Imran Sadiq Gill Keirin - Content Marketing for SEO, Part I

Does your firm have “sticky content” for effective content marketing? Anybody can write an article, write a blog post or make a video. But what’s going to make your web content really pop and get people’s attention?

Great, “sticky” content is content that is unique and it solves a problem. Junk content is, well, the opposite of those things. SEO rewards great content and punishes junk content. Not too long ago, Google rolled out an algorithm update that was called Panda. Panda was specifically designed to reward websites that followed value-added content recommendations. It also punished those websites that didn’t offer any value or they published junk content.

Examples of junk content include poorly-written content, duplicate content and content produced via software or services called “content scrapers.” These packages scour the Internet for articles on a particular topic, scrape a sentence or two out of each one, and put it together to form “an article.” Even if your content was keyword-optimized, if it was “scraped,” it was punished by Google Panda.

You’ve probably heard the expression, “Content is king.” But when it comes to SEO, is it really? The answer is yes. Content has an 82 percent impact on search results. So if you’re not writing great content for your website, whether it’s articles, or videos, or pictures, or graphics, or presentations, then you’re focusing on the wrong things. (After content, by the way, the most important SEO factor is link building. So, it would be true to say, “Content is king; link building is queen.”)

Consider that while social media impacts search results, it’s far less important than content when it comes to search engine marketing -- social media only has a seven percent impact on search results. While you should have social media profiles, you shouldn’t maintain these profiles at the expense of your website. Use them in conjunction with your website content, to promote your “stickiest” stuff.

When you write new content for your website, or upload new videos, graphics or articles, use use social media as a content distribution channel. Publish links to your best content on Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you’re regularly publishing good, useful content, i.e., newsletters, press releases, blog posts, free downloads, etc., you’ll be able to market those items on social media to earn more traffic to your website.

Find out more content marketing tips in Part 2 of this series!