Ep 065 – With Special Guest Sherry Smothermon-Short

Theory of Content

Welcome back to Theory of Content! This week Joshua Unseth is joined by the new guest host Sherry Smothermon-Short. Sherry is the founder of the blog Cub Scout Ideas. On her blog, Sherry posts about all things Cub Scouts. She teaches parents proper uniform care, teaches kids fun snacks they can concoct, and teaches the troops how to enjoy the outdoors when Cub Scouts is not in session.

Sherry begins the episode by telling Josh about her blog’s founding. She goes over her past as a den leader for her son’s Cub Scout troop. She explains how her blog has grown to accommodate posts that are not strictly Cub Scout related, but to also include more general outdoor activities. And despite the change, she still garners a large amount of traffic across her website.

Next, Josh asks Sherry to share some of her wisdom with the listeners. Sherry’s top tip that she’s acquired through years of SEO research and observation is to not forget about your smaller pages. She accredits a lot of power to Facebook to change the traffic on a page. She advises bloggers to pay attention to which type of content benefits most from a Facebook post. Knowing this, if there are some old posts that have died out but were well received by social media, maybe give them a second post.

The advice continues with Sherry telling Josh about some of her blogging mistakes, and the mistakes she sees other bloggers making. Her biggest mistake was investing two much money in an endeavour that she could have realized sooner would have less payoff than she expected. The mistake she sees other blogging making is not using Google Search Console enough. What she says next may be a bit controversial in the SEO world (brace yourself!)… Sherry does not think the main thing bloggers should focus on is producing new content. She wants other bloggers to better understand what search console is telling them, and use it to their advantage. Is there old content that could perform much better if it was spruced up a bit? Or is all your old content polished and new content is the best option at the moment? Josh adds onto this by instructing bloggers to use keyword research to help guide the content of new posts.

Lastly, Josh and Sherry give some final advice to reach your desired audience. Sherry tells listeners to pay attention to the intention behind searches, because even if you can rank very well, if your page does not fulfill the desire of the user, it might be to divert your time to another page on your blog. Josh finishes off the episode by asking Sherry about the future of her blog. She explains how she plans to keep it going even though her boys are out of the program, and how eventually she hopes to sell the blog, but that won’t be for a while.

Thank you so much for tuning into Theory of Content this week. Be on the lookout for new episodes coming soon, and in the meantime make sure you catch last week’s episode (where Amber returns) if you haven’t already.

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