Content mapping: Who, what, where, when, why and how

Did you know that you can create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey?

This is how you ensure content creation is never a guessing game.

Your content can reach and impact your ideal customer whether they just discovered your brand through your blog or are stuck on your product/service page weighing a purchase – and every stage between those two bookends.

Every piece of content you publish can be a powerful motivator and educator that speaks to the heart of your prospect. 

Every blog, article, ebook, case study, landing page, infographic, video – you name it – can work hard to connect with your audience at the right place and time.

The key to ensuring this happens?

Content mapping.

What is a content map? 

A content map is a plan that details how your business will deliver content to your ideal customers no matter where they find themselves in the typical buyer’s journey.

In other words, a content map plots out exactly how your content will reach your audience at the right time and place.

It also shows you how to personalize your content for your specific personas along their buying journey.

Creating a content map alongside creating a content strategy is a genius idea.

What is content mapping?

Content mapping is the process of creating your content map – the plan that outlines your ideal audience, the actions they may take at each buying stage, and how your content aligns with these things to nurture them toward an ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal of content mapping depends on your business goals. However, the large overarching goal of this endeavor is to create a personalized content experience for your audience. 

Ultimately, a content map helps you plan how you’ll support, nurture, engage, and draw in potential customers no matter where they are in their buying journey.

Why should you do content mapping?

Content mapping is vital to ensure your content marketing is robust and evenly spread across the customer experience. 

It’s not just good for your business but also for your customers. Let’s dig into the benefits a bit more.

Create more relevant content for each buying stage

A good content marketing strategy will help you create targeted content to nurture an audience. 

A great content marketing strategy, one that includes content mapping, will help you create targeted content to nurture that audience at every stage of the buying journey.

Remember, the buyer’s journey is the process of research your buyer undertakes as they become aware of a problem, consider their options, and ultimately make a decision on what to do about it. 

Buyers don’t randomly decide to buy something – they come to that decision through a range of circumstances and actions. That’s the buyer’s journey.

Source: HubSpot

With content mapping, you ensure that you’re not neglecting your potential customer as they move forward on the path to purchasing. 

For example, if you have tons of blogs created for the awareness stage but none for the consideration stage, some of the leads you attracted to your brand initially might fall into that gap. You helped them define and understand their problem, but you didn’t show them how they could solve it or achieve their goals.

Another brand with consideration content could swoop in here, picking up where you left off. Now you’ve lost a potential customer.

In contrast, a content map helps you stay with that customer until they’re hovering over the “purchase” button in your website’s shopping cart. In fact, it probably helped get them to that point!

That’s powerful beyond belief.

Get more returns from each content piece

Content mapping also helps you identify a solid purpose behind each content piece you publish.

You’ll create each one with a specific intent that matches up with your goals, the target audience’s needs, and the buying stage they’re in.

That makes each piece pull its weight so much more. 

It’s a stark contrast between: 

• Hitting “publish” and praying the content helps your business in some way.
• Or hitting “publish” and knowing exactly what that piece has the potential to do, and probably will do, in terms of results.

Get more engaged, invested, loyal customers

When you provide great content at every stage of your buyers’ journeys, what do you think will happen?

The engagement, connection, and affinity you build will lead to equally engaged, invested customers.

Deliver a great product or service at the end of all that, and you’ll hook them utterly and completely.

This is how you create brand ambassadors. Raving fans. Delighted customers.

Ultimately, the point of content mapping is to ensure you’re helping your prospects at every step along the way. That amount of personalization and care is naturally going to produce customers who are wild about you.

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How to do content mapping

Ready to create a content map?

Before you start, I recommend having a content strategy in place first. Your content strategy will be useful beyond belief because a lot of the work will be done for you – laying out your content goals, researching your audience, identifying and creating personas, and more.

If you don’t have a content strategy yet, you’ll still learn much from this guide. (It may even spur you on to create one quicker!)

Once your content map is complete, you’ll understand how to map each content piece you create to each stage of the buyer’s journey for your particular audience.

1. Who: Research your audience and create personas

Your target audience is the most important piece of the content mapping puzzle. Without intricate knowledge of them, you’ll be lost.

You need to understand their preferences, behaviors, habits and needs to deliver truly personalized content to them at the right time and place.

How do you build that knowledge? Through audience research. 

Audience research

Never guess what your audience is like. Your assumptions can help you at the outset, but you need to test those assumptions and make sure they’re accurate for equally accurate targeting and content mapping.

That’s what audience research is for. There are a few main ways to go about it:

• Check data that already exists about your audience in studies, statistics, reports, and surveys. This is helpful if your business is new and you don’t have an established following yet.
• Conduct your own surveys, polls, and interviews with your audience. Get data from real customers (if you have them) and also leads, your social media followers, or people who have expressed interest in what you sell. 

If you can, focus on getting insights from real people in your orbit. This will make your personas more accurate and more helpful.

Of course, if you already have a content strategy in place, you’re a step ahead. You probably already have done audience research and have one or more personas ready to go that distill that research.

Buyer personas

How do you compile the knowledge you gain through audience research and make it more usable? 

By creating buyer personas: fictional characters or avatars representing real data about your audience. Each persona is a conglomeration of the commonalities among your audience.

Source: Venngage

Think about it: For most brands, you could probably describe a type of buyer who purchases from them. For example, busy stay-at-home moms who run to Starbucks between school drop-offs, meal prepping, and soccer practices. That, right there, is a buyer persona.

If you have multiple types of ideal customers, create personas for each one so you can map their different buying journeys to your content. For example, Starbucks might add a student persona to their roster or a professional.

2. What: Map out the buying stages of your persona(s)

After your personas are set, you can lay out the common buying stages each persona goes through, including their thoughts, goals, and challenges.

We briefly touched on the stages of the buyer’s journey earlier, but to reiterate, they are:

• Awareness: The buyer is aware they have a problem, but they don’t know what it is yet, or they can’t name it specifically. They are experiencing symptoms of a problem.
• Consideration: The buyer has pinpointed the problem they’re dealing with. They can name it and define it. Now they’re looking at possible solutions.
• Decision: The buyer has decided which solution to use and is comparing the best providers or products that offer that solution. 

In each stage, your personas will have different concerns, needs, questions, and goals. Try to pinpoint these for each persona across each buying stage. 

For example, let’s return to the persona of the stay-at-home mom. Based on the challenges and goals we know she has from audience research, we can outline possibilities for her buying journey. Here’s just one:

Challenge: She’s struggling to find free time during the day. Goal: She wants to find time to indulge herself.

• Awareness: “How do I take time for myself?” 
• Consideration: “I should schedule a break for myself during the day. What can I do that would relax me?”
• Decision: “Getting a delicious coffee drink would help me slow down while I treat myself. Where should I go?”

3. Where/when: Map out content types and topics for each stage of the buyer’s journey

Now that your personas are connected to buying stages, we can look at each stage individually to determine the type of content we can create to help them.

Think about:

• How can you address your buyer’s needs and goals at each stage with content?
• What keywords might they be using at each stage to research their problem and its solution?

Let’s go through each stage to see the common types of content you can use to target your buyers, whether in Awareness, Consideration, or Decision mode.

Note: Some types of content fit in multiple stages because they help more than one type of buyer.

Awareness content

Awareness content should seek to inform your audience. It should help them identify and understand a problem, why it matters, and/or what they should do next. 

Types of content: How-to guides, checklists, infographics, informative blogs, ebooks, and social media posts.

Examples of awareness topics: 

• 10 Ways to Take Time for Yourself by BetterUp
• How to Save Money by Mint

Consideration content

Consideration content should help your audience choose between various options. For example, you could teach them all possible solutions to a problem and compare/contrast them. Or you could educate them about a specific solution and why it’s the best one.

Types of content: how-to guides, product reviews and comparisons, case studies, white papers, tutorials, and webinars.

Examples of consideration topics:

• 20 Ways to Make Your Website More Visible by LocaliQ
• The 7 Best Down Comforters of 2023 by The Spruce

Decision content

Decision content is all about convincing your audience that your product or service is the right one for their needs. This is not about sales pitches but more about presenting the value and benefits of what you offer in a way that demonstrates your expertise.

Types of content: product landing pages, testimonials and reviews, case studies, demos, and product features.

Examples of decision topics:

• 12 Things That Only Ahrefs Can Do
• Webflow’s landing page

4. How: Use your content map to evaluate existing content/plan new content

One of the great things about a content map is that it can help you take a snapshot of all the content you’ve already produced and how each piece helps buyers.

This will help you notice gaps you need to fill – and reach more buyers in a stage you may be inadvertently ignoring.

Categorize old content by which buying stage it helps

First, look at all the content you’ve published and start categorizing it by the buying stage(s) it’s most likely to address.

• If the content fits more than one category, choose the category it helps the most.
• If the content fits nowhere, add it to a list of possible content pieces to update. You could potentially edit that piece to be more targeted to a specific buying stage.

Brainstorm new content topics using your content map

Once you’ve categorized your old content, you should have a good idea of the holes in your content strategy you need to fill to address different buying stages.

You should focus on filling those holes first. Use your content map to help you.

By now, your content map should have three types of information:

• Your buyer personas.
• The stages in your buyer journey mapped to content types.
• The challenges, goals, and possible actions of each persona during each buying stage.

As you brainstorm new content topics, use your content map to ensure you create personalized, targeted content for every stage of your persona’s buying journey.

• Look at your persona and what they need at each stage, including the words they’re using to search for what they need.
  • Research these needs in a keyword tool to find opportunities for optimizing content.
  • Use these terms to find related topics you could also address.
• Look at the best content types that will help your persona at each stage.
• Brainstorm a combination of content topics + formats that will touch your persona at the right time to help them move forward in their journey.

5. Document everything in your content map

A content map should be a physical reference you can refer to during the content creation process.

For that reason, document your content map in a way that’s easy to read and understand. Make sure you can continue adding to it as your content inventory expands, too.

For example, you could create a simple spreadsheet that lists your personas, their challenges and goals at each buying stage, and the types of content you should create to target them. Include both formats and topics.

Source: HubSpot

Start content mapping and create amazing customer experiences that lead to results

Content mapping can seem complicated at the outset.

But if you want to provide your customers with amazing content at every stage of their buying journey, you need a content map.

Learning how to create one is the hard part. 

Once you have the strategy down, you’ll use your content map in ways you never imagined to understand your persona better, get major insights about their buying journey, and come up with content that is personalized to a T for their specific needs.

This is as strategic as it gets. But, as we know in content, strategy = results.

The post Content mapping: Who, what, where, when, why and how appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Google Bard now can use your device’s precise location for more relevant local results

Google Bard can now use your device’s precise location to provide better local results to your questions. When you go to Google Bard, a popup dialog may show up that reads “To get more relevant responses, you can also choose to let Bard use your device’s precise location.”

The notice. Here is what you might see when you access bard.google.com:

You may also see another prompt asking you to confirm that you want to share your location with Google.

Better local results. Google said you should see “more relevant responses about restaurants near you and many other things about your area.” I tried it and it does not seem to work for me, just yet, but it may still be rolling out.

Why we care. Local search is a huge driver of business for many small and local businesses. If people use Google Bard to find places to get pizza, get a haircut, find a dentist and so on, this may drive additional traffic to those businesses.

You’d obviously think you need to be on Google Business Profiles for that to work, so make sure your clients are set up in Business Profiles and do some searches, see how it differs from Google Search.

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A customer data roadmap for staying ahead of the competition by Cynthia Ramsaran

In today’s competitive landscape, the key to winning over customers lies in personalized and extraordinary experiences. First-party data is a vital ingredient in this journey.

By delving deep into customers’ engagement patterns, behaviors and transactional preferences, brands can gain invaluable insights. These insights, when effectively utilized, have the potential to transform the customer experience landscape.

In an era where every brand strives to capture customer attention and foster loyalty, this webinar will unveil the path to delivering a truly remarkable CX.

Learn more by registering for and attending “Your Customer Data Roadmap to Staying Ahead of the Competition,” presented by Redpoint Global.

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How Instagram ranks content in 2023: Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels, Search

Instagram has updated its resource explaining how ranking works across each part of its app – Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels.

Why we care. It’s critical to understand how Instagram ranking works if you want to maximize your visibility and engagement on this platform.

What’s new. Instagram Ranking Explained is an update to a 2021 post – so most of the changes are fairly minimal. Of note, Instagram:

• Separated Feed and Stories into two separate sections.
• Put a heavier emphasis on following its Recommendation and Community guidelines.
• Added a section called Personalize your Feed and Stories, adding new tips on how to personalize Feed and Stories.
• Expanded its discussion around Shadowbanning.

Instagram uses multiple algorithm

Instagram doesn’t use one algorithm to rank content. Multiple algorithms, classifiers and processes – each serving a specific purpose – determine what Instagram users see.

Instagram ranks content differently in different parts of the app (e.g., Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels and Search).

How Instagram ranks Feed

Instagram’s Feed is a mix of content from accounts that a user follows, recommended content and ads. There is also a mix of formats – videos, images and carousels.

Instagram said Feed ranking takes thousands of signals into account. The signals Instagram discussed all fall into three big buckets – the user, the creator and the post.

User signals:

• Engagements – likes, shares, saves, comments and time spent interacting with a post.
• Accounts the user has recently followed.
• Accounts a user has recently liked or engaged with.
• Format preference (e.g., Instagram will show more images if you engage more with images vs. videos or other formats).
• History of interacting with another account.
• Recent posts shared by the accounts a user follows.
• Posts from accounts users doesn’t already follow that Instagram thinks they might be interested in. As Instagram explained:
  • “These are educated guesses at how likely you are to interact with a post in different ways. There are roughly a dozen of these. In Feed, the five interactions we look at most closely are how likely you are to spend a few seconds on a post, comment on it, like it, share it, and tap on the profile photo.”
• Account preferences.

Creator signals:

• Information about the post creator.
• How many times people have interacted with that person in the past few weeks.
• If the content follows Instagram’s Guidelines for Content Lowered in Feed.

Post information:

• Popularity:
  • Number of likes.
  • How quickly people like it.
  • Number of comments.
  • Number of shares.
  • Number of saves.
• Time it was posted.
• Location.

Instagram also tries to avoid showing too many of these in a row:

• Posts from the same person.
• Suggested posts.

How Instagram ranks Stories

The “input signals” Instagram looks at for Stories include:

• Shared by accounts you follow (that don’t violate Instagram’s Community Guidelines).
• Viewing history (how often a user views an account’s stories).
• Engagement history (how often a user engages with an account’s stories – eg., a like or a DM).
• Closeness (a user’s relationship with the creator and how likely they are to be connected as friends or family).

How Instagram ranks Explore

Explore is where Instagram recommends images and videos from accounts a user doesn’t follow. Ranking in Explore is similar to ranking of Feed and Stories.

Instagram looks at:

• A user’s past Instagram activity (e.g., post likes, saves, shares and comments).
• A user’s past Explore activity (posts a user has liked, saved, shared or commented on; how the user has interacted with posts in Explore).
• Post information (how many and how quickly other users like, comment, share and save a post). Instagram said “these signals matter much more in Explore than they do in Feed or in Stories.
• The user’s history of Interactions with an account.
• Creator information (e.g., the number of times users have interacted with that creator in the past few weeks).
• Whether the content follows Instagram’s Recommendation Guidelines.

How Instagram ranks Reels

The most important signals Instagram looks at:

• User activity (Reels a user has liked, saved, reshared, commented on, or engaged with).
• The user’s history of Interactions with an account.
• Reel information (e.g., popularity, the audio track, visuals in the video).
• Creator information (popularity signals include number of followers, engagement level).

Reels can be less visible if they are:

• Low-resolution.
• Watermarked.
• Muted or containing borders.
• Mostly text.
• Focused on political issues.
• Previously posted on Instagram.

How Instagram Search works

Not mentioned in Instagram’s newest resource was how the Instagram search algorithm works. However, Instagram did that in a 2021 post, Breaking Down How Instagram Search Works.

What signals matter in Instagram Search:

• The query. Instagram tries to match that to relevant usernames, bios, captions, hashtags and places.
• User activity. Accounts a user follows, posts they’ve viewed and how often they have interacted with an account in the past. Instagram more often shows accounts and hashtags that a user follows or visits.
• Popularity signals. The number of clicks, likes, shares and follows for accounts, hashtags and places.

Instagram’s SEO advice:

• Choose an Instagram handle or profile name that’s related to the content of your posts.
• Include relevant keywords and locations in your bio.
• Use relevant keywords and hashtags in your captions.

You can also add up to five links in your Instagram bio.

The post How Instagram ranks content in 2023: Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels, Search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Google Local Service Ads mass policy violations

Google has been sending policy violation notices to Local Service Ads advertisers, but it is currently unclear if these are being sent out due to new enhanced enforcement or if there was a bug that triggered these from going out.

The policy notice. The email notification reads, “Your account has policy violations that need to be resolved.” It goes on to say that “if you do not take action by 12 of June, your ads could stop running.” Here is a screenshot of the email notification sent to me by Jason Brown:

When you click through t to “view policy issues” you are taken to a screen that shows you your policy violations, but when you dig deeper, you likely won’t have an issue listed. This screenshot is from Crystal Horton, who posted it on Twitter.

Some say this notice was sent to mostly garage door repair listings, but I am not sure if that is 100% validated or not.

Bug or not. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, is currently looking into if this is a bug or not. Last night at around 5:50 pm ET, Ginny posted on Twitter, “I don’t have an update, but the team is looking into it.”

Why we care. If you received this notice, for now, wait, check back here to see when Google gives us more clarity on the issue. At least according to the email, you have 12 days to act on this before it becomes a potential issue for your ads.

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3 ways to use AI for sitewide entity optimization

Ready to discover three incredibly simple (yet powerful) strategies that will help you optimize quicker and more effectively?

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

• How to use AI to provide a data source for on-page optimization. 
• Using AI to quickly create multiple schema types for every blog article on your website. 
• A free internal link solution that makes internal linking a breeze.

Key terminology

Before we begin, it’s important to connect these concepts to entities.

Entities

In machine learning, particularly in natural language processing, an entity is a significant thing or concept in a specific context. 

For instance, “Apple” could be an entity that represents the technology company or an entity that represents a type of fruit, depending on the context.

Internal links

Internal links are hyperlinks that direct to another page on the same website. They help to establish an information hierarchy for the given website and guide visitors to high-priority sites. 

From an SEO perspective, these links aid search engines in discovering, indexing, and understanding all the pages on your site. 

Internal links can also help search engines understand the context and relationship between different pages and their content. This can assist the search engine in identifying relevant entities on your site.

Schema

Schema (or Schema.org) is a collaborative, community-driven project with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet. 

In other words, it’s a way to tag and categorize information on your webpage so that search engines can better understand what your page is about. This could be anything from a product review to an event announcement. 

By using schema markup, you’re helping search engines identify and understand the entities present on your webpage.

EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value)

EAV is a data model used to describe entities where the number of attributes (properties, parameters) that can be used to describe them is potentially vast. 

This is particularly useful in SEO because it helps represent information about entities flexibly, which can be beneficial in situations where the attributes used to describe an entity can vary widely.

Search engines seek to understand the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace. 

The concept of entities, backed by the use of schema, EAV, and internal links, enables the search engine to comprehend a website’s content more effectively and present the most relevant results to users. 

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Overall, the following three tactics enhance the “semantic understanding” of your website. Along with other SEO practices, they can help improve your site’s visibility in the SERPs.

1. The hexa grammarian prompt sequence

This prompt is specifically designed around entities. As we’ve covered in the definitive guide to entities, entity understanding is largely tied to grammar. 

The nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and EAV are all integrally tied to entities. 

While it sounds confusing, it’s simpler than you might think. Here’s what ChatGPT says about its importance.

Here are the six prompts:

• “Provide a comprehensive list of the most common verbs associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated verbs.”
• “Provide a comprehensive list of the most common nouns associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated nouns.”
• “Provide a comprehensive list of the most common adjectives associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated adjectives.”
• “Provide a comprehensive list of the most common adverbs associated with the topic. Cluster the list and nest associated verbs.”
• “Provide a comprehensive list of the most common predicates associated with the topic.”
• “Provide a comprehensive list of attributes associated with the topic.”

When you get your answers, you can save them however you like. I prefer a Google sheet.

I suggest using this list in a couple of different ways.

You can use the hexa-list to inform your content briefs. You could use the hexa-list to optimize existing content. You could even use this list to help you craft clever prompts for OpenAI. 

I can’t give away all of the in-house secrets, but suffice it to say that this list can be used to help you with programmatic AI content deployment.

2. Schema and AI

Creating schema for hundreds of web pages is an absolute slog. Over the past few years, agencies have productized schema because it's one of those tasks that no one wants to do.

Since schema is hard to understand and the benefits aren’t always understood, many people use an out-of-the-box solution (e.g., SEOpress, RankMath, Yoast).

This article’s co-author, Andrew Ansley, developed a straightforward system for schema generation. You don’t need to understand anything about schema to make this work.

All you need is an OpenAI playground and access to GPT-4.

For this example, we are going to use webpage schema so we can create a clear and structured declaration of the entities that are found in the blog article.

Setting up

Step 1: Grab the URL for your blog article.

Step 2: Provide the author, website URL, organization name, publisher name, and web page URL in the system text.

Step 3: Copy and paste your blog article text into the system text.

As you can see from the image, the system text is on the left. The actual prompting is in the middle of the page, functioning exactly like ChatGPT – with a major upgrade. 

In playground, you can adjust settings and the system text functions as memory/context.

Inside the playground, you can use around 8,000 tokens (.75 words per token = 6,000 words). 

The schema prompt

The prompt is straightforward. All you need to enter into the user box is: 

• “Create WebPage JSON-LD schema. Use about and mentions. The about and the mentions should use entities and the associated Wikipedia page.” 

After you’re done, you’ll get some pro schema to add to your article. We typically use a plugin to inject header code into a blog article, but that is just one of many options.

If you don’t trust the AI, you can go to https://validator.schema.org/ and provide the code to see if it has any errors.

As you can see from the image, my pro schema code designed for entity optimization is free from flaws. Huzzah!

Another schema type that you can easily add to a blog is FAQPage schema.

FAQPage Schema

This schema type is simpler than the previous example. For this schema, you can delete your article text from the system and you can replace it with whatever you like.

The prompt is: 

• “Create FAQ schema.”

If you have the text inside of the system, it will generate something like the following example.

For those who prefer ChatGPT, you can just use the web browsing plugin (which is even simpler to use).

The only prompt you need is: 

• “Create FAQ schema for the URL [insert link here].” 

If you want to do multiple URLs, you can add additional URLs and ask ChatGPT to create FAQ Schema for each URL.

I can’t help but nerd out over how easy it is to accomplish SEO tasks with AI. While I am showing a non-programmatic example here, you can literally explain what you want to build, and the AI will provide the code.

You don’t even need to ask the AI for code to accomplish a more programmatic approach to schema. You can use this simple prompt sequence:

• “Create FAQ schema in JSON-LD format. Process one URL and when you are done with that task, initiate another prompt that continues the task until you process the final URL in the list.”

The answer looks like this:

When you use this method, the generation of results will end around the 6th URL. 

If you give a list of URLs that exceed the output length, you can type the word “continue,” and then the AI will continue down the list of URLs.

3. The internal link script

Internal links are incredibly important for passing authority between pages, improving crawlability for Google Bot, and communicating topic relationships for entity optimization. 

Here’s a script that Ansley created that only needs three things. 

• A Google Doc.
• A Google Sheet.
• App Scripts.

The doc is the article you're writing that will link out to your other articles.

The Google Sheet contains all of your keywords and URLs. I use a sitemap. 

The next step is to ask ChatGPT to identify the keyword from the URL slug.

Here is the script.

function addLinksFromSheet() {
// Your Google Sheets ID
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.openById('1AOvyOL0PCVVjY86aEEx77RqUWthV1m5Vzs2SyXE2f7g').getActiveSheet();
// Get all the rows of data in the Sheet, excluding the headers
var data = sheet.getRange("A2:B" + sheet.getLastRow()).getValues();
// Iterate over all the rows
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
// The first column in the row contains the text to be hyperlinked
var searchPhrase = data[i][0];
// The second column contains the URL
var hyperlink = data[i][1];
// Use your addLinks function to add the hyperlink to the doc
addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink);
}
}
function addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink) {
if (!searchPhrase) {
return;
}
// Your Google Doc ID
const document = DocumentApp.openById('1_T5BRHiNi3iPnEL6xtys2qEV9WNzPZAwsQdIqtgiFtI');
const body = document.getBody();
let search = null;
let count = 0;
while (count < 1) {
search = body.findText(searchPhrase, search ? search : null);
if (!search) {
break;
}
const searchElement = search.getElement();
const startIndex = search.getStartOffset();
const endIndex = search.getEndOffsetInclusive();
searchElement.asText().setLinkUrl(startIndex, endIndex, hyperlink);
count++;
}
document.saveAndClose();
}

I emphasized the part of the script that requires your own unique document slug. 

The inspiration for this script came from Hamish’s YoTtube channel, Income Surfers. Hamish is a new YouTuber, but his content is solid if you’re wanting AI + SEO.

The GIF below demonstrates what to do with Google App Scripts.

• Save project.
• Click Run and accept permissions.

The results look like the screenshot below.

The perk of this setup is you can essentially equip any of your writers with an easy way to internally link. 

One of the most difficult aspects of internal linking is the fact that most outsourced writers don’t know what to link to. 

Set up a database and maintain that list so your writers can apply all the internal links you want them to use.

If you’d like to include additional keywords, you can go to ChatGPT and paste your data. I used five keywords and five URLs for illustration purposes.

Prompt: 

• “I want to expand this table further. Repeat each URL 5 times and provide 4 additional keywords associated to each URL. The new keywords should have high semantic relevance to the original keyword in the list.”

Output:

As you can see, I now have five keywords to choose from. To avoid linking to the same URL, you’ll need to modify the script. Here is the new version:

function addLinksFromSheet() {
  // Your Google Sheets ID
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.openById('1jTwgsEgz5X4BbiNDjQeHJrRVtYdGi3LEKEBvPgIYtg8').getActiveSheet();
  // Get all the rows of data in the Sheet, excluding the headers
  var data = sheet.getRange("A2:B" + sheet.getLastRow()).getValues();
  // Keep track of the used URLs
  var usedUrls = [];
  // Iterate over all the rows
  for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
    // The first column in the row contains the text to be hyperlinked
    var searchPhrase = data[i][0];
    // The second column contains the URL
    var hyperlink = data[i][1];
    // Check if this URL has been used already
    if (usedUrls.indexOf(hyperlink) === -1) {
      // It hasn't, so add the hyperlink to the doc
      addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink);
      // And mark this URL as used
      usedUrls.push(hyperlink);
    }
  }
}

function addLinks(searchPhrase, hyperlink) {
  if (!searchPhrase) {
    return;
  }
  // Your Google Doc ID
  const document = DocumentApp.openById('1rLL9J6Lag6McZ6F22R3ptyb7XFqg9Bc1qmEgobrTa3w');
  const body = document.getBody();
  let search = null;
  let count = 0;
  while (count < 1) {
    search = body.findText(searchPhrase, search ? search : null);
    if (!search) {
      break;
    }
    const searchElement = search.getElement();
    const startIndex = search.getStartOffset();
    const endIndex = search.getEndOffsetInclusive();
    searchElement.asText().setLinkUrl(startIndex, endIndex, hyperlink);
    count++;
  }
  document.saveAndClose();
}

Using AI for entity SEO

The three specific examples above show how AI can be used to dramatically reduce the time involved in optimizing for entities. 

We always recommend utilizing AI for any repetitive or highly technical task and spending more of your time on the strategy or creative functions of SEO.  Entity SEO is no different.

However, it is important to know that there are many other uses for AI when optimizing for entities, and this is by no means an exhaustive list.  

Make sure to attend my session at SMX Advanced, taking place June 13-14, to learn more about Entity SEO and AI and why we believe Entity SEO will be crucial to top SERP positions in the future.

This article was co-authored by Andrew Ansley.

This is the third article in the entity SEO series. If you would like to start by reading the first two articles, they are linked here:

• The definitive guide to entity SEO
• How to optimize for entities

The post 3 ways to use AI for sitewide entity optimization appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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10 link-building services to scale your SEO efforts by RankZ

Link building is essential. While Google has made numerous advancements in machine learning and content comprehension, links remain a critical element of how Google ranks websites.

We know that Google doesn’t want you to proactively build links. They want you to create high-quality content and hope for the best (i.e., build it and links will come).

Whether you’re a well-known brand or a local SMB, you need to be findable in the SERPs when people are searching for your product, service or expertise. Getting that initial push to get the front page creates a virtuous cycle where the better you rank, the more links you get because of how well you rank.

Enter: link-building services. 

While link building is essential, it’s also tedious. It’s time-consuming. And, honestly, it can seem quite boring. (Though we’d politely disagree!)

Luckily, there are companies that can do this tedious and time-consuming work for you!

Link building, done right, can be a win-win – for your website and the site linking to you. The key is reaching out to your own personal network of publishers and bloggers within a niche to offer a piece of content that they can either write about themselves or link to when relevant. 

If you haven’t built the types of relationships that can turn into links – this is where link-building services providers become incredibly valuable. 

In this article, we will introduce to you to 10 popular options when considering link-building service providers. Choose wisely – there are always risks and rewards when choosing a link-building service to scale your SEO efforts. 

We’ll start shamelessly with our own and if you understand the risks and rewards of proactive link building this way, try them.

Link-building services list

The following are in no particular order. We are not claiming anyone is better than any other. This is simply a list of link-building service providers you can choose from.

1. OutreachZ

Here’s what makes us a bit different. We are a team with vast experience in the link-building space and have identified and tried to address the following pain points.

Transparency: Unlike most services, you can pick the right publishers upfront from our marketplace. Metrics like the primary niche they operate in, organic traffic, and DA (by Moz) are filters you can apply to find the right blogs, so there are no surprises after reviewing the report.

Pricing: Unlike most service providers, we will not charge you hefty fees based on the domain metrics. Instead, we take a fixed success fee and pass on the benefit of a low cost of link acquisition irrespective of how big or small that publisher is.

Flexibility: Even with the marketplace model, you are working with us to get the job done and not waiting for the publisher to react despite operating on a dynamic pricing model like other marketplaces that only serve as a platform provider. You also have managed posts and custom link-building campaigns and the option to upload your content, so the number of ways you can get this done is highly flexible.

Now let’s move on to some other notable link-building providers.

2. Page One Power

Page One Power focuses on giving you a personalized experience. They will sit down with you to discuss your individual needs, analyze your existing website and give you a customized link-building plan. They are willing to do the research and heavy lifting for you, giving you the extra breathing room to focus on other aspects of your business.

3. Fat Joe

To help you get started as quickly as possible, Fat Joe features an intuitive order intake form and a dashboard to monitor active orders and manage them. They seem to be the go-to service provider for agencies that need a lot of links for multiple clients with tight deadlines and provide content services that seem reasonably priced.

4. The Hoth 

If you considered link-building services, there is a high probability you have come across The Hoth already. They are one of the oldest link-building service companies with diverse offerings across various off-page SEO services. Their dashboard is intuitive, and one can navigate through their diverse offerings quite easily; however, given their large-scale link-building services, you might have to be careful in picking the right product for you as some could do more harm than good if you do not understand the product and its risks, so talk to them about your goals before you go ahead.

5. No BS Marketplace

No BS could have kick-started the transparent approach to link building, where you get to pick publishers upfront that they would suggest based on your requirements. So if you appreciate transparency and would like tighter control on the links you want to acquire, they are another great alternative to look into.

6. uSERP

If you’re looking for a tried and true SEO and link-building agency that works with high-profile industry names like Robinhood, Monday, Freshworks, Hotjar, and others, uSERP fits the bill. Working with small businesses and large enterprises alike, they craft and initiate content-based link-building campaigns. 

7. Siege Media

Siege Media is another agency that offers content-driven link building, where they prospect and reach out to authority publishers in your industry with amazing content. Although the specific link-building services they provide won’t give you an exact number of links they can expect to build, they will provide you with a ballpark figure instead.

8. Posirank

The folks at Posirank have been at it for a while as well. The team offers both custom campaigns and some large publishers’ lists from which they could secure a backlink for you. In addition, they have an easy dashboard where you can quickly sign up and start your first link acquisition campaign immediately.

9. The Upper Ranks

Beginning its operations in 2011, this link-building company is a trusted business partner of some of the largest brands, including established names from the Fortune 500 list. The philosophy of their approach is to build relevant backlinks that could stand the test of time.

10. Hire a Freelancer: For many, hiring an experienced blogger outreach and link-building expert from Upwork could work out best, especially if you want to control the process at every level and keep the costs in check at the same time. There seem to be plenty of skilled freelancers for hire with great feedback.

How to pick the right link-building service

Choosing a link-building service isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s about finding a partner that suits your business goals, target audience, budget, and timelines. Here are a few key points to consider:

1. Industry experience: Does the service provider have experience in your industry? Industry expertise can be beneficial for understanding niche-specific opportunities and challenges.
2. Customizable packages: Every business is unique. Look for service providers who offer flexible and customizable packages that cater to your specific needs.
3. Reporting and communication: How will the service provider report on their progress? Regular, transparent reporting should be non-negotiable.
4. Client testimonials and case studies: These can provide an honest insight into the service quality and results that the agency provides.
5. Service provider’s link philosophy: White hat practices are a must, but also understand their philosophy about link types, anchor text diversity, follow vs. no-follow and more.

Different types of link-building services

There’s a varied landscape of link-building services, each with merits.

1. Guest posting services: These providers work with blog and website owners to place articles with embedded links back to your site. It’s content marketing and link building rolled into one.
2. Niche edits: These services negotiate with site owners to insert your link into existing content, providing contextual relevance without needing new content.
3. Local citations: Ideal for local businesses, these services ensure you’re listed in important directories and local resources to generate backlinks.
4. High-authority links: Some services specialize in securing links from high-authority domains, which can significantly boost your site’s authority.
5. Link removal services: If you’ve been hit with a penalty or are cleaning up a messy backlink profile, these services can help you disavow and remove damaging links.

Pros and cons of link-building services

Let’s be candid about it. There are both advantages and downsides to employing link-building services.

Pros

1. Time-saving: Building high-quality backlinks is time-consuming. These services save you time, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
2. Expertise: Link building is a complex discipline. The right service provider brings expertise and strategic insights.
3. Scalability: As your business grows, so does your need for more and higher quality links. A link-building service can scale with your needs.

Cons

1. Quality concerns: Not all link-building services prioritize quality. Be wary of those offering high volumes of low-quality links.
2. Black Hat techniques: Some providers might use shady tactics to build links, which could get your site penalized.
3. Cost: Depending on your budget, the cost of these services may be prohibitive.

Conclusion

Google is no fan of “link building,” – but who can blame them? For years, links were a commodity that was abused by SEOs.

But proactive link building is incredibly hard. As it should be. 

That’s why you should partner with an experienced agency with clear goals and quality control. For that, we highly suggest OutreachZ – but admittedly, we’re biased!

The post 10 link-building services to scale your SEO efforts appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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