As you may know, in addition to being a web design and digital marketing company, the team at Modmacro also owns and operates a number of online publications. Businessing Magazine is the largest of them. This publication is dedicated to topics surrounding small business ownership and entrepreneurship, with articles covering just about everything one would need to know in order to run a successful small business.
Businessing was started about four years ago as a way to diversify our business, but also to utilize as a platform on behalf of our digital marketing clients. We regularly feature our clients on the site, which does two things for them:
- Gives them credibility in their industry and more importantly, with potential clients, as they are able to say that their company has been featured in a national small business magazine.
- Gives them valuable links to their companies’ websites that increase traffic and help with organic search rankings.
One of our clients, the owner of a mobile phlebotomy company in Southern California, has received so much attention from her featured interview on Businessing that she has begun offering consulting services for people around the country interested in opening their own mobile phlebotomy companies.
Recently, we published our 1,000th article on the magazine’s website, and as of right now, we are serving more than 100,000 annual visitors to the website. It is read in all 50 states and in many other countries around the world, and is in the rankings with other online small business magazines like Inc. and Fast Company.
In light of these accomplishments, we wanted to share some of the lessons we’ve learned in building a publication that does well with Google, since this is one of the main goals we pursue for our digital marketing clients.
It Takes a Village
When we first started Businessing, all of the articles were either written by our staff or by the freelance writers we paid to be contributors. As the magazine grew in size and reputation, however, we started getting submissions from outside writers looking to get their content published on a reputable site, which greatly increased the number of articles we were able to publish. These authors often shared their published articles (and by default, our publication) on their own social media platforms, which drove even more traffic to Businessing Magazine.
What We’ve Learned and How it Benefits Our Clients’ Success Online
There are a lot of writers out there looking for places to get their content published. On occasion, our clients’ blogs can be utilized as a platform for these writers. Allowing outside writers to contribute their content to our clients’ blogs (that we of course approve and edit) can provide a valuable outside perspective and can also increase traffic to our clients’ websites.
Content Strategy Is Even More Important Than We Thought
When the publication first launched, we were writing about pretty much anything and everything—as long as it pertained to small business ownership. We wanted a diversity of topics on the site to keep our readers interested and engaged. What we soon realized, however, was that Google was having a hard time understanding what our publication was about, since the articles were so varied.
After doing some digging in the analytics, we uncovered that our early readers were most drawn to articles on topics related to inspiration and motivation, as well as those about creating vision and mission statements. We made the decision to develop more content along these lines (while still writing and accepting submissions on other topics). In time, Google began ranking our articles highly whenever people searched for things like “vision statement examples” or “inspirational business quotes” because the search engine understood that these topics were a focus for our publication. We also made sure that articles on these topics were some of the most visible ones on our social media pages and in our subscriber emails. All of these things helped grow the publication in a major way.
Now that the publication is more established, we frequently earn Google page one rankings for more valuable keyword phrases like “small business magazine.”
What We’ve Learned and How it Benefits Our Clients’ Success Online
For years we’ve been preaching about the importance of using carefully researched and selected topics on our clients’ content marketing pieces (blog posts, articles, e-books, etc.), but this experience reinforced how important it really is. Google simply doesn’t do a good job of understanding the big picture when multiple topics are involved. Keeping topics narrowly focused and consistently leveraging proven keyword strategies makes all the difference for organic search rankings. It’s a lesson we already knew, but our experience with Businessing has shown us just how limited the scope has to be for Google to grasp the big picture.
Headline Writing Is a Fine Art
In a publication like Businessing, the wording of the headline can be the difference between whether or not the article is read. Headlines need to be grabby in order for a reader to click on the article to read more on the topic, but they also need to follow our proven SEO parameters for Google to understand what the article is about and give it a favorable ranking. Since starting Businessing, our team has become much more proficient at the art of headline writing for online articles, and our rankings reflect that.
What We’ve Learned and How it Benefits Our Clients’ Success Online
A well-worded headline can go a long way! It’s important to have the proper balance of interesting and functional. It should make the reader want to learn more, but it also needs to work within the overall SEO strategy. This goes for all content marketing pieces, including those we develop for our small business clients.
Good Infrastructure Keeps Everything Running Smoothly
Adapting as you grow is always a challenge. In the beginning, it was easy to keep track of the few people who were writing articles for the publication. We had one editor through which every article went. It didn’t take long, however, for the work to start to become too much for one editor. We had new authors contacting us almost daily, wanting to have their content featured on our site. Publicists were reaching out to have their clients interviewed and their books reviewed. It became too much for one editor, so one of our writers was promoted to Managing Editor to help keep track of writers, submissions, and requests, and a junior editor was hired to take over some of the copyediting duties.
Currently, we are in the process of developing a proprietary workflow management software to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks as the content passes through the various publication stages smoothly and efficiently.
What We’ve Learned and How it Benefits Our Clients’ Success Online
In this case, what we were already doing at Modmacro with content creation for our digital marketing clients influenced our work at Businessing. Several years ago, one of our programmers created a content management system that has really helped streamline our process and keep everyone on the same page. It’s an easy-to-use system that our staff relies on every day to see where things are in the process (at writing, at the client for review, at editing, or ready to publish).
Our system also provides us with valuable history so we can track the type of content we’re producing for our clients and make smarter, more informed choices with regard to content strategy.
1,000 articles is a lot! We’re excited to celebrate this milestone and have big plans for the future of Businessing. Over the past four years there have been opportunities to sell the publication, and at times, reasons to consider dropping it altogether. But we’re glad to have forged our own path with this digital publication.
Although Businessing is a tiny piece of the Modmacro puzzle, we were confident that our technical SEO abilities, coupled with award-winning copywriting and web design, would lead to a following, and be a worthwhile endeavor that would provide quality content for small business owners and entrepreneurs across the country.
Businessing has reached a new level of success. But with hundreds of writers involved now, a content workflow software application in the works, and some big plans for the future, the sky is the limit.
The time we invest in building our own web assets is a huge part of the experience we leverage to drive the growth and success of our clients. Platforms like Businessing provide us with unique and powerful opportunities to perform SEO and digital marketing experiments without putting our clients’ livelihoods at risk.
If you want to learn more about Modmacro’s overall marketing strategies for small businesses, or about Businessing Magazine in particular, we’d love to talk with you! We offer small business advertising, as well as opportunities for your business to be featured on the site. Contact us to learn more.
