 Hey Moz fans welcome back to another whiteboard Friday. I am PJ howland I'm the head of SEO and evergreen content at leaders calm So my background is kind of that sweet spot right in between if you've got SEO over here and content and editorial over here That middle ground where SEO and editorial and content collide And if you're familiar with that world, you know that we are dealing with thinner margins We have fewer resources and we have less clear direction So this is this is the world we operate in it's a place where we're trying to just get a little bit of an advantage over Our competitors and it's kind of created this fixed mindset of just trying to to scrape by to just get a little bit of an advantage However, I think that there's a mindset that can really help break this mold to make sure that every single month is actually Your best month ever and so it's the Blue Ocean SEO strategy So what is Blue Ocean SEO strategy? Well start with what Blue Ocean strategy is If maybe you've read the book Blue Ocean strategy, maybe you've heard the term thrown around Maybe haven't heard of it at all. Give me just one minute and I'll kind of explain this with a story. So Back in the days when circuses were traveling the countryside there were two predominant circuses wringling brothers and Barnum and Bailey and They would spend lots of time energy resources trying to one-up each other They were producing, you know, who can have crazier stunts who can have, you know, weirder clowns who can have, you know More eccentric animal tricks or whatever And I got to the point to where they were, you know competing so hard with each other They forgot what their customers really cared about and the sentiments of the day were that hey We don't want to see multiple rings. We don't like looking everywhere Put it back down to one ring. We don't like the animal tricks. They're cruel. They're outdated But these circuses were so fixed on competing each other that both of them ended up losing out and then Who should come along? This new player Cirque du Soleil Now if you've been to a Cirque du Soleil show, you probably know where I'm going with this It's unlike a traditional circus. In fact, it's unlike anything else out there But what they did do is they took what worked and excluded what didn't work from a traditional circus So they cut out They cut out the the cruel animal acts They also kept in the clowns and the acrobats because those were working in the traditional circus and they brought in this kind of third heat of this Theater element this fine theater experience if you've been to a Cirque show, you know what I'm talking about There's definitely a narrative there And so what they've done is they've created a blue ocean They've created a world where there really is no direct apples to apples competitors Now the Cirque du Soleil isn't the only player out there who's done this We could talk about you know itunes. What were your options before itunes? Netflix same thing before Netflix was on the scene. Where were you watching your stuff Airbnb? You see where I'm going with this at all three of these businesses or products launch There really wasn't anything out there. It was a true blue ocean So how do we get that from an SEO perspective? Well, we need to start by realizing where SEO is right now so SEO is a fixed mindset game Inherently it is a red ocean strategy and if you don't believe me, let me illustrate it this way You have this situation where you've got a keyword to look at your competitor and you see hey, they've got 100 links and you say Big deal. I'll get 200 links. Their site speed score is 80. I'm gonna make it 90. We're gonna have 90 They write 1500 words. You see where I'm going with this. We we write 2,500 words Okay, that's not really that's not blue ocean thinking that is fixed red ocean Fierce competition mindset thinking but it's where a lot of a lot of SEOs find themselves. Heck, I've I've been there That is essentially skyscraper content. It's it's skyscraper You know article building and hey, there there's been a place for that but at its core it really is red ocean fixed mindset thinking So how do how do we get over that? How do we as SEOs digital marketers? Content markers, how do we get over the fact that we're playing a red ocean game? Well, it starts with the customer So picture this Picture you're sitting down with a customer Except you're not a marketer anymore You maybe work on the fulfillment or service or product side and you sit down with them and you say hey We are enhancing our product our service our fulfillment. What is going to make it a better solution for you and You know just picture a great conversation where they're going back and forth to you You you collect valuable insight and at the end you produce a better product and that customer is grateful for it Now picture that same customer except swap out yourself as a product marketer And now you're a marketer marketer and and you're talking about your SEO strategy and you say hey So what we do is we look at the competitors and we add more words We see the links that they build and we add more links What do you think of that? How does that benefit you? The customer look at you say that doesn't help me at all. That's not what I asked for. That's not what I want That's not the deal of how businesses work. You're here to make my world easier and Truth be told when we add more words to a page Sometimes we're just making more words out there. You know what I mean? It's something that that the customers don't want to deal with so we we live in this reality though where as SEO's as editorial professionals as Content marketers we are in this place where we're we're tasked with almost an impossible task. How do we deliver? Exceptional content when the people producing that maybe it's an SEO. Maybe it's a writer aren't necessarily the subject matter experts so it starts with What you give the writer or the SEO to actually begin this project? And so I've found so many people start with they just say hey, here's the keyword go for it We're trying to ring for this just get that piece of content out and inevitably you will produce a skyscraper piece of content with that That sets everyone up for failure Nobody wins when all you do is start off with a keyword Instead what I have found is it really takes detailed write-ups that begin with with interviews with subject matter experts My interviews that are my outlines that I produce with my team I've never seen one under two pages most of them are between three to five pages that that we produce for these individual topics That all has to come from your own your own insight with like you know your team I can't really produce what your customer wants. That's something I invite you to figure out on your own However, I have found that customers No matter what industry you're in I don't care if it's B2B B2C I don't care if you're selling sass or if you've got a e-commerce platform Whatever the person that says yes, I want to buy that is always a person 10 times out of 10 You're dealing with people. So what do people want people want reality. They want authenticity So there are three things that I think can help anyone regardless of the industry that you're in Boost up your content and when I'm talking about content that could be articles. It could be blog posts It could be landing pages. It could be white papers. Whatever the point is is that people want reality So here's how I've been able to find really good delivery methods for this stories My world is a lot more article-focused, but we try to start every article with a story people love that I find a much higher time on page when we lead out with stories And I know what you're thinking is like well, you know Wikipedia is someone we're competing against so they don't start with a story Nobody starts with a story Okay Decide if you want to be a red ocean player or a blue ocean player The next thing is advice now again going back to the reality of is that we're dealing with situations where we've got writers Who aren't subject matter experts? That's okay. Nobody nobody's in trouble for that reality of the situation But it does matter that you seek that advice out so schedule interviews with subject matter experts And and buy your team a book have a book club within your organization Make sure that you're building expertise within your group and finally examples People want reality. They want authenticity if you have customer data if you have case studies I Don't think you should be gating all of that necessarily there's a lot There's a great use case to be made for just letting that stuff out there People want to see real examples happening in the wild so You come up with this blue ocean strategy that only you can produce because you should know your customer better than me and You want to figure out how to measure it? Well, if you've been doing content marketing for more than I don't know the last 30 minutes you know that there's a big gap between the first piece of content produced and The dollars in the pocket of the organization. There's a lot that happens in between there So how do you actually make sure that you can come through on this with proper measurement? I have found that time on page is the first thing that goes up So before we kind of rolled out this with leaders calm We were seeing average time on page between three and a half to four minutes, you know, not good not bad fine, whatever But after ruling this out, we're seeing average time on page of Between five and a half to six and a half minutes I have pages that are almost three thousand, you know words in length that actually get read We we have articles that have average time on page of eight minutes or higher and And that's a really validating thing And I believe that after time on the page goes up then you can start seeing if your rankings and traffic go up Now you can see right here. There's no tinfoil hat I'm not I'm not making a direct Insinuation that there is a correlation between, you know Time on page and the rankings that Google is gonna hand out to you What I am saying is that good content gets noticed and when it gets noticed you're gonna see those links come in And you see how this works. We're starting. We're starting backwards, right? Like a lot of the times we we've lead off with saying I want more links But in reality, is that really gonna serve us? I would rather play a game where links come as a byproduct of good content So what's really the takeaway here? I think it's a mindset takeaway in my organization. We've buried skyscraper content. It's dead It's in the ground now. It doesn't mean we don't look at competitors. Obviously, that would be silly not to do We're an SEO However, I think that if you want to really transition to a blue ocean limitless mindset There has to be some kind of reality check where you say hey at some point I'm not gonna be listening to the competitors for every little word that I write on my web page Thanks for watching the video today I look forward to hearing your comments for anyone that's done this type of shift in the organization Look forward to engaging with you in a good discussion in the comments below Thanks for stopping by today. See you on the next whiteboard Friday