When it comes to SEO, techniques are abundant. However, there are certain strategies which fare better than others, and we like to call our personal SEO strategy for increasing website method ‘the Wolf Pack Method’. Read about our innovative website content-based SEO method, which allowed us to increase our search engine traffic and page views in six months.
Why do we call this SEO approach the wolf pack method?
If you’ve come here to learn about SEO, then you’re probably wondering why you’re reading all about wolves and their behaviours! However, hear us out because there’s a method to the madness!
Wolves are inherently pack animals. Although wolves are fearsome predators and can hunt alone, they are not as effective or as efficient by themselves. Instead, when they form a pack, they can cover ground more easily, just as you can when it comes to your SEO should you opt to follow this method.
Also, wolves spend up to 50% of their time in their home territory. Our SEO method is not all about covering the most ground possible but the wolf pack method is about creating a patch of land/ territory (or, web, as it were) which you know well, become an expert about, and can build a valuable niche audience from.
The main reason we use the Wolf Pack Method is that that using this strategy encourages you to constantly create brand new content, rather than updating older posts with new keywords or creating cornerstone pieces that don’t answer reader questions.
This is great for both your returning readers (who get to see something new each time they visit your website) as well as gaining organic traffic from Google. Simply, the Wold Pack Method is about seeing real results.
How to use the Wolf Pack Method
It’s important to note that the Wolf Pack method is a content-forward SEO strategy and it is a long-term strategy. If you’re looking for a quick fix, then this method may not be for you.
Once you have the bare bones of the Wolf Pack Method sorted, building up traffic within your niche gets easier and easier. We understand that not everyone enjoys writing about the same topics regularly, however, the more broadly that you cover a topic, the more effective our method is.
Step one: Create your pack
The first stage of the Wolf Pack Method is ‘finding your pack’. Find your niche. Find what you’re passionate about knowledgeable about as your readers can tell. This will sustain you in the long run when your website is draining all of your time and energy.
Step two: Plan for future content & thoughtful creation
This part of the process is all about creating a content calendar and marketing which niche your niche needs to fall within or is relevant to. If you’re not sure what a content calendar is, it’s creating a clear schedule of what potential ideas you feel will resound well with your audience, as well as by making the kind of content you’ll even be able to create high-quality content on.
Start creating your niche. Create well-considered articles which read and rank well as solid stand-alone pieces. The articles must answer specific organic queries, or several if the piece is long enough.
Even if you don’t already rank for something, that article could rank well within a few months to a year. Once you’ve started creating your content, write mote content catered to your ideal reader and spend time creating a profile of your ideal reader, so that you can write more content catered to their needs.
Step four: Creating content for your ideal audience
Creating long and detailed articles which answer questions within your niche with keywords that don’t overlap with other articles is one of the best things to do for having a content-forward SEO strategy. Each detailed article should do well as a stand-alone piece and its ranking will only improve should you opt to create similar niche articles (which are just as detailed and informative) that target different keywords. (It’s important to note that we don’t agree 100% with the Skyscraper Method and it’s often sufficient to have a concise article that is 1,500 words.)
Step five: Write regularly
This stage of the process is all about writing content regularly about your chosen niche. For this step of the Wolf Pack Method, you need plenty of patience and a little bit of time. SEO focused traffic is not a sprint, but a marathon whereby the best results are seen after time has passed and you’ve put effort into training, as it were.
Step six: Set yourself apart and link build naturally
This is the optional part of the Wolf Pack Method, but it may be the most important step. The Wolf Pack Method is about building a niche successfully, enough so that real people, not just search engines, will see you as an expert on a given topic. This is how you set yourself apart from your competitors as it’s easier to gain backlinks once you’re niched on a topic.
We recommend joining relevant Facebook groups and forums on your niche. The idea here is not self-promotion, but collaboration with others in your field and simply being a helpful person who people feel comfortable asking about your niche. Your ultimate goal is to be seen as an authority by not only search engines, but also by people within your niche so that they naturally link to you (with minimal effort from yourself).
Step seven: Narrowing in or finding a new niche
While step six was more of an optional piece of the Wolf Pack Method puzzle, step seven is a prime example of not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Once you have established yourself well within one niche, you’ll want to start building out content in similar topics. Just as wolf pups leave the pack as they grow older to seek out new partners and create their own pack, we encourage you to not get overly invested in one niche.
If you need a little more clarification of how the Wolf pack Method works, then here’s a quick example on how you can build your content so that each post ranks well as a stand alone piece, and ranks even better when posted as part of a pack. This also applies to when people search for any given broad query which your content answers well and leads into other articles.
Here’s a travel focused example of the Wolf Pack Method
Step one: Create an alpha: a strong cornerstone post that stands on its own
Create a two-week long guide on how to spend time in LA. This itinerary will give a basic overview of each destination covered and will give a day-to-day breakdown of how to spend your time in this US city. This should be an informative page that fully answers the questions that someone has when it comes to a query without clicking to another page.
Step two: Find your pups
Creating new content/ articles that delve deeper into the destination. For example, when it comes to LA, you could make things such as a ‘one day guide to Venice Beach’ which you’ll then link to your larger two-week long itinerary and vice versa. Although people may be content just browsing the one page, you want to create other niche content that answers more specific questions about the destination.
Step three: Branch out to related content
This stage is not necessarily related to your previous two steps, but is more about branching out on your given your topic and gives value to the readers who came for the other content. We call this the ‘related content stage’ and by this point, you should have a clear idea of what your audience wants.
This stage includes creating listicles such as ‘best coffee shops in X’, ’20 Instagrammable locations in X’ etc. These stand-alone pieces should rank well on their own, but will be infinitely more valuable to someone who comes to your website for an LA guide and discovers all of the other content on the place that they want to explore.
Digging Deeper: Building Connections & Increasing the Pack
Create valuable content & have pack leaders
You want anyone who comes to your website with an organic query to feel that you’ve answered their question well. One of the more important things to bear in mind about SEO writing is that your post should be at a length that will answer people’s questions without being too long.
Although people often write about cornerstone content, we advocate the approach of having multiple strong alphas that bring potential clients and readers to your website. Most people don’t realize that wolves are more effective hunters as mated pairs and most packs have a male and female alpha.
Instead of just having one article, which is easy for others to outrank you on, we advocate having multiples. Depending on the keywords, there will be certain articles which will naturally perform better than others. Whether is because there is a higher search volume of traffic due to seasonality or whether one page is more likely to rank, it’s just normal that some posts will outrank others.
Cover a topic succinctly
This method is not like other SEO strategies where you write the longest content possible. Instead, it’s about putting forward the best possible content on any given subject. If people can’t find what they’re looking for, it will hurt your organic ranking. We advocate having a throughout article on the topic that answers the points succinctly without being too wordy.
If you can cover a topic in 1500 words in a visually appealing way, and that answers a specific query well, you don’t need a 10,000 words novel! Instead of adding new content to your existing article, you instead write content which caters to other related topics within your niche.
The Wolf Pack Method within a longer-term strategy
It’s worth noting that this method is not always about maximum readership, but instead is about reaching your ideal reader who is highly interested in your niche. We encourage you to find new topics that are relevant to your existing readership as well as finding topics that might be interesting to a reader that you want to attract.
Creating multiple pages and articles can aid in boosting SEO rankings, meaning that you might even rank when you technically shouldn’t. If you’re answering a query well within one article, then your reader will have no need to click on any other pieces or posts as they’re already satisfied. This will only aid in your search ranking when someone searches for the next query related to your wolf pack content.
Creating multiple cornerstone style articles means that you should create each post as if your reader will only ever land on and read that post. You should never ever ever (note the multiple uses of ‘ever’) copy the content exactly, or indeed the phrasing. Many corner stone articles assume that your reader will click on your article.
Have you tried the Wolf Pack Method? Tell us about your results!
APRIL KEY RODE says
May 10, 2019 at 7:11 pmIt’s very helpful to beginners! Very informative!