Lonely lonely pages
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On my site I have tons of blog posts that have never been visited. (Falls on floor in tears). I of course know why. The content is mediocre in most cases and when it was average to good I didn't market it more.
My question is should I go and just scrub the non visited pages or spend the time making these pages better and work on making the content above average?
My competition above me do not have as many pages and their ranking is purely (I have researched this to death) from links from sites they have developed - with good authority.
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Hi Kieran,
I feel the pain you as a business owner would be going through when you don't see all those efforts performing.
I am sure you have done your research on best practices however I would like to highlight the golden rule for online marketing success again for you. The secret is not volume, it's always quality and consistency.
I completely agree with Peter that you should not scrap the old pages with mediocre content unless they are "Not Unique". I have often seen that mediocre content is usually created through article spinning practices.
While there could be many ways to take a leap from here, however since I am not fully aware of your situation and limitations, here are some ideas:
1. List down all articles on your website in a spreadsheet and write down the following information against them:
a) Topic
b) Target Readers (Existing Customers / New Customers / Both)
c) Target Location of Readers
d) Objective of the article
e) Actions you expect the readers to take
f) Is the article Unique and Original? Please note this is not about the quality or creativity, pure uniqueness.
g) Is the quality of article poor, fair, or excellent? This is on the basis of creativity, knowledge and engagement potential of the article.
h) keywords being targeted in this article.
2. Put a filter on content quality and uniqueness and filter down all articles with fair and excellent quality and uniqueness.
3. Now starts the more difficult task of marketing these articles all over again. This is going to be time consuming and would need attention to detail. But hey honestly, there are no shortcuts to success.
a) For each article that you have filtered out, make sure you verify this before proceeding any further. All those article pages you have selected MUST have appropriate ON PAGE Meta info. Ensure you have proper titles, descriptions and keywords for each of those pages. Also try and spend 5 minutes on each article and see if you can build internal links (3-4) for each one of them.
b) For each article that you have filtered out, do a keyword detailed using Moz analysis and find out the links and ranking factors. I am assuming you know how to do this, or please contact me and I will help you through the steps.
c) Now write following for each of those selected articles. A 200-300 word Press Release (teaser), a 30-40 word Facebook post (preferably with a picture), write a twitter post for that article, 50-100 words article preview teaser (inspired from the press release), Email Teaser (50-100 words)
d) Now for each article please do the following, in no order (as per your convenience):
i) Submit press release to sites like PRweb.com if your budget allows or choose sbwire.com or similar sites.
ii) Share the facebook & twitter posts.
iii) Through your moz analysis for the targeted keywords, identify blogs and forums which are relevant for your article and submit your article teaser that you created in previous step to these sites.
iv) Send emails to all your existing customers who are relevant for that article and if possible invest in some email marketing list too. Please do not buy ready made lists however using hoovers / linkedin etc is advisable.
I hope my suggestions help you drive higher and relevant traffic to your website. Please feel free to send me any questions you may have.
Thanks & Regards,
Prateek Chandra
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Hi Kieran
I definitely think you shouldn't scrap the content as I am sure there's been a lot of work put into those posts over time.
If it's not worked, then first look at how you can improve it in the light of the knowledge you now have (including also by doing some fresh keyword research), then get to work on it.
Maybe there will be some content that is beyond redemption so in those cases retire the articles. But with some re-working of your existing blog content combined with re-marketing of it through social channels, then you should begin to see some return on your investment.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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