Part II: CONTENT
Online marketing, and specifically SEO, are nothing without good content. Whether we are talking about on-page content, content meant to be shared via social media, or viral content such as videos, content is the backbone upon which we build rankings and businesses.
History of Content within SEO
When people hear the term “SEO,” they often think first of links. “I just want more links” is what we have been routinely been told by bosses and clients alike. In the early days of SEO, once the Link Graph began to take shape, the more links approach was useful. With some links and a URL, you could rank any page for pretty much any term.
All of this mostly came to an end with the Florida update in November 2003. It was arguably the biggest change to Google's algorithm up to that point. This update marked the beginning of the end for many SEO practices from the nineties, like keyword stuffing, invisible text, and hidden links.
Over the years, the SEO industry has experienced more updates, including Cassandra (hidden text and hidden links were the target), Austin (hidden text again), Mayday (the first thin content update), Panda (the next thin content algorithm, and its 20+ iterations as of September 2012), and Penguin (targeting overly aggressive link building). Through all of this, content on the Internet has continued to improve, especially as richer media has become more indexable and supported by the search engines.
One potentially fundamental change happened in 2011 when Google launched Google+, an online social network, where Google is able to match up your identity to the content you consume and create on the Internet. While this feature allows Google to serve more relevant ads to searchers, it also provides the ability for Google to “learn” who the trusted authors are, and potentially rank their content higher due to higher source credibility.
Types of Content
Before we jump into talking about opportunities and challenges with online content, we must first outline the types of content that web marketers should be leveraging. We can categorize content by its form as well as its purpose.
• Text content is still the easiest content available for the search engines to index, process, interpret, and use to rank web pages. Often the questions asked by online marketers are “how much content do I need?” and “how many words should I write?” when the real questions we should be asking ourselves are “who is my audience and what do they want to read?” This content (not to be confused with low-quality filler content) moves the reader towards conversion and helps with search engine rankings.
• Images are another kind of popular online content. Obviously, images work very well
in certain verticals such as ecommerce, art, photography, and travel. In travel and photography verticals, images are used to elicit a “wow” reaction from users, which
then drives them towards a conversion or sharing on a social network (also known as
a micro-conversion). Images can also be used in ecommerce to show a product, and high-quality images have been known to increase conversions.
• Video is an underutilized type of content in most verticals. Some sites such as Zappos, Backcountry.com, and REI leverage video content to convert users, add richness to their site's pages, and enhance the visibility of their listings in search results. Videos can be used for social activity and brand building (e.g., YouTube and Vimeo), or for promotional and informational material.
• Graphics and visualizations have become very popular in the past few years as a way to showcase complex ideas in simple ways, and doing so in a visually appealing way can also attract links and build your brand. Low-quality visualizations and graphics do not net the same return as their high-quality, professionally designed and produced equivalents.
• Presentations can attract the attention of a new audience and set you apart as a thought leader in your space. By leveraging presentation display platforms like SlideShare, you are able to put your content in front of others—and even rank those pages for terms that would not make sense on your own site from a conversion perspective.
• Apps are another type of “content”, but not one we often think of as content. A good product will attract users, which attracts links, which leads to rankings, which leads to more visitors and users. This is the ultimate type of product—product as content.
Content can also be broken down into two categories based on its purpose:
• Informational content shares knowledge or teaches a skill. This content is often delivered in the form of blog posts, instructional videos, and product images. When users visit your site looking for informational content, they are less likely to convert directly, but they do enter the marketing funnel. We must also note that while this content is at the top of the funnel, the ultimate goal is to meet your business customer's needs and drive them towards a conversion in the long term.
• Transactional content is content aimed at directly converting a user. This is on-page content, such as promotional copy about a specific hotel, or a call-to-action video encouraging a user to “Buy Now!”
As you can see, all of the content types listed above (with the possible exception of graphics), can fit into either one of these two categories. Websites need both types to truly win at marketing.
Turning Challenges into Opportunities
As search engines get smarter, content can and must become better. Smart marketers are realizing that they need content that speaks to a user's needs and enriches the online experience. This type of content leads to more customers, more links, and a better business. Creating this content is not without its challenges, however, so marketers must learn to overcome these difficulties.
Opportunities currently exist around imagery and video content. Very few websites are currently leveraging the power of these two, as they are hard to do well and can be expensive to produce, which is why stock photo sites charge a lot of money for their images.
Video Content
Zappos has over 342,000 videos indexed in Google, and Backcountry.com has over 38,000 indexed. In many niches though, product videos do not exist, and there is an opportunity to become the leader in the space.
High-Quality Content
The type of content we are talking about in not only in this section, Part II, but in the book overall, is high-quality content. This is the content that attracts links, shares, and readers. In the past, online writers (especially part-time bloggers) stuck to a “400-500 unique words, 2-3 optimized h1 tags, and a stock photo” equation for blogging. However, numerous studies have shown that this is not the most effective approach to producing excellent content, be it for readers or for marketing, links, and social activity.
Producing Content on Budget
One common issue with content is how to produce it on a budget. As with anything in business, the quality of content is directly correlated to how much you pay. There are many freelance writing sites available, such as:
Before you hire a writer to create content for your site, or produce any sort of content (such as video or images), always ask for samples of their work.
Video content can be produced cheaply with a $300 video camera, a tripod, and some free video editing software. If you realize that you would like to produce a lot of professional-level video content later on, the costs can skyrocket, but there is no need to pay an astronomical amount of money from the beginning.
Content at Scale
Content at scale is the most difficult challenge facing marketers. All websites can benefit from fresher, better content. What do you do, though, when you need a lot of it, such as unique product descriptions?
In the past, it was possible to procure good search rankings and traffic with templated content, but this is no longer the case. Websites have also discovered that templated content does not convert well. The problem of producing of content at scale has not yet been solved, but the beginning of solving this issue is doing a content audit to find out how much content you actually need. Often, this will be less than you think.
The next step is to create an editorial and content production calendar. Website owners must determine how much content they need to produce in what time period in order to reach their goals. We recommend writing original content moving forward, and working through the backlog of pages as quickly as possible. Prioritize based on high-margin products or pages that have the potential to convert well and drive large amounts of traffic.
For more ideas on creating content at scale, read Chapter 9, “Scaling White Hat Link
Building—Scaling Content.”
The Future of Content
As content continues to become an even more integral part of online marketing, the need for new and innovative types of content will continue to grow, and the need for higher-quality versions of what already exists on the Internet will persist. One example is video infographics, which integrate well-designed graphics and pages into videos that explain an idea or how to accomplish a certain task. Other examples are described in Chapter 8, “Beyond Blog Posts: A Guide to Innovative Content Types.”
The search engines are also trying to understand who the author of a piece of content is, as this is one way that they can learn which pieces of content are more likely to be of high quality. This especially applies to blog content, and is one way to deal with spam on the Internet. Potentially, the search engines will value and rank the content from reputable sources higher than content from anonymous sources to help reduce the amount of noise on the Internet.
We recommend that authors seeking to improve their reputation start by improving the quality of their work. If this applies to you, reading Chapter 10, “10 Super Easy SEO Copywriting Tips for Improved Link Building,” may benefit you. We hope this chapter, and the others in this section, inspire you to create a unique strategy for producing high-quality, future-proof content in a way that works for your business.