Search engines try to create rules that improve the experience for users of their product. The rules are designed to surface the most relevant results at the moment of time the search occurs. While some rules are open for interpretation and manipulation, the golden rule is if it is good for the user it’s good for the search engine.
Fresh original content that provides educational value to the user is the going to rise to the top. The objective is to become the authority for a content area. This is not something accomplished overnight.
While there are many black hat / grey hat SEO tricks that can be deployed, they are almost all temporary. They are churn and burn tactics. Often seen used by scammers and affiliates with no vested interest in the long term growth of a brand. Real growth in SEO is slow and steady.
A good content strategy works hand in hand with the community strategy of the brand. Excellent programs are designed as a catalyst for user generated content. When brand and user generated content work together they tend to accelerate SEO. Traffic makes traffic. To borrow a gardening metaphor, if a vine has a scaffold to support it, it can grow faster and more efficiently. It will bear more fruit. A content strategy framework is that scaffold for efficient growth that leads to more revenue.
A content strategy evaluates:
- Keyword difficulty – We build an assessment of the competition and what level of effort is required to build content authority that will surpass what is already out there.
- Resource allocation – We examine the resources and budget appropriate to executing the strategy and determine an expected ROI. We have a network of content producers that can work with your in-house experts to create high quality content.
- Written content – Blogs, Product detail page descriptions, Category page content, and specialty landing pages can all work together to build on each other.
- Video content – YouTube is a stand alone search engine. Video content is a critical part of holistic strategies.
- Social content – We work out formulas for the optimal amount of posts, and integrate social as part of the content development cadence. For example, when a 30 minute educational video is shot for a product that video content can likely be cut up into multiple short segments that can become social posts.
- User Generated Content formats – ratings and reviews / questions and answers are great ways to get fresh content to product detail pages.
- Appropriate use of offsite content – Monitoring and fostering affiliates can accelerate any SEO program.
- Cadence – Fresh relevant content does the best. We can align content to a long term marketing calendar or product deployment cadence.
- Multi-lingual deployments – There are tools that can automate whole site translations. While they are still not as good as having a content expert translate a page, they can be very good for SEO. We recommend a hybrid approach. Important pages for top products should have a manual translation. Less important pages can be automated.