By Karen Burka

It used to be enough to say that "content is king." But the proliferation of content on the web today means that if you want to create value and drive traffic to your website, it’s smarter to say "fresh content is king."

Just look at what’s happened at Google, which recently changed its algorithm to penalize the "content farms" that have created millions of web pages containing low-quality content all with the primary intention of generating search engine traffic. High-volume, low-quality content will no longer rank well on Google. Instead, Google’s algorithm will lift fresh and trending pages in the search results.

Nearly all search engines — Google included — have a ‘freshness’ filter which introduces ‘recency’ as a search criteria. Several years ago, Google created a specific initiative, "Query Deserves Freshness” (QDF) that is part of its search algorithm. With QDF, Google’s aim is to include recency and freshness when determining relevance.

For marketers and web businesses, the challenge today is to continually create and refresh unique content to remain relevant.

Defining Fresh Content

Fresh, high-quality content is living content that is regularly updated and added to. It is written for readers — not search engines — and it is written well. It is shared quickly through social media and takes root across the web. It’s about what’s happening this week, today, right now.

Just look at the growth of Facebook and Twitter and you’ll see that people want to know what’s happening now. This doesn’t mean simply adding a Twitter feed to your old pages. It means creating fresh, new and timely pages which address people’s desire to find out what’s happening and what’s new.

If your content isn’t fresh and unique why would people want to tweet about it? Spend some time on Twitter and Facebook to see that old content gets very little exposure.

Living content means that no content page needs to remain static. New information can always be added. As a result, there is always a reason to create fresh links to old pages. Perhaps the best example of living content is Wikipedia, whose entries are constantly being updated. When a page is no longer fixed and static it becomes fresh again and worth talking about and sharing. Another example is adding comments to posts, where new content is created in the thread of the posts themselves.

Developing Fresh, Linkable Content

From Google’s point of view, the second signal for high-quality content can be summed up in one word: links. Content that has generated links directly to a webpage is going to be far more likely to rank higher in the search engines. This means that your content must attract as many natural links, blog attention and social media bookmarks and sharing as possible.

SEO can and should play a crucial role in developing a quality content strategy. A properly structured site with unique, frequently updated, keyword-rich content is the best foundation for high search engine rankings. Quality content that is interesting or useful to users also has an excellent chance of receiving unsolicited links, further enhancing a website’s ability to rank well for relevant searches.

Content development starts with strategic planning, particularly when there is an initiative to expand a website’s content base by adding new content sections or substantially revising existing content. There are a number of ways in which SEO can add value to discussions about topicality:

• Provide topic suggestions based on keyword trending data, such as Google Insight for Search.
• Use internal search and traffic metrics to reveal which topics are important to users.
• Once a topic has been determined, provide actionable keyword analysis to writers, including page, post and section titles based on that analysis.

Acquiring Fresh Content

It’s critical to take the initial steps to define your content needs and develop a content strategy, involving the entire team — SEO, web development, and marketing. But then what?

It’s one thing to understand the need for fresh, custom, recent, authoritative and trusted content.

It’s another thing to actually write it in a way that will attract readers — and links.

That’s where a content creation partner can help. Whether you need someone to develop a week’s worth of tweets — or prepare a custom whitepaper on an obscure, technical topic — you may not have the resources internally to properly develop good unique content.

As the demand for fresh content continues to grow, content creation companies have sprung up in response. Finding the right partner is easier, once you’ve defined your strategy and identified your content needs.

What should you look for in a good content partner?

• a large number of proven, authoritative writers and proofreaders
• authors in a variety of fields and professions, with different quality levels to match your needs
• experience in creating custom content that will fit your unique needs
• a workflow process that makes ordering and then exporting the resulting content easy, fast and scalable
• the ability to fulfill your content needs quickly and inexpensively, while delivering the quality you expect

The End Result

In the end, fresh, highly linkable content will have several common attributes that can be easily measured and maximized for the highest search engine rankings. Whether it’s a well-written press release, a news article or a blog post, these attributes will be the same. They are as follows:

• Core topic
• Number of words
• Reading level of content
• Embedded media (images, video, podcast, etc.)
• Outbound/reciprocal links on the page
• Scope/thoroughness of content
• Information structure (Top 10 list, "ultimate guide," info aggregation, etc.)
• Apparent target audience
• Apparent target audience skill level (basic vs. advanced)
• Stage of the buy cycle targeted
• Style and tone (formal, third person, etc.)

Karen Burka is a freelance writer specializing in online marketing and advertising topics.

About This e-Solution Spotlight…
e-Solutions Spotlights are produced in association with sponsors by Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land. The opinions expressed are not those of the Search Engine Land editorial staff. Interested in being an e-Solution Spotlight sponsor? Contact us by filling out this form.