Content Publishing Tips for Brands From the Experts

Brands publishing news content isn't a question anymore, it's a way of life in the digital marketing world. Whether it's a weekly post on a corporate blog, a news release published in the company newsroom or a series of daily news articles as part of a brand's online publication.

Welcome to the era of brand publishing and content marketing, where quantity doesn't mean quality and journalistic best practices are part of the job descriptions for success. Today we have conferences, institutes, books, webinars, blogs, staff, departments, and agencies dedicated to content marketing offering tips on how to do it best.

While content marketing maybe just be one of most overused words in 2013, it's a necessary evil that brands must master to rise above the competition, get attention by the search engines, feel the sharing love in social and create brand advocates that ultimately... convert into sales. Gasp!

Brand Publishing: It's Really Nothing New

Smart brands have always published good content – they just used to do it via press releases to get their message across to print journalists. The difference now? There's no need for a third party. Brands can go straight to their audience and bypass middlemen; becoming the authority news source.

Social content, editorial content, news content, web content. Everybody is doing it, the question is who is doing it right and what is the right way?

How is Social Media Impacting a Brand's Content News Cycle?

For the fourth year, TekGroup International conducted the social media news survey (PDF), asking social media users how they share, discover and create news content. Respondents indicated they are using social media tools habitually with almost 90% saying they use Twitter, Facebook, and blogs on a daily basis to follow and monitor news content and information.

• 35 percent reported frequently visiting a corporate website for news, an increase
• 54 percent believe social media is important to follow nes
• 78 percent use Facebook to follow, share and discover news
• 86 percent use Twitter as a news source

How to be Content Jugglers and Social Media Masters

 
What best practices can we learn from brand publishers doing it right and even online publications such as Search Engine Watch?

We asked the names behind brand content managers: Ashley Tate, content manager, BigDoor; Danny Goodwin, associate editor, Search Engine Watch; Jennifer Lopez, director of community, Moz; Victoria Edwards, digital content strategist, Florida Blue.

Is More Content Better?

When it comes to quantity and quality, all agreed that quality was more important that quantity.

"Gosh no! For example, our goal with YouMoz is to publish one post each day (two if possible). However, we'd rather not put anything up, if it means we're sacrificing quality," Lopez said.

Tate agreed.
"I prefer high-quality content over a high quantity of content, so as a general rule, more content is not necessarily better. However, every content strategy is different, so sometimes publishing a high volume of content can support a strategy well," Tate said.

When in doubt, go back in your content timeline and repopulate past content that still serves a purpose.

"Repurposing good, evergreen content is better," Edwards said.

"There is no ideal word count. You can tell a story in 400 words or 2500 words. Write to what the topic deserves. "More" isn't better. "Better" content is better, " said Goodwin, who manages about 80 writers and guest contributors and gives the final edit, optimization, artwork, and production pass on all Search Engine Watch posts.

What Are Your Guidelines About Authors Tweeting and Sharing?

"Every piece of content we publish is easily shareable, so we always encourage social sharing internally and through our community if the reader is inspired to do so," said Tate of BigDoor's publishing and sharing policy. "The more eyeballs you can turn towards your content, the better!"

One aspect brand and publishers sometimes forget is to give the author credit embedded in social shares. A best practice is to make sure the sharing widgets are programmed properly especially on Twitter article shares include credit to the publication and the author versus just the title and the link.

"We share all of our posts several times on our social networks and will always call out the author if they've given us their Twitter handle, G+ profile, etc.," Lopez said. "Additionally we encourage authors to share their posts in their networks as well, as it can really help a post get out to the greater community."

How Far in Advance do You Manage Your Editorial Calendar?

"We look at our editorial calendar in two ways: the long game and the short game," Tate said. "For the long game, we have big content pieces planned at least six months in advance, and will tweak the topics when necessary due to changes in the industry, updates to our product, etc. For the short game, our editorial calendar is usually set four week out."

"For the main blog, the calendar is often full four to six weeks in advance. However for YouMoz, where the editorial process takes a bit longer, we're happy to get a couple posts set in advance," said Lopez in regards to the Moz blogs.
Brands can learn from online publications when it comes to flexibility and leaving room for breaking news that needs immediate attention.

For example, Search Engine Watch sets up a publication schedule for the full year, where contributors are given assigned due dates, and sent reminders to ensure they keep on track to deliver their posts. With the search industry seemingly in constant flux, Goodwin said he aims to have a good handle on what contributors are working on by four weeks out or helping generate content ideas, though many contributors are often given creative freedom to write about topics they choose.

How do You Decide the Timing of the Posts?

There is no one size fits all when it comes to timing.

"You should check analytics to see when most people use the site and put out content during those hot times," Goodwin said. "For us, it's generally weekdays from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET."

Publishing when you have the most audience eyeballs is the name of the game.
"BigDoor's blog posts are published at the time when most of our community will be available to read them," Tate said. "We've assessed the days and times throughout the week when our readers are most active on our site and social networks, and base our publishing schedule off of the combination of the two. We know that our readers are always evolving, so we try to make sure our publishing schedule evolves with them."

Who is Responsible for Optimizing the Brand's Content for Search?

While some brands have the luxury of a point person heading up the optimization, in today's digital world where content is king, writers with an SEO background can add even more value.

"Ruth Burr focuses on our SEO, however most of our editorial staff are trained in SEO as well which helps us scale," Lopez said.

"Our primary editor is responsible for making sure the content, header, and social sharing copy for each piece is searchable and engine-friendly," Tate said.

"At FloridaBlue, I have a blog guideline document that I share with writers, but ultimately it is me that will optimize the content and visuals, that go along with the blogs," said Edwards, who is also a Search Engine Watch contributor.

Collaboration Brings Symmetry and Productivity – or Chaos?

Publishing a blog with just a part-time writer, in-house team, or blend of outside contributors can be an experience of havoc and chaos if not organized with editorial calendars, deadlines, schedules, and roles of responsibilities. Tools of choice include:

• Custom CMS systems
• TeamBox
• Basecamp
• Kapost
• Editorially
• Tracky

The world of journalism and publishing is evolving. Need proof? See NewsCred, the content marketing company which just launched The NewsRoom, a freelance-based newswire that aims to connect brands with journalists.

The slow moving days of marketing departments approval process are over, today it's time to find a journalism frame of mind. Brands can adapt or die.

Original Article Post by Lisa Buyer @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Ecommerce Product Pages: How to Fix Duplicate, Thin & Too Much Content

Content issues plague many sites on the web. Ecommerce sites are particularly at risk, largely due to issues that can stem from hosting hundreds or thousands of product pages.

Typical issues with ecommerce product pages are:

• Duplicate content.
• Thin content.
• Too much content (i.e., too many pages).

Left unchecked, these issues can negatively impact your site's performance in the SERPs.

If you run an ecommerce site and you've seen traffic flat-line, slowly erode, or fall off a cliff recently, then product page content issues may be the culprit.
Let's take a closer look at some of the most common content woes that plague ecommerce sites, and recommendations on how to can fix them.

Duplicate Content

There are typically three types of duplicate content we encounter on ecommerce sites:

• Copied versions of the manufacturer's product descriptions.
• Unique descriptions that are duplicated across multiple versions of the same product.
• Query strings generated from faceted navigation.

 

Copied product descriptions

A large degree of ecommerce resellers copy their generic product descriptions directly from the manufacturer's website. This is a big no-no. In the age of Panda, publishing copied or duplicated content across your site will weigh your site down in the SERPs like a battleship anchor.

How to fix it

The solution here is to author original product descriptions for every product on your site. If budget is an issue, prioritize and get fresh content written for your highest margin product pages first and work backwards.

Unique yet duplicated product descriptions

With many ecommerce sites, site owners have authored original product descriptions, which is fantastic. Where they run into trouble is they sell multiple versions of the same product (different sizes or colors or materials, etc), and each product version has a different page/URL with the same boilerplate description.

Now even though this content is technically unique to your site (it's not copied from somewhere else), it's only unique to a single page. Every other page it lives on is considered duplicated content.

How to fix it

The solution here is to concentrate multiple product version pages to a single page, with all the different product options listed down the page. Or you can position them as a list in a drop down menu, like Zappos does.



Once you combine all pages to a single page, 301 redirect the other URLs to that single page, in the event they've attracted links and/or accrued link equity. The redirects will also help Google sort out the true version of your product page, and can help with any potential crawl budget issues.

Depending on the ecommerce platform you're using, concentrating multiple versions of a product page to a single URL can be difficult or impossible. If that's the case, think about moving to a SEO-friendly platform, like Magento or Shopify.

Faceted navigation issues

Many ecommerce sites host category pages with a range of filters to help users easily navigate their site and drill down to specific products, like this Weber Grill page on Home Depot.



A faceted navigation menu like the one above can create dozens if not hundreds of query strings that are appended to the URL, thereby creating duplicate versions of the same page. Faceted navigation can be a fantastic UX feature for consumers, but can problematic for SEO.

How to fix it

There are a few ways to prevent searches engines from indexing duplicate content from faceted navigation:

• Block faceted pages via Robots.txt file.
• Parameter handling via Webmaster Tools.
• Add self-referential canonical tags (rel="canonical") Note: this may help Google distinguish original from duplicate content, but it won't address crawl budget issues.

Thin Content

Even if a site has 100 percent unique product descriptions, they can often be on the thin side (i.e., a few bullets of text). Now, product pages with light content can still rank well where domain strength helps supersede potential thin content issues.

But most sites don't have the backlink profiles of Amazon or Zappos, and I like to think in terms of risk/reward. Thickening up descriptions makes sense because:

• It can reduce any risk that thin content issues might negatively impact SERP visibility
• It adds more content for engines to crawl, which means more opportunities for your page to rank for a wider basket of search queries.
• It freshens up your page, and freshening up your content can definitely pay dividends with Google.

To audit word count for every page on your site, crawl the site with Screaming Frog and looking for potential trouble spots in the "Word Count" column.

How to fix it

Some of the ways you can address thin content on your ecommerce product pages include:

• Enable (and solicit) user reviews and feedback. User-generated content is free and helps thicken up your content with naturally-written text (not "SEO" content). This additional content can help improve potential relevancy scoring, time on page, user engagement levels, and can help the product page rank for a broader basket of search queries. Also, user reviews offer social proof and can improve conversion rates as well.
• In the previous example, I spoke about condensing multiple versions of the same product to a single page. Doing this would also help thicken up that pages since you'd list all the different dimensions, size variations, colors available to consumers.
• Write some additional, original content. You can hire a writer to help thicken up these pages with additional features and benefits, or you can do it yourself. Again, given it could be very costly to thicken up every product page on the site, you can prioritize your highest margin products first.
• Pulling in mashups of links/text of similar products, product accessories, special offers and recently viewed items is another way to add more content to a page, and a tactic many larger ecommerce sites use like Amazon.com.

Too Much Content

Saying that a site has "too much content" may sound contradictory to the issue of having content that's too thin. But when I say an ecommerce site may have too much content, I'm really talking about two distinct issues:

• Too many product pages.
• Improper handling of paginated product pages.

And specifically how having too many pages of low value content can cause PageRank and crawl budget problems.

Too many product pages

This is really an addendum to the duplicate content issues posed by faceted navigation or hosting multiple versions of the same product on different pages.

Aside from low value content concerns, hosting a mass of duplicated product pages dilutes your site's PageRank or link equity, which weakens its overall ranking power of your important content.

The other issue pertains to your site's "crawl budget" (i.e. how deep/how many pages Googlebot crawls each time it visits your website). If a large percentage of your site if comprised of duplicate or low value content, you're wasting your budget on junk content and potentially keeping quality pages from getting indexed.

Improper handling of paginated product pages

Another concern of hosting "too many pages" is not handling pagination correctly. Often times, ecommerce sites can have product categories containing hundreds or thousands of products that span multiple pages.


Like duplicate product pages, excessive paginated results rob link equity from important pages and can hurt your crawl budget.

How to fix

Some of the ways to address equity dilution or crawl budget issues that can stem from too many product pages include:

• Rel=next, rel=previous: This markup tells Google to treat ecommerce product listings spanning multiple pages in a logical sequence, thus consolidating link equity (rather than diluting it) with all pages in the series.
• Canonicalization: It's effective for consolidating link properties (thus solving equity dilution), but it won't solve potential crawl budget issues, since Googlebot will still crawl all your dupe content.
• "Noindex, follow": If your goal is to optimize crawl budget and keep duplicates or pagination out of the index, use brute force and block Googlebot via robots "noindex, follow" meta directive.

 Learn More: Ecommerce SEO

• E-commerce Holiday SEO Keyword Optimization: 6 Keys to Success
• Ecommerce Title Tags: Top 5 Ways to Increase Clicks
• Why Thin Content is Hurting Your Ecommerce Site & How to Fix It
• 3 Ways Ecommerce Websites Can Grow or Maintain Organic Search Traffic
• A 4-Step Approach to Ecommerce Content: Focus on the Experience

Original Article Post by Ken Lyons @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

How to Turn Data & Creativity Into Great Content in 3 Steps

Marketers seem to spend their lives trying to reconcile science with creativity.
Our marketing decisions are supposed to be driven by hard, scientific metrics based on ROI, signals and big data. Yet we're also supposed to create creative, engaging content that's driven by genuine human interest. It's a tug-a-war that very few ever manage to resolve.

So, what should be the major influencing factor when it comes to content creation? Can we ever satisfy both the scientific and creative approach to content marketing?

The Data Driven Approach

Using data to dictate the subject matter, writing process, and editorial calendar is an effective and valid approach. This includes looking at content that generates the most traffic, creates the best conversions or gets the most love through social channels. Modern tools also let us look at what the competition is writing and which subjects appear to be the most popular.

As well as dictating the content itself, when, how, and where your content is published and shared can also be driven by data alone. Both big-data and real-time, algorithm driven tools drive the majority of content publication and syndication for the world's leading brands. Nothing is left to chance.

It makes sense really. If you have access to data that tells you exactly what your community wants to be reading, and when they want to read it, it seems illogical to ignore it, right?

The Creative Approach

The problem with reacting to big data, even if it is supplied in real-time, is that you're always going to be at least one step behind. You will always just play it safe.

Also, how are writers supposed to write articles that'll capture the imagination of their readers if it's dictated purely by metrics and results? This approach leaves little room for creativity, passion, or originality. A purely data driven approach to content will eventually suck the soul out of your content, no matter how good the writer is.

I recently asked Rand Fishkin, CEO of the Inbound Marketing Software Company, Moz, for his thoughts on the subject. His reaction?

"It's so inauthentic to write about something that you don't give a crap about," Fishkin said.

Well, who can argue with that?

The problem is that the Internet now operates in a way that exposes inauthenticity like never before. With social media, content aggregators and a whole range of online apps designed to prioritize only the best content on the web, only great content will get you heard.

So, authenticity is the key to visibility. That means we need to "give a crap" about what we're writing about!

So, how can you reconcile the two approaches?

Advantages and Disadvantages

Let's start by looking at some of the advantages and disadvantages of both the scientific and creative approach.

Creative Advantages	Creative Disadvantages
Inherent creativity produces content that is more unique. Driven by real passion, real interest and topical subjects. Writers are then more passionate about creating the content in the first place. Higher likelihood of generating the post that strikes it big with your audience.	More difficult to forecast and apply to content calendars. Decreased consistency in metrics like traffic, conversions, shares etc.

Data Advantages	Data Disadvantages
Increased predictability and planning. Higher rate of consistency in metrics. Scalability. Most organizations are metric driven and the value of content is more easily communicated.	Sacrificing the passion for the writer's interest in the first place. Decreased motivation to create compelling content. Writer dissent. Threat of disengaging your audience by lack of creativity.

Unsurprisingly, each approach has its advantages but some major drawbacks as well.

Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions? Clearly, you can combine the data-driven approach with creativity, the key question is how much? How can you strike a healthy balance between the two? Where's the sweet spot?

During the aforementioned conversion with Fishkin, I got his feedback on how he combines creative ideas with data driven topics.

"I like to create a Venn diagram in my head," he said. "Here's what data says people are interested in; here's what's creative and unique and fascinating and no one has thought about or written about previously."

The sweet spot is where the two circles converge.

Clearly this is the ideal scenario. Fishkin has years of experience creating some of the best content on the web. He's also worked with some of the best minds in the content marketing industry.

The Process

So how can we take this approach and distil it into a practical process that all content creators can build into their own content marketing process?

• Creative Brainstorming: Start by creating your ideas! Don't sterilize your content by making data and metrics your starting point. Start by cultivating a creative, imaginative approach. Have a regular brainstorming session with your team to come up with fresh topics and ideas. Don't base your ideas on anything other than what you think would make great content. Create a mind map if it helps.
• Cross Reference: Once you have a list of topics from your brainstorming session, you then need to try and align the topics with those that are supported by analytical insights. This is where you need to develop a skill for recognizing Fishkin's sweet spot. Lead with the topics/titles where you see most crossover! This will be your most engaging, functional, and widely shared content.
• Fill the Gaps: When you look at the data, you will see opportunities for content that weren't covered in your brainstorming session. Though this content might not be the most creative, it still has a part to play. Do this in a rotation format to ensure your writers don't get jaded.

By following this process you will naturally give precedence to the creative content that is most likely to perform. It also makes sure that you don't ignore the second level of practical content that will do the leg work day-in-day-out.

Summary

Data can be incredibly effective at communicating to your organization what your audience finds most interesting.

Data can also create a slippery slope that curbs the creativity that fuelled the content your audience engaged with in the first place. Unless you're careful to avoid it, this approach can lead to sterile, lifeless content that will draw you further away from your marketing goals.

A better approach is to combine creativity with metric-driven subjects and content. By embracing both approaches, you will encourage creativity and create the content that most marketers strive for.

 More Tips for Great Content

• How to Write Great Content: Because Awesome Content Won't Write Itself...
• How to Build Your First Content Marketing Strategy
• Matching Content to the Customer Life Cycle

Original Article Post by Brad Miller @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

How to Build an Analytics Package to Measure Off-Site Content Distribution

Marketers and advertisers have been spoiled in the cloud-based world we now call home. Data is seemingly ever present and infinitely divisible into segments that allow for minute-by-minute reactions to advertising and marketing campaigns.

Because of this we define "analytics" as the software that gives us this insight, however true analytics is the system by which we measure any data or statistics. By this definition analytics have been the core of modern advertising as early as we could quantify audience numbers of media.

As content marketing evolves as a practice, one area current analytics packages often fail – and thus leave marketers wondering about ROI – is in regards to content based activities that take place off of a company's website. Whether it is a publisher, social network, or social curation platform, marketers have a hard time figuring out how to grade performance in a seeming black hole of data.

The following tips give a good framework for how marketers and advertisers can build their own analytics solution internally.

Step 1: Measuring on Social Networks

This one isn't as straightforward as you would hope. Some of the issues that arise in documenting content spread effectively on social network are:

• People taking images and uploading them directly to the network.
• People augmenting the URL of the content.

This renders the open APIs that networks such as Facebook and Twitter have pretty ineffective when it comes to these specific issues. However, the basic URL data should be enough to allow marketers and advertisers to easily pull information about their campaign.

You can actually create a pretty basic version of a tracking software using Google Spreadsheets.

• Create a Google Spreadsheet and add the content you want to monitor
• Open the Script Editor

• Enter basic functions to pull open APIs. I give you Twitter and Facebook below

• Enter your URLs to monitor and reference the functions to pull the data.

This basic tool can be very helpful when you are dealing with publishers that don't have widgets that track such stats, or a large amount of content outreach going on.

Step 2: Monitoring Publishers

This one is tough. Most publishers aren't going to give you analytics access to measure your performance. But all the information you need is at your fingertips if you are inventive.

First let's think about the metrics that are going to be most important to us as marketers:

• Overall visitors.
• Time on page.

There are a few ways to handle this. Each will depend on your relationship with the publisher.

For new relationships where the publisher is very particular about what they will put on their website, you can utilize a system like Compete to give you basic visitor metrics for the website, and break that number across the number of new pages. This is a pretty flawed concept, but it gives you a general idea of what is going on traffic wise. You can also back this out using click-throughs from the content to see if it matches other sources you have better data on.

For relationships you have established, a JavaScript wrapper or basic pixel in the content can give you a ton of data on the page level. We have chosen to build a standardized, secure JavaScript widget to use with our publishers.

With the JavaScript option you can easily monitor any statistics any other analytics software would monitor, and you can easily utilize such a system to make on the fly changes to content. This is also something our system allows for.

The main issue is trust. If you're going to be sneaky with such a widget and try to spam your publisher base or not let them know ahead of time, you could be in for an earful. And rightfully so.

Step 3: Monitoring Impact

Referral data can still be difficult in either scenario above, and furthermore referrals can have larger impacts than direct traffic. The links that drive that traffic are the links that drive SEO value as well.

The last piece of a makeshift analytics package to monitor content marketing would need to be Majestic SEO. For my money, it doesn't get any better than Majestic's ability to update links quickly, and let you know the content that is working and what it is yielding.

This ability really replaces the ability marketers lost with the closing of Yahoo's Site Explorer.



Through the steps above you can close the gap on analytics needed to guide your online content marketing. Some of the techniques discussed are less exact than others, but they do address the current black hole most marketers face in a way that can at least justify budgets, gauge ROI, and chart progress.

Most of these processes can be set up in an afternoon, and designed to funnel into Google Spreadsheets for easy reporting.

Original Article Post by Dave Snyder @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

How to Build Your First Content Marketing Strategy

Google's recent Penguin algorithm updates have forced many business owners to take a hard look at their content strategy and link portfolios. Sites with unsavory linking practices, sub-par content, and no social media signals, are losing visibility in Google's search rankings.

Many sites have also incurred manual penalties that have either caused them to rank much lower in search engine results pages, or become de-indexed completely. And once you've been knocked into search engine oblivion, it's nearly impossible for people to find your site.

Whether the main goal of your site is to make a little extra cash each month or your site the main hub of your business, your content conveys your message, establishes your brand, and converts potential customers into sales. There are a few key questions you should ask yourself when examining your content strategy or when determining that you need to get started with one altogether.

High-quality content serves two purposes. It:

• Attracts your readers and keeps them engaged.
• Helps your site rank well in search engines.

A Good Content Strategy: The Basics

To better understand how to develop an effective content strategy, it's important to explore what content is. Let's start with a basic definition.

Content can be either visual, auditory, or written. It includes everything from blog posts, articles, website copy, letters to customers, and social media posts, to podcasts, recorded interviews, infographics, photos, and video. Most content is created and published with a particular target audience in mind.

If you look at any successful business online, you're likely to notice one common element: they're producing high-quality content that's both engaging and informative on a regular basis.

So how do you know if you're producing effective content in your own business niche? A simple test can help shed some light on this question.

If you're creating content regularly, grab a few of your recent pieces for evaluation, then get started by asking yourself the following five questions.

1. Who Are You Writing For?

It's time to take a good look at whether you're creating content with your target audience in mind. Many business owners make the mistake of writing for their peers as opposed to their customers.

Take stock of your web copy and recent social media content. Are you using these channels as effectively as you could be to engage with new clients?

Consider the following scenario. You own a graphic design business and the last two articles you've written are highly technical pieces related to user experience design and trends in vector options. While the content may be well written, it is more likely to appeal to other professional web designers rather than potential customers. Clients are going to be looking for less technical posts like "how to make your website stand out from competitors," "what you should budget for professional web design," and "what criteria you should use when choosing the right designer."

Often, we draw inspiration for our content from popular industry blogs and publications. The things we read daily influence our thought process. So it's important to take a step back sometimes and evaluate whether you are writing for the right audience.

You can still write technical pieces as well. But consider pitching them to popular magazines, journals, and blogs written for those in your industry.

Publishing content on external publishers with an existing, established audience that fits your target criteria should be a primary goal of your content marketing campaign, as it can yield tremendous ROI while also establishing your brand as an authority in your field. For more information on building a content strategy specifically for a B2B business, see "How to Create a Content Strategy for a B2B Business".

2. What is Your Customer Avatar?

You've now made a commitment to creating content with your potential customers in mind. But do you know who your customers are, exactly?

Let's take another professional services example: lawyers. The logical assumption is that a lawyer's target audience would be clients who want to find legal representation.

But most often, this isn't the case. The "clients who need a lawyer" category is too general, so businesses who target that broadly typically don't experience much success. If you take a deeper dive into your previous client list, you may find that the majority of your customers are individuals needing a specific kind of representation. Maybe they're looking for a divorce attorney, or a bankruptcy specialist.

Let's continue the example with the divorce context in mind.

So your target audience is individuals in the midst of a divorce or considering that path that want to talk to an expert. Once you've identified your customer avatar, it becomes easier to focus your content strategy.

You can use the information you've gathered to plan and design your content specifically for your audience. The right information goes from "how to choose a lawyer" to "the top 10 things every woman should know during a divorce." Which one do you think is more likely to get your specific target audience to read your content?

3. How Can You Make Your Customers Lives Easier by Solving a Common Problem They Face?

Typically, the first thing that comes to mind when we think about our business: the features we offer to our customers, either products or services. A web designer, for example, would probably consider features such as brand consultation, requirements analysis, design mock-ups, reviews and changes, and the final product. From the client side, we'd be focused on the product: a professionally designed site that aligns with our brand and presents us well to our audience.

When you're creating your content strategy, try to think ahead about what kinds of questions your clients may have. Sometimes it's better to focus on the basics for a mainstream audience.

A typical client who is seeking a professionally designed site may have questions like:

• What will the total cost be?
• What's the turnaround time?
• What should I expect from the process?
• Who will write my content?
• Should I provide photos for the site?
• Which company will provide hosting?
• Will I be able to manage my own site if I need to make changes?

As you take a deeper dive into your audiences' questions, you can start to shape your content strategy. Effective content will address your customers' pain points and help them solve their problems. It provides simple answers to their most pressing problems, while solidifying the idea that you're the go-to expert in their minds.

4. How Do You Keep Your Audience Engaged?

By this point, you know who you're writing for and the topics they're interested in reading about. Now how do you capture their attention and keep them interested? A quick search online will reveal that certain types of content are popular.

For example, readers love top 5 or top 10 lists. But chances are those lists already exist in your industry. So how can you craft engaging content? The key is finding your story and writing compelling pieces.

Let's pause for a moment and take a look at these two examples:

"Bill M. and I first met on a sunny morning in my San Francisco office. At first glance, you could tell that Bill was overworked and wiped out, his skin was pale, large bags under his eyes, shoulders tense. I could tell this was going to be an interesting meeting. Suddenly, everything became clear when Bill laid it all out for me: 'Marie, my brick and mortar business is on the verge of bankruptcy and something's got to give. It's time to take my operation online to attract more customers.'"

Or the following:

"Retail businesses can be affected negatively by technology. Unfortunately for many stores, they are in dire financial straits before they realize they need to make a change. One of my clients was close to bankruptcy because he was losing business to big name online retailers."

Does one of these introductions make you want to read more? Think about how you can tell your story or capture your readers' attention with your new content.

5. Are You Providing a Call to Action for Readers? Will They Feel Compelled to Get in Touch?

Last but not least, you want to make sure that everything you create has a strong call to action.

For example, maybe you're writing about a popular service that your business provides. You'll want to end your piece with something like, "if you want more information about service packages, please get in touch with me(@)mybusinessname.com."

Ensuring that everything you're writing provides a clear message to customers will help increase your sales conversions. This single step alone will dramatically increase the ROI on content that you create. I recommend this article, "The Definitive Guide to Crafting Winning Calls to Action in Your Content."

Did Your Business Pass the Test?

Were you writing for your audience? Did you choose a topic they were interested in? Was your content engaging? Did your content focus on solving a pain point and help your customers?

In order for your content strategy to be effective, everything you produce needs to meet these goals.

How to Develop Your Future Content Strategy

Hopefully the evaluation of your current content helped shed some light on how effective your previous content has been, and you now have some in-depth knowledge of what it means to create good content.

If you truly want to develop an effective content strategy, it's important to have a plan. Otherwise you might fall into a rut, and simply create content that feels forced and doesn't help your business achieve its goals. Or you might lose your way, and fail to produce content at the rate needed to achieve your goals.

So before you start writing, take the time to reflect and plan. Developing your strategy will help your business in the long run. It's going to make it easier to achieve goals for your site and your sales, cut down on costs, and you may even surprise yourself and surpass your expectations.

1. Have Clear Goals in Mind

You should always approach your content strategy with goals in mind. Truly think about what you want to achieve and write it down.

It's a good idea to set a series of milestones for yourself, rather than one large overly-general goal. Once you've identified your goals, reflect on how you can achieve them with your content.

Let's consider the following. A local industrial equipment dealer specializes in selling trucks and repairing industrial vehicles. They are interested in grabbing the attention of potential customers, but their products and services attract different audiences: those who are interested in purchasing a truck and those who want a trusted mechanic for a range of industrial machinery. So, instead of creating one overarching goal, they identify a series of smaller ones. Those goals may include increasing the visibility of their repair shop and getting the word out to the community about their line of trucks. The auto dealer can then use these goals to develop their content strategy.

2. Review Your Data to Develop Great Content

Do you have a monthly newsletter through an email marketing service? Or perhaps you have an analytics program (like Google Analytics) installed on your website? Use that data to help you develop your strategy moving forward.

Reviewing previous campaigns and assessing your site can help you understand what types of content are getting the most interest from your readers.

If you haven't been tracking data from previous campaigns, there's no need to worry. You can take a look into industry trends, do some keyword research, and see what's driving the most traffic to your site, and what traffic is converting the most.

3. If You Need to Know, Just Ask

Nobody knows what your customers are looking for better than your customers themselves. Think about doing some market research to help get a better understanding of customer needs. A quick survey should do the trick.

Ask questions like:

• What do you enjoy reading about?
• What would you like to learn more about?
• Are you looking for something specific?
• Do you enjoy watching videos or prefer to read blog posts?

Get your customers talking and you may be surprised at the insights you gather. You can also get creative with customer follow-ups.

Set up a customer service survey, or email customers to ask for their feedback on a recent purchase. Customers will appreciate the opportunity to share their thoughts with you.

4. Look Inside for Opportunities Before You Go Outside

You've set your goal. Take a look at your existing audience and do a quick analysis. Can you meet the needs more effectively to help meet that goal? If the answer is yes, then you may want to consider developing a feature blog that provides valuable information for your customers or targeting existing customers with your email marketing. These things would make a lot of sense and create a positive impact for your business.

If you need to look toward an external audience to meet your goal, consider writing and placing some guest posts at targeted sites.

5. Create a Timeline

You've taken the time to think things through, now it's time to create a timeline to achieve your goals. Make a plan to step back and evaluate your strategy at the 3-, 6-, and 12-month marks.

Typically, it takes time for an effective content strategy to truly take hold. In that time, you'll probably have at least one piece that drives considerable social activity and website traffic.

But it's always good to focus on your long-term success. Identify weekly or monthly benchmarks that indicate who your target audience is, which topics you'll discuss, what format you plan to use, and how you'll share your content – either on your own site, through guest blogging, email, etc.

After you've developed your timeline, evaluate it to ensure that your topics are focused and not repetitive.

Creating a timeline will help you develop specific goals with your content marketing efforts.

You've spent time reviewing the data from past campaigns. You've used that data as well as input from customers to plan your future strategy. And you've created a timeline of how to make the most of your content marketing and meet your goals in the coming months.

The next steps are execution, tracking your successes, modifying your timeline, and keeping up with your efforts.

Are you tackling your first content marketing strategy? Let me know what challenges you're facing in the comments below.

Original Article Post by Jayson DeMers @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Matching Content to the Customer Life Cycle

 
It's not what you say. Sometime it's not even how you say it. It's whenyou say it. The right message, at the right time, is what it takes to convert a visitor to a life-long customer.

By now we know the power of content; it's been firmly drilled into our heads. We even know the different flavors of content and the options we have to pack our content marketing arsenal like ebooks, infographics, motion graphics and animation, whitepapers, presentations, interactive games, tools, articles, blog posts, and the list goes on. But when do you do what? When is one type of content more appropriate than other?

It ties back to the customer life cycle.

The content your audience is looking for will vary at each stage of their buying cycle. In the early Awareness stages I may be looking to uncover how you do business and the things important to you. In the Consideration stage, I'm less interested in how you approach business, but your specific capabilities and benefits. As an Advocate, I just want to show you off. As the brand, you need to provide me with content that lets me do what I want to do, when I want to take that action.

You do this by first understanding your audiences' triggers in each stage of the buying cycle and then creating content to match them.

While your personas and triggers may vary slightly, below are common distinctions in the consumer buying cycle and specific content types that work well for each. By understanding who your audience is, you're able to offer them a targeted message.

Awareness

A consumer in the Awareness stage is just learning about your brand. They've been able to articulate a need and are now doing research to identity the options that exist for them.

As someone just learning about your brand, I don't want to be hit in the head with anything too heavy. I'm looking to understand the basics of who you are as an organization, the services you provide, and how you approach your business. This initial information will tell me whether your views align with my own and if you're someone I want to invest more time into.

What types of content am I looking for?

• I'm looking for blog posts that feature both opinion and knowledge about what you do, how you do it and your views on why you do it that way. 
• I want to read commentary that paints the picture of who you are in your industry. 
• I'm reading your About page to learn the core tenets and beliefs of your company to see if they are things I can stand behind. 
• I'm looking at your social media channels to familiarize myself with your voice and your image.

The content at the Awareness stage should be focused on your industry and how you approach it as a business. This includes blog posts, brand videos, infographics and social media updates.

Consideration

In the Consideration stage, I'm aware of you as a business and the need that I have. But I'm not sure yet whether you're the vendor I want to work with. To get there, I need specifics about what you offer and the benefits it provides me.

What types of content am I looking for? Content focused on:

• How you're going to help me see a return on investment (ROI).
• Case studies and reports about how you've helped others.
• Research studies related to my industry.
• Other proof point to illustrate what you know and what I'm missing out on if I don't ask you to go steady right now.

When I'm in the Consideration stage, I want all the research, the data and the numbers to paint your benefit story.

Purchase

In the Purchase stage, I'm ready to make a decision and am narrowing down my options. My top two or three choices have been identified and I'm looking for the “IT” factor that's going to motivate my decision one way or another.

What types of content am I looking for?

• Free trial offers.
• Data sheets.
• Expanded product information.
• Demo videos.

I need to be sold on your product and the sense of urgency that says I need to make this purchase today to avoid missing out. This is your last chance to make a case for your company before someone does it for you and I'm gone forever.

Evangelist

Your Evangelists have already purchased from you. You've won them over with your product and previous content marketing, and now you have the opportunity to leverage that relationship for additional word of mouth opportunities.

What types of content am I looking for? I'm looking for non-monetary rewards and other interactions I can use to create a closer connection to your brand or to show off my love for you. This may mean:

• Creating user guides, webinars, or webcasts to help customers like me get more from your product or use it in new ways. 
• Additional blog posts to continue to add value around your organization or product. 
• In-person events where users of your product or service can unite to learn more about it and from each other's experiences.

Just because these folks have already purchased from you once, doesn't mean you can forget about them. Using current customers to attract more is the cheapest route to new lead generation.

Summary

By understanding the needs of your customers at various stages of the buying cycle, it allows you to craft content specifically targeted at them to put them into that buying mood. You'll also learn the triggers that will be most effective in converting them.

Image Credit: Sid Mosdell/Flickr

Original Article Post by Lisa Barone @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

How to Increase the Profitability of Your Content

Most site owners and businesses know exactly which pages on their site are the most profitable (i.e., the content that drives the most leads and/or revenue). If you run a site and you don't know, then you really should figure it out today.

And since a primary goal of most organizations is to grow revenue, they might work to increase the profitability of their top pages with tactics like:

• Hiring a conversion rate optimization specialist.
• Using a fantastic A/B tool like Unbounce to test and iterate.
• Conducting user tests to increase conversions, using an insanely affordable tool like UserTesting.com.

But another, often overlooked way to boost the profitability of your top performing pages is to give them even greater visibility on your site. Here's how.

Move Your Top Content Higher Up in the Site Structure

When auditing a site's analytics, we often come across pages that are driving conversions but aren't as prominent as they could be in the site structure or user's click path. Entrances to these pages come predominantly from organic search, so visitors rarely navigate to this content from other pages on the site.
This is a big opportunity. Even through these pages are performing well, we know they can perform even better if they were exposed higher up in the site structure.

Let's use an apartment finder site we worked on recently a real world example throughout this post.

With this particular site, a large percentage of the leads came from organic search for apartments in local ZIP codes, like "apartments for rent in 02134." The site had dedicated ZIP code pages with lists of apartments in that area, but these ZIP code pages were buried at least three clicks away from the home page. To reach them, you had to drill down through a click path of Home > State > City > ZIP Code.

By moving these ZIP code index pages higher in the site structure, we were confident they could drive even more conversions. Why? Because when your top content is easier to reach (for users and for engines):

• It gets seen more often by visitors.
• It gets crawled more frequently by search engines.
• It sends a clear signal to engines that you place more value on this content (since it's featured prominently across your site).
• It earns a larger share of PageRank because it's fewer clicks from the home page. And more link equity improves performance in search results and drives more traffic.

The steps we took to increase the visibility of the ZIP code index pages across the site included:

• Adding a "search by" list of links above the fold on the home page with "ZIP code" as an option.
• Adding a "search by" list of links in the site-wide footer with "ZIP code" as an option.
• Adding a content box above the fold with a featured list of "popular ZIP codes" on all city and state pages.

Expose Your Top Content on Pages With the Most Visits

Another way to generate even more revenue from your top content is to expose/feature it on the pages that get the most traffic on your site. Doing this allows you to get your content in front of more eyes, more often, which can exponentially increase visits and conversions on those pages.

To find your most viewed pages in Google Analytics, go to Content > Overview and click the "view full report" link in the lower right. Then sort by "Unique Pageviews."


Let's use the apartment finder site as an example again. One of the top performing assets on the site was a beginner's guide to renting an apartment. The free download signup for this guide drove a ton of leads, yet the guide was pretty much orphaned on the site.

As with the ZIP code pages we talked about previously, the majority of traffic to the guide came as first touch from organic search. So this seemed like another great opportunity, and our goal was to expose the guide as a soft offer on the site's most highly trafficked pages to capture "top of the funnel" leads.

Steps we took to increase exposure for this asset were to:

• Drop a banner offer/sign up for the guide at the end of the most viewed articles and blog posts.
• Add a persistent offer/ad to the sidebar that was exposed across the site (exposing it site-wide meant it was present on the most trafficked pages).
• Add it to a "most popular" box on the home page with a link to the guide.
• Test a persistent pop-up box on key pages that mapped well to user intent.

Add Contextual Links to Top Content on Relevant Pages

Internal linking is an extremely effective but a notoriously underused SEO tactic. From an SEO standpoint, strategic internal linking can:

• Reinforce semantic relevance for a page (via keyword anchor text), helping it rank higher for target searches.
• Flow link equity from your "link rich" pages to your money pages.
• Boost additional page visits and time on site (potential engagement signals).

When it comes to visibility, adding inline links can help get even more exposure for your top content assets and thus dial up profitability. The keys to doing this effectively are to ensure you're placing those links on the right content and in the right context.

Let's revisit the apartment finder site and their beginner's guide to renting an apartment example once more. We wanted to identify the right pages to add inline links to the guide on, so we:

• Audited the site and pulled a list of articles, guides, and blog posts that were the most relevant and best aligned with intent of the guide. Don't aimlessly insert inline text links on irrelevant documents. It will only distract, annoy, or frustrate users.
• Grabbed the report of the most viewed landing pages on the site that we used in the previous step.
• Pulled a list of the most linked to pages on the site (the most linked to pages are often the most visited, but also contain link equity we could tap and flow the guide, thereby scaling our efforts). We used both OSE and Ahrefs for this.

We then weaved in links to the guide, with a goal of adding them above the fold so they'd get seen sooner and more often. We also prioritized placement on pages with the best user intent and paid close attention how it aligned with the guide's subject matter. Finally, we added links in a manner that supported or helped the user get more information or find a solution, using descriptive and engaging anchors.

Taking the steps above ensured the contextual links to the guide would be seen as useful, and thus generating a high percentage of clicks.

Original Article Post by Ken Lyons @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Matt Cutts Talks Google Panda Basics: Make Sure You've Got Quality Content

What should you do if you think your site might be affected by Google's Panda algorithm? And what types of content get impacted negatively by Panda? That is the topic of a recent video featuring Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts.
That first gives is a bit of a primer on how Panda rolled out previously and how it currently is rolling out into the search algorithm.

"So Panda is a change that we rolled out, at this point a couple years ago, targeted towards lower quality content. And it used to be that roughly every month or so, we would have a new update. And we would say, OK, there's something new, there's a launch, we've got new data, let's refresh the data.

"And it had gotten to the point where with Panda, the changes were getting smaller, they were more incremental. We had pretty good signals. We'd pretty much gotten the low hanging wins. So there weren't a lot of really big changes going on with the latest Panda changes."

So as Google got better at finding low quality content, they adjusted how and when new Panda updates would impact the search results.

"And we said, let's go ahead, and rather than have it be a discrete data push – that is, something that happens every month or so, at its own time, when we refresh the data, let's just go ahead and integrated into indexing. So at this point, we think that Panda is affecting a small enough number of webmasters on the edge that we said, let's go ahead and integrate it into our main process for indexing."

But what if you did get hit with Panda? First off, it likely means that your content is either poor quality, or it's of the cut-and-paste variety that can be found on many free article sites.

You should also check in your Google Webmaster Tools to see if there's any kind of alerts for you in your account that can help you determine if it is Panda or something else that is negatively affecting your Google search rankings.

"And so, if you think you might be affected by Panda, the overriding kind of goal is to try to make sure that you've got high-quality content, the sort of content that people really enjoy, that's compelling, the sort of thing that they'll love to read that you might see in a magazine or in a book, and that people would refer back to, or send friends to, those sorts of things," Cutts said. "So that would be the overriding goal."

So what if you think it might be the quality of your content that is affecting your rankings? Panda was pretty tough on many types of content that Google deemed to be of poor quality.

"So if you are not ranking as highly as you were in the past, overall, it's always a good idea to think about, OK, can I look at the quality of the content on my site? Is there stuff that's derivative, or scraped, or duplicate, and just not as useful?"

Not surprisingly, Cutts said this is a type of content that doesn't rank well, and it's the quality content that will be higher up in the Google search rankings.

Original Article Post by Jennifer Slegg @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

4 Types of Low-Cost Content Small Businesses Should Create

Small businesses face a big challenge: they must balance the need to market themselves with small marketing budgets. It's crucial that they get the word out about their products and services, but they often have limited resources. Therefore, small businesses need ways to market themselves in ways that don't break the bank.

One way small businesses can grow their brand is through content marketing through social media. They can create valuable content about their industry, services, and benefits and distribute it through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like.

When small businesses share great content in social media, they become a trusted resource and build brand recognition without having to spend too much money. So what kind of content should small businesses create?

Blogs

Every small business should have a blog. A blog is a place where small businesses can write about their industry, new products and services, and interesting facts about their business.

Blogs give companies a voice and facilitate conversations with potential clients. They allow companies to publish information that gets noticed and establishes them as thought leaders in their industry.

Blog posts also boost SEO (search engine optimization). That means that when people search the web for information, they can find it on the company blog.

Blog content drives people to websites, which ultimately drives sales.
Blog posts are also great fodder for social media channels. Links to the latest company blog post should be shared through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media channels.

Ebooks

Ebooks are digital publications that people can read through the Internet. They establish credibility because they provide valuable knowledge and expertise to clients and sales prospects.

Additionally, ebooks generate leads. Every person that downloads an ebook is a new lead. Businesses exchange the valuable information in their eBook for an email address so they can follow up about their company's products and services. Like blog posts,

Ebooks should be shared via social media channels so people download it and it gets noticed.

Slide Presentations

Slide presentations are easy-to-read content that is presented in the form of a slide show. Many businesses often have sales presentations, conference presentations, and educational content that can be published on their website and distributed on social media.

You can share slides on SlideShare, YouTube, Vimeo and other channels. Doing so will help companies promote themselves as industry experts.

Press Releases

Press releases are excellent ways to spread information, boost SEO, and establish credibility in the market. They contain information about new products and services, company growth, major customer announcements and more.

When companies write press releases and put them on newswires, they invite journalists, bloggers, and major publications to share their story. News releases are an integral part of any marketing strategy. They detail milestones of the company to the public and keep the business top of mind for journalists covering the industry.

Small businesses want to establish relationships with journalists so that they can be included in any stories about local business or industry news. Press releases alert journalists about what is going on in their coverage area. Additionally, press releases and published stories are great content to share on social media.

Summary

Social connectivity is the key to marketing small business online. When companies provide good content, they create relationships with consumers and establish themselves as the experts in their field.

Distributing that content on their social media channels helps them get the word out, provide value to their clients, and create buzz about their business.

Original Article Post by Phillip Thune @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »