I have long advocated for companies to pay more attention to their content production strategy. Many companies don’t budget for creating keyword focused content on a continual basis. Often, they are preoccupied with just getting enough content created to create a website and haven’t yet thought of how to sustain any level of content production over an extended period of time.
For companies that want to position themselves successfully in organic search over the long haul, a content creation strategy that supports digital marketing initiatives is critical. This is especially true in light of Google’s new announcement of an algorithm update that favors fresh content for a large number of search queries.
For those companies that are challenged to produce timely content, I would recommend leveraging these four asset types to create a steady stream of keyword rich content.
1. Press Releases
Not only are press releases timely, but they can be optimized around your most important keywords. Press releases should also be posted on your own site in addition to sending them to third party distribution for maximum SEO value.
2. Marketing Automation Content
A lot of marketing automation content lives behind an authentication wall. By creating landing pages that preview this content, using snippets and other descriptions, you will be able to leverage marketing assets for SEO as well.
3. Social Media
Social media content, especially blog articles, can be a very powerful content production platform. Bloggers tend to write about topics that are often time sensitive and therefore, are more likely to target search results that would be affected by Google’s algorithm update.
Many of the assets that are created for social media distribution (e.g., articles, infographics, video) should also live on the company’s website in order to provide optimal SEO value as well.
4. User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is sometimes harder to focus around keywords (since you don’t control it) but it can be used to augment existing content and to help differentiate syndicated content. This is especially true for product descriptions where multiple sites may use the same text and run the risk of duplicate content issues.
Using UGC like reviews to augment this content not only helps to make the content unique from a search perspective, but it also adds value to the customer experience and increases conversion and engagement.
Summary
It’s incredibly important to ensure that these content production channels are aligned with your SEO strategy. By integrating SEO best practices into these four content streams, you will be able to get the most return for your investment across all of these digital marketing activities.