• Efikó
  • Posts
  • 3-2-1 Friday: How to boost your search rankings, Google's MUM update, and MOFU content

3-2-1 Friday: How to boost your search rankings, Google's MUM update, and MOFU content

29 Apr

Welcome to today’s issue of Efikó, a weekly newsletter by me, Dozie Anyaegbunam, with a focus on content marketing, writing, social strategy, and living your best life. THANK YOU for being here! I appreciate you!

Hey folks,

I’m late today.

But it’s for a good reason. The wife’s birthday is on Sunday. So yours truly is trying to make it a special one.

She’s had a really interesting year - moving to a new country while pregnant, dealing with the first couple of months of baby chaos with the usual support we get back home in Nigeria.

I have been helpful. But nothing beats going through those first six months with your Mom and family.

3 Things I learned This Week

i.

I have been working on optimizing our old blog posts at UserGems. And we’ve seen some exciting results in the short term - excited to see what happens in three months. Here are three surefire ways to see some good results on Google’s SERPs:

  • Refresh your title tags and meta descriptions. You can add the current year or rewrite it to include a great hook.

  • Update the content. You could update the stats, add new images, or create a video summarizing the article. I even went as far as sourcing fresh expert quotes.

  • Go after new keywords. Use Ahrefs or Frase to run a content gap analysis. This exercise shows you additional keywords your article should be ranking. Update the blog post to reflect these new keywords.

ii.

Last week, we found two different pages ranking for the same keyword. Now, is that bad? Not anymore. Google is evolving towards becoming a semantic search engine. Cue the MUM update.

With MUM, Google wants to provide searchers with all the relevant information on a topic, especially in the awareness and consideration phase. And this is why your SERPs are now cluttered with videos, images, and other featured snippets.

So how do you take advantage?

Consider all the challenges your prospects face when looking to find answers to the problems your product solves, and build different kinds of content to answer those questions.

For example, someone new to content marketing is more likely to ask the question, “What is content marketing?” Next, they ask, “How does content marketing work?” At this point, they might get confused and ask, “Any content marketing courses for beginners?”

As they go on this journey, you’ll need to provide answers to these questions in different formats.

iii.

Suppose you’re building a content engine from the start. Focus on providing content that drills down the specific problems or solutions your prospects are interested in.

Forget about '“what is” content and go create the middle of the funnel content. They are usually low-volume keywords but high intent - meaning you’ll see higher conversions.

Your clients will thank you for this.

2 Things I am Thinking About

i.

Improve the quality of your “fuel” to improve the quality of your life.

Brain Fuel: 

  • Content you consume

  • People you interact with

  • The meditation you perform

Body Fuel: 

  • Foods you eat

  • The exercise you perform

Wealth Fuel: 

  • Investments you make

  • Income streams you build

Sahil Bloom

ii.

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”

Marcus Aurelius

1 Book Recommendation

Today’s recommendation isn’t a book but a looooooooooong article by Gurwinder called The Electronic Starfield. Here’s a paragraph you will resonate with:

"no matter what you choose to believe, you'll find a wealth of evidence for it...your brain evolved to find patterns in a low-information world, and with an almost limitless supply of information to cherry-pick from, it can find any pattern you wish."

Content Writing Jobs

All the best, folks. Could you please share with any of your friends/colleagues who might find this helpful?

If you would love me to review your writing and give you feedback, you can book a time here. Or just hit the reply button.

Thanks for reading this far. I am grateful!

Be good out there. If you can't be good, be careful

I’ll be back on 5/6.

Dozie

P.S: If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it on LinkedIn or with a friend! If this was sent to you by a friend, get the following email by signing up here.