As you *might* have noticed, the internet is saturated with content — so how do you win the SERP wars and win your audience’s trust?  

In this fourth episode of The Notorious Thought Leader podcast, Evan Bailyn, CEO at First Page Sage, joins Erin Balsa to:

Evan is the founder and CEO of First Page Sage, the No. 1 SEO agency in the United States with clients including Microsoft, Salesforce and Verizon. First Page Sage blends SEO, thought leadership marketing, and conversion optimization to drive leads and ROI for years to come.

4:42-4:53 — Every idea is in some way derivative (Evan): “But if you can say something in an original way, or format it in a new way, or package it in a way it hasn't been done before, people find a tremendous value in that … and not many people are doing it.”

5:33-6:13 — You can be credible without being a subject matter expert (Evan): “Credibility is in the eye of the beholder … I think credibility often comes down to people getting a repetition of either your face or your name or something like that. If they see you talking a lot then you become more credible, which doesn't make logical sense, but it is a truth of marketing.”

6:57-7:20 — Blending SEO and thought leadership (Evan): “The way that I personally create original content is I think about the concept that I want to write about that I think is interesting. In my world of SEO, it's often keyword-driven. I know the keyword that I want to rank for. Then I think about what the searcher would be interested in. I think about what people have said about the subject, and then I just go through testing it. Do I agree with that? Do I disagree with that? I don't allow myself to write what comes to my mind immediately.”

15:06-16:59 — How to find the best keywords (Evan): “I prefer to just go to Google and start typing in keywords that you think your audience would search. It wouldn't be one person doing this—you need a few different minds in the room … It takes some experience. It takes some debate. Some people say, ‘I don't think people look that way’ or ‘When someone types this in, that's not what they really mean’ or ‘That's more of a researcher. That's not a real potential customer.’” 

27:10-28:00 — Why good content isn’t good enough anymore (Evan): “The goal is creating the best piece of content on the internet for a keyword that would drive revenue — ultimately, that would bring a prospective customer. If you're going to do that, you can't really have a generalist. Because the problem is there's been blogs and content creation in vogue since 2007, or 2006. Every site now has a blog. And the internet is saturated with content. There’s almost a 100% probability that there’s a well-written, good spelling and grammar, reasonably persuasive article out there on the subject you’re going to write about. So you simply can’t produce yet another one of them or you’ll end up as number 32 on Google.”

Evan is the founder and CEO of First Page Sage, the No. 1 SEO agency in the United States with clients including Microsoft, Salesforce and Verizon. First Page Sage blends SEO, thought leadership marketing, and conversion optimization to drive leads and ROI for years to come.