. You can even look at books on Amazon, or other videos, or stuff like that. What are the hot topics around your particular niche?

Say, like I mentioned earlier, you’re looking at something like DIY, and you wanted to look at DIY in terms of building out storage, because right now, apartments and houses, depending on where you go, in big cities, are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So, maybe you want to focus on things like smart or compact storage ideas, or people who want to do some DIY and create their own storage compartments within their small space that they have. You’d be looking at taking a small cupboard and sort of compartmentalising that into an effective way of storing, for example, in the kitchen, or stuff in your bedroom, or whatever that is.

You have to really know what it is. So, go to places like Buzzfeed, look on generic news websites, see what’s happening currently in the marketplace around your niche or sub-niche, and then go to somewhere like the Google keyword planner. I’ll make sure and include all these references in the show notes. Go to somewhere like Google planner, and look up those main keywords, okay?

Now, because you just … Say, for example, you just bought a domain name, whatever it is, and the site isn’t up and running yet, or if the site is already up and running, it’s feeling new, say, one, two years old. You may have a broad niche, like do-it-yourself storage ideas, or whatever. The thing you want to tackle first and foremost is the long-tail keywords, as opposed to the short-tail keywords, because those will help you get much better traction, and they will help point those particular articles to the more competitive short-tail keywords that will get you ranking eventually, over the long term.

So, three things to remember when doing your keyword research: Look at short-tail versus long-tail. Really, really zoom in on your niche or sub-niche. What does your audience want? When you put up these articles, when you drive traffic to your website, you want people to come to you, visit you, and read your article, what it is that they’re looking for? Is it the quality of information available? What’s the problem that they’re trying to solve?

And then, make it relatable, so people can relate to what it is you’re saying. Speak to the person. If you’re speaking to one person, a friend, for example, don’t make it sound like it’s so technical and business kind of feeling. Write the article in such a way that it is relatable like you’re speaking to a friend. So, when you go to write, focus on that friend, and write all that particular content.

So, top three things on that one, keyword research. Short-tail versus long-tail, what does the audience want, and make it relatable.

Length of the Article/Post

The third thing we’re going to look at is the length of the document. Say, seven to ten years ago, when I started into the world of blogging, the minimum keyword … Sorry, not keyword, minimum word count for an article or blog post was 350 words. Now, they’re saying it’s 500. My advice to you would be to go for 750 to 1000 words, although many of mine are somewhere in the 2000-3000 words bracket.

The longer the better, but it shouldn’t be a lot of fluff, it should be really valuable content, because you want to make sure the content is evergreen. You’re going to put it out there, and it’s going to be there for a long time to come. Focus on value, focus on quality. If you don’t have anything to say, you’re better off not saying it. Read through your research, and give your audience the quality that they’re looking for.

And write a story. Don’t just write facts and figures. Make it sort of personable to the person who’s reading it by adding a story to that. Say, for example, if you’re writing something in the DIY niche about storage in small apartments, for example, clever storage in small apartments, you go and say, talk about a story about something that happened with one of your friends, or maybe a relative. When my parents were whatever age, they had a lot of space, and now they have a lot less space, and