Five Steps To Leveraging Great Content For Better Rankings

Recently, I was at an internet marketing convention where the question was posed to a panel: “As a search engine optimizer (SEO), what would you advise your clients to do if an extra million dollars fell into their lap?” The response from the SEOs on the panel was essentially “invest it all in creating great content.”

When questioned, the panel agreed that links were important (since Google’s algorithm prioritizes their analysis of links so highly), but the general implication was that if you create great content the links will come.

It would be fair to say that sometimes good content gets linked to, but it’s rare. According to Google, as of late 2008 they’d indexed one trillion pages. So the probability that one new page of content would be found by a surfer randomly clicking from one link to the next on the internet would be one in a trillion. Man, those are not good odds.

There are many ways to help good content get linked to, but the practical reality is that these same techniques are more often used to help all content get linked to, regardless of the content’s quality. So SEO is just as much about creating “great” content as it is about being great at getting content linked to. I am not suggesting that the quality of the content doesn’t matter, but that the purist approach of simply putting great content into the world and waiting for unnamed altruists to link to it on merit alone relies too much on luck.

Five steps for creating & distributing content

When trying to improve organic SEO, creating great content is just as important as doing a great job of distributing it. These tactics, however, should not be pursued in a vacuum. Instead, you should approach SEO using a holistic strategy. Here is a sample five-step plan that you can customize to fit your company’s objectives.

Step 1: Search Google Trends for keywords that relate to your business that have received heightened attention recently (either because of seasonality or other special events). On a search for “outdoor chairs,” for example, you will see that the number of people searching on this keyword spikes every summer. If you sell outdoor chairs, now would be a good time to target that phrase aggressively.

Once you’ve chosen a topic area you are ready to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Use the Google keyword tool to find terms related to the concept of “outdoor chairs” to write about. Through appropriate analysis you may find that the terms outdoor chairs, lounge chairs, wood chairs, and folding chairs are relevant to the products you sell, and that they get a lot of search volume.

Refine your target keyword list and move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Search Twitter for the keywords you selected in Step 2 to see what your target customers are talking about in order to get content ideas. @Macktacular is talking about painting children’s Adirondack chairs. @endlessrant seems to need outdoor chairs in a hurry. @jherskowitz is looking for comfy chairs to fit a rooftop bar. Try to pick content ideas that correspond to the keywords you decided to target in Step 2 because you know there is substantial search demand for those keywords.

Once you have your topic, target keywords and specific ideas you are ready for Step 4.

Step 4: Create your content and be sure to include the keywords you identified in Step 2, while also being conscious of what you’ve learned from browsing Twitter in Step 3. Popular content and articles are highlighted on Digg.com, so you may spend some time there browsing popular content that relates to your topics to learn how to structure your article’s title and body copy.

Your article is now written and you’re ready to focus on distribution.

Step 5: Determine a concrete “distribution” goal for each piece of content you’ve created, whether it’s an article, a how-to guide, etc.

Here’s an example:

Now it’s time to get to work. You are ready to distribute your content in accordance with your plan and enjoy the benefits of creating great content and leveraging it to increase traffic, search engine rankings, sales and brand awareness.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.