Can I be honest with you? Until recently, I’ve been a horrible internet marketer.

I’ve lucked into my content writing business. But, as they say in sports, “luck will only get you so far.”

So, in the past few months, I’ve been able to take the time to learn different ways to improve my marketing. I want to rely on more than just writing great content for other marketers.

One of the ways I’m stepping up my game is to work on the SEO ranking of some of my sites.

Do you ever look at your current website and cringe at the thought that your site isn’t half the site it could be? I’ve been known to break out in a sweat when I think of “optimizing” a website for better search engine ranking. I’ve almost broken out in hives over higher conversion rates and social sharing.

But, you shouldn’t break into a 103-degree fever when you think of the work you need to do to your site to make it better. I’ve found a dozen little hacks I can do to get some awesome results in my SEO ranking.

In this post, I’m going to show you some ways you can hack your site to improve it. Some of these hacks may be ways you’ve never considered before.

By following through this post, you’ll develop a strategy of gradual improvement over time. And, you’ll do it without taking up too much of your already busy schedule.

Since there are twelve months in a year, here’s “A Dozen Ways You Can Improve Your Content Marketing Tactics.”

Pick one of them this month, and save the rest for each month following. By the end of the year, you’ll have some highly targeted content in your site. That will do nothing but maximize your site’s ability to sell products or services. Here the list: (By the way, I made it easy for you to go to each section by clicking on any of the links below.)

1. Cut Your Posting Frequency
2. Master Mobile
3. Focus on Value Rather Than Quality
4. Upgrade Your Content Offers
5. Ramp Up Your Call-to-Action
6. Improve your Headlines
7. Add Another Form of Content
8. Revitalize, Refurbish and Recycle Old Content
9. Improve Your “Other” Pages
10. Re-Energize Your Social Media Outreach
11. Create Another Content-Rich Site
12. Optimize Your Home Page

Cut Your Posting Frequency

In one of Ben Adkin’s recent posts, he shows us how to build a profitable blog in a weekend. The post is, in truth, about Content Marketing.

In “How You Can Build a Profitable Blog In 48 Hours” you learn how to do that with only three types of posts.

• Authority
• Review
• How-To

Using an authority post, some review posts, and how-to posts, you can create a very profitable site.

I’m amazed that some people think they need to overload their readers with a glut of content. That’s really all you need to build a profitable site.

In the post, Ben shows you how the authority and review posts help push your reader toward the sale. He also shows you how to design the how-to articles to build a growing stream of traffic to your site.

The rest is just a numbers game, really. When you want more traffic, create more how-to articles and promote them.

The problem with a content marketing calendar with too many posts is that you have to create (or buy) that content. That means you’re stuck writing or buying that high-quality content. Or, you’re buying a sub-standard posts until you can afford better ones.

There are some interesting findings from  a recent experiment at CoSchedule. They found that publishing more content actually degraded their traffic. More content also decreased average social shares.

And, an increase in posts had no effect on the email opt-ins.

But, as the image above says, publishing less content actually increased traffic. This from their months of experimenting with up to four posts per week.

One of the reasons for the inverse results from the increased content is the lack of time to create bonuses. With more frequent posts, less time was available for creation of bonus material.

Readers didn’t get the extras like infographics, PDFs and other resources. This gave them less incentive to visit the site, or opt-in with their email address.

The length of content also suffered as the quantity of content increased.

Author Nathan Ellering’s conclusion from his study? “Understand the trade-off for quality versus quantity (and go for quality).” He also suggested that successful bloggers should:

• Create longer form content that is proven to get more traffic
• Use more visuals in your posts that are also proven to get more traffic
• Promote your content with social media even better to get more traffic
• Create blog giveaways. Things like checklists, templates and e-books gather email subscribers. (We’ll talk about this again later with task number 4 “Upgrade Your Content Offers”)

Master Mobile

Recently, Google made changes to penalize ranking for sites that aren’t mobile optimized. When that happened, several sites once at the top totally disappeared from the charts.

In a post by blogging expert Neil Patel, he explans why you should focus on being mobile-friendly. Here are just a few of the stats he presented in this article:

• 60% of consumers use mobile searches before buying
• Over half of consumers will not recommend a business with a bad mobile site
• 40% of consumers say they will use a competitor if they had a better mobile experience
• Over 90% of mobile searches end in some type of action, such as visiting a business or purchasing.

Being mobile ready is super important.

That’s why you need to know how mobile customers engage with your content. There are lots of tools you can use to help you serve your content to mobile users the right way.

Here are a few of the techniques you need to master mobile content. There are more found in  the same Neil Patel article linked to above:

1. Trigger mobile-formatted CSS. The WPTouch Plugin works well for this if your site is WordPress powered.
2. User Opt Out. Make sure you give the user the option of going back to the full website design
3. Don’t block Googlebot-Mobile. Google checks your doctype to see if you’re using Compact HTML or XHTML mobile. If you block the mobile bot, you’ll lose your ranking in mobile searches.
4. Image rendering. Make sure you use percentage or relative rather than absolute or pixel measurements. The best tip is to leave the image at full size.
5. Shorten the length of links. Links with too many characters don’t look good on a smartphone. With JetPack, you can use the wp.me url shortener. Other sites, like bit.ly and even goog.le will shorten links for your site.
6. Position Calls of Action Differently. Mobile versions of your site might cut off the top right corner. This is where most calls of action are placed. Move them to the top left of the screen, instead.
7. Cut the number of links in a post. It’s hard to touch the right links if you have too many of them. Mobile users don’t like to click more than twice on any one post.
8. Test the quality of your mobile experience. Use MobiReady  to measure load times and device rendering information. Use W3C Mobile Validator for mobile validation

Focus on Value Rather Than Quality

Don’t be confused. I know I suggested higher quality content over increased quantity in point #1. But, what customers really want more than anything, is value.

Make sure you’re focusing on your customer’s pain points. When you develop your content strategy that pain should be your focus.

Every piece of content should give valuable information and solutions. Without dealing with this need, it doesn’t matter what you publish, or how many posts you publish.

One of the greatest motivational speakers of all time, Zig Ziglar speaks about value.  “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Give your readers value, and they’ll become valuable (and loyal) customers.

Upgrade Your Content Offers

One of the masters of creating content upgrades to grow your email list is Bryan Harris. Check out  his article, “Lead Magnets: 11 Ways to Get More Subscribers” . He recommends what he calls “content upgrades” for each post you publish.

This is one of the reasons you need to reduce the frequency of the posts you publish.

Instead of just writing awesome content on your site, create some great bonus content.

Take this month to find some of the most popular posts you’ve published. Now, find a way to use content upgrades for those posts in exchange for an email address. Then, refresh that old content in a new post, and offer the content upgrade in the post.

In the future, schedule your posts far enough in advance to create new lead magnets for each post you publish.

Debbie Drum wrote this great post about creating (or finding) lead magnets you can use. I love her tip about using links to other blogs to get subscribers.

You might also want to use our new cool product BirdSong to help you manage your lead magnet offers.

Ramp Up Your Call to Action

Speaking of lead magnets and content upgrades, make sure you ramp up your calls to action. Just a simple “download my latest e-book” had gotten old, tired and trite. Readers treat them a lot like banner ads, they ignore them.

Make your opt-in refined and compelling. You might want to offer a five-step email course to accomplish a task presented in your blog post. Or you could ask your reader to use a TweetDis link to unlock a bonus. Or, a Facebook post could reveal the rest of an extra long blog post with high-quality content.

Whatever you do, stop being generic.

• Make your call to action specific to your audience.
• Make your call to action specific to your content.
• Make your call to action specific to a problem your audience is facing.

Improve Your Headlines

On average, 20% of your audience will read your article, while the other 80% will read your headline. That stat comes courtesy of CopyBlogger’s article “How to Write Magnetic Headlines.”

The task of your headline is to get your audience to read the next sentence. The task of the next sentence is to get them to continue reading. The better your headline, the better your odds of accomplishing that task.

Here at Fearless Social, we have a weekly content meeting. During that meeting, we spend quite a bit of time talking about the headlines we use. Learn the skill of writing great headlines to get your content read more. The more your content is read, the higher your authority ranking goes in Google.

Read the post “5 Easy Tricks Anybody Can Use to Write a Striking Headline” to learn more.

Add Another Form of Content

Before you check to see if you can commit me to the psych ward, hear me out. Adding a different form of content will maximize what you’ve already produced.  In her article, Debbie Drum gives you a goldmine of ideas about adding more content to your site. She even tells you how to automate the production and marketing you new content.

Here’s the secret behind this task: not everybody learns by reading. If you’re writing blog posts, you’re doing a disservice to those who are visual learners.

By producing videos only, you’re doing a disservice to those who have more time to listen.

Find one more form of content, and follow Debbie’s instructions for repurposing content. You’ll be grateful for the extra traffic you bring to your site.

Revitalize, Refurbish and Reuse Old Content

Look around your office, or on your hard drive. I’m sure you can find content lying around just waiting to be used again. Why create a new email course from scratch when you can repurpose an old blog series for that purpose?

Why struggle to find data for your next blog post? You probably have it in some spreadsheet on your hard drive. Maybe it’s in a presentation deck you produced for an office meeting? Why not reuse it?

Use courses you’ve purchased in the past to create a series of short audio clips. Add some screenshots or slides and create a series of videos. Assist your audience in solving a problem they have in as many media forms as possible.

Finally, take your old content, update it and give it new life as an educational course. This will attract a wider audience.

One of the greatest tools of education is repetition. Don’t think that just because you’ve said something once, you have to leave it alone.

Debbie Drum wrote a great post about the power of repurposed content. Listen to her wise advice about using what you’ve already created to bring more people to your site.

Improve Your “Other” Pages

You’ve probably got a lot of places on your blog that is terribly underused. These pages aren’t normally considered in a content marketing plan. But, they can be vital to the power of your site.

Your “other” pages are all ideal places to cross-promote other content. Pages like:

• FAQ
• About Me
• Contact Me
• Resources Page, and
•  Case Study Pages

These are all ideal places to cross-promote other content, products or services you offer.

In Content Marketing University, you learn your “About Me” page is best used as an “Authority Article.” You can find out about that trick in the article, “How You Can Build a Profitable Blog in 48 Hours.”

Take a month to look at all of your pages. These aren’t posts, you should already be doing this in your posts. Sneak in valuable content that benefits your customers. The more you include there, the more you engage your customer and get business.

Re-energize Your Social Media Outreach

One of the biggest myths coming from some content marketing gurus is that social media isn’t needed as much. I call “bulls#*t!”  Social media isn’t extraneous to content marketing, it’s evolved.

You know we’re sold on Facebook here at FearlessSocial.com. We know that social media works. Paid ads and free techniques are still successful in driving traffic to our posts like this one.

If you’re struggling to find a way to use social media on a tight budget, consider this suggestion. Use your social media platforms to share your voice as a thought leader or an authority in your niche.

Don’t promote your content or boost your posts. Use your social media updates as stand-alone content worthy of being shared.

Then, when you do share your content, curate your shares so that everything you post gives value to your audience.

Remember, the first question we teach marketers to answer is “where is your customer?” They’re still using social media, so, you should be using social media as well.

One of the sessions in Content Marketing University  teaches you six techniques to get immediate traffic to your blog. This session will also help you establish authority with Google. You may not know,  they weigh social shares heavily in their ranking.

Create Another Content-Rich Site

Big dog companies like Adobe are creating new content-rich sites of curated content. All the content is to benefit their customers.

CMO.com  “delivers marketing insights, expertise, and inspiration for and by marketing leaders — all aimed at helping… marketers lead their brands in this new digital world.”

Another great use of our BirdSong app is to help you create this content-rich site easily. BirdSong’s “profiles” help you curate content in categories. This way, you can use the sites you learn from to help your customers learn from them, too.

Using this tactic helps you establish yourself as an expert and authority in your niche. And, by using BirdSong, you build a “home base funnel” without a lot of extra effort.

Everything you share using BirdSong can be used to build your brand in a different website. While you’re sharing that content, you’re growing your audience.

It’s happening in every email you send, every form post you make, and even as content upgrade lead magnets you offer.

Optimize Your Home Page

Have you looked at your home page recently? Is it a long, drawn out piece of sales copy that answers almost every objection known to man? Maybe you need to optimize that maze of content.

Last year, serial entrepreneur Neil Patel decided to do just this. In his article about the process, Neil admits to spending over $250,000 on consultants to improve his sales page for CrazyEgg. The post has a ton of great information the team at QuickSprout learned during the process, I’d recommend you study it.

But, the article I strongly recommend you study is by Joanna Wiebe over at CopyHackers. In the article Joanna shows the process taken to learn the things Neil blogged about.

You will be able to optimize your home page by following the seven steps CopyHacker used. Their efforts to optimize CrazyEgg, for a quarter of a million dollars, created a huge increase for the blog.

So there you have it. A 12-month strategy to increase the value of every square inch of your online landscape!

You don’t have to follow the list in order. Choose a task and spend about an hour a week or so on getting it done.

Remember, these 12 tasks are designed solely to increase your message’s reach.

Pick one of the dozen easy ways to quickly improve your content marketing and focus on it this month. Commit 15-30 minutes each day to accomplishing that one task. By the end of the month, you will have made great strides in improving your SEO power on your site.

1. Cut Your Posting Frequency
2. Master Mobile
3. Focus on Value Rather Than Quality
4. Upgrade Your Content Offers
5. Ramp Up Your Call-to-Action
6. Improve your Headlines
7. Add Another Form of Content
8. Revitalize, Refurbish and Recycle Old Content
9. Improve Your “Other” Pages
10. Re-Energize Your Social Media Outreach
11. Create Another Content-Rich Site
12. Optimize Your Home Page

You still need to grow your traffic and social shares to increase the value of your content. To learn how to maximize your content’s ability to sell products or services, get Content Marketing University.

By focusing on content marketing, you’ll have everything you’ll need to increase your authority, attract new clients and sell your products, offers or thoughts to your audience in the short-term and the long-term.