Here’s what’s happening, why reCAPTCHA alone doesn’t cut it anymore, and a tiered playbook you can actually implement – whether you’re a solo contractor, a mid-size service business, or a multi-location e-commerce brand.

Why This Is Happening Now

Traditional spam bots were dumb. They could be stopped with basic honeypot fields, IP blocklists, and a simple CAPTCHA. What’s flooding forms and storefronts today is different: AI-powered agents that simulate human behavior convincingly. They move a mouse naturally, type with realistic delays, pass behavioral scoring, and in many cases solve CAPTCHAs using human-powered solving services or advanced vision models.

The cost to run these agents has dropped dramatically. That means the problem is no longer limited to high-value targets like financial services or sneaker drops – it’s hitting general contractors, self-storage facilities, home services companies, and mid-market Shopify merchants.

The motivations vary:

• Competitors burning your ad spend by clicking your ads and submitting fake leads
• Lead arbitrage fraud — someone selling “leads” they fabricated against your form
• Affiliate fraud — fake conversions to trigger commission payouts
• Inventory hoarding on e-commerce (add-to-cart bots that lock stock before real buyers can purchase)
• Carding attacks — using your checkout to test stolen credit card numbers at scale

The Tiers

Tier 1 – Foundation (Every Client, Every Budget)

These are low-cost, high-impact changes that should be baseline for any site you build or manage.

Honeypot Fields Add a hidden form field that no real human will ever see or fill. Bots, which try to complete every field, fill it automatically – and you silently discard those submissions. Takes 15 minutes to implement, costs nothing, and still catches a surprising amount of unsophisticated bot traffic.

Replace reCAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile Cloudflare Turnstile is free, privacy-friendly, and significantly more effective than reCAPTCHA v2/v3 against modern bots. It analyzes device fingerprints, browser signals, and behavioral patterns without requiring the user to click anything. Drop-in replacement for most form implementations. If your client is on Cloudflare (and they should be), this is a no-brainer.

Phone Number Type Validation This single check eliminates a huge percentage of fake leads cheaply. Services like Twilio Lookup or NumVerify check in real time whether a submitted phone number is active and whether it’s a mobile, landline, or VoIP number. VoIP numbers are a massive red flag – the overwhelming majority of real residential and SMB leads use mobile numbers. Discard or flag VoIP submissions at the form level.

Basic Form Friction

• Require a real field interaction sequence (not just autofill)
• Set a minimum time-on-form before submission is valid (bots fill forms in milliseconds)
• Limit submissions per IP within a time window

Cost: Free to ~$25/month depending on validation API volume.

Tier 2 – Validated Leads (Service Businesses, Lead Gen, Local)

For clients in financial services, home services, legal, healthcare, real estate, or any business where a single qualified lead could be worth thousands of dollars, you need real-time data validation at submission.

Email Verification Services like ZeroBounce or NeverBounce check submitted email addresses against known disposable/temporary domain lists, validate MX records, and flag addresses that bounce. Integrate at form submission – reject or flag invalid addresses before the lead ever hits the CRM.

Address Validation For service-area businesses (contractors, HVAC, self-storage, pest control), a submitted address that doesn’t exist or falls outside your service area is useless at best and fraudulent at worst. USPS Address Validation API or SmartyStreets can confirm addresses in real time.

Lead Fingerprinting with TrustedForm ActiveProspect’s TrustedForm captures a session recording of every form submission – mouse movement, typing behavior, time on page, device data. This gives you an auditable certificate for every lead. It’s invaluable for two things: (1) flagging bot-generated submissions that passed other checks, and (2) protecting against “I never submitted that form” disputes. Essential for any client in regulated industries.

IP Reputation Scoring Block or challenge submissions from known datacenter IP ranges, VPN exits, Tor nodes, and high-risk ASNs. Most real local service customers are submitting from residential IPs. Services like IPQualityScore or built-in Cloudflare rules handle this.

Cost: $50–$200/month depending on volume and tools selected.

Tier 3 – Full-Stack Protection (E-Commerce, High-Volume, High-Stakes)

For Shopify merchants, multi-location businesses running significant ad spend, or any client where fraud has already caused measurable damage.

Cloudflare Bot Management or a Dedicated Bot Mitigation Layer Purpose-built tools like DataDome, HUMAN Security (formerly White Ops), or Cloudflare Bot Management (paid tier) go well beyond what free/basic tools offer. They maintain continuously updated threat intelligence, apply machine learning to request patterns, and can distinguish sophisticated AI agents from human traffic with high accuracy. These tools sit in front of your entire site – not just forms – so they catch scrapers, inventory bots, and carding attempts before they touch your application.

For Shopify Specifically:

• Shopify Plus includes native bot protection at checkout – relevant for clients on Plus, but not a solution for the majority of merchants on standard plans
• Third-party bot management via Cloudflare or DataDome Shopify integrations fills the gap for non-Plus merchants – For limited-release products or high-demand drops: Queue-it or similar virtual waiting room tools eliminate the timing advantage bots have over humans entirely
• Server-side quantity enforcement (not just UI limits – bots bypass those trivially) – Signifyd or NoFraud for transaction-level fraud scoring, especially to catch carding attempts before fulfillment

Behavioral Analytics

Tools like FullStory or Microsoft Clarity (free) applied with a fraud lens – not just for UX optimization, but to identify patterns in sessions that submit forms or complete purchases. Unusually linear mouse paths, zero scroll before submission, and sub-second field completion are all signals worth acting on.

Post-Submission Lead Scoring

Even with everything above, some bad leads will get through. A lead scoring layer – whether through your CRM, a dedicated service, or a simple internal scoring model – can flag leads for human review before they trigger callbacks, email sequences, or ad retargeting. Time-of-submission anomalies (3am local time for a local service business), geographic mismatches, and duplicate contact data are all scoring inputs.

Two-Factor Confirmation for High-Value Leads For financial services, legal, or any client where a single qualified lead justifies significant sales effort: require SMS or email confirmation before marking a lead as qualified. This adds friction, yes – but it also means every lead that makes it into the pipeline has been verified as attached to a real, reachable person.

Cost: $200–$1,500+/month depending on traffic volume and toolset. ROI positive for most clients within the first month of implementation given wasted sales team time on bad leads.

Putting It Together: Recommended Stacks by Vertical

The Bottom Line

No single tool solves this. The clients who are managing bot fraud effectively right now are layering defenses – filtering bad traffic at the edge before it reaches forms, validating data in real time at submission, and scoring leads after the fact. The cost of these layers is almost always less than the wasted time your clients’ sales teams spend calling disconnected numbers and fake emails.

The threat is also evolving faster than most static defenses. AI agents that adapt in real time – observing a challenge, failing, and retrying with a modified approach – are already in the wild. Staying ahead of this requires a defense posture that updates continuously, not a set-it-and-forget-it CAPTCHA from 2019.

We help clients reach their audience and get quality leads and customers. Get in touch with the Tribal Core team to talk through what makes sense for your business.

The post Why Is Lead Quality Such a Problem in 2026? appeared first on Tribal Core.

A few months back, a valued client reached out regarding a blog post we had written and delivered. The content, he said, was run through an AI checker and came back as likely AI content. Except it wasn’t.

This opened a remarkable can of worms that has invited us to reimagine how we can continue to provide quality content that moves the needle in an AI age.

Some key questions surfaced:

• How does Google feel about AI content?
• How do clients feel about AI content?
• How do we feel about AI content?
• Does AI have a role in creating content?
• Do humans have a role in creating content?
• How do we add value?

More questions arose. How does all this translate to process, evaluation and quality control? What tools do we need to add to our production stack? How can we build in reliability and resiliency?

To make a fairly long story short: this re-imagination has led us to a hybrid model whereby we can leverage the benefits of AI and people alike to develop ever-better content that reads well, covers topics comprehensively and can compete in organic search for years to come.

When an article of content is written in the first place, we want that written by a human, full-stop. We want character and personality, and an eye for a turn of phrase. And as the vast majority of our client portfolio is here in the United States, we want to employ US-based writers and editors who can pick up on and utilize the nuances of American English. Depending on the volume of deliverables in our content pipeline, we’ll rely on a mix of in-house writers and a single content partner we’ve been working with for a decade.

The research process for that article is a different story. We find that AI can be a very useful tool in establishing contours. It helps us build the framework of the article. We still consider the equivalent of a term-paper outline to ultimately be a human task, but one that can be aided by AI tools, in terms of what should be in that article in order to write about a topic comprehensively.

Next step in the process is editing. We have multiple edits, again all human. For our clients in more technical industries, such as law, medicine and technology, we have editors with extensive business journalism experience to help us deliver content that is as shovel-ready as possible.

We’re not yet done creating great content. Next up is our updated content stack. A stack is a set of tools to facilitate a process or a product. For instance, WordPress is typically hosted on a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). So our content stack includes three primary functions:

• AI Checker – to tell us how much of the content is AI, and the likelihood that the content is AI
• Plagiarism Checker – to ensure we aren’t cribbing from another article somewhere out there on the web
• Grammar and Spelling Checker – to present high-quality content that reads well and pays attention to the details.

Even though we largely write in-house, we still run our checks, because it’s important that our clients know we have a process and can stand behind our work.

For what its worth, we’ve found that AI Checkers are wildly divergent in their ability to flag AI content; also on a wide spectrum are the metrics the AI Checkers use to communicate the results. In fact, false positives are all too frequent, where even articles written in-house by real human beings are being flagged as AI. You can imagine this is frustrating for the writer, us as an agency and clients alike. This isn’t confined to marketing – higher education (as just one example) is struggling with this as well.

One disturbing trend here is the research that asserts that data for AI training is disappearing, per the NY Times. If AI increasingly is consuming AI content to train itself, then the lines will continue to blur between what content is human and what is AI, making fact-checking and AI detection ever more difficult. All the more reason to define how we work with humans and AI alike, in service of our clients.

Our clients typically are looking for a comprehensive approach to content. We’ve addressed this by rounding out what we call a Content Package. Our Content Packages, inclusive of a 1,000 word blog post, are packaged up with blog post images, social media images and SEO guidance. Our end-to-end process looks something like this:

The images themselves are formatted for the web, and for social media platforms specifically. For our clients that want to DIY their images, we provide a Creative Brief, which you are welcome to use for your own projects.

Typically we do not use AI imagery, instead largely relying on either client-supplied images or royalty-free images, depending on the level of quality provided to us. We superimpose text over the images so that they really pop.

As an aside, I wanted to see what ChatGPT would generate for us if I requested a “boring” image. The header image above is what ChatGPT generated for us, describing it as a “very plain and uninteresting landscape, designed to evoke a sense of monotony and simplicity.” Pretty spot-on!

Lastly, we provide SEO guidance. This includes a Meta Title, Meta Description, Permalink, Hero Image Alt Text, Share Copy for social media and Hashtag research. We want to make it as easy as possible to plug-and-play the content we provide, while still maximizing the SEO value of that content.

The bottom line here is that we are dedicated to evolving and navigating the ever-changing online landscape. Our clients expect it of us, and we expect it of ourselves. If you have any questions about our process or are interested in working together, let’s talk! We’d love to be of service.

The post Content Production in an AI World appeared first on Tribal Core.

My wife and I are currently doing some caretaking for family in South Laguna Beach.  We’ve been really busy, and thus we’re grabbing quick meals, including a lot of takeout.   We might search for “mexican food near me” or searches related to “fast healthy meals” or even “restaurants” to see what comes up.

Fortunately for us as patrons, we have plenty of dining options.  For local restaurants, all those dining options mean competition, so it’s imperative that a business does what they can to have as much visibility as possible to best put butts in seats or get calls for takeout.

How Bad Data Created a Competitor

Let’s take a real-world look at Adolfo’s, a local Mexican restaurant.  There’s some bad data out there regarding their Name and Location and it’s unfortunately getting worse.  First of all, take a look at a snapshot of a Google Map.  We can see here the actual location (green arrow) and a bogus location for “Adolfs” (red arrow).

Here we can see both Adolfo’s and the bogus non-existent Adolfs.

Unfortunately for the real business (Adolfo’s), there’s this other “business” (Adolfs) that has an established web presence.   Adolfs is showing a location two blocks away in a residential area.  So imagine you’re driving around looking for the restaurant – it’s incredibly confusing if you end up among the Laguna bungalows with no restaurant in sight.  In fact, it’s quite likely you’d give up, drive downtown and never darken the door of the real Adolfo’s.

Google looks for signals about a business

Google is always looking for various “signals” about a business.  This certainly includes a website, a Google Business Profile, a Facebook Page and any other number of business listings (or Citations).

There are essentially both passive and active signals that Google can consult.  Active signals are generally controlled by the business – think updating hours on the website or providing a link to patrons to leave a great review.  Passive signals are often the result of automation, such as third-party scrapers and data aggregators.

What do we mean by having an established web presence?

Establishing a web presence means controlling as much of the web footprint as possible.  Let’s look at it another way: when Google finds active signals, like an updated website and Google Business Profile, it is far more likely to use data from those sources in search results, particularly the Knowledge Panel in the right column of those search results pages (SERPs).

When Google is forced to rely on passive signals, it’s far more likely that info will either be inaccurate or not displayed at all.  Thus, one of the key outcomes of Local SEO efforts is to maintain data consistency across active signals, such that search visibility remains high and accurate.

How Bad Data Compounds in Local Search

This is where the web footprint starts getting really messy.  We already know there is bad data out there that essentially establishes Adolfs has a real and competing business.  That’s a problem in and of itself.  Alarmingly, the problem only gets worse when not addressed.

Let’s take a look at Adolfs’ listing on a bot-powered site called Restaurantji.

Here we see our bogus listing, a map pin for a restaurant that doesn’t exist at all, nor in that location, and reviews for Adolfo’s scraped from TripAdvisor.  Also note the “Nearby Restaurants” link to the real-deal Adolfo’s.  So now, we have a directory site that is strengthening it’s listing, more likely to rank in search, sending a stronger passive signal to Google, reinforcing bad data, making it more likely that Adolfs will rank, sending potential restaurant patrons off on a wild goose chase.

What’s the Local SEO Fix for Bad Data?

Fixing this issue only gets harder the longer it is allowed to propagate unchecked.   Over time, Adolfs will become increasingly “real” in the eyes of Google, as users continue to leave reviews, star ratings and comments on various websites for the wrong restaurant.

The real restaurant, Adolfo’s, needs to actively manage their web presence.  Clearly, they don’t have the in-house expertise to do this, so hiring a cost-effective agency to manage Local SEO is probably their best bet.  They need to:

1. ensure all data is accurate on their website
2. sign up or claim their Google Business Profile
3. ensure all data is accurate on their Google Business Profile
4. ensure all data is accurate on other key platforms such as Facebook
5. use a location management platform to distribute accurate data to business listings (aka Citations)
6. use that location management platform to identify and delete duplicates (which would include Adolfs)
7. contact sites with bad data to reconcile their listings and delete the Adolfs versions
8. regularly update data, post offers and events, and continue to create active signals
9. solicit reviews from happy customers, with direct links to owner-claimed listings such as Google, Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisor

Local SEO for a Local Service Area

While we’ve used a restaurant as an unfortunate example of how bad data can undermine a business’ web footprint, these lessons apply to any business with a local service area.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen bad data for doctors, chiropractors, accountants, mortgage brokers, tow truck operators and businesses located inside other businesses.

Let’s be really clear here: Local SEO Management is now a basic monthly cost of doing business for any entity that has a local service area.  The pain is too high for those that aren’t proactive about it.  It’s not expensive (we offer this service for 200 bucks per month per location), and it is essential.  Here’s the good news: when managed properly, having a clean web footprint gets additional visibility and is likely to lead to more phone calls, lead forms, patrons and a positive ROI.

Whether you are fixing what’s broken or looking to get out ahead of problems, get in touch.  Let’s have a chat and if we’re a good fit, we’ll go to work building your business for the long haul.

The post How Bad Data Compounds in Local SEO appeared first on Tribal Core.

Managing a Web Footprint

If you, a mortgage broker, have a web footprint that is well-managed, and get a steady flow of 5-star reviews, you’ll be increasingly competitive in search results over time. This isn’t just your website – it includes presence on Google Maps, the right-column Knowledge Panel and the coveted “Local Pack,” Google’s group of three local business listings (yes, your direct competitors).  

Looking for Mortgage Broker Near Me?

When your web footprint is not actively managed, it is likely you will have much less visibility in search results.  In fact, if your mortgage brokerage is on the second or third page of results in your “geo-target” (including “mortgage broker near me” searches where Google knows your location), the first thing we’d want to do is look for inconsistent data, along with problems that compound with older businesses or businesses that have changed key data-points such as name, address, phone number and URL.   That geo-target might be a set radius around the business, regional areas such as “the westside” or a particular group of cities.

What is Data Inconsistency?

Data inconsistency happens when the “signals” across the web Google harvests don’t match.  For instance, the office hours of a mortgage brokerage could have changed on the website, but not on the Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).   Or you might have an old URL on Facebook. Or perhaps you rebranded, with the old brand still shown across fifty or more business listings.  And what if you’ve listed the rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage in multiple places?  You can see how easy it is for the data around your business to start showing stress and wear.

Bad Data as a Local SEO Problem

Viewed through the Local SEO lens, this “bad” data – due to inconsistency – is a problem. It might be fairly easy to fix or it might be intractable. There are three things likely to result when a brokerage has this Local SEO problem:

1. Google can’t fully validate your data, resulting in less visibility in search.
2. Google will more likely pull data from other sources, including user suggestions on sites like Yelp and Facebook.    
3. When you do show up in search results, the information displayed could be wrong, which may be confusing and even frustrating for your prospective clients.

The Importance of Local SEO for Mortgage Brokers

So, then, why is Local SEO so important for a mortgage brokerage?  Most obvious, showing up in Google search results produces phone calls, leads and clients. Having a consistent, maintained web footprint works.  Conversely, ignoring your web footprint compromises your visibility.  It’s as if a palm tree was planted right in front of the sign on your building.

Local SEO Conclusion: DIY vs. an Agency

Taking a DIY approach to Local SEO is certainly doable with enough budgeted time and dollars.  You can also work with an agency that gets you and understands what your mortgage brokerage needs.  Bottom line, we believe it’s essential to actively manage your web footprint in order to reach the local audience looking for your services. While Local SEO is now a basic cost of doing business, it’s likely to have a positive ROI, good for your bottom line.  You can run a free Listing Scan of your own business on our Local SEO explainer page here.

UPDATED APRIL 3, 2023

The post Why Local SEO Is So Important for Mortgage Brokers appeared first on Tribal Core.

Most websites out there use a version of Google Analytics code called Universal Analytics, which contains a script named analytics.js.   Some sites have adopted Google’s latest: Google Analytics 4, which is commonly referred to as GA4, and some sites are concurrently running both GA4 and Universal Analytics.  A smaller number of sites are running even older code, such as ga.js.

GA4 is a seismic shift in data collection and measurement.  Google describes it thusly: “Google Analytics 4 operates across platforms, does not rely exclusively on cookies and uses an event-based data model to deliver user-centric measurement.”

You Need Data Continuity

Here’s the kicker: Google has announced that Universal Analytics will no longer process new data beginning July 1, 2023.  That means that a website that has been running Universal Analytics will not collect data at all beginning July 1, 2023, such that any report or view will have a total drop-off on that date.

That seems aways away, yes?   Well yes and no.  Continuity of data is really important.  Measuring site performance month-over-month or year-over-year is really important.  Looking up historical data is really important.

And so too it becomes really important to ensure this continuity of data in your new GA4 account, so that by the time that Universal Analytics stops collecting data, you’ll have at least a year of data in GA4. This means that you need to set up GA4 by July 1, 2022.

We Want to Migrate You Sooner Than Later

Migrating over to GA4 is something that we feel is critically important for our clients, so we’re taking the lead.  We’re building process and checklists so that we can prepare you for this transition, which we’ll help manage.  Every one of our clients is now in progress or fully transitioned with GA4.

For Those With Existing Analytics Accounts

For most of our clients, we’ll be adding GA4 to run concurrently with an existing Universal Analytics account.  This means our clients will have two different Properties in Google Analytics, each of them populating with data.  This ensures that we stay the course with the Analytics we know and love, while collecting data in GA4 and learning how the platform works, what’s different in GA4, and how to maximize actionable insight.

Implementing in Google Tag Manager

Some clients have implemented Google Analytics code via Google Tag Manager – we have process for that as well, as implementation is different than placing the Analytics code directly on the website.

For our new clients, we’ll be reviewing the existing Analytics setup and charting out a path that ensures continuity of data or, in the case of a brand-new company with a brand-new website, starting solely with GA4 right out of the gate.

Not Just Flipping a Switch

Some specific challenges in this process are setting up fundamentally different Conversion Tracking (now entirely based on Events) and migrating Ecommerce measurement (which Google calls “high effort”).

Conclusion: Let’s Do This!

The bottom line is that we’re treating this as the big deal that it is, so that our clients continue to have the data they need to make good decisions about spend, resources and time.  Both clients and prospects alike are welcome to reach out to discuss this further – we’re here for you!

LAST UPDATED: May 30, 2022

The post It’s Time For Google Analytics GA4 Migration appeared first on Tribal Core.

Why Marketing Isn’t Always Considered for a New Website

There is a remarkable amount of pain in the ecosystem that makes this a surprisingly difficult question and conversation. A few possibilities:

1. The web designer doesn’t have anyone they can trust enough to recommend. This forces to client to do their own research and take a leap of faith. This causes uncertainty, which is anathema to any business owner.
2. The question may not come up until well into the web design process or even after launch, which may compromise the ability of the marketing agency to contribute valuable insight that is frequently outside the purview of the designer. Taxonomy SEO and Local SEO are two good examples of strategies that require foresight in development.
3. Bringing up marketing early on may complicate negotiations on the web design front, so it doesn’t get brought up. This creates a project with blinders – neither the client nor the web developer is choosing to see the entire picture.
4. Marketing packages may be stale. Plenty of designers see the value in offering SEO and Digital Advertising services. However, it takes a LOT of time to stay on top of the latest marketing technologies, practices and trends, just like it takes a LOT of time for a developer to stay on top of code changes, programming languages, theme implementation and the like. So a two year old web marketing package on a designer’s website may be selling the client short, because it simply hasn’t kept pace with the evolution of the web – on the marketing side.
5. The client may ask their designer marketing questions they can’t easily answer. This goes back to domain knowledge – designers know design and marketers know marketing. The result is friction – designers are forced to spend time on researching questions they may not know the answer to, and they may reply with an answer that comes from a blog post, and not from on-the-ground and in-the-weeds knowledge. That’s a disservice to both client and designer.

Solving the Marketing Question for Web Designers

So how does this pain get solved? Relationships. When good designers can trust and recommend good marketers, and good marketers can trust and recommend good designers, then everyone wins, especially the client!

The client with the new website has the right people addressing the right priorities with the right skill set and core competencies.

The web designer can focus on design, while working with a marketer that can drive future design work based on rational outcomes for that design work.

The marketer has a partner to discuss different ways to implement recommendations, and what’s in scope or not. This allows for a transparent conversation with the client on possible next steps, and not an adversarial relationship where one might say “tell your designer to do this.”

A good designer, a good marketing agency and a willing client are all needed for a successful web project. Creating an environment of trust, based on setting and meeting expectations with quality work and integrity is essential to making these relationships work. This is a hugely important step in addressing the pain of resolving the marketing question for a new company with a new website.

The post 5 Ways a New Site Draws the Short Straw on Web Marketing appeared first on Tribal Core.

Following is an edited transcript of the above webinar.  The DIY comparison might be particularly helpful to someone that is searching for “google rankings agency” or “natural search agency.”

In this webinar, we’ll show you the end-to-end process of ranking content in Google search, focusing on how Topic Research helps us create content that is more likely to rank for your target keywords.

In this webinar, we’re going to talk about 1) what content to create, 2) how to create it and 3) how to rank it.

In both the DIY and Agency cases, the driving principles are to create content and build authority.   How you do that is the biggest difference between the DIY and Agency models.

Before we get to the 8 steps, let’s first define content and authority.

What is Content?

• Blog Posts
• Videos, both YouTube and embedded on your website
• Case Studies – a note on case studies – create them based on your services, the verticals you serve and your geographic service area.  The tendency is to create case studies based on a specific client, but no one is searching for that.   So a plumber might create a case study on “commercial pipe repair in Downtown San Diego” in order to rank for that keyword phrase.
• Geo-Service Pages – these are content-rich pages that combine one of your services with one of your geographic service areas.   You might have a page for accounting services in San Francisco and another for bookkeeping services in San Mateo for instance.
• Webinars, like this one.

What you create for your site creates value for your audience.   For instance, a semiconductor firm that provides webinars and white papers provides serious value to a big-time prospect like an automotive manufacturer.   

So the lens through which we’re viewing all that great content is how do we get visibility for it in organic search?

That leads us to the question:

What is Authority?

Authority is the value you’ve built online.  This includes building your brand just as you’d do to build a brand offline, including reputation and thought leadership and presence in a local community perhaps.  Authority is only quantitative to a degree, in that Google is a black box and their search algorithm is incredibly sophisticated.   

But there are some basic principles at work here, along with webmaster guidelines and other learning.

The simplest equation here is:  backlinks build authority

A backlink is a link from another site to yours.  How much authority they have, and if they are in a related field to yours factor into this calculation.  More backlinks over time will raise your authority, and its like the tide that lifts all boats: if you have good content on your site, that content will rank better and better, and you’ll be able to increasingly compete for broader keywords.

Also playing a role is Domain Expertise – and by that I mean, what is it in which you are experts or market leaders?  Here’s an example –  we rank well for SEO-related terms because we write about it a lot and have earned backlinks because of it.  Google knows its something in which we have a lot of experience.  That Domain Expertise means we carry more authority on the specific topic that has earned us that authority.  

Next is Longevity – how long have you been around and doing your thing?  All things being equal, a company that’s been around longer is going to rank better.  

The last point here is Freshness: Google is increasingly rewarding sites that have fresh content, both new and freshened up.  We’ve seen really good results by freshening old content, pruning less relevant no-traffic content, focusing on domain expertise and delivering ever more value to potential customers.

Before I share the 8 Steps, let’s put some extra focus on Topic Research. 

For us, Topic Research covers a lot of ground.  It includes identifying what to write about, such that you are demonstrating domain expertise and so forth, and also how to write it once you have your topic.

So let’s briefly look at choosing a topic and then writing about it.  We’ll go deeper on this later.  Briefly:

Search Volume is a number that tells how many unique monthly searches there are on a specific topic.    For instance there are up to 100,000 monthly searches on “instant pot quinoa”.  Good to know for a company like Bob’s Red Mill that sells the quinoa those searchers may put in their instant pot.

Search Intent is an understanding of where someone is in the customer journey.   You can imagine that someone searching to “buy organic quinoa online” is farther along in the customer journey, closer to making a purchase.

Once we’re actively researching our chosen topic, we want to cover that topic comprehensively.  What does that mean.  Well, someone searches for something on Google.  Google generally wants to serve up search results that best answer that query.  How do they know who best answers that query?  If you cover a topic comprehensively, like instant pot quinoa, Google knows that you’ve given the best, most comprehensive answer because they have a billion pages to reference so they know what comprehensive is!  

So that brings us to long-form content, which might be 1,500 words or more.  By necessity, answering a topic comprehensively lends itself to long-form content, and thus it tends to rank pretty great.

So we’ve looked at Content and Authority, and now I want to show you 5 examples of how this can result in #1 rankings for a target keyword phrase.

Each of these examples demonstrate some combination of good content and authority, for both the domain and for the individual page or post.

Example 1: Ranking in Organic Search

First up is a financial services firm. 

They have a blog post specifically researched and written to rank for these search terms.  This gets our client in front of the right audience – startups needing CFO-level help on this accounting question.

An excerpt also appears in the People Also Ask section of search results, which gives them a lot of real estate on this results page and a high share of clicks as a result.

This post is just over 1500 words, and has been kept very up-to-date with fresh content on a regular basis.

Example 2: Ranking in Organic Search

Next is a building supplier, ranking #1 for a keyword phrase that is highly relevant for one of their key B2B verticals.

This page actually outperforms expectations because the site itself doesn’t carry that much authority.  But this post, with over 2,000 words, more than 25 images and regular updates, produces a steady flow of highly-relevant traffic.

Example 3: Ranking in Organic Search

Now we’re going to take a look at our site.  We rank #1 for a really great niche keyword phrase.  There’s a lot of competition for this search from other marketing agencies and from the self storage associations, so we’ve had to write a nearly 6,000 word post updated every 60 days or so in order to stay on top.

This is also a good example of how you create a guide that gets updated each year.  So sometime in December, we’ll update this post to be a guide for 2022.

Example 4: Ranking in Organic Search

Our fourth example is another building supplier.  They rank #2 for a keyword phrase that has allowed them to reach an audience outside of their primary service area in Florida.  They are increasingly shipping nationwide because of this content strategy.

They’ve done this with a well-researched 1200 word post and an embedded YouTube video.  However, they haven’t updated in almost a year, and so they’ve slipped from #1 to #2 in the results, which costs them clicks every day.   Simply adding a couple hundred words to this post could return them to the #1 position.

Example 5: Ranking in Organic Search

Back to our site, we rank #1 with what I call a geo-services page.  This combines a service we offer – SEO – with our key service area, Ventura County.

In order for us to maintain this #1 ranking, we have to update frequently and build backlinks to this page ongoing.  And it works, so we allocate budget to it.

OK, now that you’ve seen some real world examples of combining Content and Authority to achieve top rankings in organic search, we’re going to look at the 8 steps to do this, first from a DIY perspective.

In other words, you can do this yourself, and it will move you ahead of many of your competitors who aren’t doing this stuff.   Following these 8 DIY steps, we’ll then show the Agency view.

In these 8 steps, we’re going to talk about 1) what content to create, 2) how to create it and 3) how to rank it.

We’ve spent years building great process and implementing best practices so that we can consistently provide high-quality work and positive results. But here’s the thing: you can do this yourself, every step.  You’ll have to put in a lot of time and some money, but the DIY approach can absolutely work for you and your site.   

We are going to walk through each of these 8 Steps in more detail.  These steps inform what content to create, how to create it and how it can rank.

We’ll identify keywords and topics with Keyword Research

We’ll outline our content with the Topic Research Roadmap

We’ll write a 2,000 word Blog Post

We’ll optimize it before it’s published with Post SEO

We’ll track the target keywords with a Web Position Report 

We’ll build backlinks to our content with an SEO Campaign

We’ll schedule time to freshen our content on a regular basis

And we’ll diagnose anything that needs improvement with the Page Research Roadmap

Let’s get to it!

Step 1: Keyword Research (DIY)

What we’re looking for here is a sweet spot – keyword phrases that get some search volume but not so competitive you can’t rank for it.  

The sweet spot is pretty heavily dependent on your website’s authority.  The more authority you have, the more you can compete for keywords with higher search volume.  If you have low website authority, you might want to stick to very niche keyword phrases.   

We recommend you use Google Keyword Planner, in Google Ads.  This is a free tool with real-world data from Google.  Focus on a topic that is within your domain expertise, especially if you’re new to creating content, so that Google has a real good idea of who you are and where your expertise lies.

Pick a topic and we’ll move on to researching that topic.

Step 2: Topic Research (DIY)

Here you’re researching the topic, so that your copywriter knows what to write about and include in order to comprehensively answer the topic.  You want to fully explore the topic and answer the questions people are asking about this topic.  The structure of it can be in the form of a term-paper outline, with main sections and sub-sections, so that it flows intuitively.

For DIY, we recommend starting with Google search results, paying close attention to the top results for the search and the People Also Ask section on the results page.  Spend some time at Google Trends as well, which can provide insight on trending topics and geographic variations on the topic.

This outline you create, along with questions to answer, phrases to include and so forth, can be handed over to your copywriter and they can run with it.

Step 3: 2,000 word Blog Post (DIY)

Using the Topic Research, the copywriter can create longform content, which might be 2,000 words or more as we saw in the examples previously. 

The sections of the article can contain header tags, denoting where an H2 or H3 header would go for a section or sub-section.  Again, simply think of header tags as if it were organized like a term-paper outline.

There are a number of ways to create interesting longform content.

Listicles, Buzzfeed-style, are very common.  FAQs can be helpful for products and services alike.   Pull-quotes can add word count quickly and easily.

And structured data can also be helpful.  What is structured data?  Well, here we see Google showing a recipe in search results.  This recipe shows a star rating, # of reviews and how long it takes to make this recipe.  That information comes from data that is marked up – basically, in the code, you’d say time to prepare this recipe: 22 minutes, and Google will pick up on that in the code.   Structured data is often managed by a plugin, so you don’t have to be too technical.

Once you’ve uploaded your post, you’ll want to optimize it before you publish it.   That brings us to

Step 4: New Post SEO (DIY)

A few key things to pay attention to here:

The Permalink should pretty much be your target keyword phrase and that’s about it.   So in our example, that might be instant-pot-quinoa

The Meta Title (also called the SEO Title) should be 56 characters or less including your brand name appended to the end.  

The Meta Description should be 156 characters or less.  You have to be able to edit both the Meta Title and Meta Description for every page and post on your website.  For instance, Yoast SEO for WordPress is practically mandatory these days.  If you’re on another content management system, make sure you can edit these fields.

Images should be sized for the web.  In most cases, 1600 pixels wide, with a file size under 300 kilobytes is about right.   The alt tag, which is an attribute assigned to the image, should be descriptive of the image and can be keyword rich at the same time.

Lastly, the categories and tags you assign to your post help give it context.  The organizational structure of your content, or taxonomy, is a great topic for another webinar.

So go ahead and optimize your post and Publish!  Once published, you can give it some visibility by posting to your social media channels, including it an email newsletter and so on.

Once your post is up and live, you’ll want to track it’s position in the search engines for your target keyword phrases.

Step 5: Web Position Report (DIY)

As this is the DIY version of web position tracking, you’ll have to cobble together a few tools.   First, google “ahrefs keyword rank tracker” and bookmark that tool.  Ahrefs is a platform with a set of SEO tools, and this one is free.  

You’ll want to check rankings on a fairly regular basis, either weekly or monthly.  Record the position in a Google sheet.   You might also use Annotations in Google Analytics, so that you see the direct relationship between landing page traffic and search rankings.

With a focus on Content and Authority, you’ll see changes in rankings and traffic over time. 

Step 6: SEO Campaign (DIY)

What we call an SEO Campaign is the procurement of backlinks to your website.  These backlinks, or links from external sources, are what build authority.   All of the links together comprise a link profile, which needs to look natural to google, as you’re supposed to earn links, not buy them.  To be clear, building links is tough whether you’re a DIY site owner or an agency. 

So start with your distribution channels, such as social media and your email newsletter.  You might also create a series of Google My Business posts, which are super easy to put together – just an image and an excerpt.

Building links to your home page will continue to build your brand and help you maintain a natural link profile.  Here are a couple ways to do that.

1. Author a guest blog post or article for a publication.  This might be for a blog or a local newspaper or a trade publication.   The author bio would contain a backlink at a minimum.
2. Look for media and podcast appearances.  We recommend signing up for free to peruse opportunities at helpareporter.com and qwoted.com with a w.

Backlinks accrued over time will build authority and impact search rankings.

It turns out that if you can get your content to rank, you have to work to maintain those rankings.  The best way to do that is: 

Step 7: Freshen Content Management (DIY)

Especially for websites that have been around 10 or 20 years, it’s really common to have previously ranked #1 for a target keyword phrase, and then watch that ranking slip over time until you’re no longer on the first page of results.  That’s painful, right?

Freshening your content can halt and reverse a slide.   There are two key ways we recommend freshening your content.

1) update your content on a regular basis – every 90 to 120 days is generally adequate for all but the most competitive keywords.   Updating means adding 50-100 words or more, building in semantic phrases, answering Questions People Ask from Google results, adding a couple images and generally just making your content better.  This doesn’t have to take long – we can freshen a post in 15 or 20 minutes and reap the benefits from that modest time investment.

2) you can also update your content annually, where your content is positioned as being helpful for 2021, 2022, 2023 and so on.  Change your Meta Title, Meta Description, Page Title and references throughout the post and you’ll be good to go!

Step 8 is Page Research (DIY)

Say your post is not ranking as well as you think it should, or maybe it’s slipped over time.  You’ll need to diagnose the issues causing this. 

If you’re doing this DIY, it can be one of the more challenging steps, but we’ve cobbled together a checklist for you using free tools.

First, check your Meta Title and Meta Description.  Make sure they are within proper character counts and include the Target Keyword Phrase.

Next, make sure the Page Title is correctly marked up as an H1 header tag, and make sure it too reflects the Target Keyword Phrase.  This might require an adjustment to your theme to get this right.

Now, The First Paragraph of your post is really important.  It has to be contextually aligned with your Target Keyword Phrase.  In other words, don’t beat around the bush – get right to the point in your first paragraph.  If its about something other than what you’re ultimately writing about, you very well may not rank as well as you could.

And does your post have an embedded YouTube video related to the topic?   This can help a lot, and it doesn’t need to be your video.   You can embed a related video right in your post, which can increase user engagement and factor into how well you rank.  If you can create a video for your post, even better and highly recommended!

Readability is important – you might find you need to simplify your copy and your sentence structure.  Google this: “flesch kincaid grade” or google “readability tools” and run your page through it to see how you compare to your competitors.  Simplifying your content can help quite a bit.

Next, are you answering questions that google displays in the People Also Ask section of search results?  If no, then do so.  These questions can also make for quick videos uploaded to YouTube and then embedded into your post.  See how these dots are connecting here?

Lastly, do you have any backlinks to this post?  If not, your page very well may not have enough authority to rank.  In fact, something like 95% of all blog posts don’t have any backlinks, so this can be a competitive differentiator for you.

There you go, those are the 8 Steps to #1 rankings done DIY – research, content development, optimization and improvement all factor in to how you can do this for yourself and your site.

Now, how does an Agency approach these 8 Steps?   An Agency is going to have a marketing stack – a set of paid tools that can help with discovery and so forth.  If they’re nice and organized, that Agency will be able to execute on each of these steps and follow-through, such that your content is well-positioned for great rankings.

Let’s peel back the curtain, so you see how we approach each of these 8 Steps and what clients can expect.

Step 1: Keyword Research (Agency)

We first build out Keyword Research as comprehensively as possible, and then iterate as need be, as the client adds new products, services, enters new markets and so on.

We start with raw data based on a small set of keywords our client provides.  This raw data can be many thousands of keywords, which we map to a Google Ads Search Campaign with a dozen or more Ad Groups.   

We then create a set of 50 Priority Keywords, which we’re going to track and watch in a Web Position Report.  There’s much we do at the account-level, and also at the keyword-level for an individual page or post.

We research questions and queries people are asking, we identify negative keywords to keep ad costs down at launch and we build competitor analyses.

All of this research lays the groundwork for choosing great topics each month, and we can do additional research to supplement this.   We top this off with a PDF explainer that walks our clients through every section of their research document.

Next up, how an Agency approaches Topic Research:

Step 2: Topic Research Roadmap (Agency)

We put together a three page PDF with the precise information that you and your copywriter need to write a killer page of content, including the permalink, metadata, outline and how to put it all together.  

In short, your content needs the right context.  When you comprehensively cover a topic, you can rank against huge brands and stiff competition.  Google knows when you are comprehensively covering a topic, because it has a billion pages to reference.

So we help you and your copywriter do that – no guessing involved.   Follow the outline, include the right semantic phrases, format and optimize it, and you’ll be competitive.

And we provide a PDF explainer tying it all together, neat and tidy.  

Now you’ll create the content!

Step 3: 2,000 Word Blog Post (Agency)

Our Topic Research is shovel ready – it makes a copywriter’s job much easier.   We’ve worked to remove the mystery of creating longform content that can be of high value to your target audience.  We develop and procure content for most of our clients, while some have in-house resources. 

As the writer develops the content, they’ll be referencing the Topic Research Roadmap, including the Outline.  The article should reflect this outline with the inclusion of Header Tags, just a bit of text which precedes each section header with an H2 and each subsection header with an H3.  Remember the title of the page is the H1, and the rest of the content flows like a term-paper outline.  

These header tags will be super helpful to your Content Manager who is uploading it to your content management system.   

Step 4: Post SEO (Agency)

This is often referred to as on-page SEO.   The trick here is to optimize the post before it’s published, and particularly the permalink.  You really want to avoid changing the url after it’s published, so as an Agency, we integrate into the content workflow.

We have a 10 point checklist.  We look at the Post Title, the Post Length, the Permalink, the Metadata, images, taxonomy and more.   We’ll make notes for clients, and make adjustments ourselves if we have website access.

Properly formatted and optimized content sends the right signals to Google, and helps your site stay well-indexed.

From here, the content is published and pushed to the client’s distribution channels, including social media and an email newsletter.

Next we track the rankings:

Step 5: Web Position Report (Agency)

Paid software that can manage this is really helpful, so that you have such features as historical data, grouped keywords, competitor data and more.   Did you know that Googlebot for Desktop and Mobile are basically two different search engines?  It can be quite helpful to see results for each of these two separately, and it can inform important adjustments such as site speed and user experience.   So, yes, tracking keywords and how your pages appear in search engine results, also known as web position, is part of the process of ranking content effectively.

Step 6: SEO Campaign (Agency)

This is how we as an Agency approach building authority in your website and your content.   We procure three high-quality backlinks per campaign, and these links often carry very high domain authority.   One of the ways we ensure quality is the requirement that backlinks come from sites that actually get traffic.  

We also closely manage the anchor text, or the text that actually links to our client site, be it “Click Here” or the brand name or something else.  All of these things are part and parcel of maintaining a natural link profile – in other words, what Google would expect to see when a website has great content and earns backlinks as a result.

As an Agency, we have great process and solid reporting for our clients, and we track backlinks over 90 days to ensure they have significant longevity.  The steady acquisition of backlinks over time can have a significant effect on a site’s authority and that of any one particular page.

Step 7: Freshen Content Management (Agency)

Freshening content is where an agency can help a client maintain and improve rankings on existing content.   As we’ve shown in this presentation, a page or post can rank well at one point and then fade over time.   

By adding 50-100 words, incorporating some semantic phrases based on research and adding an image or two, your content can have a lot more staying power in the rankings.

We provide our clients management of this process, tracking key content on the website, and setting up a schedule to update that content at appropriate intervals.   We recommend that most keyword-focused blog posts get updated every 90 days or so, with more frequent updates as competition increases.

For instance, if you maintain a blog on Apple rumors, you might update a page daily or even more frequently, to stay competitive for highly-trafficked, high-value searches.  Setting the right intervals and sticking to a schedule will maximize the work done to maintain a freshened content schedule.

Step 8 is the Page Research Roadmap (Agency)

Where we diagnose why an individual page or post isn’t ranking better than it is.   It takes into account real-world rankings and competitor data to figure out how you can improve a particular post on your site, so the post needs to have been published for a while in order to accumulate data and settle into where it is sitting in the rankings.

An Agency would need to use one or more paid tools to do this work, there’s a lot of unearthing to do here in order to figure out how to improve a page, especially for more competitive target keyword phrases.

On-page SEO, which we did prior to publishing, may need some adjustments, along with the first paragraph of the post, and other key elements which send signals to Google.  

We’ll also pay close attention to the backlink profile of your site and the target page.  You might need an authority boost provided by one or more backlinks, and we show what it might take to push your way back up the rankings.

We look at the Page Research Roadmap through many different lenses, and we deliver this in a lengthy PDF, accompanied by an Explainer, and attainable Next Steps.  

There we go – the 8 Steps an Agency can take to ranking content #1 on search.  We’ve talked about 1) what content to create, 2) how to create it and 3) how to rank it.  

And we’ve shown how you can take a DIY approach or work with an Agency like Tribal Core to maximize the impact of the content you’re creating for your website.

Next, let’s look at what to expect, showing how a focus on Content and Authority produces results.

In the first chart here, we can see a 400% improvement in Organic Search traffic over six months.    This client has posted 1 or 2 posts every month, including a longform post that we’ve researched and produced.  They’ve also run an SEO Campaign with us each month, building backlinks to their homepage and targeted posts. 

In the second image, we see the same client over a shorter 120 day span, with a greater than 200% increase in organic traffic.

With steady attention to creating great content and building site authority, this client has seen steady improvement month after month.  They’re getting leads, phone calls and clients with this strategy.  It’s great to look back and see how far they’ve come and how we’ve built momentum for continued success together.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably a little curious about Tribal Core.

I founded Tribal Core in 2002, after the technology company I was working for was acquired by Vivendi Universal.   We’re a web marketing agency that has always focused on businesses that value social responsibility, community and philanthropy.  

We’ve worked with mom-and-pops and organizations as big as the United Nations.  We currently do a lot of work in higher education, working with four university clients, as well as organic product companies, spiritual organizations and a host of others, including biotech, health and wellness and nutraceuticals.

We also have an online Store, where we offer up content marketing research a la carte, so you can kickstart your business or get ongoing support.

Thanks so much for joining me in learning how you can create content that ranks in search, whether you’re a DIY small business owner or working with an Agency like ours.  

We know we need to earn your trust and confidence every day.  If you’re interested in working with us, get in touch, we’d love to learn more and see if we’re a good fit.   Bye for now!

Last Updated: November 11, 2021

The post How To Earn #1 Rankings in Search: DIY vs Agency (Webinar) appeared first on Tribal Core.

I’m a grizzled old veteran of the internet.

I logged on to BBS’s in the early-80s. I built my first client website in 1996. I created the New Media department for a record label in 1997 and attended the first MP3 Summit in 1998.  

I founded Tribal Core in 2002, and I was in the trenches when the music industry sued its customers in 2003, when it couldn’t put the file-sharing genie back in the bottle.  We ran our first Google Ads some time around 2006.  

From Napster, MySpace and Friendster to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I’ve had a front-row seat to the rise of social media.  

A dozen years ago, social media stories were remarkable: people found childhood friends, old teachers, long-lost lovers.   Facebook, in particular, was advancing technology that was changing the world, much as previous technologies had done – email, telephone and even the internet itself.   It was communication and connection that was driving the web.

As their revenue increased, from profitability in 2009 to $19 billion in 2019, so too did their focus on user behavior.  The endless scroll became ubiquitous, and before long, everywhere you looked, people were staring at their phones.  

From an advertiser’s standpoint, reaching audiences through Facebook is largely unparalleled.   Want to reach the thousand people in Portland that like the BMW 3 Series and read Architectural Digest?   Not a problem with Saved Audiences.   Want to reach a million people that share similar demographics and psychographics to your customers?  Just upload your customer data and create Lookalike Lists.

As a marketing agency, we’ve used Facebook and Instagram Ads to help our clients sell products, generate leads and put butts in seats.   We’ve worked with some of the world’s largest spiritual organizations, organic brands and universities, each using social media and the web to reach their audience and make the world a better place.

But gnawing at me, in the back of my brain, was a growing disgust with it all.

Why is their ad platform so fragmented, and so difficult to get permissions in place?

Why do I have to be Friends with my clients to get admin access to a Facebook Page?

Why is their support so opaque and almost non-existent?

Why does it seem like Facebook is being run by children, in comparison to their brethren over at Google?

That’s just an advertiser’s perspective.  I was disturbed by the addiction I saw in young and old generations alike.  The inability to put the phone down.  The constant scrolling.  The pervasive texting and messaging.  Tech execs who don’t allow their kids to have screens. My own Pavlovian reaction to the ding of a notification. 

The ickiness quotient was compounded by stories of Facebook’s technology being used to promote hate and division. 

An algorithm that “actively promotes” Holocaust denial.   

A platform that is complicit in perpetrating genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. 

A revenue model that accepts ad money from China to help spread anti-Muslim propaganda, perpetuating the oppression of the Uighur minority in concentration camps. 

A company that ignores live-streamed suicides because the “video did not breach its Community Standards.” 

A company that was sued by and had to pay a huge settlement to content management contractors who are suffering from PTSD.   

A company that only fessed up to a massive data breach that likely impacted the 2016 election after it was caught, data that was weaponized by recently-indicted Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica.

A company that failed to stop dangerous QAnon conspiracies that use Nazi eliminationist rhetoric.

A platform that is fueling anti-mask sentiment amid Coronavirus “hoax” conspiracy theorists.

What a god-awful shit-show it all is, the AI-driven manipulating of our consciousness in pursuit of advertising dollars, and it is accelerating in the face of the 2020 election. 

When an early investor in Facebook says “Facebook is a threat to whatever remains of democracy in the US,” I have to listen and to act.   When The Social Dilemma on Netflix confirms my repulsion to the rank manipulation we all experience (h/t Center for Humane Technology), I have to listen and act.

Ethically, I can no longer succumb to the allure of advertising to captive, doomscrolling audiences. 

Morally, I can no longer contribute to a platform that is shortening the attention span of entire generations to be less than that of a goldfish.   

I can no longer hide my disgust of Influencer Marketing, and it’s shallow, vapid, self-centered appeal.

And so, we’ll no longer offer Facebook and Instagram Ads Management.    We may lose some business, and we may not.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ll sleep better tonight, knowing that we serve our clients with integrity. 

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has said “my actions are my only true belongings.”   What burdens, then, do we carry with us as technology pervades every nook and cranny of our lives?

We can choose a path that we walk in good conscience.   We can choose an ethical way, and maybe help others who are grappling with the same decisions.  We can act from a place of love and compassion.  We can look out for each other, regardless of race or orientation or politics.   These are the choices we make each and every day.

In gratitude,

Tyler Suchman
Founder, Tribal Core

The post Why We Are Suspending Facebook Ad Management appeared first on Tribal Core.

A La Carte Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is where a menu of marketing services or products is available to purchase for a fixed price. Customers can select these marketing services based on their size, their budget, and their digital needs just like how they would select dishes off a restaurant’s menu.

Pretty straightforward, right?  We’d like to share a bit about how A La Carte SEO works, what you can do yourself, and where you might consider a monthly engagement for SEO and web marketing in general.  Let’s start with some of the primary ways you can do SEO on a one-off or a la carte basis.

Blog Post Ideas

Blog Post Ideas are data-driven topics based on what users search for in Google, questions they ask about a topic and how much search volume there may be for a collection of searches.   Businesses have finite resources; when they engage A la Carte SEO services that include Blog Post Ideas, they know they are allocating those resources effectively.

Blog posts are the bread and butter of internet visibility, and they essentially function as both information sources and sales pages. Yet without data or writing expertise, blog posts can be a nightmare to produce.

Three main problems can emerge from DIY posts.

1. A key decision maker at a business has a great idea for a blog post, but the topic is heavily covered and extremely competitive.  It also may be too broad: imagine a small, local plumbing business posting “All About Plumbing” – it is highly unlikely this post can compete against strong internet brands. This can make it tough to rank, and thus there isn’t a whole lot of value in creating the content, unless it’s part of a larger strategy.
2. Or a client thinks of a niche topic that only a very few users search for, and even with a #1 ranking on a Google search, the post sees almost no inbound organic search traffic.
3. The content is insufficient, both in terms of quantity (think 1,500 words or more), and quality.  The latter can be subjective, but Google can analyze the body of content in context of billions of other pages, which may impact search engine results.

A web agency solves this problem by finding topic with higher demand and less competition, while providing SEO guidance on what questions to answer and what semantic phrases to include.

Keyword Research

The bottom line here is that every business should have Keyword Research for their key products, services, and areas of knowledge and influence.   Good Keyword Research starts with raw data, which is then carefully curated into a keyword set that can be tracked for search position, and deployed quickly in a Google Ads format for Search Campaigns.

Furthermore, Keyword Research is a great source of inspiration for Blog Post Ideas.  See how these dots are starting to connect?  Any business would benefit from understanding what keywords are most relevant to their business, the questions users are asking and how they rank for any one particular search.

So in terms of A la Carte SEO, starting with a discrete Keyword Research project deliverable can reap benefits for years to come.  It’s also a good way for a business to test-drive their web agency!

Topic Research

Topic Research involves the process of creating a guide to long-form comprehensive content on a subject.

What is Long-form Content?

Long-form content is any piece of content that exceeds a sizable word count – the general consensus is 2,000+ words. This might mean a 4,000 word blog post How-to Guide, an 8,000-word white paper on a technical subject, or a 16,000-word ebook.

To compete in Google search these days, you benefit from creating deep-dive research into one topic. This can start with a “term paper outline,” proper headings, semantic phrases and more, so that a business can create a 2,000+ word post that covers that topic comprehensively.  Taking this approach gives a post the best opportunity to rank, even against stiff competition.

From an A la Carte SEO standpoint, Topic Research can be a worthwhile investment on an as-needed basis, without the need to engage in a monthly plan with a web marketing firm.

Social Media Ideas

Most businesses need to maintain some presence on one or more social media channels.  Quite frequently, the person responsible for social media doesn’t know what to post!  Running out of ideas is pretty common.

Having data-driven topics based on what people search for and ask questions about on various social media platforms can be a huge boon to the stressed-out marketing person on staff (or receptionist or the boss’ nephew!).

A la Carte Content Strategy, related to A la Carte Search Engine Optimization, can reveal what’s current about topics most relevant to a business.   Furthermore, having insight into upcoming Holidays & Observances can help a business plan a Social Media Calendar which can include coordination with a graphic designer to produce fun, high-quality social-friendly graphics in advance.

Visibility online in a highly competitive marketplace can pit local businesses against multinational corporations and huge aggregators like Yelp and TripAdvisor. We can help businesses level the playing field with our A La Carte Content Marketing services.

A la Carte SEO vs. Monthly SEO

Whether a business can derive benefit from a monthly SEO agency or can get by with a single-pass SEO effort is largely dependent on the business itself.  Some considerations might include:

• Size of website – is the website thousands of pages or five pages?  Can SEO be applied at the template level (i.e. optimizing the template for products)?   Can taxonomy SEO be deployed as a strategy?  Generally, a small website just getting started would be benefit from a single-pass at SEO, whereas a much larger site should consider aligning with a trusted agency for ongoing SEO support, and web marketing in general.
• Age of website – older websites may be on older platforms, or lack a content management system (CMS) entirely.  This may make the SEO process quite difficult, in terms of the ability to modify key elements such as the Metadata, image alt tags, and more globally-oriented settings such as appending the brand to Meta Titles.
• SEO training – businesses that have internal content teams may consider training up their team in SEO basics.  Having a checklist for key SEO elements on a blog post or product page can get a business quite far down the road.  They may still need to outsource SEO services on occasion, but this may be an opportunity to develop some in-house expertise.

Brand Ranking

Perhaps a business has a website that they have used as a business card (aka brochureware), but the website is so obscure that not even a direct search will list the website on Google.  If the website doesn’t appear for brand searches, then there’s a problem there.  This could be due to something complicated or quite simple.

Check out this article on LinkedIn we wrote on how the U.S. Open accidentally hid their site from search engines while the tournament was on!

Local Search and SEO

This restaurant with an open kitchen needs to compete in local search, and it’s extra complicated in COVID-19 times!

Local businesses can derive outsized benefit from SEO perhaps more than any type of business. If a restaurant appears first on a search of local restaurants, they will gain much more traffic to their business as they’re given the first shot at hungry clients. So SEO optimization isn’t just for multinational corporations, instead the service can give Mom and Pop shops an edge over the national chain grocery store.

But climbing to the top and staying at the top of search results requires constant updates and content development. Google’s algorithm rewards websites who consistently upload or update content.   An A La Carte SEO model may place heavy emphasis on content creation.

We’ve created a Library of Content Strategy Roadmaps for small businesses that serve a local or regional clientele.  These one-time digital products can provide a small business outsized value in understanding local search for key topics, and helping guide the creation of compelling content that ranks.

What are SEO pricing models?

Free DIY SEO

Free services are a great way to hone in on exactly what you need from a professional. These tools break down the barrier of entry into the digital space so that anyone can publish anything. This is both a pro and a con. Anyone can pick up these tools and publish their website online, so the digital space has become much more cluttered.

Although everyone can access many quality tools and significant expertise in their product, they may not have marketing experience. So there comes a point when hiring a professional would save time and add value.  One could learn to build an entire retail store from scratch, but hiring a contractor would add value by creating a competitive storefront in a fraction of the time. In addition, the flood of SEO services often offers contradictory information that goes against industry best practices in order to appear like they are exploiting a niche.

That being said, we understand the DIY mindset and try to offer services that can help support this attitude. One of our main services is supplying clients with data about a topic where they have a specific expertise. For example, a private school may want to know what qualities a potential customer searches for in their school. With our Topic Research Roadmap, we process millions of searches into a term paper outline that includes crucial key words, phrases, and content outlines that match what potential customers desire in a product. The client can use this research to write a post that organically delivers the needed information to make a sale.

SEO on Monthly Retainer

A monthly retainer for SEO, or digital marketing more broadly, is another popular pricing model as a retainer fee offers the most comprehensive coverage. Clients expect that all their digital needs will be taken care of via a retainer model where the agency charges a wholesale sum for a complete package. For clients with the budget and an established need for digital services, this ensures stability and can save money via a consolidated service.

For businesses dipping their toe into the digital market, these services can be overpriced as much of the materials and research generated will not add enough value to match the resource allocation needed by the client. For instance, a customized email template adds value for a corporation with a long email list but will not add value for a small business that generates no leads via email.

Why A La Carte SEO?

A la Carte SEO offers an in-between model that helps businesses looking to establish an online presence. By selecting services off a menu of options, and getting guidance to best serve your businesses’ needs, you can discover the crucial online services without exceeding your marketing budget.

An a la Carte model also incentivizes a web marketing agency to submit their best work as they get paid per item versus being paid a singular, flat fee, and have the opportunity to win more business.

This also helps build trust as you can test to see if the agency actually delivers what they promise or submit generic, poor quality work. Many services charge a rate similar to a custom build hardwood desk and give the client a generic desk made out of particleboard. And at a glance, these services can easily blend together.

In addition, A La Carte SEO and Content Strategy models allow an agency to develop expertise and experience in the field before charging a high fee. Every business is specifically built to address a unique niche in the market, and so marketers will need to discover the best way to present this niche to the general public. Experienced agencies can usually estimate correctly, but this process is not an exact science and there may be some flops. Yet once a marketing niche is discovered, the process turns into an exact science and all the marketing materials can be developed for this niche.

The Bottom Line on A la Carte SEO

Hopefully, with any service, be it one-off or ongoing, you get what you pay for, or your expectations are exceeded.  A la Carte SEO may be a great option for a business that wants to spend their marketing dollars surgically, or get a feel for an agency they may want to work with.  While a monthly engagement may produce more value, a client can start with an A la Carte model to ensure they have proper resource allocation internally, before really engaging on a more comprehensive approach to online marketing.

UPDATED: December 19, 2020

The post All About A La Carte SEO appeared first on Tribal Core.

We’ve developed well-honed topic research methodology so that you always know your lines and find a receptive audience. We’ll help you speak to your audience and climb the rankings in search engines, even in the face of what might look like fierce competition.

We help you make the most of your time and be as creative as possible by a) eliminating time spent staring at a blank screen and b) ensuring that your content is focused. The best way to build a consistent social media content strategy is to organize your content before you sit down to write it. This doesn’t only mean filling out your content calendar, but also knowing what to write in each blog post.

So, without further ado, check out some of these great blog post writing ideas to help fuel your creativity and boost your business. Then get started with our Topic Research Roadmap and let our experts focus their skills on your content.

Build an FAQ in your blog post

The answers to common questions are destined to be popular with your visitors. This makes an FAQ section blog content gold. Writing an FAQ post is also a great way to show off your expertise and demonstrates how much you value your customers.

Yet another awesome benefit is that they may save you work elsewhere. If your sales staff are frequently answering the same questions, for example, a FAQ will allow some of your visitors to be better informed before they talk to your salespeople, which means that they will be further along in their decision-making process. It will also alleviate some of the pressure on your sales staff so that they can make more use of their skills and time. If a customer does phone up with a question that is answered on your website, your representatives have the option of answering them concisely before referring them to the FAQ for more detail.

Create a Guide for your audience

If you are an expert in your field and/or you want to help people by passing on your knowledge, creating a guide is useful. Create the guide on a subject that aligns with your customers, their lifestyles, and their needs. Offer the guide as a downloadable PDF in exchange for an email address to build your email list. This is known as offering a lead magnet.

The content you create for the guide can be repurposed in any number of ways throughout your site, including excerpts, summations and helpful lists.

Write about your company values

You may be offering similar products or services to another business, particularly if you sell commodities. However, you can stand out by explaining your focus. Are you a family-owned business with an emphasis on family values? Perhaps you’re proud of your size and your access to a vast network of experts.

EO Products Founders and Company Values

One of the several benefits of blogging your company values is that the process may help consolidate your ideas. Putting your business values into words can also be an effective way to share your mission statement with your staff and make sure that everyone knows what the firm stands for. In this way, you can reaffirm your sense of identity, internally and externally.

By self-identifying in this way, you may also attract backlinks from like-minded blogs and press coverage that has sought out your perspective.

Business goals and company vision

Expounding on your business goals can help you connect with your audience, because it gets to know more about you and where the firm is going. It’s always a great way to make your firm accountable, which can be good for motivation! Goals can go hand-in-hand with a company vision or mission statement.

You could consider writing your business goals for the next year, five years, or ten years. Following up and updating regularly can provide you with yet more blog post content that will engage visitors and give them an insider look into how you are doing and where you are headed.

For an example, take a look at the Mission page of SpaceX. They’ve done a spectacular job at marrying imagery and mission in a variety of different visual interfaces. Note the timeline slideshow, the flight path infographics and the embedded video.

Newsjacking as a content strategy

Newsjacking could be described as taking a popular news story and generating traffic to your site by writing about it in relation to your business. The trick to newsjacking is to get there fast, use the right keywords, and write honestly and authentically about your reaction and opinion on the story.

If you can muster up a nimble response, make it clear why the story is relevant to your business and your clients. This helps you avoid coming across as inauthentic, rather than adding value to your brand.
Communicating with your audience while being topical can be an effective blog strategy.

Consider coordinating written blog posts with video responses on a YouTube channel, to expand exposure and the chance to grow your audience. This works for satire, commentary, editorial and more. Check out Sarah Cooper with near-instant response satire using the President’s own words. Here we can see she has racked up 400,000+ views on YouTube for a video originally posted on TikTok!

Share when you share

A company’s altruistic and philanthropic efforts can be a big part of the decision-making process for customers. If you have a favorite charity or sponsor, consider a post that is all about them and why your business is proud to aid their efforts.

Patagonia is a great example of a company that has long worn its values on its sleeves. This stems from the founder’s original vision.

The peaceful #blacklivesmatter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder have put pressure on corporate America to take a stand. This is pushing companies into the spotlight and forcing them to think about their values and contributions, and express this in a way that might be a departure from past “corporate-speak.”

The must-dos of your industry or business

This is a great post for setting the bar of customer expectations. It tells them what you think is important and, in so doing, gives them expert advice they can use in their decision-making process.

This is quite common in the marketing world. Social media marketers post their listicles on how to do Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat and TikTok. SEO guys post the ten tips to Dominate The SERPs. Growth hackers give tips on how to get the most out of Google Tag Manager.

The reality is that some people are DIY and others aren’t. If you share your expertise, showing someone how to do the things you do, that person might be more inclined to get in touch with someone that clearly knows what they’re doing.

Blogging lessons learned

A “lessons learned” post reminds people that business owners are people too. And businesses make mistakes, just like people do. Not all goals are met. If you had a chance to do things again, would you do them differently?

This kind of information opens the door to your visitors and gives them an insight into why you do business and how. It’s obviously a pretty big step to implement “post-mortem” reviews of projects in the first place – to then publish those requires a deft touch and thoughtful tone.

We know that coming up with the right topic and content for a blog post and social media is hard for many busy business owners and managers. Fortunately, you can access our Content Strategy Roadmap to make all this kind of thing much easier. Our Topic Research Roadmap has everything you need to create world-class long-form content on a subject. It will help you write comprehensively, including the key elements that help your contact to rank against the competition. If you want the fast track to great content and engaging your audience, get started today.

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