One Thing Writers Don’t Get About SEO
Reading Medium, I grew to distrust SEO.
As an aspiring writer, I just wanted to learn the ropes of the business. Making a sustainable income was a dream. So, was SEO ever important for writers?
Not so much, everybody kept saying.
“You can write a blog post on your website that nobody will ever read. Or you can join one of the social writing sites and build your audience.”
While the statement has some truth to it, it’s half-baked at best.
I’m the co-founder at MadX , a growth agency helping SaaS businesses connect with their ideal customers. From our efforts so far, SEO produces the largest return on investment for our clients. Market feedback doesn’t lie.
Here’s why.
More than 90% of online experiences start on search engines.
As a result, businesses will spend $80 billion on SEO this year, which is a 10% more compared to 2018.
Why is it important for writers? SEO is one of the largest global industries.
Informational architecture is one of the leading problems.
You can build a viable long-term business by understanding how people consume and search for information.
The global music industry lags $30ish billion behind the SEO industry. We’re spending less money on the most popular activity on the planet (music) than feeding search engines. SEO is people Feeding search engines means helping people.Understanding that you’re not competing with an algorithm but building something for an actual person helps map out search engines. They’re not computers. SEO is people using computers. So, we’re not gaming the system. We’re building one.But without getting too philosophical, let’s jump into that one thing most writers don’t get about SEO.Every search query comes from intent.Ahrefs (one of the top SEO tools) has run a study. They’ve bought affiliate keywords from Fiverr in three price categories . Each one has set them back $15, $80, and $150.The biggest difference between these three gigs?The cheapest gig provides a bunch of low-difficulty keywords with higher search volume but without analyzing user intent.In plain English, the list is not suitable for ranking an affiliate product because they’re missing the key element — query goals.Why is the user even googling a particular term?If you can’t answer this question, you can’t build an SEO strategy. Your content will probably underperform and fail to rank. Randomly stuffing your content with high-volume / low-difficulty keywords is no bueno. You’ll miss the mark. The most expensive Fiverr gig sets the difference because it provides a usable list of keywords. If you’d like to watch the Ahrefs experiment in full, visit their Youtube channel here .You get what you pay for, I guess. Here’s what the lower tier reports miss.To illustrate the following examples, we’re focusing on Postaltyics , a website offering direct mail automation software for tech-savvy SMBs. When you turn to Google, you’re usually driven by one of four goals:> Informational intent: i.e., “how long does first class mail take?” Navigational intent: I.e., “Postaltyics login.” Transactional intent: I.e., “Send bulk mail online.” Commercial intent: […]
