* What Does “Build Content for SEO” Mean?
The SEO world is fascinated with “building content”. What
exactly does that mean for a music lesson studio owner? (Teaser: It’s much
easier than you think!)
By Dirk Johnson
Go to just about any SEO
guru’s site and they will tell you to “build content” if you want to rank well.
Even Google’s own search engineers will tell you to “create great content”.
What the hell does this
mean? And more specifically, what does this mean to the lesson studio owner
like you, who already has plenty to do and “building content” is nowhere near
the top of your priority list?
The “Throw Crap at the Wall” Approach to Content
Does it mean that you need create all manner of music-related information to
post to your website, and then miraculously, someday, maybe years down the
road, your site will rank at the top for the keywords that matter to your
business?
Sorry, no, it doesn’t work that way at all. In fact, that ham-fisted,
backwards approach will likely NEVER work for a music lesson studio! Yet, there are SEO consultants who advise that you
do exactly that.
Search rankings are not at all based on the sheer volume of content on your
site. Not even a little bit. In fact, the “sheer volume” approach has been
tried, and it has failed.
A single page website, executed well, can easily out-rank a site that
is loaded with unfocused content.
“Great Content” is Audience Dependent
Let’s break this down
with a hypothetical example. It will then become much more clear what kind of
content you need for your lesson business website.
Let’s say that you want to create a hub or portal site that is all about
gardening and that you want sell ads or be an affiliate marketer to the
gardening-related industry.
To do that successfully,
you will need to generate a barn full of
gardening-related search traffic.
Informational Queries
People ask all kinds of questions about gardening using a search engine, such
as, “how do I lower the Ph value of my soil?”, or “what is the best type of
tomato for northern climates?” It’s endless.
To get this kind of traffic, your site needs to be optimized for those
kinds of specific searches. You’d want to have content that answers a specific,
common question, but with proper title tags, descriptions, headlines, images,
and page content.
That’s how you’d compete
for general gardening traffic on the Web. You anticipate the most common questions, then answer them with a
page on your website.
In any case, those kinds
of queries are informational inquiries.
People may not be looking for a vendor or a specific product. They just want
answers to questions.
To compete for informational query traffic on a broad-based subject, your site
must have a lot of good content.
Service Queries are Very Different
Not every search is an
informational query, and not every website needs to try to answer information
queries.
Some queries are what we
can term “service inquiries”. They come from people who are looking for a
service provider who can deal with their issue at hand. Plumbers, locksmiths,
mowing services, painters, and yes, music lesson studios.
In these cases, the search query will look like “Plumber in Plumville PA” or
“Locksmith in Lock Haven”. There’s a service request, a service area, and
sometimes a qualifier like “best” or “cheapest” or “oldest”.
The searcher is using a
search engine as if they were using the old Yellow Pages. They just want a list
of local service vendors that they can contact.
The person doing the
search doesn’t really want to know the details of how to unplug their drain or
unlock their car or mow their lawn.
They just want someone who can do it. It’s not an informational inquiry,
it’s a service inquiry.
Music Lessons are Service Inquiries
People who are looking
for music lessons in their hometown are not at all interested in knowing about
music theory or the Italian words used in standard notation. They don’t care
about the scale length of a Gibson Les Paul guitar or the various types of
harps.
People who use a search engine to find out about “piano lessons in Peoria” just
want to know WHO provides lessons in their hometown and what are the various
criteria, as in private lessons, group lessons, age limits, skill level, costs,
etc.
Our Job is to Answer their Questions!
THAT, my friends, is the
CONTENT that you need to provide to them, so that your site then shows up in
the search results when someone does a service inquiry for music lessons for
the various instruments that you teach and for the towns or areas that you
serve.
HOW TO: Set up SPECIFIC pages that are focused directly on the service
inquires that matter to your business. Match the page title, description, page
name, headline, content and images with the service inquiry that you are aiming
to attract.
In the content of the page, answer ALL the questions that these people might
have about your program. This is how you attract who you want to serve and weed
out those you don’t.
That is a “focused
landing page”, and THAT is the kind of content that you need on your website to
begin to compete properly for search traffic in your town.
A focused landing page IS GREAT CONTENT!
Even though it is
entirely self-promotional, a good focused landing page speaks DIRECTLY to the
searcher who is looking for your type of service in their town. You can’t
create any more targeted content than that.
Google search engineers have stated specifically that they want to deliver the
BEST POSSIBLE RESULTS to the people who use their search engine. When someone searches for “Clarinet lessons
in Claremont”, then if you have a page that is aimed at solving that searcher’s
problem (they need clarinet lessons in Claremont), then that IS GREAT CONTENT
for that inquiry.
You don’t have to
explain the variations between clarinets, or how to clean a clarinet, or
anything else like that. You are not making money on those aspects of the
clarinet and you have no solid business reason to answer them on your website!
Focus like a laser on the service inquiry
content that matters to you. If you do, you just might go straight to the top
of the results.
Stop Fretting Over the Calls for Constant Content
Building
Some SEO gurus want you
to “create content” on a regular basis. Blog, blog, blog, and then blog some
more.
With proper pages aimed
at specific service inquires, the chances are very good that you don’t have to
jump through those blogging hoops, and second, if the blog is not aimed at the
search terms that are going to bring you clients, what is the purpose of it?
Content costs time and money to create, and we have far too little of both in
this business.
Creating content that has no value to anyone, as means to “bulk up” a
website for SEO purposes, is a complete waste of time. Don’t fall for it.
If you want to do create content for other legitimate business reasons, then,
by all means, go ahead, but realize that it will probably do nothing for your service
inquiry SEO effort, unless other site owners
people link to it from their website. Then it might help your SEO efforts, but
don’t count on getting those links
Your “content”, at least for SEO purposes, should be aimed at attracting the
traffic that matters, and in almost all cases, those are the local service
inquires for various types of music lessons. Aim at that, and forget the siren
calls to waste your time creating content that provides you with no benefit.
Don’t Hold Yourself Back!
Using the SEO
Guide for music lesson studios, you can either do all of this yourself, or
if you don’t have time, or if you prefer to have someone else manage the basics
of SEO for you, please contact
me.
And,
as always, if you want to get a quick review of your current website SEO
condition, please contact
me with your website address, and I’ll be glad to have a look and report
back to you what I find.
Thanks again for tuning
in!