Content Isn't Just King It's Also Queen & Ace

Content Isn’t Just King
It’s Also Queen & Ace
by Brian Harnish
Internet Marketing Specialist
Twitter: @brianharnish
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=40366504
Twitter: @brianharnish Email: harnish.brian@gmail.com
SMX West 2013

Elements of Superb Quality Content
 Superb quality content should be relevant.
 Superb Quality content should be interesting.
 Quality Photos
 Quality Headlines
 Photos That Are Professionally Formatted
 Lists and bullet points summarizing important points.
 Sub headings (H2s, H3s, etc.)
 All of these elements provide a pleasing, structured separation between
paragraphs of text content.
 Also, videos are an important part of quality content.

One of the #1 elements of superb quality content?
 It should be unique.
 You don’t want visitors coming to your site and
seeing content they’ve seen everywhere else.
 The #1 thing people are looking for is unique, relevant content
that entertains them or helps them accomplish a specific task.

So how DO you make content unique and relevant to your
industry vertical?
RESEARCH! Find out what people in your industry
are interested in.
Competitor research – Find out what your
competitors are writing & talking about.
Build on that and create content that is the superb
example throughout your industry.

Analyze your industry’s top content.
1. Who are your main industry competitors?
2. What does your industry write about most often?
3. When does your industry publish?
4. Where does your industry get their ideas?
5. Why does your industry publish what it does?
6. How does your industry publish it?
7. How often does your industry publish?
8. How does your industry share it?
9. How does your industry engage customers?

Google’s Guidelines for Content
This is direct from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for
Design/Content
• Make a site with a clear hierarchy/information architecture.
• Offer a sitemap to your users that point to the important
parts of your site.
• Keep links on a page to a reasonable number.
• Create a useful, information-ritch site, and write pages that
clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words your users would type to find your
pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those
words within it.
This information is direct from Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines:http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769&topic=1724121&ctx=topic

Google’s Guidelines for Content
This is direct from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for
Design/Content
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names,
content, or links. The Google crawler does not recognize text
contained within images. If you must use images for text content,
consider using the ALT attribute to include a few words of
descriptive text.
• Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are
descriptive and accurate.
• Check for broken links and correct HTML
This information is direct from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769&topic=1724121&ctx=topic

Does Google Have Guidelines for images
and video content? YES!
Don’t embed important text inside images
“Avoid embedding important text in images for elements like
page headings and menu times. Not all users can access them. To
ensure maximum accessibility, keep it in regular HTML.”
Tell us as much as you can about the image
”Give your images detailed, informative file names. Make
your file name this-is-the-name-of-the-image.jpg rather than
IMG123456.jpg. If we can’t find suitable text in the page on which we
found the image, the filename will be used as the image’s snippet in
our search results.”

Google Guidelines for images and video
Create great alt text
The alt attribute is used to describe the contents of an image file. It’s
important for several reasons:
It provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of
the image. This is used to determine the best image to return for a user’s query.
It’s also important to use for screen readers and to help users with
other impairments who many not otherwise be able to see the image.
Be descriptive with your alt text
Instead of using just one keyword to describe the image, use a phrase
that includes keyword phrases you are targeting, like so:
Good: <img src=“DeLorean.jpg” alt=“DeLorean”>
Best: <img src=“DeLorean.jpg” alt=“Classic Car 1981 DeLorean Automobile”>
Never use: <img src=“DeLorean.jpg” alt=“DeLorean, automobile, car, classic
car, cars, DeLorean 1981, 1981 DeLorean, DeLorean car, DeLorean Back To The Future,
Back to the Future 2, Back to the Future 3, DeLorean automobile”>

Even More Google Guidelines
 Provide good context for your images.
• For example, the page the image is on as well as the content
surrounding the image provide search engines with important
information about the subject matter of the iamge.
 Think about the best ways to protect them through various
licensing methods.
• Make your images available under a license that requires
attribution, such as a creative commons license.
• Provide an HTML snippet that other people can use to embed your
image on their page while providing attribution.

Google Guidelines for Video
 Mark up your videos using Schema.org markup.
 Submit a Video Sitemap or mRSS feed to Google.
 Tell Google when you remove videos from your site.
 Create high-quality thumbnail images
 JavaScript, Flash, and Hash Tags
 Create a great user experience.

Google’s Quality Guidelines Boil Down
To...
 Make your pages geared primarily towards the user, not the
search engines.
 Do NOT deceive your users.
 Avoid “tricks” intended to improve rankings.
 Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or
engaging, and make your website stand out from others in
your field.

Now That We Have Gone Over
Google’s Guidelines...
 Evergreen Content
 Why would you want to take advantage of Evergreen content?
 Evergreen Content is timeless, quality content that keeps your
visitors coming back again and again.
 It’s a steady stream of traffic to your site that’s almost never-ending.
 It helps set your site above the rest.
Let’s Explore Evergreen Content!!

The Characteristics of Evergreen
Content
 It is narrow in focus.
 Usually can take the form of a how-to article, but many
times also comprise different types of articles.
 Examples of Evergreen Articles include:
 Top 100 lists
 How-To Articles
 Comprehensive Video Tutorials
 Content exceeding 2000 words, going extremely in-
depth into the subject matter.

Q+Q=T^2 (squared)
 Don’t worry, this isn’t a math class.
 The equation, Quality + Quantity = Traffic Squared is a great
equation to aim for and leverage in order to excel in content
marketing. How do you take advantage of this equation?
 Study your competitors. Find out how they are
exceeding in quality & quantity for your targeted
keywords.
 Create your content in order to take advantage of the
lack of quality & quantity in your competitor’s
website.
 Leverage your team to output quality and quantity of
content to your site.
 But be careful! This does NOT mean to Spam or not
pay attention to Google’s guidelines.

How to Analyze Your Competition for
Superb Content
One of the best ways to keep ahead in just about any
industry is analyzing your competition for superb
content. To analyze your competition effectively, it is
important to look at several different aspects of
quality content:
 Frequency of posting (Google has a freshness factor in its algorithm)
 Word count
 How they format their content
 How they link their content
 What do they write about?
 How long is there content?

Leveraging The Use of a Team
 If you are consistently unable to keep up with the demands of
your industry in terms of quantity of content, perhaps it is
time to consider building a team for the express purpose of
publishing content.
 This team can be responsible for quality as well as quantity.
 For quantity – are you trying to output many articles a week? Use content
writers to come up with the content, then use your team to publish it.
 Once you start up the momentum, it’s important to keep it going.
 Say you want to publish 20 articles per week. It’s probably difficult for a
normal human to keep up with right? So, use your team and build an
efficient content production calendar around it.

Example Of an Effective Content
Production Schedule
 Say we are trying to rank for and drive traffic for several keywords in an ultra competitive
niche. The competitors in this niche output on average 10 articles per day, so, 50 articles
per week. This is just an example. You could never do this on your own, so you may
consider outsourcing your articles.
 Outsourcing can mean using a writer outside your company in the U.S., or you can even
go so far as to find a writer in India to do your articles.
 You could schedule your writers to write 50 articles per week. Once you get these
articles, you can then setup your team to publish 10 articles per day. This is relatively
easy for one person to accomplish in an 8 hour period. This allows for considerations of
coding, high quality content publishing, and other considerations that go into publishing
this content.
 Once you have the wheels turning, it can be easy to keep this production schedule going.
 Remember to always follow Google’s guidelines when adding content to your website. This
will help you avoid getting trapped in the next Google Panda update.

My Own Case Study
My own case study focused on achieving higher rankings for particular key words, but not traffic. It
was done purely to study the Google Algorithm and its own emphasis on quality content.
I used the following methods:
 Wrote 1500 word articles per keyword I was going after.
 Setup Webmaster tools accounts for Google and Bing.
 Used Fetch as Googlebot in Google Webmaster Tools.
 There was no link building involved. It was just its own single page.
Results:
• Google rankings of #16, #43, #42 for 3 different targeted key terms
within the first 48 hours of launch.
• This is without including social media, videos, or other elements
within content. Had I included these, no doubt these would have
increased rankings even further.
Takeaways from the Case Study:
• Google still considers lengthy, high quality content to be key for higher
rankings. Don’t ignore other paths to SEO: link building, community
building, and other SEO. It’s important to have variation in your
strategy.
• But – it’s always important to follow Google’s guidelines when publishing
your content!

Examples of Quality Content
A friend, and fellow SEO Aaron Friedman, used this photo of him in a wedding dress to spark a
sharing trend across social networks. It’s actually a post about Facebook’s photo album foibles. A
great example of tying in unique, memorable photography with a compelling subject.

Search Engine Land is one of the best examples of quality content: It’s the news
of SEO: timely, lengthy, and always of great quality.

SEOmoz, a well known blog in the SEO industry, consistently outputs some of the best content you will
ever find. They use their own team to write blogs, rather than outsourcing the writing, and it’s
consistently top notch, very lengthy, extremely detailed, and superbly well done.

Thank You!
Brian Harnish
Internet Marketing Specialist
Bisnar | Chase Personal Injury Attorneys, LLP
Twitter: @brianharnish
Email: harnish.brian@gmail.com

Content Isn't Just King It's Also Queen & Ace

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