SEO Case Study #1 Part 1: Creating Great Content

For my first mega SEO case study I’ve chosen to follow Chapter 3 from The Advanced Guide To Link Building by Neil Patel and Brian Dean. This Chapter is about epic content link building and because I want to get clambr on the map ASAP I think this will be the best place to start!

In the intro to Chapter 3 Neil and Brian explain how one of the biggest myths in SEO is that quality content naturally generates links. I’d agree with that. It doesn’t. Just take a look at my traffic report from Google Analytics:

Flat as a mill pond right? That’s because great content needs backlinks and so far the only backlinks I’ve physically laid down have been directory submissions of which most have yet to be approved.

clambr is still very much a fledgling site. As far as social following goes I currently only have 31 likes on my Facebook page and just 229 Twitter followers. Eric Cartman would describe this as “lame”.

So it’s time to take Neil and Brian’s tutorial for a test drive and see if it can help steer me in the right direction to making great content that generates backlinks on autopilot (with a big push of course) and finally get my blog tons of eyeballs!

Step 1 – Keyword Research

Firstly they recommend I find what’s already out there in my niche by kicking things off with some good old keyword research using the Google Keyword Tool.

I found two gems amongst a sea of high competition and believe they will be perfect for crafting my great piece of content around. The two keywords I’ve chosen are “top bloggers” and “Google rank.”

Next up I went on Google to check out each of my 2 keyword’s top 10 results.

You can see immediately that the top 3 ranking sites for the keyword “top bloggers” don’t even include the keyword in the title tag! This is great news because it means I might actually have a chance of getting my content to rank within these top three.

I opened the Search Engine Analysis tool to check out the on page SEO of these top 3 and guess what? None of their meta descriptions contain the keyword “top bloggers” either.

As luck would have it this was the same case for my second keyword: “Google rank”:

The exact keyword “Google rank” was not in any of the title tags, meta descriptions, or meta keywords.

What further inspires me about competing with all the above is that their title tags are not very “link baity”. They are all fairly mundane and I don’t feel enticed to click.

Step 2 – Make Something Even Better

The plan now is to make something better that will blow the competition out of the water! It’s time to drop a big fat duck in my mill pond!

Well because I’m a newbie to offsite SEO and have a tight budget for investing in tools that’ll help me rank on Google there’s been a question playing on my mind for weeks now. I want to know plain and simple the core tools top bloggers use in their link building campaigns to succeed in ranking high on Google. In a nutshell I want to know what they power up on their browser or desktop each morning and if they could only choose three tools what three would they be?

I’m sure there are plenty of newbies like me who’d love to know what tools top bloggers rely on most, so focussing on just three will hopefully make people really think about what they can or can’t live without.

Step 3 – Expert Roundup

To answer this question I’m going to go with Neil and Brian’s suggestion to do an expert roundup. They recommended using AllTop and Technorati to find bloggers to pitch to so I’ll spend the next few days trawling through these websites to make a solid list of email contacts. (Actually speaking of Technorati, I think they need to verify my blog, so this code is for them: VASW4DD5EJS5 ).

I’ll be using Buzzstream to manage my email out reach and will use various versions of this slightly altered template from The Advanced Guide to Link Building:

Hey [Blogger Name],

I’m doing a roundup of expert opinions on my site and I think many SEO newbies like me would love to know your answer to this question:

If you could only use 3 SEO tools for your link building campaigns what 3 tools would you choose? e.g. Buzzstream, Scrapebox & Open Site Explorer.

Thanks in advance and if you’d like to expand on how you made your decision that’d be even more epic!

Of course, I’ll include a link back to your site.

Thanks!

Richard

Conclusion

So…let the email out reach begin!!!

I will follow up this post with a Part 2 on how my email out reach goes and if or if not things are shaping up for a piece of great content!

Let’s hope I get plenty of replies because it will be truly fascinating to see if 3 tools really do stand out above the rest!

Excited about how this SEO case study will turn out? Don’t miss out on the action and sign up for clambr updates (at the top of this page) to see what happens! 🙂