First, Try This

Pretend you forgot what SEO means. Pretend you’ve never heard the term before. There’s no longer such thing as writing great sales copy using your descriptions and filling it with meta keywords.

Common Mistake In Mindset

The mistake SEO companies are making right now is trying way to hard to program Google. We need to understand that Google is self-sufficient, they don’t actually need us.

Who needs us?  The people we’re helping.

The more value you give through your content the more likely people are to share your content with their friends and family. This equivocates to people spending more time on your website, which is what Google looks at more than anything when determining if a page should actually show up in search engines.

How To Correct It

Get your friends and family to stay on your website longer. Do everything you can to accomplish that. Its the whole reason you write in the first place, its to send value to others. When the focus of your content strategy shifts away from that, and instead you focus is on ranking higher in search engines.. your search engine rank actually gets worse.  Why?  People aren’t staying on your site as long and Google is measuring that the content on your website isn’t valuable–and thus not valued to rank high when searched.  Also because your bounce rate will increase because people who are landing on your site aren’t receiving any value and quickly navigate away.

The Takeaway

Value first, the rest will follow.  Its the same principles behind servant leadership.  Make your content strategy purely around serving others. Think about this: if you have unequivocal buy in to your content strategy to educate, and provide useful content that solves your customers problems you are exhibiting all the characteristics of a servant heart.  If your heart is serving your potential customers they will know it, and they will reciprocate.  Good luck!

My Question For You

Has this post changed your mindset for your content strategy?  Let me know in the comments.