Your most valuable content needs to be seen, right? Eventually, you’ll have an audience that is eager for your new content, but getting to this point is an uphill battle.

So, what can you do as a content creator? You need to find ways to expand your content’s reach while building your brand.

Let’s view 19 ways you can make sure that your content reaches your target audience.

1.     Create Content That Matters

Far too often, people create content just to create content. The idea is that quantity is better than quality so that your brand can be seen. This is absolutely wrong. Instead, you want to create content that matters.

Content needs to add something to the community. It needs to answer questions, or provide solid advice to your audience.

Take a look at your content right now. Would you read your content? If not, you have some work to do.

2.     Link to Other Blogs

Scared to link to other people’s blogs? It’s time to spread the link love and let others know that their blogs matter. Oftentimes, these bloggers will plug your site or even add you on social networking sites.

Start networking with others and don’t be afraid to share some link love.

3.     Mention Others in Your Post

People love to be mentioned, positively, by others. As a blogger or business owner, you want others to notice you. You need to brand yourself and your business.

Mention others in your post, and let them know that you’ve included them via social media or email. This is a great way to get a retweet, network and maybe even attract a potential link to your article. Don’t be afraid to mention someone that is on top of your niche.

Network, network, network.

All marketing strategies must include networking. Period.

4.     Respond to Your Comments

Not responding to comments on your posts is very bad for your brand’s strategy. You’ve probably noticed that larger sites close comments for older posts, but never do this for their newer posts.

Let others start commenting and always reply. Your readers need to know that they are valuable, and responding to comments keeps the conversation going.

If you’re commenting back, others will join in on the discussion and may even check your blog more often as a result. This doesn’t apply to content only on your site. If you guest post, you must take the time to comment back.

5.     Master Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to get the attention of others on Twitter. I personally use TweetDeck, but many other apps will allow you to add a tab to follow hashtags. Find the hashtags that matter most to your audience.

A few of the best Twitter tools for finding hashtags are:

• RiteTag
• http://hashtagify.me/
• https://www.hashtags.org/

I really like RiteTag for finding hashtags, but the other two mentions on my list are also great resources to use. If you use TweetDeck, you can also type in a hashtag and see further recommendations, which is a big help.

Not only will hashtags allow you to follow conversations, but you can use them to find people to connect with, content to read and of course, content to share.

Once you know which hashtags to use, you can leverage the right tags when promoting your content via Twitter.

6.     Join in on Twitter Chats

Twitter Chats are an amazing way to join in on the conversation. You don’t want to just be a spectator, but someone who is really involved in the chat. After all, you want to get noticed and really build your brand up. In some cases, you may even be able to promote your content or gain followers that are interested in your content and what you have to offer.

Afraid to join in on the chat? Don’t worry, I was afraid too at first. Professionals, especially highly opinionated ones, are intimidating, but don’t let them stop you from chatting. Take a stance and hold your ground. It gets much easier once you gain some confidence.

Setting up Twitter Chats is really easy. You can use these tools to follow a chat:

• http://twchat.com/
• http://tweetchat.com/
• http://www.tchat.io/
• http://twubs.com/

You can also setup social media management tools, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck, to help you follow a chat.

There are dozens of free internet marketing tools you can use for engaging in Twitter chats. If I missed your favorite, let me know in the comments.

7.     Reach Out to Others on Twitter

I ignored Twitter for so long that I want to cry, but I have just started really branding myself and getting the attention of others using Twitter. In fact, I have connected with so many great people that I have been following on various blogs for years, and reaching out to them was so simple.

What’s the secret? Just talk. When you read a person’s post they share, reply back to them. Ask people questions. Answer people’s questions.

Your audience will be on Twitter, and connecting with them is simple.

The worst that can happen is they don’t reply to your tweet.

Once you’re connected, these followers may even retweet your tweets and help you further promote your content. Remember, networking is everything.

8.     Provide Answers to Others

People want answers. Your content can and should provide answers to readers. Naturally, these same people are looking for answers to their problems. A great way to share your content, not in a method that is considered spamming of course, is to use question and answer sites.

If you’re using these sites properly, you’ll be able to answer other people’s questions, and hopefully lead them and other readers back to your website.

• Quora
• Answerbag
• Answers
• Yahoo! Answers

Thorough, informative answers are best.

9.     Use ViralContentBuzz

ViralContentBuzz is something we just started using here at DREMdesigns. Started by Gerald Weber and Ann Smarty, VCB is an amazing platform that really helps you get your content noticed.

So, how does it all work? It’s simple:

• Sign up (it’s free)
• Add your social media account(s)
• Start sharing

You can share content via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and StumbleUpon.

Each time you share content, you will earn credits. Content is broken down into categories and you only share the content you want. You’re not forced to share anything. Credits are earned and used as currency to promote your campaigns and content. Pretty neat, right? The best part is that all of these shares will result in real, natural traffic to your site.

I was going to write a complete guide on how to leverage this platform, but I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel. The folks at VCB provide a free course that teaches you how to get the most out of their platform.

Enroll in the free VCB course on Udemy today.

10.            Content Isn’t Just Blog-related

Content isn’t just words. Being in the business of writing, that is a hard pill to swallow, but it’s the truth. You can and should utilize your content in different ways.

• Videos: Turn your posts into videos and promote them on YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion, among many others.
• Slideshare: Turn your existing content into a presentation. Using lists, you can expand your content’s reach by easily using the same content you have in a new way.

These are just two of the many ways that you can create content that isn’t centered around your blog. Your social media profiles are content. Your video channels are content. Images, ebooks, training courses, PDFs and even excel files are content.

11.            Promote Yourself Through Personal Branding

What’s your reputation? Do influencers in your industry know who you are? This is a question we recently asked ourselves at DREMdesigns. If no one knows who you are, it’s much harder to get noticed.

You need to engage in personal branding. If people know you, it’s much easier to get your content read and shared.

Start by networking on social media, guest posting, commenting on people’s blogs and joining in on the conversation on forums.

Get your name noticed. Try and be everywhere you can.

Ryan Biddulph is a prime example of this. Not only a nice guy, but Ryan seems to be everywhere. In fact, I often go to comment on random articles on the web and see Ryan already commented. It’s so bad that I am sure he thinks I’m stalking him by now. I’m not!

Ryan gets his content read and shared because people now recognize him.

12.            Provide Interesting Infographics

Infographics are interesting. Aesthetically pleasing and informative in nature, infographics can greatly help your content get noticed. Jeff Bullas has a great post on this very topic. The following are 4 reasons to use infographics to expand your content’s reach:

1. Infographics are compelling. They add to the appeal of your post.
2. Infographics are portable. Allow others to embed them and share them with the world. Always include your logo and URL on the graphic.
3. Infographics paint you as an expert.
4. Infographics often go viral, leading to brand awareness, links and an increase in site visibility.

Don’t have a budget to hire professionals to create the perfect infographic? Sites, such as Piktochart, Easel.ly and Infogr.am can help.

13.            Ask People to Contribute

How many times have you asked someone to contribute to your content? Oftentimes, people will churn out article after article and never ask for a contribution from others. Influencers want their names to be everywhere. It’s part of their promotional mix.

Experts in your field may be willing to contribute to your post.

A quick example of this comes from one of my clients in the dental industry. We consulted with dozens of dentists in the field about their opinion on a particular topic. Many did not respond, but 9 dentists did reply back.

By asking our chosen dentists to answer 3 questions – just two minutes of their time – we created an outstanding, profitable piece of content.

The result was:

• An amazing piece backed with real dentists’ opinions.
• Dentists linked to the article.
• Dentists shared the article on social media platforms.

Not only did a few dentists gain promotion from the article, but our client received backlinks, shares, promotion and most importantly, highly-targeted leads to their website.

14.            Repurpose Content

I touched upon this earlier. You want to repurpose your content as much as possible. What does this mean?

• Convert your content to a PDF and share it.
• Turn your content into a video. Include a transcript as well.
• Turn your content into a presentation.
• Combine your best content into an ebook that you give away.
• Share snippets of your content on social media platforms.
• Share your content on relevant LinkedIn groups. Be careful not to spam. LinkedIn has a pretty tight community, so understand each group first before sharing your content to avoid backlash.
• Republish your content in a different language.
• Republish your content on other

My last point is very good to build up your reputation – not your traffic – but you need to be careful with your approach. Neil Patel has a great write-up that explains the right way to republish your content and what to expect.

15.            Revisit Old Posts

Have you noticed that some of your posts do outstanding while others are lackluster? Every website and blog has posts that fail or exceed expectations. Looking at your old content will allow you to write another great piece that will knock the socks off your audience.

• View your analytics to find posts with high views and shares.
• Write a follow-up post to this idea
• Link the follow-up at the top and bottom of your original post.

You can also use past post ideas to determine what your audience likes. If certain content resonates with your audience, there is always room to expand with another piece that is similar in nature.

16.            Write More Often

Write, write and write some more. While you don’t want to write just to write, you do want to write on a consistent basis. What does this mean exactly? Well, it means you want to create content that will keep visitors coming to your website. Depending on your industry, this may be once a day, once a week or heck, even once a month in some cases.

What a vague answer, right?

Articles and blog posts are your assets.

The more you write, the more assets people can read and share. But, you need to have good content that is meaningful.

Content needs two elements to be meaningful:

• The ability to tell a story.
• The ability to help your blog meet an objective.

If you have content that meets the two elements above, you’ll be able to create content as often as you like.

17.            Write Longer Content

My own contradiction. I always tell clients that they need to have content written naturally. When a client asks me to write an article of 1,200 words, it may go to 2,200, or it may be such a stretch that I recommend a smaller word count. However, statistics show us that longer content is better.

SerpIQ did a great study on this in the past. The results were as follows:

• The first result on Google had just over 2,450 words on the page.
• The seventh result had 2,200 or so.
• The 10^th result had just over 2,000 words.

On average, the 10^th result had 400 words less than the first result on Google. If you want organic traffic, longer content is better.

OkDork took this a step further and showed that longer content is shared significantly more than shorter content.

<p><a href=’http://okdork.com/2014/04/21/why-content-goes-viral-what-analyzing-100-millions-articles-taught-us’><img src=’http://okdork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Shares-by-Content-Length.png’ alt=’Average Shares by Content Length’ width=’500px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br />

<p>

If the subject matter warrants a greater length, write until your heart’s content.

18.            Join Triberr

You can reach more people by working together, right? Triberr is, essentially, a collective experience where you work within a community, or tribe as it’s called. You will have the chance to join tribes and start seeing what other tribe members have shared.

Over time and as you gain some credibility, you may be promoted so that others will see your shares. These are like-minded people that want to read and share your content.

The goal is to expand your content’s reach. Let’s look at an example:

• Member 1 has 1,000 Twitter followers
• Member 2 has 3,000 followers
• Member 3 (you) have 100 followers.

Now, you have a far reach of 4,100. As your tribe grows, you’ll see your reach grow exponentially.

I’m not going to lie, you’ll need to be very active to see results. Comment on other people’s posts, share to your heart’s content and be very active in the tribe. Eventually, you’ll see others are sharing your content and helping your website grow as a result. Triberr can be a major part of your overall brand strategy, but seeing results will take time.

19.            Share Your Content in Relevant Communities

The final entry on our list is to actively share your content in relevant communities. I initially wrote social bookmarks, but I thought the term seemed rather dated with sites like Pinterest and Reddit making our list.

If you can, aim to share content with a niche-relevant audience first, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

A few great sources to consider are:

• Reddit: Be warned! Never, ever spam this community.
• Pinterest
• Stumbleupon
• Delicious
• Digg
• com
• com
• it
• org
• Plurk

Some of these sites may not be relevant to your niche, but they are a good example in what to look for when submitting your content.

Have you ever joined a community only to post your own links? This is a bad idea. Instead, comment on other people’s shares, share content you read around the web and then sprinkle in your own content to share. You want to gain maximum exposure, and sharing just your content is not going to help any of these communities prosper.

What content marketing tools or marketing ideas do you use to promote your content?

Leave your answer below.

Let’s take a look at 7 tips that you can start using today to create content that converts.

1.     Start With Emotional Triggers

Emotional triggers should always be part of your arsenal. When you add in emotional triggers, you’ll be speaking directly to the reader in a whole new way. Fear, hope and desire are among the most prominent emotions.

Sparking these emotions will help your content convert faster and better than ever before. Unsure of how this works? Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Fear

Fear can literally cause a person to remain in their home neglecting life’s duties. Marketers have been using fear to stir up a person’s emotions for the last hundred years. A great example of this is: We’ve all seen it before. She looks great at 30, but once she hits 32, lines and wrinkles begin to overcome her face. If you’re starting to see wrinkles, you need to apply XYZ once a day, or you’ll watch your beauty fade before your eyes.

Hope

Hope is the foundation of a person. People hope that tomorrow will be better. Hope makes people look for solutions, buy products and move forward even when they have doubt. Using these techniques, others have been able to boost their conversions by 300%. What’s stopping you from taking the leap and selling more goods in one month than you normally do in three?

Desire

The desire to be better or improve your own life is very powerful. For example: Wouldn’t you like to look better than you did when you were 18? With magic pill XYZ, you can look better, feel better and spend more time with your family instead of running on the treadmill. This is desire. Services and products should always have the desire trigger integrated into content.

2.     Speak to the Reader

Readers don’t want an expert that has never shared the same problem or opinion as them. Content that converts speaks to the readers. When writing your content, you’ll want to:

• Relate to the reader. Speak to them directly.
• Let the reader know that you understand their problem.

Create a bond with the words you write. Readers want to be educated, but when you speak directly to their needs, you’ll create unbelievable content that’s unforgettable.

3.     Throw in Reader-Related Personality

I’m guilty of this point, or should I say, I was guilty of this point. Clients would order content and many didn’t want me to add personality to their work. What did this do? Not only did I hate writing, but I also hated the work I created. When your content lacks personality, it’s boring and dull.

Not every piece of content needs to be a knee slapper, but it should have personality. Don’t be afraid to add personality to your piece, but don’t overdo it either.

4.     Make the Matter Urgent

Want to make a conversion? Making the matter urgent to readers is one of the best methods to achieve fast results. Just look at marketing ads. Virtually half of the ads either have a “limited time” discount or an offer that will only be available for a limited time. After all, you’re special and this offer is just for you; however, it won’t last long.

Your words are a piece of art, and if you can make the matter urgent without saying “buy my product now, please”, you’ll find that conversions will rise.

5.     Provide All The Answers

Why do people use Google? Every visitor your website receives is looking for an answer. Perhaps a person wants to learn to market their website, but they don’t know what to do. Well, you, as a marketer, can offer SEO, PPC, content marketing and a variety of other services to the reader. A few of the answers you’ll want to provide are:

• What is SEO, PPC and so on?
• How do these strategies work?
• What will each strategy offer in terms of benefits?
• Which method is best for who?

The more answers you can provide, the better.

6.     Don’t Forget to Educate

You’re probably thinking that you’ll sound like a car salesman that people run the other way from if you add all these tips into your content. Actually, you don’t want to seem like a salesman. Instead, you want to add in these tips naturally and in a way that’s not pushy. Educating a reader is a must.

Content that converts not only incites emotions, but it provides substance to the reader too.

7.     Call to Actions

Call to actions are one of my least favorite parts about writing. One client wants a strong call to action, while the next wants a call to action that is more of a strong point and doesn’t tell the reader to do anything.

A CTA, or call to action, must:

• Tell people what to do next.
• Entice the reader to act fast.

Everyone creates their call to actions a little differently. A few classic starts are:

• Subscribe/join now
• Download/Get
• Buy/purchase XYZ
• Click here/this link

Want an example of a proper CTA?

Don’t wait another second. Subscribe to our newsletter and put our content writers to work for you with industry exclusive content.

Did we miss one of your go-to tips for creating highly converting content? Let us know in the comments below.

In a nutshell, great content:

• Attracts new customers/readers and keeps them interested or engaged
• Helps improve your rankings in the search engines
• Enables you to build your brand

But creating a content strategy is not always easy. Many business owners and marketers have a difficult time navigating through the process. Here are some do’s and don’t’s to follow.

Do Know Your Audience

Are you writing for customers/clients or your peers? Are you appealing to other businesses or the general population? In order to create a content strategy, you need to understand who your audience is. And knowing your audience is the single key to success with content marketing and marketing in general.

While there was a time when only large corporations had the resources to conduct customer research, advancements in the industry have allowed even small businesses to take advantage of a wide range of services. And this research can go beyond basic demographics.

Here are a few of the many ways you can get to know your audience:

• Keyword research. Keyword research can go beyond SEO benefits and also provide you with information on your audience, including what they like and what type of information they’re looking for. Long tail keywords can be particularly useful for this purpose.
• The information gathered through your site’s analytics can also tell you a lot about your audience. Where did they come from? Which pages do they visit, and how long do they stay on your site? You can use this information to formulate topics for your content strategy.
• Analyze buying data. You already have quite a bit of information about your customers, including what triggers them to buy, who they are, what they purchase, when they purchase and how they purchase. This information paints a picture of your target audience and gives you a place to focus your research.
• A/B testing. A/B testing is a great way to find out what works and what doesn’t. These tests compare two options to see which one performs better. Use it to find out:
  • Which headlines attract more attention
  • Which products or services your customers are attracted to
  • Which landing page design generates the highest conversion rates
  • How effective a call to action is 

Once you know who your audience is, you can create a content strategy that appeals to them.

Do Appeal to Your Audience

What is your audience interested in? What life situation are they in (e.g. going through divorce, heading off to college, etc.)?

Knowing who your customers are is great, but speaking their language and appealing to their interests is crucial.

This will help you create highly targeted content that appeals directly to your target audience and prevents you from being too broad with your marketing efforts. Let’s say, for example, you’re a divorce lawyer looking to create a blog for your website. Instead of creating posts that target people looking for lawyers, create posts that appeal to people who are thinking of divorcing and in need of divorce lawyer.

So, how can you appeal to your audience? Here are two tips:

• Speak their language. Use terms that only an industry insider would know. This lets your audience know that you understand them.
• Put a spin on a topic that your customers are familiar with. Have a topic your audience is interested in. Offer a new perspective, or put a negative spin on a topic to create controversy.

Do Solve Their Problems

Once you know who your audience is and what they’re all about, you can create content that solves their problems. People search for answers to questions. Answer their questions with your content.

Create a list of questions that your target audience is asking. It can be helpful to use customer/visitor data for this.

Don’t Create Content for the Sake of Creating Content

Don’t create content just for the sake of creating content. Your marketing strategy and all of the content you create should have a purpose and a direction. Providing your customers and visitors with information that doesn’t appeal to them is just a waste of your time and their time.

Don’t Be Inconsistent

Developing a marketing strategy is an ongoing process. It’s important to be consistent and continually add to your strategy. You’ll need to:

• Keep in touch with your audience to stay relevant and continue providing them with content that appeals to their interests.
• Make sure that you’re providing content on a consistent basis.
• Follow through with your strategy and track the results.
• Tweak your strategy to improve its effectiveness.

A content strategy is the foundation of your online marketing efforts. Understanding your audience is key. Creating content that appeals to them and answers their questions will establish credibility and build trust that will ultimately provide you with new leads, customers, sales and more revenue.

Need help bringing your content strategy to life? Contact DREMdesigns today, or order your content online today.

Thankfully, after writing for several years, I have found that there are going to be times when I just cannot seem to write a single word on even the most interesting topic. I believe that the biggest issue, for me, is that I simply do not know what to write. However, I have an advantage that I believe most seasoned writers also have – I know how to form content ideas that propel me to write great content.

Usually, the hardest part of the writing process is coming up with an idea for your topic. Let’s delve into the process so that you are not sitting in front of a blank Word document daydreaming your Saturday afternoon away like I have done countless times in the past.

Brainstorming Content Ideas

I have found that there is no one method to start brainstorming content ideas.
Depending on your niche, you will need to have an arsenal of methods that allow you to come up with great ideas. While this list may seem overwhelming at first, you will find that with a little practice, you will be coming up with more ideas than you ever thought possible.

The following is an easy table of contents that will allow you to get into the meat of each brainstorming strategy that we have listed:

• Comments
• Social Media
• Utilizing Feeds
• Competitor Inspiration
• Answer Sites
• Google Trends

We also provide a tool roundup which you can use to easily gather all of the tools and URLs that we use to quickly start assessing an industry and begin formulating ideas. Let’s get started.

Building Off of Comments

Comments can become a minefield of great ideas that many bloggers and content creators ignore. Oftentimes, people that comment simply have questions, or they want to give some insight into the topic that has been posted.

This is a great avenue for generating more ideas that comes from actual readers asking actual questions.

As an example, we will be looking at a great piece written by QuickSprout. If you have never been to the site before, grab some coffee and be prepared to learn. The content and information provided is simply priceless.

This particular piece is about the dreaded Penguin 3.0 update that will eventually come to realization and leave some website owners clamoring to pick up the pieces. Viewing the comments on this post, you will see that 172 people have left a response. There are sure to be a great responses that can lead to great content ideas.

From the comments section, we can see that people are still unsure if anchor text over optimization is an issue with internal linking, or if over optimization only pertains to external links on a website.

This one comment can lead to many great ideas that will drive readers right to your blog. A few that I am thinking of are:

• Over Optimized Anchor Text: What Does This Mean for Your Internal links?
• Can Internal Linking Harm Your Website? Breaking Down Over Optimization

Now, we can start ironing out our ideas by adding in some great points that we would like to cover.

• What is over optimization?
• Why is Google against over optimization?
• How much is too much?
• Does internal linking suffer over optimization woes?

From just one comment, we can start to formulate great ideas that can really get our creative juices flowing. If you continue reading further comments, you will find many other questions that users have asked. You can also take another avenue and make an article on the “10 Questions That Remain in Anchor Text Over Optimization.”

Social Media

For many businesses, social media is still an untapped resource that can provide them with unlimited content ideas. People tweet and share content that’s important to them; topics that jive with them. You can use this to your advantage by creating content that people are already looking for or interested in. You can also use social media to find questions that your target audience is asking and answer them through the content you create.

There are several tools you can use to find social trends and discover what your target audience is talking about right now.

Facebook Hashtags and Trending Topics

In 2013, Facebook jumped on the hashtags bandwagon. Although the feature is not quite as popular as it is on Twitter, it can still be useful in helping you find new content ideas for your website or blog.

Searching for posts with specific hashtags is simple and straightforward. Let’s say you were looking for topic ideas for a content marketing blog. Searching for “#contentmarketing” will yield a list of posts with the #contentmarketing hashtag.

Tip: Before you hit enter on your search, make sure that you pay attention to the dropdown list that pops up under the search bar. Hitting enter will bring you to the first page listed, which may not be the hashtag results. Look for the result with the yellow icon and a hashtag in front of the search term.

Trending is another relatively new feature Facebook introduced that helps users see what topics people are buzzing about. Trends appear on the right sidebar, and clicking on a trend will bring up a list of posts discussing that topic. Facebook’s Trending feature can be a great tool for newsjacking or blogs that rely on recent news stories for content.

Twitter Search & Twitter Discover

Twitter can be an amazing place to discover new content ideas. More than 9,000 tweets go out every second of the day, equaling roughly 50 million tweets each day. That gives you 50 million opportunities to find new content ideas every single day. Between Twitter’s Search and Discover features, you can find yourself compiling list after list of post ideas.

Twitter search can be used to search for tweets with certain hashtags, or you can just search for a particular keyword. Tweets with your searched hashtag or keyword will pop up. Aside from actual tweets, you will also find:

• A list of Twitter users that are in your industry or niche
• Related searches to help you find even more content ideas
• Collections related to your hashtag or keyword

Using Twitter’s advanced search, you can search for tweets:

• Written in a specific language
• With exact phrases
• That exclude certain words or phrases
• Made in specific locations
• Made on specific dates or date ranges

You can also search for tweets that are negative, positive or pose a question. Twitter’s search gives you countless ways to find new content ideas.

Twitter also has a Discover feature that allows you to view the latest tweets based on the people you follow and the people your followers follow. Discover is a great way to find content inspiration and trending news topics in your industry or niche.

Hshtags

Hshtags calls itself a “social media search engine dedicated to hashtags,” and I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description. When you land on its homepage, Hshtags greets you with a simple search box to enter your desired hashtag. Its intelligent search aggregates posts from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Google Plus and Tumblr that include the hashtag you search for.

Omgili

Forums may not technically be considered “social media,” but they are platforms where consumers and everyday people talk about things that matter to them. Omgili searches discussions on message boards and forums for your keyword or search phrase. Using this tool, you can find questions your target audience is asking and their thoughts about products/services in your industry.

Using Feeds to Stay Updated

If you have read the previous section about comments, you are properly wondering how you can find great comments on a continual basis. After all, there is only so much reading that you can fit into the day.

The absolute best way to keep up-to-date with your favorite blogs or industry leaders is through feeds. Feeds allow you to read posts using feed readers, eliminating the need to visit hundreds of websites to find great new content.

By setting up your feed reader and adding industry leading blogs into the mix, you will:

• Read industry news as it happens
• Find great comments that you can build ideas off of
• Find great content ideas by simply browsing the latest posts

Stephen King has been quoted as saying:

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Reading allows you to keep your creative juices flowing and provides you with new information.

The Best Feed Readers Available

Now that you are convinced that feeds are great for you, it’s time to setup your feed reader. With the sad closure of Google Reader a year or so ago, a slew of other great feed readers surfaced to help pick up the pieces. The following feed readers will allow you to read content faster and start generating new ideas as a result:

• Feedly: My personal favorite. Available for iOS, Android and the web, Feedly is extremely popular and easy to use.
• Newsvibe: A web-based RSS reader that allows you to read articles on any device.
• Pulse: An aesthetically pleasing reader that is only available on Android and iOS. You can also use Pulse right from LinkedIn.com.
• The Older Reader: Never miss a thing with The Old Reader. Add up to 100 feeds for free and add subscriptions with ease. This is a web-based reader.

There are dozens of great RSS readers that can be listed, but these are the four that I have had the pleasure of personally trying.

Note: Always categorize the feeds that you add. Each reader will have a different method for categorizing feeds, but ensure that your feeds are organized in an easy-to-read manner. This allows you to quickly find the latest topics that mean the most to you. This eliminates the need to weed through dozens of sites just to find what you’re looking for.

Using Competitor Articles as Inspiration

In a world where there are millions of fresh blog posts published daily, you will find that coming up with a truly big hit seems nearly impossible. Let’s face the truth, the vast majority of content really isn’t that good. This may be because a person simply is trying to make fast cash and writing horrible content, but the biggest concern is that even great content may not have a readership.

Inspiration from competitors is a great way to find content that will work for you; however, you need to know how to decipher your competitor’s content appropriately.

One thing that I cannot stress enough is that:

You do not want to rewrite the same content. You want to be inspired and to know what works.

There are a variety of ways to use the content you will shortly learn how to find and analyze, but you need to how to use this content correctly. You can do the following with competitor’s content:

• Create content that is longer, more engaging and more thorough.
• Put a twist on the subject. You can approach it from a different angle or completely disagree with it.
• Gather information to put into an infographic.

You must create something better, but you already have the benefit of knowing this content will work, so you can spend more time on it.

Finding Inspirational Content

If you are up against a huge entity, such as the Huffington Post or Forbes, it will be impossible to judge the value of their content. Larger websites have so many readers that these publications can merely post anything with moderate success. Instead, you want to find bloggers or other smaller websites that have published great content.

Google

Starting with the most basic of avenues, Google is a great way to start finding great content ideas, but you will need help from a trusted add-on: MozBar.

What does this toolbar do? Well, it allows you to judge the searches that you perform on Google. What you want to do is perform a regular search and browse through the results, with the toolbar enabled, to find content that ranks highly and is not coming from a domain that is overly popular. Thankfully, MozBar makes this easy.

When typing in popular vegan food ideas I came across the following on page 2.

MozBar tells you that this post has 19 links and a domain authority of 25, which is not too hard to compete with. Now, upon further inspection, this same post received 769 Facebook likes. People are obviously interested in recipes, and content curation would be the perfect opportunity to make amazing content in this niche that people want to read or see.

Now, why should you use an SEO toolbar? The MozBar is a great way to simply judge the popularity of the content’s source. Remember, places like AllRecipies (currently #1 in this niche) already have a huge readership where people will simply read and share their content often because of their immense traffic. The key is to find domains that are not as popular, but have popular posts. These are ideas that will drive your content marketing strategy to new heights.

If you like a particular site and want to simply gather a few ideas, the right query will help.

Site: example.com

The above query will provide you with a list of all the pages on a site.

QuickSprout Analysis

I am addicted to QuickSprout simply because Neil provides priceless information for free at all times. Do you know what else QuickSprout offers besides an awesome wealth of information? The QuickSprout Analysis tool that allows anyone to dig deeper into their competition.

Now, you can analyze all of the SEO factors, but this is not what this article is about. Instead, you will want to dig even deeper into the website analyzer so that you can really start to develop content ideas.

1. Go to quicksprout.com and type in your competitor’s URL.
2. Click search and wait.
3. Now, click “social media analysis.” This can take a while to process, but it is well worth the wait.

The initial start of the report is not what we are interested in. instead, you will want to scroll down to the Page Level Results. This is a breakdown of all the pages a site has as well as their total shares on the top 5 social networks.

As you can see from the image above, everything is laid out nicely for you to analyze. This information will allow you to see which pieces of content have worked wonderfully for your competition. In this case, “Homemade oatmeal dog shampoo” seems to be a topic that is in demand and very popular.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is so easy to use and it is a great starting point to find content that other avenues simply do not include. You will be able to easily view shares on:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Google+

This is one of the easiest methods discussed, but you will need to further drill down the results to find articles that are not from major websites.

Pinterest

What can Pinterest show you about your niche besides a bunch of pictures? Well, if you search through the results, you can find really good avenues for ideas. Let’s see how this works.

• Login to Pinterest
• Search for your niche

Now, you will be presented with a gazillion results of beautiful images that others have pinned. What can pins show you? Hover the first result:

This particular pin was about the One Song Workout. This should have your head filled with ideas. Perhaps a top 10 list of songs that are great for your one song workout. Or an infographic of what workouts most people can complete within just one song’s duration.

People are always looking for alternative fitness methods and working out to a song gives you a lot that you can build off of.

Answer Sites

Answer sites are a goldmine for content ideas. Some industries and niches are able to get more use out of these sites than others, but they can be great resources for any topic. If you think outside the box, you may find some hidden gems that can help you create viral content.

Some of the top answer sites include:

• Answerbag
• Answers.com
• Quora
• Yahoo! Answers
• Stack Exchange Network
• Sharecare
• WikiAnswers

Check out Wikipedia’s list for more sites that you can use. Some answer sites are dedicated to specific topics, such as medical or legal, so be mindful of this before you start searching every site.

So why would you bother using answer sites to find content ideas? The questions asked are posted by everyday users; probably people who use your products or services. There’s a good chance that other people have the same questions and are looking for an expert to give them answers. This is your opportunity to do so.

Let’s say a personal injury lawyer was looking to create content focused on car accidents. A quick search on Yahoo! Answers can generate quite a few topic ideas.

Just using this list, you can create 6 pieces of content, or combine each topic into a larger report. Some ideas include:

• Car Accidents: Who Should Pay?
• Top 10 Car Accident Questions Answered
• Car Accident Settlements Explained
• How to Start Driving Again After a Traumatic Accident
• Car Accident and No Insurance? What Happens Next?

These are only rough ideas, but you can use questions to fine-tune your content ideas and provide solutions for questions that have yet to be answered.

Google Trends

Google Trends was launched in May 2006. Although it may not look like much on the surface, Trends can be a fantastic resource for finding hot topics and new ideas for your content – regardless of where you are in the world.

When you land on Google Trend’s homepage, you’re presented with a Trending Now list and a list of Top Charts. Both of these lists are tailored to your location.

The Top Charts list allows you to explore search trends in specific categories, or niches if you will. You’ll find everything here from business and politics to nature, lifestyle, entertainment, sports, travel and more. Each chart lists the top search term for that particular category. You also have the option of looking at trending search terms. Trending searches allow you to capitalize on topics that are gaining interest.

Using the Explore tab, you can further explore trends related to any keyword or topic. Let’s say you were looking for some content ideas about dogs. Using the Explore feature, you can take a look at Related Searches and switch over the to “Rising” tab.

In this case, searches for “Miley Cyrus dog” are up a whopping 1,300%, likely because of the death of her dog. Using this information, you can create a post that discusses the impact of the loss of a pet and tie in Miley’s unfortunate situation. Just from this simple list of rising queries you can find six other content ideas that you can implement into your content strategy.

Tool Round-Up

Let’s round-up all of the great tools we discussed in this post.

Social Media Content Tools

• Twitter search
• Hshtags
• Omgili

Feed Tools

• Feedly
• Newsvibe
• Pulse
• The Older Reader

Tools to Find Inspirational Competitor Content

• MozBar
• QuickSprout Analysis
• Buzzsumo
• Pinterest

Answer Sites

• Answerbag
• Answers.com
• Quora
• Yahoo! Answers
• Stack Exchange Network
• Sharecare
• WikiAnswers

Newsjacking and news aggregator websites can also help you form new content ideas, but these need to be capitalized on immediately in order for them to really be effective.

There are numerous ways to gather new content ideas, but what it ultimately comes down to is finding topics that are in demand. What questions is your target audience asking? What kind of information are they looking for?

As the saying goes, “Your audience doesn’t care about your products; they only care about themselves.”

Always keep this in mind when searching for new content ideas.

How do you find new content ideas? Leave your response below!

Let’s take a look at an example of poor quality content:

The paragraph above is grammatically correct and there are no spelling errors, but it lacks substance. Substance aside, the paragraph lacks direction. What are you trying to say here? Essentially, the sentences are a series of separate ideas strung together to fill space on a page.

A paragraph in a high quality article may resemble something like this:

We have certainly seen worse examples of poor quality content, but just because a piece of content is grammatically correct and free of spelling errors, it does not automatically qualify as “high quality.” High quality content will keep your readers engaged, answer their questions or teach them something new. Ultimately, this is what readers and search engines value most.

Poor Quality Content Offers Little Value

Poor quality content offers little to no benefit to the reader. The topic of the article or post may not even be relevant to your particular niche. It’s great to post new content to your website, but that content needs to tell your visitors something new and interesting. With poor quality content, you’re likely just presenting your audience with words on a screen.

For many years, businesses focused on churning out content for the sole purpose of improving their rankings. The focus was on keyword density and ensuring the post was written in an SEO-friendly way. There’s only one problem with this: What happens when the searcher lands on your page? Sure, you may have all of the right keywords in your post, but how are you going to convince the searcher to make a purchase? Achieving high rankings does not automatically equate to higher conversions. If your page offers nothing valuable to the visitor, they will simply click off of your website and move onto another.

High quality content, on the other hand, is highly researched and tailored to your target audience. Writers that produce this type of content will take the time to get to know your industry, who your customers are and what their likes/dislikes are. With this information on hand, posts can be written in a language that speaks to your potential customers and draws interest to your products or services. Because visitors find the content useful, they share it with their friends and your website will generate natural links. Great content and SEO go hand-in-hand, and both sides of the equation deserve the same amount of attention.

High quality content also helps to establish you as a leader in your niche or industry. If you’re answering your target market’s questions and providing them with useful information, you earn their trust. It becomes clear that you know what you’re talking about and you have experience. This means something to your audience. If your blog posts are poorly written, you cannot expect potential customers to take you seriously.

High Quality Content is Engaging, Valuable and Shareable

In a world where some writers charge less than $5 for an article, it can become quite easy to get lost in the world of content. In fact, high quality content is often pushed to the side because there are just too many cheap options available.

What is high quality content? This is a question that clients often ask and it is quite baffling to a writer. High quality content is:

• Engaging and interesting
• Easily shared and enticing
• Research intensive and highly accurate

The poor quality content that is plaguing the Internet is more about the quick profits that can be made than the longevity of a business. There was a time when website owners were rewarded with ad revenue and higher traffic because of the massive amount of articles that they could churn out. This gave a rise to foreign writers that do not have a good grasp on the English language becoming the cornerstone of the Internet.

Google has done their fair share to remove this low quality content, but it is up to every business to produce content that is valuable.

OkDork.com recently released their findings on which content was most shared. These findings correlate to the high quality content mantra.

As you can see, high quality content with a word count of over 2000 is ideal. This is the content that people want to share. Not only is high quality content thorough, but it holds the reader’s attention and provides a major boost in SEO value.

There needs to be immense value in each and every piece of content provided. The looming issue is that some topics do not warrant longer articles. The goal is to create an engaging piece of content that is not redundant and actually speaks to the reader. Can low quality content compare? No.

From a professional standpoint, I have been on the lower and higher price point for articles. When a client can only pay pennies for an article, the article can only dictate a certain amount of time. Writers need to earn a livable, comfortable wage. For high quality content, the justification must be the cost. High quality content may be more costly, but it will allow a writer to:

• Conduct the needed research to engage readers and keep their attention
• Writers will be able to edit and revise their content as well as outline it
• Writers can spend more time on a higher paying piece to ensure that it is perfect

When high quality content is produced, it has a rhyme and a rhythm. The writer is able to take their time and do the necessary research that leads to exposure, social shares and natural link garnering.

Low quality content must be profitable to the writer, so immense research and editing are simply implausible. This leads to rehashed content that is either meant only for search engine rankings or for filler content that provides little value to the reader.

When a visitor lands on your website, do you want them to be interested in your content, share your content with their friends and sign up to your newsletter, or would you rather them close the browser and go to a competitor because the content provided did not meet their expectations?

Quality Content is In-Depth

With the introduction of Google’s in-depth article feature, it should come as no surprise that longer content holds an immense amount of value. Low quality content often neglects to bring out any form of substance. An article about teaching jobs can be written in either a low quality or high quality format.

The difference between the two will be the following:

Low Quality

The article length will be brief. In fact, the very minimum amount of information will be included. This may be a lack of statistics, salary information, educational requirements and a variety of other pertinent information that makes a high quality piece shared, viral and useful.

There are two issues with low quality content:

• Content is forced to be too long that it cannot contain any form of substance and turns into a rambling of words
• Content that is low quality is merely a regurgitation of what has been said a thousand times before

Anyone can go to the BLS website and merely rewrite the content into a low quality, regurgitated piece that provides little to no value.

High Quality

High quality content will use numerous sources to gather information, statistics and facts about the teaching industry. Instead of merely reformatting a post and writing it into your own words, high quality content will be outlined, revised and compiled to make a complete overview of the teaching industry.

Facts and figures will be provided that will tell potential teachers information they may need to know before pursuing a career in teaching. This will be:

• Educational requirements
• Salary figures
• Certifications and specialties

High quality content will delve deeply into these areas and explain required coursework a potential teacher will face while in school, what an entry-level salary will be, what yearly growth a person can expect and a variety of other factors that leave the person well informed about the teaching industry.

As a business, do you want your readers to be left with more questions than you answered? Satisfaction comes from educating the reader and this can only be done when the appropriate amount of time is granted for a high quality piece to be written.

There are times when an article will be short in length; if an article doesn’t warrant 2,000 words, do not force the word count. Instead, the article should be thorough, informative and answer all of a reader’s questions.

From a Google standpoint, in-depth articles are much more valuable. These articles contain naturally flowing keywords, statistics and leave readers with a fundamental understanding of the subject after reading. With the in-depth search introduced to the US market in August of 2013 and recently to the UK market in April of 2014, it seems as if Google is keeping a close eye on the articles that leave no questions unanswered.

When you are searching for information, do you want to read a small snippet that is an overview of your questions or would you rather read a 2,000 word piece that is filled with information, facts and statistics?

Does the word count of a high quality article have to reach or exceed the 2,000 work mark? No. However, if the article can be written in a well formatted easy-to-read manner that is educational and provides answers to a viewer’s questions, longer content should be utilized.

Time is Money

How much is high quality content worth? This depends on who you ask. There tends to be two groups of people: Those who values content creators and those who don’t. When you get down to the heart of it, high quality content is not cheap. It takes time to develop an article or a blog post that grabs the reader’s attention and answers their questions.

If a post requires an hour of research and another two hours to write and edit, that writer should expect to be paid a decent wage. Yet, it’s not uncommon to find job listings on freelance websites that look a little something like this:

Paying $1 per 500 Words. All articles must be free of spelling and grammatical errors. All articles must be unique and pass Copyscape.

Unfortunately, many of the listings like the one above are for businesses looking to create blog posts for their website. It’s impossible to produce unique, high quality content at the rate listed above.

In order to make a livable wage, you would have to write at least one post every 5 minutes. If a freelancer does take the job, there’s a good chance that their content will do more harm than good to the website’s reputation and rankings. Zero research can go into these types of articles, which means you wind up with 500 words of fluff.

At the end of the day, businesses need to sit down and think about the future of their online success. High quality content cannot be produced on a shoestring budget. Are you willing to sacrifice your success because you rather pay a writer an unlivable wage that certainly does not pay their bills?

High quality content is shared more often, lures in natural links and becomes a place where readers will leave their thoughts and opinions. The best part about high quality content is that it continually pays for itself. When an engaging piece is written, it will attract readers and potential clients/customers indefinitely.

Higher quality content is a smart investment that will pay for itself time and time again. Low quality content simply cannot offer the same level of profitability.

Standard Content – $1.95/100 Words

With Standard content, you will receive a unique and lightly researched article. All articles are still written by American writers, which means they will be grammatically correct.

We still take the time to make sure that Standard articles are engaging and high quality. Many clients use our Standard content on their main blogs or “money sites” and have seen great results.

Premium Content – $7/100 Words

Premium content is well researched, engaging and unique. We charge a higher rate for this tier, but this allows us to devote more time to the research and writing process.

We recommend Premium content for:

• Web Copies
• Press Releases
• Blog Posts
• Guest Posts

In addition to the article itself, you also receive a:

• Meta description
• Twitter post
• Facebook post

Twitter and Facebook posts are small snippets that you can copy and paste onto your social accounts to promote your new content.

With Premium level content, we work with you to craft a post that really speaks to your readers. No matter whether you have an idea in mind or prefer to leave that up to us, we try to approach the topic from a different angle. Nobody likes to read the same story over and over again. That’s not what engages readers and it certainly won’t be getting the attention of search engines either. Shareable content is unique. It sheds new light on a topic or shares a completely new idea. This is what we strive to do with all of our Premium projects.

There are also certain types of content that are only reserved for the Premium tier. Web copies and Press releases are only available on this tier. Let us explain why.

Press releases and web copies take a great deal of time to create. This is especially true for sales copies. In order to create the best possible content, we have to take the time to get to know your company. We also have to take the time to get to know your products or services. How can we sell something we know nothing about? We also have to get to know your audience. To engage with them, we have to relate to them and really “speak their language.” A careful approach is taken with Premium content. For this reason, we only offer those two pieces of content at this level.

Choosing the Right Tier

If you choose standard content, does this mean that the quality of the work will suffer? Absolutely not!

We are a small team of two writers who were born and raised in the United States. No matter whether you choose Standard or Premium, you will get high quality, grammatically correct content.

The main difference between the two is the time spent on the research process. We do our best to go above and beyond for our clients, but there are some topics that require intensive research.

Let’s say, for example, that you were interested in creating an in-depth piece on green energy. At Premium level, we can truly explore each type of energy in a more detailed way. We can talk about what wind and solar energy is, an in-depth look at how each one works, what benefits they offer, tax benefits (if applicable), ROI, environmental impact, etc. We can also take a unique approach to the topic by exposing myths of green energy or comparing studies.

In short, we introduced a Premium tier to give you more options. The same quality that you’ve come to expect with our Standard articles will remain the same. Premium will simply give you the opportunity to add highly researched and in-depth content to your site.

If you have any questions about our content tiers, feel free to send us a message or visit our FAQs page.

Content Strategy Basics

Content should be written for users and not for search engines. If everything is done correctly, both in the search engines and visitors will love what is produced. This is, however, if there is a rhyme and rhythm behind the content that is produced. Visitors to a website are always looking for answers. These answers can be virtually anything from what the best new cell phone is to where they can purchase a gift for the holidays. Regardless of what a person is searching for, they will want answers.

Content strategies are going to produce these answers in an eloquent manner. However, there are quite a few ways in which content can be tailored for a website. These marketing strategies are normally derived from targeted keywords. The idea is that when a keyword is searched often and if content is structured around these words, a website will rank highly for them. However, these keywords must be placed within content in a natural manner.

Content Questions

Every article must be written with a purpose. If there is not a purpose present, virtually any topic can be written about. This does not fit well into the idea of a niche. If a blog has the majority of its content written about language learning, it would be a tragedy to start adding content about plumbers. Readers of a language blog would not benefit from this at all. Instead, content marketing has to be done after a few questions have been answered.

• What is the purpose of my content strategy?
• What will this strategy provide for my readers?
• What exactly are people searching for in this niche?
• How many total posts should be written?  (This will be increase over time)
• How many times a week should posts be published?
• Does this niche have new subject matter frequently? (The history of Ancient Egypt may not have real news added until a new finding comes about. This limits the amount of content that can be written.)
• Will newsworthy information be written?

Once this has all been determined, it will be time to start developing some sense of topics to write about.

Keywords for Content

Normally, people head over to Google Keyword Planner and will gather keywords related to their niche. This is obviously a smart way to find what users are searching for, but this is not the only way.

The goal is to fit keywords into text without thinking about what they may be. For instance, this article is filled with great keywords that have been produced naturally. While there was some LSI research done to get a general idea of what keywords exist, nothing has been produced with these keywords being the prominent reason for a sentence. Instead, they have been placed appropriately to ensure that this article flows naturally.

Once keywords have been gathered, it is time to start formulating ideas for content. Perhaps a person is writing about natural remedies. If a person delved into the topic, they may find the following keywords:

• Aloe
• Antioxidants
• Cinnamon
• Turmeric
• Ginger

Now, each of these topics can be researched a little bit. Once a person delves into Cinnamon, they will find that it helps reduce blood sugar. Great! Now, a person create a few new topics out of this one finding.

• The Properties of Cinnamon: This article could talk about the origins of cinnamon, where it comes from, what properties it contains, what foods it is used in and what these properties help with healing-wise.
• Cinnamon – Diabetes Symptoms Reduced Naturally: Since cinnamon has been used for lowering blood sugar, studies have shown those with diabetes can reduce their blood sugar by 10 percent with using this spice.
• Cholesterol Reduction – Cinnamon to the Rescue: Now, this article can delve into other studies which show that cinnamon has been shown to reduce cholesterol. This is amazing for heart disease and those wanting to maintain a healthy heart.

It took 2-3 minutes to formulate these topics and in-depth articles can be created for each one. In fact, 10 articles could be written on cinnamon easily. This means not only will readers be able to find everything they want to know about cinnamon, but maybe they can also refine their search by the categories provided on the blog. For instance, one category may be diabetes related. Now, a blog can target a slew of keywords and really get the word out about what natural remedies every person is able to utilize for better health.

Adding LSI Keywords Naturally

Whew! Now that you have enough topics for every day of the year, it is time to start writing. Through the use of LSI keywords, it will be possible for this marketing strategy to incorporate very similar keywords that search engines love. Search engines will expect these keywords to be in a post centered on that particular keyword. For example, a handful of LSI keywords for automobiles will include:

• Vehicles, cars, trucks
• Wheels, maintenance, spark plugs
• Audi, Ford, Honda
• Torque, horsepower
• Auto prices, car dealership

All of these keywords relate to one thing – automobiles. These will give a good indication that an article pertains to automobiles and that the subject matter is informative. When this can be produced naturally, search engines will rank an article higher and there will be a slew of keywords being ranked instead of just one. When done correctly, this does not hinder the natural flow of the article and will be unnoticeable.

Putting it all Together

Now, killer content can be produced for virtually every day of the year. This is what every blog needs. However, there can always be refinements along the way to make custom content based on post popularity. Let’s briefly look at how current content can help to shape a strategy.

Advanced Strategies

Blog posts that have been written will provide some indicators on what visitors really find of interest. Every site has their own group of readers so the only way to do this is through researching the data that a particular website has amassed. The following metrics must be considered:

• Views
• Comments
• Social Shares

If some posts are simply struggling to be noticed but others have been quite successful, a content marketer will be tasked with doing further research on why the popular post is of interest. Perhaps, this is a topic that was well discussed and something that resonated with readers. Instead of writing another piece on a topic no one enjoys, it may be wise to add in an extra article every month on the same topic that has shown to be popular. This will help to retain readers while allowing a website to cover all of the possible questions a visitor may have.

It is better to be over-informative with a topic than simply leave readers wondering what else to do. The true importance of every article will be what it can provide to readers. This eliminates all of the “fluff” and gets right to the point of a content strategy. If a strategy is executed correctly, readers will be informed, they will be engaged and they will start to be social. This is what every viral campaign has been able to do and the secret is this: A lot of thought and planning goes into viral content.

Organizing Posts

Many of the world’s most popular blogs will not publish content on the weekend. This leaves 5 days a week when content is a “must.” Obviously, posting schedules will vary with some niches only demanding a few posts a month and others requiring several a week. In either case, there has to be an easy way to spread content out over a week, month or even year. Thankfully, those using WordPress can simply schedule their posts for the future. In fact, many CMS platforms will have a future post option. Content scheduling for at least a week or two in advance is highly recommended. This allows for fresh content to always be posted and new content to be created.

Through the use of a content strategy, it will be possible to drive traffic to a website like never before. This is the foundation of success and will be fruitful for all those that are willing to put the time and effort into their own marketing plan. Once created, adhering to the schedule is a must. Even when visitors are scarce, content must be posted. Eventually, highly targeted traffic will trickle in, natural links will be gained and success will shortly follow!

What tricks have you found that make content strategies a breeze? Leave your comments below and let us know!

Now, many of you are probably stating, “You can’t trust Matt Cutts! He works for Google! He is misleading!” While all of Google’s signals cannot be discussed and Matt is rather vague, there is definitely one thing that all major search engines want – quality. When quality is measured, the only true substance that a page has is the content that it contains.

But Keyword Density Used to Matter!

A few years ago, people were completely obsessed with keyword density and for good reason – it helped in the SERPS. There was a time when all a person had to do was stuff their content with keywords and they would rank highly. This was a time that came and went rather fast. While it may have benefited some, search engines could not prosper with that type of content. Why would anyone continue to utilize something that is flawed? If every result consisted of keyword stuffed content, Google would be in trouble. They realized this and this is shown with their recent updates.

Big Bad Panda

The rise of spun content was great for marketers. It was possible to “spin” one article and turn it into thousands. Using this content, a person could go out and rank for hundreds of keywords. The rise of article directories were plainly seen! Great – hardly readable content was being written at astonishing rates. In fact, people tried to fit the history of Ancient Egypt into a mere 200 – 300 word piece of content. Users were greatly benefiting by missing out on 99 percent of the history and seeing what could only be described as – a day in Ancient Egypt. This was low quality content, there was no real substance provided. Google had to do something drastic. What did they do? They rolled out Panda! This update targeted low quality content that was clearly made for search engines.

The Squeaky Penguin

Many people found ways around Panda and decided not to go with the hard working methods of ranking a website. Instead, people found ways to circumvent Panda’s grasp and their sites were ranking greatly. This was mostly done with spam tactics that actually worked. People made a lot of money off of these tactics, but when Penguin came about, a lot of people lost their income. This was devastating for some as they were just starting to make good money online. Penguin, while targeting spam, was another update that made it even more necessary to have high quality content.

Back to Keyword Density

Now that the ever-so-short history of Google updates has been discussed, it is time to look at keyword density again. Density, for all those that do not know, is how many times a given keyword is used within a copy. If a copy has 100 words and a 2 word keyword appears twice, the keyword density for that keyword would be 4 percent. A simple mathematical formula to calculate this would be:

((Keyword Length * occurrences) / total words) * 100

While there was once a time where this mattered greatly, Google started to take a new approach – Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. This is where the industry is heading and something that many do not fully grasp.

What is Latent Semantic Indexing?

LSI is essentially figuring out what a piece of content relates to by the words that it contains. For example, a copy about dogs may contain the following words:

• Leash, collar
• Pit Bull, Labrador
• Fur, shedding
• Canine
• Dog training, puppy, man’s best friend
• House training, biting, teething, dog toys
• Neuter, muzzle, aggression, food
• Play catch
• Crate train

All of these words, please bear-in-mind that these are thought up and not researched, all relate to one thing – dogs. In fact, the above words would be able to fit naturally into a dog training article and Google would not have a difficult time figuring out that the copy is training related. Now, if these words are within a text that is being optimized for “dog training”, has a few backlinks from high quality sites and has all of the proper on-page optimization – this article will rank higher in the search results.

Naturally Flowing Articles

The key to high quality articles is allowing the words to flow naturally. If the keyword shows up 1 – 3 percent of the time naturally, that is perfect. However, if the keyword has a density of 10 percent and hinders the article’s readability, this should never be utilized for a website that a person wants to make money from or utilize for their business. Human readability should be of the utmost importance. Does this mean that a copy should not contain the targeted keyword? Absolutely, not! This means to use keywords naturally, take advantage of on-page SEO and start utilizing LSI keywords.

SEO is NOT Dead!

SEO is not dead – yet. Google has reassured publishers and SEOs that there’s nothing they need to change. In fact, Google’s guidelines remain the same: produce high quality, valuable content that readers will enjoy. So if SEO isn’t dead, what exactly is all the fuss about? 

Google’s Hummingbird is All About Improving Answers

The goal of this new update was to improve the way Google answers long, complex questions asked by searchers. As you know, the search engine is always looking for new ways to improve the user’s experience. This is just one more step towards a smarter and faster search engine.

Rather than analyzing a search query word-by-word, Hummingbird attempts to look at the query as a whole and produce a set of results that will best answer the user’s question. This update is one that was rolled out months before its announcement, which further discredits the notion that Hummingbird is the death of SEO.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Many businesses, SEOs and Internet marketers have seen some major ups and downs over the last few years. Google has made a number of changes to their algorithm that have, indeed, affected many people’s rankings in a negative way. For many, it was a major wake up call. Using “spammy” techniques to game your way to the top is no longer an option. What it takes is some good old fashioned hard work.

Ultimately, it all comes down to is the value of the content on your website or blog. What are you offering your visitors? For businesses in particular, this remains as a key factor in their success. Pages with little to no substance or content will be devalued and pushed down to the bottom of the results. Even when crafting guest posts to network and gain new links, it is important to remain focused on your audience and offer them something that is worth sharing. It really is quite simple when you stop and think about it. If you choose to stick to these simple rules, your site will withstand any algorithm updates Google throws at you.