From the first course that we had with you at Squirrly, you learned how to optimize content for seo. Now in this second training program, you’ve learned how to optimize your content for Humans, so that Human readers get to enjoy and share your content.

I’m happy to see that you sticked with this course for so long, and as a bonus, two of my colleagues are already working like cute little squirrels on some Bonus Lessons that you will receive next week.

Since you know how to optimize your content now for people like you and me, lets see how you can track the results of all the articles that you optimized. There’s no point in optimizing anything, if you can’t track the results. I mean, there is, but it wouldn’t bring you any valuable data, to show you that “Hey, it’s actually awesome that I’m thinking of how to optimize and get maximum results on any new piece of content, not just randomly create something. Also, how awesome is it that I now have tools to show me what results I actually got by performing all the steps in Florin’s courses?”.

Okay?

It’s very important to see if the optimizations we make for content actually bring us real-world results, like: more readers (traffic to the article), authority (links from other bloggers and influencers), Google rank (it’s also important to see that we actually managed to get a better rank on search engines for certain topics, because this is also a sign that you’re getting more authority), social signals (shares for your article, that you get from other people who liked what you’ve written so much that they just had to share).

So how do we know which of these things tell us if Humans love our site? Good question. The answers are soon to come, but until then, you must make sure that not only your articles are optimized, but you track the aspects of your site that really make Human readers love your site.

Offering your readers a great experience with browsing your site and engaging with your content, is 100% prone to bring you success. Here you have to track that your site always has a few aspects made great for your readers.

 

Tracking the Human Love <3 :

In September we launched ( in Beta ) a new tool which by now I think that you all received by email. It’s called the SEO Audit, even though it covers all the aspects of your Content Marketing Strategy and it helps you track each area that influences your success.

Usually, such a service costs $600 for just one report. We offer it for you weekly, and it’s included in every Pricing Plan, because we want to know that you have the right tools to help you succeed.

Since this is about how you optimize for Humans, and not how you optimize content for SEO, we will talk about how the Audit helps identify how successful your site is in terms of “how much people engage with my content and how much they love it”.

 

A list of things that will help you track the aspects that are certainly going to bring you Human Love:

It’s great if you start working this list, to bring the best experience to your Human readers.

01: How Your Site Looks On Mobile Devices and on the Web:

This is an important aspect to track, related to your site, because nowadays it’s a must that your content looks great on mobile phones, tablets, etc.

Squirrly’s Audit renders exact pictures of how your site looks on mobile devices.

If you use a tool like Google Analytics you can see how many people browse your site on mobile. If the numbers of people who browse your site from a smartphone (iPhone, Android, etc.) or from a tablet (iPad, Android, Windows 8) are big, then you must do something about your mobile version.

The best part is that if you make a change, the Audit will help you render new images to show you how your site looks on mobile devices.

Of course, keep in mind that the Audit is sent just once / week on the Free, Starter and Pro Plans. Only those who have the Agency Plan can update the report instantly.

02: Do you have a Meta Viewport tag?

Having the viewport also helps for mobile devices, so if you’ve done your research on the first step we’ve had in this lesson and you saw that people look at your site from mobile devices, then it would be kinda awesome to have your site resize well on mobile devices.

Remember: Happy readers will bring you Moola Moola (yes! the awful slang for money is back), so you’d better have this. If it’s too geeky, just ask the guys who take care of your wordpress site. They should be happy to help.

One quick look at the Audit will show you if you have it. Or you can try to resize the width of your browser.

03. Apple fans are awesome! Do you have an icon for them?

Even though you may not love Apple devices too much, some of your audience certainly does, so it’s great if you have your Apple icon ready for them to pin to their device’s screen.

Squirrly’s Audit shows you if you have the icon ready for Apple users.

04. Speaking of icons.. 

Do you have any, to make their browsers look great and have your branding in them?

Icons are important. People these days have a lot of tabs open in their browsers. It’s nice to give them that one thing that helps them easily identify which of all those tabs is your site and the awesome content that you have ready for them.

This will also help you in bookmarks, and some other lists they may create.

05. Speed.

Most people think they optimize content for SEO when they fix the speed issues with their sites, but it’s really not the case.

The speed of your site and the way your content loads is something that matters a lot for your readers.

Pingdom.com can help you figure out the speed of your site. The Squirrly Audit will tell you if your speed makes your Human readers want to stay in for more, or click that X button fast.

[sqcta text=”Gzip” type=”bullet”  color=”yellow” cnt=”6″]

What? Yup, it’s what you’ll need to get a really good speed and have people fall in love with the speed that your content loads with.

The Audit has some info that is useful for your techie, but if you want you can just use a plugin like W3 Total Cache or Super Cache.

Make sure you test the plugins on a test site before you place them on your main site. Issues may appear, due to your current wordpress installation, so be careful.

07. Social Sharing Buttons

If you have them, you have the potential to get Human Love. If you don’t it’s a massive problems, because you’ve spent so much time learning how to optimize content for Humans, and now you can’t have those people show you some Love by sharing your articles.

We personally use and recommend the Add This Social plugin.

08. Follow Me Buttons

People want to learn what you’re all about, especially once you’ve provided them with awesome content.

09. Subscribe by Email form

Believe it or not, people like it a lot when you offer them the possibility of hearing more from you be email. If you’ve just offered them some really great content, they’ll want more, but if they have to change their workflow and blot the bookmark lists they have, they won’t <3 you as much.

Offer them a way to keep them updated with a Subscribe by email form.

10. Twitter Cards, Facebook Meta, Google Authorship

Make sure these are working correctly at all times. If people love your content they will share it. When they share it, they want it to look good on the profiles they’ve shared it on.

Squirrly helps you set these up and the Audit helps track and check that these are working 100% right.

So that’s it for the stuff you have to track in order to bring you Human love. Make sure you track those on a weekly basis. Since you have the Audit from Squirrly, this will be a really easy, 5-minute task.

 

Now how do you measure the success of every piece of content that you optimize for Humans?

When it comes to written articles, there’s about 5 aspects you need to measure in order to see what results were brought in by the optimizations you did. Basically, what’s the return on your investment of optimizing content for Humans?

01. Social Signals To Your Article

This is easy to measure with the seo analytics of Squirrly. You can find it in the All Posts section. Just click on the “See Rank” button to open up the seo analytics for your article. If you click “More Details”, it will show you a  list of all the social media channels on which your article was shared and how many times it was shared.

It’s important to track the social signals of your articles, because it’s a very clear indicator of how much people actually love your content.

02. More Subscribers Than Usual

Yes, it’s great to have a Subscribe by Email section in the banner, or on the side-bar. I’ve talked about this before, of course.

If you see more subscribers coming in than usual, it means that your content is doing better than it used to, because it’s getting more people to crave for more content from you. That’s why it’s important to measure this aspect.

03. Early Traffic to the Article

SEO helps you get traffic to your articles in the long run, it doesn’t help you get anything really short term.

However, if you usually get like 30 visits to your articles in their first 2 hours, and suddenly you start getting 90 visitors, then that’s a crystal clear sign that your content just *Clicks* for many of your Human readers and they love it.

04. Links to Your Article By Other Peers

This is a clear signal also that you managed to strike something great into the hearts of your audience, because they even start mentioning your articles when they discuss certain subjects.

For each of your articles, the SEO Analytics we have shows you how many bloggers linked to your article in the content they built. Also, it shows you how it improved since like a month ago, to let you know what its progress looks like in time.

05. Comments to Your Article

This is an obvious one. It’s great to have people commenting on your articles and it shows that you’ve managed to get them to engage with your articles.

 

Wow, it’s been amazing to prepare more Lessons for you and I loved every typo I’ve made along the way, because I want you to be successful with this whole idea of optimizing content for Humans and being able to keep an eye on all that’s happening with the content that you did optimize.

I hope you’ve learned some good things in these lessons and that you’ve enjoyed them.

It’s already October, we’re getting ready for the Harvest Festival at Squirrly. I may have something nice for you this Monday, so stay tuned to your emails.

 

Thank you very much for going through the lessons. Feel free to ask me anything by email and I’d be happy to see you share some of your experiences with Optimizing Content for Humans with me.

Best regards,
Florin Muresan
CEO of Squirrly