So in this podcast episode, we're going to talk about what makes long form content discoverable so you can really leverage organic marketing. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Amplify Your Authority podcast. I'm your host, Marissa Shadrick. Now we're going to be talking about blog posts and articles. A lot of people love to write, and especially now with AI, people are writing more content, but they're finding it's not discoverable. It's not really accomplishing what they were hoping was going to accomplish as far as bringing traffic to their blog post. So what's happening now? Obviously, search is changing and we have to adapt. And we're going to talk about how to structure your article so it has a better chance of being discovered by AI search engines and indexed by Google. So let's start by addressing some misconceptions. A lot of people say that you have to post consistently and you have to post on many platforms. Well, consistency can work. However, if the content isn't structured correctly, it doesn't matter how frequently you post. It's not going to get the traction you're looking for. So before we're consistent or before we decide to really explode all the platforms with our long-form content, we have to go back to the basics. And it's not complicated. It's pretty simple. And you can implement this very easily when you're writing content. But first, before we get started, I want to remind you if you're watching this on YouTube, I would love it if you would subscribe to this channel, or if you're listening on one of the podcast platforms after this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. All right, let's start with the consistency trap. That advice made sense when volume drove reach, but that's only part of the story now. You can post every single day and still be invisible. The frustration now is not the work behind writing articles, but having the articles just sit there and not be seen and not be read. So we've all seen it. We spent a long time researching, we finally have this great idea that we want to share. We write the blog post, we do everything that we think we need to do, and it's crickets. Then what some people do is they search and they see what's working for other people, and that copycat method just doesn't work for us because a lot of times it's not aligned to our audience and our pillar content. So consistency isn't the problem anymore, and many are burning out just trying to put out more content, thinking that it's going to change something. So what has actually changed? Search has changed. And so we have to once again adapt, especially as a solo business owner. We see now that Google's AI overview, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity are now pulling answers from published content. So what does that tell us? Well, here's a list of a few things I jotted down. They favor articles that are clearly structured that answer a real question and align with a defined topic. The old approach was volume and keywords. The new approach is clarity, depth, and structure. Even Google addresses this and says what matters is whether content is genuinely useful and written for people, not whether it manipulates ranking. They also use the acronym EAT, which is EEAT, and it stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. So you might be wondering, well, how do I avoid from talking about one topic over and over again? There's so much more that I want to talk about. Well, you can use past content to figure out what your content pillars are. So if you publish on YouTube or if you have a podcast, you can go to the platform where the audios are uploaded, or you can look at newsletters or blog posts, and you can extract that and have AI analyze it. That would give you some valuable information to figure out which pieces of content really resonated with your audience. And you can choose three to five pillar pieces of content that you're going to be talking about. And this can serve as valuable information because it'll help you either create or refine your content pillars. And you know that's what your audience wants to hear because of the data that you collected. And here's the thing that some people don't realize well-written long-form content has a long shelf life. One strong discoverable article can bring new readers month after month. So, what does a discoverable article actually look like? Well, I'm glad you asked. There are three things that make an article discoverable, and we're going to go through each one. Number one is we have to realize that we're writing for two audiences. I know that hurts my copywriting heart, but we are writing for two audiences. The first one is your ideal avatar, human. The second is your writing for AI search engines like ChatGBT, like Gemini, like Google. So now we have to take a topic and really refine it for our audience, but also give it the structure so that AI search engines can find it. That means we have to answer the main question right on top and not bury it down below. It has to be on the top of the article. And then we also want to use clear subheads that gives AI signals as far as what this article is about. And you want to keep the article really tight. When I was learning how to write articles years ago, one of the things that I was taught was to always incorporate sticky statements. Think of it as a tweetable or think of it as a quote written into your article or your paragraphs. This is what AI likes. It likes to be able to scan and find those standalones that will identify what this article is about. They can pull these statements and quote it as answers to a question. Now I know this sounds like a lot, but once you have your content pillars and you do the research for a topic you want to write about and you structure it in a way that AI search engines can find you, you can continue to duplicate this and create a system around this using AI. You don't have to start from scratch. You can create templates and you can help AI craft the article in a way that's still you, still has your insights, but has a structure that it needs to be able to be discoverable. Step number two, build around topics, not keywords first. You can add the keywords later once you choose your topic. A good way to look at this is what is it that you teach or what is it that you sell? And what type of educational content can you create for this rather than chasing trends? Here's a little tip. I use research to analyze everything. My audience, their needs, competitors, even trends. I try to look at everything and then decide what type of content I can deliver that is part of the content pillars that I have. Then once I decide on a topic, I do deep research on that. Now there could be a lot of research that comes out of it and it could make your eyes cross. But there is a resource I'm going to share later where you can simplify the research process. It's really super easy and it gives you so much intel, so much information to shape your insights, your personal insights based on credible data. So this is helpful to be able to create that rich content, that long-form content, because we're talking about anywhere from 1200, 1800, 2000 words. So there's a lot that you need to put in there, and that is going to make it a very comprehensive article that AI is going to favor if it's structured correctly. And that brings us to step number three, structuring your content. Now I already mentioned that you want to have the answer to the question up top, like in the first three lines, the first paragraph. You do want to spend a little bit of time on the subheads. So if somebody was scanning, they could tell what the article was about. You've done it, I've done it. You go in, you open something up and you scan first, then you go back and read it. So those subheads are really important to either reflect the questions that your audience is asking online or the answers that they're seeking. And you want to cover the topic thoroughly from all angles because this builds credibility and authority. And if you have done research and you can cite the work even better, this isn't about word count necessarily. This is about creating depth and making sure that you have made this article very comprehensive and extremely useful for the reader. And here's a little blog bonus tip. If your article would benefit from having frequently asked questions, go ahead and put four or five of them in there. You have the question, you have the answer. AI loves this type of format. So if it fits, you can go ahead and use it. But this is primarily with blog posts. There's a little bit of controversy whether it works in other places or not. But right now, what they're saying is that it works for blog posts. So you can test it and try it and see if it works for you. So why does all this matter? Because we're playing the long game. Long game matters, and you spend a heck of a lot of time writing articles and blog posts. So you want to make sure you position yourself for longevity, not just something quick to put on your content calendar and knock it out and check it off. You want to make sure that it's going to provide value for you and your readers on an ongoing basis month after month. And here's some additional reasons why it matters. When you consistently publish within a definite topic area, you become known for that topic. You become the topic expert. And that's really important, not only for your brand and for your audience that you serve, but also for AI search engines. So if you deviate too often because you want to follow a trend, you're going to dilute the signal. This matters a lot, especially for us solopreneurs, because we can't compete with volume. We can't compete with large organizations that have entire teams creating content. However, you can totally compete when it comes to depth and clarity. Now, I'm not knocking short form content because it all has its place, but think about it. Long form content, when somebody reads it, they understand you. They understand your business, they understand your brand, they understand your perspective, they are gleaning from your wisdom, they're seeing your blueprints and your frameworks. They begin to get to know you in a way that short form content doesn't do. So if you've been a little bit inconsistent in posting, you're feeling a little guilty. Well, don't feel guilty. I believe that if you have a small library of long-form content that's structured well and is very focused and provides answers for your readers, it will outperform years of inconsistent posting. So know your value and build your topic authority. So how do we move forward? Let's make this super practical. You can stop worrying about posting all the time, chasing all kinds of trends, and trying to game the algorithm. That's going to be exhausting. What deserves your attention is asking yourself, do I have three to five content pillars? And then you want to make sure your article is structured properly. Now you can do the research. We work on this inside of the AI lab, but it can be different between a blog post and a LinkedIn newsletter. So you want to make sure it's structured correctly and then create a template for that. And then make sure you do some research because you want some credible statistics. You want to be able to see various insights, pros and cons to something, what consumers are saying, audience pain points. And I have a resource that you can download that gives you an idea of how to prompt an AI tool to give you the best resource. And then a second prompt to be able to pull those insights and again align it to your content pillars. So if you want that resource, all you have to do is go to marissashadrick.com forward slash research. That's marissashadrick.com forward slash research. On a final note, just remember that consistency is a habit, but discoverability is a strategy. You need both and you can do both. You just have to slow down a little bit, do a lot of good research, create those templates that align to the type of long form content that you're going to write, and just watch what it can do. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, take care.