Running out of content ideas for your SEO campaign?
Content has always played an important role in any successful SEO strategy, but many times we run out of steam coming up with content ideas that can support the SEO campaigns.
Content serves two purposes in SEO/SMM campaigns. One is for targeting your keywords, improving visibility, awareness, and building back links from diverse and relevant web, user and social communities to your website. And two is for the visitors who find the content useful and become loyal readers, and eventually good customers.
The challenge lies (both for the clients and the SEO expert) in not just creating content, but creating content that is unique, compelling, informative, educational, and at times, entertaining. This is no easy job, even for a team of content writers at times.
After all, how many articles can one write about motor insurance for example? And in SEO, one may have to write many articles at times to support and power a primary keyword. After you have written a few articles around a specific keyword, it’s just a bunch of re-writes after that – same information rehashed. This can be discouraging for the readers of your blog, who if bored with your content will find someplace else to satiate their need.
While most smart clients know that they need to invest in creating new content for SEO success, they may not be aware that they are already sitting on a wealth of content. Most companies are already creating content in their course of day-to-day business – PowerPoint presentations, sales pitches, in-house training material, training videos, FAQ’s, white papers, case studies and collecting client testimonials.
All these are great sources of content that can be used very effectively in a SEO campaign. This is a great tip for all those who are stuck coming up with topic ideas, and re-writing the same content in different forms.
The solution lies in looking out-of-the-box when searching for content ideas, and more importantly, exploring various mediums of delivering content to your potential customers.
The advantages of exploring various mediums of delivering content are two-fold. Its great mix of interesting content for the users, and you can syndicate that content to various communities like SlideShare (PowerPoint presentations), YouTube (Videos), Flicker (Pictures), Digg (Social Bookmarking) etc, enhancing the visibility of your content and building quality and a diverse mix (by participating in different web, user and social communities) of links back to your website.
Content serves two purposes in SEO/SMM campaigns. One is for targeting your keywords, improving visibility, awareness, and building back links from diverse and relevant web, user and social communities to your website. And two is for the visitors who find the content useful and become loyal readers, and eventually good customers.
The challenge lies (both for the clients and the SEO expert) in not just creating content, but creating content that is unique, compelling, informative, educational, and at times, entertaining. This is no easy job, even for a team of content writers at times.
After all, how many articles can one write about motor insurance for example? And in SEO, one may have to write many articles at times to support and power a primary keyword. After you have written a few articles around a specific keyword, it’s just a bunch of re-writes after that – same information rehashed. This can be discouraging for the readers of your blog, who if bored with your content will find someplace else to satiate their need.
While most smart clients know that they need to invest in creating new content for SEO success, they may not be aware that they are already sitting on a wealth of content. Most companies are already creating content in their course of day-to-day business – PowerPoint presentations, sales pitches, in-house training material, training videos, FAQ’s, white papers, case studies and collecting client testimonials.
All these are great sources of content that can be used very effectively in a SEO campaign. This is a great tip for all those who are stuck coming up with topic ideas, and re-writing the same content in different forms.
The solution lies in looking out-of-the-box when searching for content ideas, and more importantly, exploring various mediums of delivering content to your potential customers.
- PowerPoint Presentations - You can put up a PPT explaining types of motor insurance (or a sales presentation) for example. This PPT can be syndicated to sites like SlideShare. This not only helps improve visibility of your content, it’s a cool way to participate in another community and build valuable links back to your website. Also you can convert the PPT into a movie file, give it a background score (or voice-over at times), and voila you have a video that can be syndicated to video submission sites like YouTube.
- Press Releases - You recently issued a press release about a new product or service launch. The press release can be published on the blog, and then further syndicated to online PR Syndication sites. This is again good for visibility, and building quality links to your website.
- How to Articles – Give a twist to your article, and you can now syndicate to How to Sites (eHow), which are sites that promote “How to” articles. A new community, more links, more traffic.
- Video’s – Informative Videos (4-5 minutes) can explain a topic/service/product much better and build visitor confidence. After all who does not like an audio-visual experience? And it’s good for the lazy people who don’t like to read. The videos can be posted on your blog, and then syndicated to Video Submission Sites. Another community, powerful links, more traffic.
- Case Studies – Everyone loves a success story. Also case studies and white papers can be used to target specific industries your business focuses on. Eg. A supply chain consultant who is an expert in the automobile sector, or the engineering sector can create case studies that can be used to target keywords like “supply chain consultant for automobiles industry”. In addition many .org and .edu sites don’t mind linking to case studies/white paper if it can be of interest to their members. Keep in mind it is very tough to get (.edu) sites and (.org) sites to link back to you. Why would they? But a good case study or white paper could get linked by these sites. These links of course are invaluable.
- Client Testimonials – Every had a client send you a thank you for your great service, or an email of appreciation. What your customers say about you is not just good content, but the best word-of-mouth publicity as well. Don’t shy from putting up some little less than positive comments as well. Shows maturity, as well as willingness to rectify the customer issues and implement good suggestions.
- Ground Events - You participated in a recent event or a seminar, and voila you have access to pictures, a press release on event, maybe a video, an article, what people said at the event - all new fresh content for your SEO campaigns.
- Photographs – Photographs of an event or seminar can also make good content and be further syndicated to photo sharing sites (Flicker).
The advantages of exploring various mediums of delivering content are two-fold. Its great mix of interesting content for the users, and you can syndicate that content to various communities like SlideShare (PowerPoint presentations), YouTube (Videos), Flicker (Pictures), Digg (Social Bookmarking) etc, enhancing the visibility of your content and building quality and a diverse mix (by participating in different web, user and social communities) of links back to your website.
Any other ideas for great content? Do write in with your ideas
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