Quality Content...Sizzle
-
I see tons of 'push quality content'... push quality content.. Ok Ok. However, I am a little confused about this. Maybe I am understanding it wrong. Say I have a website about donuts. I am going to try to promote my donut website so people can see all my latest donuts and hopefully they will come into my local store and purchase them.
I interpret quality content as writing about the topic of donuts. However, people who eat donuts probably don't care about the history of donuts, or the different types of dough used. They probably could care less about statistical facts that explain how my fictional donut company uses a whole wheat dough which will lower their cholesterol.
What they want to see is a fat donut with icing on it. They want to see someone biting into it and enjoying it.
How does a local donut company go about becoming #1 on the serps if they do not want to write constantly about all things donuts? A video would be nice for them perhaps?
Like I said, perhaps I am overthinking this. But I have understood the best way to write quality content is to identify a problem that people are having, then find the solution, then write about it (or video).
But sometimes people just need to be TEMPTED. Coca-Cola uses awesome commercials to promote their business. They are not writing articles about high fructose corn syrup.
How does this so called 'temptation' factor play into SEO? I want to sell the sizzle not the sausage. Ultimately marketing is about getting more sales which means more money for the business. Being high on the SERPs helps get more sales (hopefully).
Writing quality content is great and I am sure it works in plenty of areas. But I am not sure how to apply it to certain industries. Creative marketing ideas have to come into play to market the fake donut business.
How do you tie these other strategies in so they help you with SEO?
All I can think about is posting a 'cool' video on youtube/facebook and trying to get people to like it. Cross your fingers and hope it goes somewhat viral?
Thanks!
-
I'm going to write my response for a generic local eatery/coffee shop/donut shop, and hope some of it works for you.
I'm a contractor for SEOmoz, and work from my home. I regularly search Yelp for nearby places that have wifi where I can escape the heat in the summer, or work by a fireplace in the winter, and enjoy some food and a change of scenery. I care less about the pretty pictures, and more about making sure the home page comes up quickly on my mobile phone, that you have hours and directions easily listed, and that there's a menu with prices. I'm overjoyed if I do have some information about the establishment -- is this a place that has wifi? Can I come hang out for a couple of hours and work? Is there a special on a certain day where I might decide to make Thursdays my day where I treat myself to a late lunch at your business? If I find a good place, I will get on Yelp and leave a review and let others know as well.
If you're more of a manufacturer of the product and not a direct retailer, do you offer a gluten free product? Anything vegan? If I'm shopping for a donut that a relative with a specific food allergy can eat, will I find that information on your website? If you did make a gluten free donut, you could reach out to blogs about gluten free diets and have those bloggers review your donuts and link to you.
-
We happen to have 2 full time writers on staff but we do have the clients pick topics and we then research the field to see what type of content would be valued before we start writing.
What you see on seomoz is people saying that if you take the time to make a quality guide , article etc then if you go to link build you have something to offer websites not just begging for backlinks.
-
Nice! These are good ideas. The donut business is just an example (i dont really promote one... but maybe I will now..)
I love soaking up as much knowledge as I can!
-
Ok because you mentioned the dreaded writing topic how do you handle managing multiple clients?
I've read this before somewhere, but it basically mentioned that are we doing SEO? Or are we just writers? If what is MOST important is good content, then writing > everything else. Sure, finding what to write and all the other technical details of SEO are important. But, I've seen on here time and time again. Content, content content. The word is getting beat to death. "Make quality content and users will come". "If you just have quality content, you can spend less time on SEO".
Ok...So if you are an SEO company and you have multiple clients across different industries, how do you handle this? If you are doing SEO for a donut company, with a rather small budget, do you plan on becoming an expert in all things donuts? Or do you talk to the owner and get his advice? Sure, the owner knows a ton of information on his topic. But he has a hard time explaining it to you, or putting it into words. This has happened to me with just about everyone (the few) people I have worked on SEO for.
So, I am expected to research your field (donuts) in depth, find good websites, then start pumping out relevant quality articles. Correct me if I am wrong, but, once again (quoting the SEOmoz community), this is hmm, I dont know, 90% research/writing. Maybe you do a video, so you need to be handy with a camera.
If you are a one man band (like myself), it is quite a lot of work. Especially if you are working on the donut industry, then plastic widgets, then a doctors office, then a law firm. It gets incredibily overwhelming. So what do you do? Stick to a particular industry and start from there?
Say you do that. Say you have 1 donut shop in Houston, 1 in Dallas, 1 in Seattle. Locally, the marketing strategies are going to differ. BUT, as mentioned here, you need to go to food communities and guest blog, etc. The topic stays the same, but you need to promote 3 businesses. Well now you have to write 3 articles in the same industry, but keep the topics different. White hat is all about "good content on the net" if I am not mistaken. This is really good and I agree. But, honestly, there is only so much you can say about donuts (or any topic for that matter). So you log on to the food community as the dallas user (post something), logout, login as the houston user, post something different... You see how this gets pretty wild pretty quick? Now it makes more sense to go serve completely different industries because you are not competing with yourself. You can try to dominate donuts for the highest paying customer. However, you have to be an expert in so many fields....because now you have to do this for lawyers, doctors, etc.
So, is the majority of this WRITING or is it actually technical. Because the technical aspect doesnt seem to be so complicated. As a bigger firm do you just hire writers to work for you? Perhaps outsource it on the net? Maybe you hire a virtual assistant?
The normal "content" part seems to take the most time...which is writing/research. You can learn strategies to promote on facebook, youtube, google, etc. But if you don't have anything to promote (content) then where are you left?
So, the majority of what you need is content... then I need to take some courses at my local community college on writing and start reading through my longman writer?
It just seems ridiculous that you have to do 'press releases', guest blogging, and beg for backlinks...especially when you have more than a handful of companies to promote. People bash 'black hat' SEO and claim that the results are temporary. Ok, granted. Perhaps they ARE temporary. But, if you are promoting a brick/mortar business and you get them to #1 , even if it is for a few months, and the business sees a REAL increase in sales from REAL people that come in to their store... then REAL money was made for that business. So maybe they will lose their rankings one day. But the people that came during the 'black hat' time period tasted the donuts and like them. Just because the donut store falls out of rankings doesn't mean that person won't return to eat donuts.
I am not promoting black hat... I don't even know any techniques. I am just saying... food for thought?
Sorry for the ranting. This just gets a little overwhelming. There is a goal to achieve. I want my client to have more sales. Period. Marketing and business is a dog eat dog world. If someone else does something better, they could put you out of business.
-
5 ideas for donut articles that could go viral:
The Story Of The Guy Who Eats Donuts Every Day And Runs Marathons
Top 5 Favorite Cop Donuts
How They Get The Kreme In A Krispy Kreme (there actually is a machine called a Cream Injector, believe it or not)
Joe's Donut Shop To Sponsor Donut Eating Contest (run the contest, let the local papers eat it up!)
The 10 Most Decadent Donuts Ever Made
You're right - donut customers don't care about the history of donuts or the makeup of corn syrup. But I guarantee you everyone would want to read these articles - and there are definitely way better ideas out there; this is just what I came up with off the top of my head.
The point is that engaging content doesn't HAVE to solve a problem, that just happens to be the most common way to make it engaging. Anything with a little creativity can be engaging.
-
It all starts at why we make good content for sites- In my opinion 3 reasons apply
1- links and buzz on the net
2- User experience - time on site, bounce rate, reason to return like a blog etc
3- More words for google to see you relevant for in organic search
Each reason has a different type of writing that goes with it, you need to first pick a goal then write towards that goal. And in the best case scenario you have all 3 in mind
Hope this helps you
-
I'd recommend reading the book "Fascinate" by Sally Hogshead. It's all about the kind of issues you're discussing here, and is pretty much vital reading for most marketers these days, IMO.
http://www.amazon.com/Fascinate-Your-Triggers-Persuasion-Captivation/dp/0061714704
Having done some food blogging, I'd say that in the donut niche, readers are either going to want their mouths to water, or to be reassured. There's a reason the largest food communities on both Livejournal and Reddit are called "Food Porn". You need great pictures of donuts. Interesting donuts. Donuts that people haven't eaten, but want to - and info on where to get them. Mouthwatering donut videos.
At the same time, people are also likely to be Googling for the health value of donuts. They're worried their donut will kill them, make them fat, or give them cellulite. Reassure your customers, and they'll buy your donuts.
-
This is a very good thought and I can understand your concern. I would say that quality content is still important, but the aproach in this particular case could be distribution. Let's say you build you site with awsome video and sweet pics (funny ones) and then writing conten for other channels, PR, News, guest blogging and linking to the domain.
That would keep you site cleaner but still pointing quality content to your site. For the customer this is the best.
**Remember that data like bouncerate, page views, contrast and typografy is a big factor for ranking. **
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Other than social media, where are good places to post content from ones website?
I am trying to build links with my content. I always post to social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google + and sometimes Stumble Upon) What are other good choices that may have more staying power?
Link Building | | donsilvernail2 -
Link Building/ Off page strategy. Do we have already have a 'hook' or should we create more specific content.
Hi Guys. As part of our link building campaign I've been creating a database of people who might link to our site. We're a diary company. So I’ve been focusing on people interested in stationary, paper, pens, etc who also blog. We have a unique product at TOAD diaries, it's essentially an online tool that allows you to design your own diary. You can choose size, colour, duration, etc and also personalise the cover. So the product (we think) is very compelling and interesting. First of it’s kind. Check it out here: http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/designer/diary/a5/everyday-diary-week-across-2-pages/coil-bound/toad-plum/12/1/8/2014 So.... question. Do you think that the site itself would considered 'good content'? i.e) It's already a very interesting idea that's worth linking to. Or Would it be better to create a high quality engaging blog (with info-graphics etc) that really speaks to that community of people? Say, about our love of the humble paper diary, and why it's still useful. Then use that blog content to try get links? You thoughts would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance. Isaac.
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
I have well over 110 identical backlinks of widely varying quality - is it worth taking the page they're linking to down?
The site on which I'm working has been experiencing a month-to-month decline since the Panda and Penguin updates - I didn't get an unnatural links notification, but have clearly fallen off the face of Google with many of the more important rankings. After running a scan on my backlinks, I found over 110 identical backlinks (it looks like the same medical definition and my website is listed in the endnotes as a source - just the URL, not anchor text), some from reputable websites with high pageranks and others that look very 'spammy.' We've redesigned the architecture of the site, so the actual link itself has a 301 redirect on it, but I'm just wondering exactly how much of a liability is it to have these links out there? I'm guessing it's an all or nothing kind of thing given the identical content on each page - on one hand, I'm pretty frantic to get to the root of the Google penalties and get back in their good graces. On the other hand, I don't want to kill the site completely by going after a set of valuable links. Has anyone dealt with this before?
Link Building | | travis-taylor0 -
Content optimisation or Link Building first? Small clients & small budgets
Hi there. Apologies in advance for this long message! I have come from a large client-side SEO position where I had a small team of online marketers to assist in our SEO efforts. The effect was that we were able to work on link building and onsite optimisation at the same time and obviously give it 100% of our attention (and the website had very high DA and Trust). I have recently moved to a small agency where I am the sole SEO-Guy and my clients are small. I typically have no more than 8 hours to spend per month on all aspects of SEO (analysis, reporting, link building and content optimisation) per client and I have to strictly adhere to this. To make matters more difficult, these clients typically have weak back-link profiles (low in number and quality and all pointing to the home page) and poorly optimised content (which contributes to low DA & PR). I went through my first 'monthly process' for a particular client in September and focused my 8 hours on optimising the site content for a particular section of the website. This involved optimising meta titles & descriptions, body content and images for our chosen keywords. I didn't focus on links at all. I published the changes to the site on 23rd September. When I look at my rankings as of 6th October, one keyword in particular has dropped by 28 places (from 11 to 39) which seems excessive to me. In my mind, the changes I made were small, so this drop concerns me. The particular URL was ranking in position 11 for a keyword that I subsequently targeted to another (more relevant) page in the site. Both pages have the same MR, PA and links etc. I think I may have effectively cannibalised the keyword and to make matters worse, the new page isn't even in the top 50! Both pages are in the Google Index. So, this is my longwinded way of asking for your opinion on whether other SEOs in my position would recommend spending time on building the back link profile to strengthen DA and PR of deeper pages before you start making content optimisations (given I am unable to do them at the same time). It's tricky with small clients as they don't necessarily understand how long these things can take. Cheers! Laurie
Link Building | | Laurie-Tomahawk0 -
Quick question : Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ...
Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ... from different authoritative domains in one month...I think google might find it strange and I might get penalized...
Link Building | | ksbnok0 -
Guest Blog Etiquette & Re-using "Expired" Content
Hi everyone, There's two parts to this Q, which is why the title's sort of split in half. We wrote a guest blog post that we were really proud of, which took a good few hours of work. It went live about a month ago, but I just happened to notice recently that it had disappeared off the person's website - I now get a 404 error and I can't find it either using a 'site:' search in Google or via the site's own search tool. I've tried getting in touch with the webmaster, but he's no longer responding to my emails. I really don't know if a) it disappeared by accident (for whatever reason), or b) they purposefully wanted to remove it and now they're avoiding me. My two Q's: Do you think it's cheeky to re-use the content, by giving it to someone else? Or would you say it goes against guest blogging etiquette? It seems a shame to waste it, for it to disappear. If I were to re-use it, would there be any implications regarding Panda, given the fact that it was content that was once live (i.e. effectively 'duplicate', once upon a time), even if the 'original' content is no longer indexed by Google? Would it even be considered a duplicate if published again now? Many thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Gmorgan0 -
Authority versus Content in Linkbuilding
Hi there, I am rather new to linkbuilding and reach out to various sites at the moment. The interest in linking to us is very high and now I sometimes get the question where on a particular page I'd like to be linked to from. I then do a check in opensiteexplorer to find out about the authority of the various subpages. Yet, how do I decide if one subpage has more authority while another one has more relevancy for us (in terms of the content being provided there being more related to ours)? Thanks for your recommendations! Best regards, Tobias
Link Building | | space560 -
What is the general consensus on using Text Broker for content?
I have seen generally good reviews for http://www.textbroker.com. Does anyone here have personal experience with it? We are considering using it for content creation for guest blogging for clients. As far as we have found, this is all within Google's acceptable webmaster guidelines. In general, how much editing is required from an article provided by Text Broker? Thanks!
Link Building | | outofboundsdigital0