Transcript
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk and Tea.
Today's conversation is about knowing what SEO strategy you should take based on the inherent resources and competitive advantages you have. And of course that also means what you shouldn't be doing to depending on your weaknesses. But again, this is Talk and Tea and today I want to introduce the tea that we're having. It's a Pu'Er Tea and this is one of my more prized ones because it is caked. If you've ever seen a caked Pu'Er, this is what kind of what it looks like. And so I kind of have Pu'Er a lot, I have a lot of different kinds. It's very strong, gives a nice kick in the morning and I just generally really like it. So let's go ahead and get brewing and start talking about SEO strategy based on your businesses, unique, competitive advantages.
So the reason why this is import is because SEO is a complex game. There's a lot of different metrics, there's a lot of different strategies and there's infinite amount of search results and there's a lot of competitors to compete against.
And so when it comes to strategy, like any other strategy, you can't beat everyone at everything. What I like to advise my clients is, yes, we want to get to their levels and rank on their level, but let's focus on the thing that we have a competitive advantage over.
So if you've seen my other video with the three pillars of SEO or one of my blog posts, I talk about what those three pillars are. But the three pillars of SEO, again, are link-building referring domains, content and also technical SEO. So those are the three link-building referring domains, content, and then technical SEO.
Generally for most sites, we're going to focus on the first two pillars, link building and content. A third technical SEO is more if you have hundreds of thousands of pages, that's the video for its own. But the kind I wanted to discuss more are not as big as a hundred thousand pages. Because if it's bigger than that, it necessitates a whole different strategy that we can discuss in a different video.
But what ends up happening is you need to either beat your competitors out on link building or content. Generally that's where it falls in. And what I like to advise is if you're a company that you've been in business for years, you've been involved in the community, you know your neighbors, you know the local councils and networking organizations. You have an inherent competitive edge in your brand legacy. People know you and your exposure. You've been there for awhile and you're active in the community.
But oftentimes for these companies, they have a strong network but they're online presence or the resources or their marketing resources are not there because most of their marketing has been through in-person investments of time. So for companies like this, the best strategy forward is not to make up your weakness, which is like, let's put a lot of content and focus on content strategy to get that there.
What I would actually advise sometimes is double down on your inherent competitive vantage, which is, if you really want to network to the community, go that route and use it to are towards a link building method. So if you know local networking organizations, councils and your friends, ask your friends, "Hey can I post on your website, some valuable content and they kind of get a link back to my website?" "Hey can I come speak at the next meeting about a topic that I think is valuable to the members?" You double down on that.
Use your network and your cachet with the community to drive a link building campaign. Screw the content and focus because yes you should have at the bare minimum add more content on your website. But don't double down on your weakness. Double down your strength, which is link building.
So if you're a business that's been around for a while, you have a lot of friends, a lot of small business owner friends or you've just been in the industry for a long time in the market. The trade publications know you, the local newspaper knows you, the industry publications know you, you go to the local conferences, use that. You have a lot of friends, link build with them.
Now, let's say you're on the opposite side. You are a business that does not have a lot of network just yet, but you have scrappy dreams. You have a lot of willpower and you're kind of new to the field and you want to kind of make your mark. Generally for businesses that are new, you don't really have the same cache or the same connections. It takes time to build those.
What I'd argue is you do have the willpower and you have the watt to be big, so that's what I would argue. Hey, go use a strategy that is more content-focused. You're excited. You have the time. Use those resources to build a content library that is big so that your site can be seen from Google as a authoritative website.
Lots of legacy businesses or businesses had been around for a while. They've been around for awhile so they have full operations where they can't exactly pivot to a marketing SEO strategy overnight. It requires a lot of slow movement of, okay, who are we going to hire? How's this change our day to day responsibilities?
If you are a business that doesn't have that same legacy or you're not as tied down to years of operations, you can quickly get off the ground content because you guys are scrappy, you guys should be able to, right? Or you can make that time investment or monetary investment to get that content on your site.
So I would argue if you don't have the network, go the content route. Lots of businesses cannot get content out. I've worked with a variety of clients from the big from the small startups. They just can't get content out and the bigger the business, the harder they have... They have the time to get out because the bigger they are, they have more checks, they need design on it, they need the CEO to look at it, they need so-and-so to look at it. They have a lot of the issues it's standing in their way. If you're a smaller scrappier business that doesn't have the same departments fighting or needing checks, go to the content route.
Buy a lot of the content, put it out. You can beat your competitors based on the content library. Again, just like I said link building that isn't just any, you don't need links but double down what you're good at. So those are two angles you can take it.
Those are I guess extreme angles. Whenever I advise clients to SEO strategies, it usually falls on those two areas. Well should we do a strictly a link building side or do we, should we do a of the content side? You're generally going to fall in some line there and the strategy will depend on what your competitors are doing.
If your competitor has like a 100x the links you have, then maybe you should go the content route. If they have way more content than you, like 10,000 more pages than you, then maybe you want to go the link route. It also depends on... Sorry guys. Well, we had a slight issue with, no, hold on... Sorry guys. We had a slight issue with the camera. It fell.
So let me kind of pick back up where I just said, if your competitors have 10,000 pages, don't really try to beat them at what they're good at with that spread. Go the link building route, try to get high quality links from big referring... Get a lot of referring domains from big websites.
There's a lot of different ways you can kind of take it, I'd say, but it's just more of the thought exercise. Double down on what you're good at. Don't try to beat your competitors on everything. So again, if you have inherent competitive advantage with your connections, go link build.
If you have an inherent connection that are about sweat equity, go build content, or somewhere in between of them. All right, so hopefully that gets you thinking this isn't a strategy that you can just take a move now, it's more of a thought exercise. It will help develop your SEO strategy.
But this is what I feel like helps people get how to start with their SEO. So hopefully you can take that and use that for your own SEO strategies.
Now, if you found this valuable, I would love if you would like and subscribe. I make a lot of these videos to kind of help small business owners, other marketers, and just general businesses who want to get started with SEO. So hopefully this was valuable for you today. I'm going to go ahead and pour my tea and going to go ahead and enjoy it and hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks.