Written by mallorywhitfield Did you know that writing unique, helpful content is a sure-fire way to get noticed by Google’s search engine algorithm? It’s true!
Not only is it a foundation of our blog content SEO strategy here at Carrot, but it’s a proven strategy that top-performing Carrot sites emulate to find success.
The great thing about Carrot is that your site comes with a lot of foundational content and pages right out of the box, so you can save time instead of building everything from scratch.
But you’ll still need to personalize it and make it uniquely your own.
Luckily, our Unique Content Tool helps you keep track along the way as you add or adjust your template content to your liking.
This article will highlight a few things to keep in mind as you start writing and editing your Carrot site.
You’ll learn how to make sure your content stands out from competitor sites who haven’t made the effort to personalize and unique-ify their content.
Why 50% Unique Content Is Important
Adding unique content that is localized, credible and personalized to your target market is central to Carrot’s content strategy.
With the homepage of each Carrot site you launch, for instance, we recommend editing and adding content that is 50% unique from the original template.
Adding content that is unique and personalized to your specific business and expertise will help you to optimize for E-E-A-T. Short for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, E-E-A-T is part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
By demonstrating that you are credible and trustworthy, you can stay on Google’s good side.
For websites and businesses that impact people’s financial well-being (including real estate), this is particularly important. Google calls topics that could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people: “Your Money or Your Life” topics, or YMYL for short.
The bigger the impact a topic could have on someone’s life, the more closely Google looks at the quality and uniqueness of the content.
ℹ️ Google Search Central: Learn more about E-E-A-T and Google’s quality rater guidelines →
But how do we know that it “works” when Carrot members put this unique content strategy into practice?
To put our strategy to the test, we started by identified the top-performing Carrot sites across our member base.
We then ran an analysis to see just how much the content of their homepage differed from the starting template when the site was launched.
Finally, we sampled from Carrot sites with no movement at all in organic traffic and rankings and ran the same comparison.
Across the board, our top-performing member sites had homepage content that was substantially unique from the foundational template the site was launched with.
The lowest-performing sites had made no changes at all to their homepages.
Our Unique Content Tool can help you see just how much content you’ve added or changed from the original template on the homepage (or any of your pages or blog posts), but you’ll still need to put in the work to add this content to your site!
ℹ️ Blog post: Learn more about the anatomy of a high-converting home page here →
To help generate ideas and get started on the right content to add that is helpful and relevant to those who land on your page, here are a few key categories to keep in mind as you are writing:
Personalization
Defining personalization is pretty easy: it’s a form of proof that there are real people behind the company logo and website.
People want to know who it is they are potentially going to work with prior to making that call or sending their contact info. Your potential clients need to know that you are trustworthy.
Ways to personalize your Carrot site:
- Add images of you or your team
- Explain your unique expertise and brand positioning
- Share information about your background and how your business got its start
- Include your company’s core values, mission statement or what you believe in
- Mention how you or your company support your local community
Things to remember:
Focus on adding personal elements that will build trust and help visitors better understand and connect with what you stand for as a business owner.
Your goal with personalization is to drive home the message that a real person (or people) is behind the website visitors are on.
Make sure to have at least one photo or video of you and your team in the top half of your core conversion pages. Especially if you make property visits often, your face should not be buried in the bottom half of the page.
Share personal knowledge related to your business and include first-person pronouns. One SEO study found that including first-person pronouns (words like “I,” “we,” “my,” and “ours”) and first-hand experience were two of the top factors associated with an increase in Google visibility.
Credibility
When we talk about site credibility…we are essentially focusing on building trust.
Here are some questions you’ll want to answer for sellers:
- Are there real, local people behind this business, or is this website a scam?
- Have other people used your services? (And how good was their experience with you?)
- Can I trust you to do the job smoothly, correctly, and keep my best interest in mind?
This is where you can get really creative, as there can be lots of effective ways to add content that drives home your business credibility.
Testimonials and reviews are a great place to start when it comes to building credibility and adding new and unique content to your page. Check out our guide to the ideal “Reviews” page.
You can take it even further and expand a testimonial into a full blown case study. Create a blog post or page walking through the situation a seller was in before contacting your business, and how you helped them overcome the issues and got the house sold through listing, a cash offer, or some other method. This type of content could be a great niche topic page (pillar page) covering a common situation you help your clients with.
Listing certifications, organizations you belong to, or press your business has received can be hugely beneficial in differentiating yourself from the rest of your competition.
Carrot’s Credibility Bar feature makes it easy to showcase these logos for visitors who care about working with experienced and knowledgeable businesses.
- Use the Carrot Credibility Bar to Build Trust and Increase Conversions
- How To Use The Credibility Bar
Taking the additional time to describe why those certifications matter not only add unique content to the page, but also helps paint a clearer picture for visitors as to what areas of expertise your business covers.
ℹ️ Blog post: Learn more about how to create the ideal “About” page here →
Localization
One easy way to localize your website is to add specific, relevant info that local people in your market city or state will quickly recognize. This can help with entity-based SEO, and could include:
- City nicknames (e.g., Portland, Oregon is also referred to as the City of Roses)
- Neighborhood or regional names
- Local slang or phrases that are unique to your area
- Popular local businesses or landmarks
Note: when adding local content, make sure that you stick to local info that is relevant to your business or the main topic of your website.
For example, if you have a real estate business, you’ll want to focus on information relevant to the local real estate market and homeowners in your area, like popular local neighborhoods. If you have an HVAC business, you could mention seasonal weather that is common in your local area and how it can affect heating and air conditioning.
On the other hand, adding a lot of information about general things to do in the area may be better suited for a tourism website and could make it harder for Google to understand what your website is about.
We also recommend updating any photos and images to reflect your local market area.
For example, the types of homes and architecture seen in Arizona look very different from a neighborhood in New England or a suburb of Seattle.
Updating your photos with images from your local area can help build credibility and trust with your website’s visitors.
Add Your Unique Knowledge or Perspective
Whether you are writing a blog post or editing your homepage, it’s important to add your unique spin to it.
We get it. Many of Carrot’s members don’t consider themselves particularly creative or feel like writing is their strength. That’s okay!
You can record a quick video on your phone or use a speech-to-text tool to share your perspective or knowledge about a topic.
Adding video to your site can boost your credibility and help with SEO.
If you are struggling to come up with ideas for what additional information you could provide, turn to the search engines themselves.
Search for the keyword phrase you are targeting and scroll down to Google’s People also ask section:
The questions that appear in the Google search results are great related topics that you could add your expertise on.
We suggest using a version of the question itself as a heading (H2 or H3) and then answering the question with a short paragraph or two below the question. This can help your post or page get found by people searching for that question.
You can also use free tools like AnswerThePublic to come up with more questions to answer on your site.
Worried about unintentionally hurting your page’s SEO when changing or adding content?
A common hesitation we see when members go to edit content is that they may unknowingly remove or change a vital area of content that will end up hurting their ranking or page indexing.
The good news: it’s really hard to do unless you are eliminating huge swaths of content (hence our recommended minimum word count) or keyword-stuffing the heck out of what’s on the page.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when editing or adding content to your homepage to ensure you don’t self-sabotage!
- Be mindful of your target keyword phrases for the homepage (something like ‘sell my house fast’, ‘we buy houses’, etc for our Motivated Seller template). You want these phrases to remain in the content so as to have effective on-page SEO.
- Mind your H1 and H2s! These are headings Google will pay the most attention to. The Carrot team goes to great lengths to ensure these headings are consistent with SEO best practices, so take extra care when changing the wording or removing phrases in existing header tags unless you have a clear optimization strategy.
The bottom line: focus on how the content is going to help the person reading it.
- Can you help solve their problem?
- How are you qualified?
Adding helpful content will only improve upon the strong foundation our optimized templates provide.
You have two audiences: search engines, and everyone else who lands on your site.
Effectively balancing the two doesn’t have to mean keyword-stuffing or eliminating a bunch of content–it simply means translating your expertise and background onto the page.
For more tips, check out this guide from Search Engine Land:
Conclusion
Good luck! Creating great, unique content can feel daunting at first, but it’s a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors and gain organic search traffic.
If you’re just getting started with SEO and evergreen marketing, be sure to check out this intro to SEO basics.
We’re always here to help support and empower you to take your site to new heights. And remember, Carrot’s Official Evergreen Marketing Community is ready to help you along the way as well.