One of the most annoying things to me is the way writing is devalued, both by those who can do it, and those who seek to purchase the fruits of a writer’s labor. Of course, that’s just the way of the marketplace, right?
Well, at this point, I’d say the “marketplace” is suffering a case of retardation. Most clients will still hugely devalue excellent content, while if you can write with the right business angle, you can clean up all on your own at this particular point in history.
Although my SEO copywriting series is over, I wanted to point out some other great posts that can help you in this area before I move on to the next series.
Keywords: Roberta has a great post on determining relevant keyword phrases, and Jordan points to a free keyword research white paper that she says is worth a look.
Apathy and resignation.
Last week, I opened up a discussion on whether or not the term “linkbaiting” was the best way to describe what has evolved into a new marketing services sector. At its essence, linkbait is simply great content with an angle that prompts links and social media action.
This isn’t simply an academic discussion. It’s not much of a secret that I’ve been working with clients in this area, despite not advertising it (until today). Social media marketing is the here and now of effective online marketing, as well as its future, and it goes well beyond great search engine rankings (no matter how sweet those can be when they arrive).
Along with the debate over whether the term linkbait is good or bad for content creators and marketers, there’s also been a related debate going on. What’s more important, content or promotion?
I wish I had been bookmarking all the discussion along the way, because there have been a lot of key insights. However, I think Lee Odden summarizes the consensus quite clearly today:
If you create great content and no one knows about it to link to it, you’re spinning your wheels. A combination of content as well as social networking, link networking, public relations and gaining editorial visibility as well as viral and individual link solicitations will all work together synergistically. Building a community of consumers of your content as well as relationships with the media in your industry is the distribution network necessary to gain the most link value out of creating great content.
Content or promotion? Yes to both.
It’s no secret that I’m a content guy. But I’ve always promoted my content behind the scenes to get started in a niche, and I may have been guilty of taking it for granted that everyone understood that as well. To rectify, I recently followed up my post about cornerstone content with one about getting the word out.
Creating great content makes promoting it relatively painless. In fact, creating great content and not getting it noticed is an online marketing sin.
The key to successful content promotion is to start relationships, not beg for links. Over time, you’ll find yourself part of a relevant network within your niche, and content promotion becomes a whole lot easier going forward.
While the reaction to your content off-page has become the critical determining factor when it comes to search engine rankings, your targeted keyword phrase should still appear on the page itself. And while there’s little consensus in this area, having your keyword combinations appear throughout the page copy generally helps search engines further identify the relevancy of the page for those keywords.
The good news is, copywriting best practices can create compelling, engaging content that also contains repeated keywords and phrases. You never want to sacrifice readability in the pursuit of rankings, but given that links are more important than on-page keyword repetition, you should never have to.
Coming into the New Year, I resolved not to use the term “linkbait” any longer. Linkbait is simply compelling content that’s remarkable, and in social media the remark is mostly made via the link. Compelling content is simply compelling content, right?
However, not only has the term not gone away, it’s gaining strength. For example, we have this and this and this and this, and also this and this thus far in the first 24 days of 2007.
If you’re still not sure what I’m talking about, read this.
