If you want to be seen as a thought leader in your space then you’re going to have to write. But the way that you organize those pages is critical to your online findability.
Today, we’re going to look at how you become a keyword professor one page at a time. I’m going to share with you how to be a true thought leader and not a Salesman.
When you think about someone you want to work with. Someone who you’re gonna trust or hire. You want to make sure that they really know their stuff.
Well, as a salesman, typically it’s all about, “Are you ready to buy? Here’s how great we are, here’s our services, and here’s how you contact us.” Do you see that’s all about what’s good for them and not what’s good for you.
When we’re taking a step back and we’re saying, “How do we make ourselves look like a thought leader and not a Salesman” we have to understand how to organize our content. We should be more careful about how we manage our content.
You can write one blog post, you could white write one page on your website. But you have to remember that one page does not make you a thought leader or a professor in that topic. Always remember that you have to have a body of work to prove that you are an expert in your space.
Think about a professor from a major university who must publish or perish. Now, why would you want to take a class from a professor who had me continually written content on his specific subject? Maybe some of you had some of those professors in school.
You knew if they were up-to-date or not. I’ve got to help you to look like the most findable current relevant professor one page at a time. But all the pages have to work together.
Keyword Mindset Map
Let’s take a look at what we call a keyword mindset map or just keyword map. When we are looking at how we impress Google about our knowledge, we have to organize it like a book. Like our definitive thesis. The home page is the cover of that thesis.
It’s a cover of your book. This is going to be your most important keyword.
Now, most people think that every single visitor starts on the homepage. That’s just not correct! You want to think about it as this page can rank on its own. This page could rank on its own. But all of them together being organized is what makes it findable.
About us, Services, Testimonials, Contact Us
The trick is where is the about us, services, testimonials and contact us? It’s not here right now, is it? No. It’s there but it’s going to be in like the top right corner of your website. About us, Services, Testimonials, Contact us. That’s a sales brochure.
Remember, that’s the we-we. “We do this and we do that and we do this and we do that.” The we-we got to be here. But more importantly is Google wants to index thought leaders not salesmen.
You got to come out of the gate with a highly organized series of pages that are going to prove to Google that you are the number one thought leader and all of the nuances that people are searching for.
Think about a website like a tree.
That’s going to be very funny so bear with me. All right, so the trunk, right? And then we’ve got the tree. The trunk is really the website content. Then we have the leaves, where these leaves are all the different things that are happening in social media and your blogging, in trends.
Alright, so what you are thinking about is maybe one of the leaves are hashtags. Now, what’s another leaf we could do. Well, we could do a video. Another leaf might be a blog post or tweets.
The core knowledge is those pages I showed you. I know for sure they’re all hyper-organized. The leaves are what make you an expert on a day to day basis.
You’re tapped into what’s happening in trends, communicating that through tweets, Instagram. This could even be LinkedIn. It’s the leaf that makes the tree grow but the content itself ranks because of all of this other work that you’re creating.
Creating content thoughtfully so you look like a thought leader who is building all of and sharing all of their thought leadership out into social and of course using the hashtags to make sure that it gets in front of the right people.
Remember, it’s not just about creating tons of tons of content that’s not connected and just pushing it out there and hoping for the best. It’s about being very methodical about looking like a thought leader.
You have your website member that’s your core pages. Then of course you’ve got to take what you know and share it all over social media. But it has to be anchored in what you know for sure.
This is the only way that you’re going to get Google’s attention around what keywords you want to rank for. When you’re thinking about rebuilding a website or building a blog category. You want to take a look at and say, “Okay, what is my homepage keyword?”
Remember, that’s the cover of my book. What are the chapters in my book? As well as what are the then the next topics that go deeper inside of those chapters. Google is going to love you on this all day long.
I’m going to put a link below to some examples of others we call these keyword sitemaps and I have a bunch of these in my book Marketing Espionage.
Start showing up as a thought leader and not a Salesman and Google’s going to love you all day long.
Now that you’ve gotten a crash course and how to be a thought leader online. Don’t forget to sign up for a findability review with me.
We’ll take a look under the hood. We will run some reports and we’ll see how we can move the needle for you in your online marketing.