Tracey Wallace is a author turned content material marketer turned SEO professional. She was the pinnacle of BigCommerce’s content material workforce and now serves an analogous function for MarketerHire, a market for freelancers, which launched in 2019.
In our latest dialog, she addressed the post-Covid workforce, the advantages of hiring freelancers, and, sure, learn how to drive visitors with content material advertising.
Our whole audio interview is embedded beneath. The transcript is edited for readability and size.
Eric Bandholz: MarketerHire has grown dramatically.
Tracey Wallace: Yes, we’ve grown an insane quantity. I’ve been there for a couple of yr and a half. I used to be the one full-time advertising employees initially.
MarketerHire is a market for freelance entrepreneurs. When I joined, the first advertising tactic was adverts; they’re nonetheless essential for us. But I used to be introduced in to construct natural search visitors, which is my background. I’ve executed it for a number of different B2B firms.
We’re attempting to develop our advertising workforce of 5 workers and 7 freelancers. We use freelancers from our community. But we nonetheless want in-house expertise, so we’re hiring product entrepreneurs, copywriters.
Bandholz: Everyone is in search of advertising assist now.
Wallace: Right. So many individuals have give up their jobs. In August, the variety of folks within the U.S. who give up their jobs was the best in 20 years.
It’s scary for enterprise house owners. Larger firms can throw more cash, extra advantages. But it’s costly for the small guys. We just lately interviewed over 600 advertising leaders and located that many are hiring freelancers. They nonetheless want work executed.
There are a number of freelancers; many have extra credentials than inside workers.
Hiring freelancers may be cheaper, too. But it requires cautious onboarding and challenge scoping. Even advertising leaders that rent freelancers don’t all the time know the dimensions of a challenge.
Bandholz: We’ve shifted so much to freelancers at Beardbrand. The great thing about hiring freelancers is getting somebody at some point per week who’s specialised, equivalent to social media, video modifying, or copywriting. That’s all they do, and so they like it. Whereas one individual in-house could love social media however hate running a blog or video work.
Wallace: Right. That’s the problem generally with early full-time hires. Early on, you want of us to do a number of issues. But because it scales, the enterprise requires specialised experience.
Bandholz: Let’s revisit natural search. What are the methods to execute that efficiently?
Wallace: We may do a two-hour-long podcast on natural search methods. People typically ignore it as a result of it takes time. Marketers should not usually affected person. We can put cash behind a Facebook advert and see fast outcomes. Organic search takes six months to a yr.
That’s some huge cash for companies to speculate with out seeing a right away return. I labored at BigCommerce for 4 and a half years. I used to be the one content material marketer for 3 and a half of these years. That’s nuts. Shopify, on the opposite hand, had a bunch of individuals working on it. HubSpot invested in it very early.
The finest recommendation I can provide to any small enterprise concerned with rising natural search visitors is to publish one article per week — even as soon as a month. And write about your personal experience associated to your online business.
Do a fast Google search on your subject. There’s a ton of search-engine-optimization instruments to assist. But Google itself will present data simply by looking out. There’ll be 10 articles on web page 1. Look at these, particularly the highest 5. Read them.
At the underside, Google has “Related searches.” Copy these solutions and drop them in a Google Doc. Google additionally consists of comparable questions in search outcomes, known as “People additionally ask.”
Click on these questions, and extra pop up. You solely want three or 4 questions. Drop these in a Doc, too.
Then have a look at what you’ve simply collected. Start to formulate the sort of inquiries to reply and what individuals are in search of. Those questions must be headers in your article — HTML headers equivalent to an H2.
Then write the reply in your personal voice beneath the header. You may even use CopyAI or Jarvis.
Bandholz: What are CopyAI and Jarvis?
Wallace: Those are new copywriting instruments. I’m undecided how a lot they value. I’ve tried them and some others.
I’m a author. It’s not difficult for me to supply content material. I’m not a fan of the copy the instruments produce.
But should you aren’t a author, these instruments may also help. Insert a subject equivalent to learn how to construct a motorcycle. Then select your tone, voice, different variables. You may insert whole outlines, and the instruments will write articles for you.
It’s all primarily based on synthetic intelligence, not human writers. But you possibly can edit it and replica and paste it.
So if you’re struggling to publish one month-to-month article, strive an AI software.
Bandholz: So the technique for SEO is growing content material across the merchandise you’re promoting.
Wallace: Yes. I exploit an SEO platform known as Ahrefs. I want it over Semrush. Lots of people want Semrush. I’ve used Ahrefs my whole profession.
Go to Ahrefs and enter your private home web page URL on the high. It will present the variety of key phrases your web site already ranks for. For every key phrase, Ahrefs lists the search quantity.
Ahrefs additionally gives a key phrase problem rating — 1 to 100, with 100 being probably the most tough. If you’re new to content material advertising, ignore the upper scores and focus on the decrease ones.
Look for key phrases with a excessive quantity that you just’re already rating for, even just a bit bit, and with low key phrase problem. Then go to that web page on your web site and enhance it — add content material or enhance what’s there. You can fairly shortly begin shifting up.
Google rewards websites that replace pages.
Bandholz: Beardbrand has round 1,000 articles. A variety of them haven’t been touched in years. How can we replace them?
Wallace: You’re in a great place with 1,000 older articles. Again drop every article URL right into a software equivalent to Ahrefs. What key phrases are they rating for? Most in all probability aren’t rating for a lot of.
Then work out which URLs are the strongest — rating for the perfect key phrase or getting probably the most visitors. Then rewrite that article and mix all associated weblog posts into one utilizing 301 redirects. Google likes long-form content material.
Try to replace the highest articles every year, if not each six months. You don’t all the time want an enormous replace.
And embody footage by all means. Put the key phrase within the picture identify. It’s tremendous essential. You may even conceal key phrases again there. Tools equivalent to Clearscope will let you know what key phrases must be in your article for it to rank the best. I extremely suggest it.
Sometimes you possibly can’t match all of the key phrases in an article. I embody these in my image names.
Bandholz: Let’s handle e mail assortment? Do you suggest popups?
Wallace: Well, I hate popups as a shopper. I’ve all the time hated popups. But they work so properly.
If you need to gather extra e mail addresses, a popup is smart. Just know that some folks will despise the web site due to it.
I like what some manufacturers are doing with SMS, the place they solicit textual content messages on their Twitter profiles or their web site and even packaging. Consumers textual content the manufacturers. As a consumer, that doesn’t really feel prefer it’s in my face. It doesn’t really feel determined.
Bandholz: At Beardbrand, we encourage of us to textual content “Style” to a telephone quantity, and we’ll present model recommendation.
Wallace: I like it. I believe it’s genius. I’ve seen cooking manufacturers say, “Text ‘Recipe’ to this quantity, and we’ll ship you recipes.”
It’s genius. The model didn’t spam me. I requested to obtain the data. I’m not aggravated. Plus it’s straightforward to opt-out.
I ought to add that I don’t know the way it’s working for manufacturers. But as a shopper, I prefer it.
Bandholz: SMS is killing it for everyone now. Merchants have to get on that practice earlier than it will get crowded, like e mail.
How can listeners attain out to you?
Wallace: I’m on Twitter — @TraceWall. I’m lively there. It’s my fundamental place. MarketerHire is on Twitter, too — @MarketerHire. The web site is MarketerHire.com.
https://www.practicalecommerce.com/marketerhire-exec-on-freelancers-content-seo
