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39 ways to get more mileage out of your existing content

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At the heart of any effective SEO strategy in 2018 is the need for high-quality content that is written with a target audience in mind. However, the drive to keep creating fresh content can be challenging for businesses, especially smaller companies with limited budgets and time.

But here’s the good news…

If you’ve been creating great content for a while now, you already have a wealth of existing resources to mine in terms of your marketing, authority and the visibility of your brand!

Wondering how to make this work for you?

We’ve listed the best 39 and most simple ways to get more mileage out of your existing content and get as much value as possible from every article, video or ebook that you produce.

Want to know the best part?

Using these techniques will multiply your content and resources but save you hours of time. 

How to get more mileage out of your existing content

Repurpose Content

One of the most effective ways to get more mileage out of your existing content is to repurpose it. This can be of fantastic value to your target audience too because it recognises that people access information in different ways. Some people love listening to podcasts, others love reading blogs, while some prefer watching videos – repurposing helps you to cover all bases.

 

  1. Bring together a series of your blogs on the same topic and turn them into an ebook

If you look back through your blog, you will probably find that you regularly write about specific themes or topics. Here on the SEO+ blog, for example, my articles fall into four broad categories: SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing, and Analytics. Within those categories, I have regularly revisited topics such as local SEO or SEO basics.

If you have a series of articles on the same topic, you could bring them together and turn them into an ebook. Depending on the depth of information in the ebook, you could then offer this as your ‘irresistible freebie’ incentive to sign-up to your mailing list or even publish the ebook for download to Kindle; the latter can be an effective way to attract some passive income.

 

  1. Publish a transcript of a webinar you have run recently

Are you someone who runs webinars as part of your business model? Although plenty of people enjoy listening to a webinar, the chances are that many of your target audience would benefit from reading your webinar notes or even a transcript of the full webinar. This would give them something to refer back to in the future.

Create a transcript of a webinar and send it out as a freebie for all attendees or even make it available for download or purchase to people who missed the webinar itself.

 

  1. Use the notes you produced for your webinar as the basis for a blog article

Another way to repurpose your webinar notes is to use them as the basis for a blog article. Your article could include a link to sign-up for a recording of the webinar as another way to build your mailing list.

 

  1. Pull out key quotes and sound bites from a blog article and post them on social media

Different styles of posts are suitable for different social media platforms; a platform like Twitter is all about short sound bites, whereas posts can vary in length on Facebook.

A great way to get more mileage from your blog posts is to pull out key quotes and post them as Tweets or Facebook statuses.

If you have a WordPress website, you could use a plugin such as Inline Tweet Sharer to turn sound bites of your copy into tweets that readers can post and share on their own Twitter feed.

 

  1. Turn a blog or webinar notes into a Slideshare presentation

For clients who prefer information presented visually with plenty of images and short, snappy bullet points, you could turn a blog or webinar notes into a Slideshare presentation. All you need to do is upload a PowerPoint presentation, PDF, Word document or Open Office presentation – as just a few examples – and you will quickly have a presentation that you can share on social media or on your blog.

 

  1. Include a webinar or Slideshare presentation in the materials for a coaching programme you offer

If you run an online or face-to-face coaching programme, you can repurpose content such as your blogs, Slideshare presentations, webinars, or tutorial videos as course materials or bonus resources.

 

  1. Turn a ‘Facts & Figures’ style blog post into an infographic

Infographics are another way to repurpose and present information to people who prefer visual resources. HubSpot reported that people’s willingness to read content increases by 80% if it is accompanied by coloured visuals. Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without images.

When talking specifically about infographics, they are three times more likely to be Liked and shared on social media than any other type of content. HubSpot also reports that people following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations.

If you have ever written a blog that explores data or presents the findings of a factual report, turning it into an infographic is a sure-fire way to increase its mileage. And if you’re after a free and easy to use tool give Visme a try. It’s an easy to use drag-and-drop online tool that works right in your browser and free to use. It’s actually a bit different than most other creative tools because it allows you to create both true form Presentations and Infographics while allowing you to add full interactivity to any object. Users can share, embed or even download for offline use.

 

  1. Record a series of podcasts based on your whitepaper

If you have produced a whitepaper on any topic, you could create a podcast series about your findings. This can be a great option for people who don’t have the time to sit down and read your whitepaper but listen to audio files while cooking dinner, doing the housework or driving. You could even sell your podcast series on iTunes to create a new stream of passive income.

 

  1. Produce transcripts of your videos

As we mentioned in the context of webinars above, some people love watching videos but others prefer to work from written content. If you have produced any videos about your products or services, you can add value by offering a written transcript of the video for people to download and keep.

 

  1. Record a video version of a recent blog topic

On the flipside, many of your customers may prefer to watch a five-minute video instead of reading a blog. Lumen5 is a fantastic tool that transforms articles into videos in minutes. You could, therefore, take a popular blog topic and turn it into a video. For example, a virtual assistant might create a video series of productivity hacks, while a jewellery designer might turn a ‘how-to’ series of blogs into a video tutorial programme.

 

  1. Sell a recent webinar as a downloadable, ‘on demand’ product

Webinars can take a great deal of planning and research, so it seems a shame for the content to be available on a one-time-only basis, unless you’re trying to create scarcity and a time-limited offer to attract sign-ups.

Instead, you could try recording each webinar you run and selling that webinar online as a downloadable, ‘on demand’ product.

 

  1. Read through your old blog topics and see if you have mentioned anything in passing that would make a good blog topic in its own right

If you are looking for inspiration for fresh blog content, read back through some of your old blogs and see if you have mentioned anything that could be fleshed out into a separate blog article. Remember to include internal links in your new article to the old, related content that inspired it.

 

  1. Turn old blogs into ‘How-to’ guides ordered by topic

You may have older blogs that are no longer attracting any traffic. If the content is ‘evergreen’ – i.e. as relevant now as when it was written – you could create a page of your website where you publish or even sell ‘How-to’ guides grouped together by topic. For example, people could run a search for ‘local SEO’ and access all the blogs on that topic in one ‘How-to’ guide.

 

  1. Turn a list article such as this one into a series of Tweets

Most blogs feature a number of list articles like this one. Why not take the main list items such as ‘Get more mileage out of your content by recording a video version of a recent blog’ and publish them as Tweets?

 

  1. Use your FAQs page on your website in your corporate brochure or client welcome pack

FAQs pages on websites are helpful for visitors and search engines, but you don’t just have to repurpose your content online. Instead, you could add your FAQs copy to a corporate brochure or client welcome pack to provide valuable information offline too.

 

  1. Create templates from your offline materials to be shared and downloaded online

If you have templates that help you organise your day, such as a daily planner, accounts spreadsheet, freelance contract, product guides, or task organiser, you could turn them into branded, downloadable PDFs available for sale or as a bonus material at the end of a blog or as part of a course.

 

  1. Turn quotes from an article into a series of memes

People love a good meme – Facebook feeds everywhere are full of inspirational quotes, hints and tips. Memes also work well on visually-driven platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest.

Software such as Canva or PicMonkey gives you the opportunity to pull out advice from your blog posts and turn it into memes. Don’t forget to brand your design and add your web address to let people know who created the meme. If you use a picture that you find online to illustrate your quote, it’s important to check that you are allowed to use it commercially under the terms of its Creative Commons license. You can find free-to-use images on websites such as Pixabay, Morguefile and Pexels.

 

  1. Create a downloadable ‘resource kit’ from your blogs, webinars, ebooks and more

Over the years, you’ve probably created a huge amount of resources that your clients would find useful. Try pulling together a variety of blogs, videos, webinars and ebooks as a downloadable ‘resource kit’ – you could even charge a fee for this, adding to your passive income stream.

 

  1. Turn your best content into an online course

A step up from point 18 above is to turn your best content into the materials for an online course that you then sell through an online teaching marketplace such as Udemy or Lynda.com.

 

  1. Use a blog as the basis for a downloadable checklist

If you have a blog that includes plenty of actionable hints and tips, you could always create a downloadable checklist as a sign-up incentive or even as a ‘no-strings’ gift. I have done this with a number of blogs, such as the Ultimate Landing Page Cheat Sheet.

 

  1. Take the analytics data you have gathered internally and turn it into a case study

Whenever you post content on your website or social media pages, it’s important to keep track of the analytics data to understand how it is performing. You can use the information you gather for more than just your own reference purposes by turning your findings into a case study that your clients might find helpful.

refresh and breathe new life into your existing content

Refresh Content

Instead of repurposing your content to give it more mileage, another option is to refresh and breathe new life into your existing content.

  1. Add images to image-free blogs

As we saw in point 7 above, content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without images. It’s worth taking some time to review your older blog articles – would any of them benefit from one or more additional images?

Once you had added images into your blog, re-promote them on social media to see how people respond.

 

  1. Update images with more Pinterest-friendly pictures

Tastes change and you may find that you have blogs that, although packed with images, no longer visually reflect your brand. Instead of deleting the blog, you could replace your old images with new, fresher ones that reflect your current branding. Look for Pinterest-friendly pictures that will look great when pinned to your boards and those of your followers.

 

  1. Rewrite a blog article that you feel you could improve

Have you ever read back through an old blog article and thought, “What was I thinking when I wrote that?” It could be that your tone of voice has got clearer recently or just that you’ve learned a lot since you originally wrote the article in question. A great way of attracting new traffic to an old blog is to rewrite and re-promote it.

 

  1. Update a blog article with new information

You may also find that a blog needs updating rather than rewriting. Maybe you wrote an opinion piece about a topical news issue and now have the benefit of hindsight to see how the story unfolded. Perhaps circumstances have changed within your industry or best practice has evolved. Have a look for blog articles that would benefit with bringing up to date.

 

  1. Write a longer version of an old blog

Quite a few years ago, circa. 2012, the trend for blogging was to write short, snappy articles of 300 to 500 words (and sometimes less than that). These days, the blogs that perform best in searches are those with meatier content. New data from experts such as HubSpot shows that content that exceeds 2,000 words performs best in terms of social shares, backlinks and encouraging dwell time on your website. In fact, one study found that the most successful blog articles take about seven minutes to read.

Therefore, if you have any 2012-style shorter blogs now is the ideal time to go back and flesh them out.

 

  1. Add a video to an old blog or into a marketing email

According to stats from HubSpot, adding a video to a marketing email can increase the clickthrough rate to your website by 200-300%. Equally, adding video to a landing page can boost conversions by 80%.

Videos can skyrocket your marketing and SEO for a number of reasons. Stats show that 80% of people recall videos they have watched for at least 30 days, and 90% of us use videos to inform our buying decisions. Adding a video to a blog article can help to keep visitors on the page for longer, which will push up the average time spent on your site – a positive signal to Google that you’re producing engaging content.

 

  1. Fix any broken internal and outgoing links

In my Ultimate Guide to Backlinks and How to Get Them for The Huffington Post, one of my suggestions was to identify and repair broken internal, outgoing and incoming links on your website. Broken links can impact on the reader’s experience of an article and prevent them from quickly accessing relevant connected information. It’s worth spending some time just checking that all the links on your website work and take people to the right destination.

  1. Add links to newer content that hadn’t been published when the blog was originally written

When writing blogs, people often remember to include links to older related content. What they forget, however, is to go back to that older content and add in links to relevant, newer articles.

Have a read through your old blogs and see if you can identify articles that relate to your more recent content. By adding links to and from each of the relevant articles, you can enrich the reader’s experience and help them access more information that they will find of interest.

 

  1. Update the SEO of old articles

SEO should be an ever-evolving part of your marketing efforts. Best practice changes from year to year – for example, five years ago it was usual for web pages to have a long list of keyword tags, often duplicated from one page to another. These days, Google evaluates the topic and the user intention, therefore, focusing on the key topic to enhance the relevancy of the content and the strength of the page is recommended.

A good starting point here is to refer to Google Search Console to identify the pages with the most impressions in SERPs. Are there pages that are ranking well in searches but not attracting clickthroughs to your website? It could be that the meta description lacks a call to action or a compelling reason to click through. Rewriting this copy could make a huge difference to your traffic.

It’s also worth checking whether all of your blogs have unique H1 titles and whether you have added alt tags to all of your images.

recycle-content1

Recycle Content

Another strategy to get more mileage out of your existing content is to recycle it.

  1. Delete or archive old posts (if they are harming your site)

In my experience, there are very few reasons to delete an old blog post but it is a situation that comes up from time to time. If the blog post is very thin on content – fewer than 300 words – or about a time-specific issue that is no longer relevant, you may feel that its presence is doing your website more harm than good.

If you do delete an article from your blog, it’s important to make sure the URL redirects to a different, relevant page of your website or that you have an engaging 404 Not Found error page that redirects people to another part of your site.

 

  1. Merge several small articles into one longer blog

If you do have lots of thin content, you might want to consider merging several small articles into one longer blog. You can then apply a 301 Redirect channeling all of the traffic to the old URLs to a new URL.

 

  1. Create a ‘Best of’ article that features links to your most popular posts

One way to recycle your old content and bring new traffic to it is to create a ‘Best of’ style article. For example, in December you could publish a blog rounding up your ten most popular articles of that year with links to all of the relevant content.

 

  1. Try using different titles to promote the same articles

Another effective strategy to recycle your content is to try promoting it using different headlines or introductory copy. You may find that some of your clients prefer headlines that are questions, while other prefer ‘How to’ headlines. By varying the headline you promote on social media, you can attract different people to the same content.

 

Re-promote Content

Once you’ve put in all this hard work to repurpose, refresh and recycle your content, your next task is to promote it.

  1. Promote more than once

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with their content creation is to only promote it once or, worse, to fail to promote it altogether. As individuals, many people worry about over-promoting something and being seen as pushy. In reality, social media channels are fast-moving. For most people, their newsfeeds are so busy that content posted in the morning may be hundreds of posts down the page by the afternoon. This means that when you post a link to your content, many of your followers may never see it.

By re-posting the link several times during the week – especially on different days and at different times in the day – you can help to ensure that the greatest number of people possible see the article.

 

  1. Post links to older content on all of your social media platforms

It is also beneficial to post links to older articles on all of your social media platforms. Someone who started following your brand recently may be glad to read an article that you posted last year.

 

  1. Send out links to old content in your latest newsletter

If you send out a regular newsletter, you could always include links to some of your older articles in the newsletter. Try including a ‘From the archive’ or ‘#Throwback Thursday’ heading near the footer of your newsletter featuring links to past articles that you think your customers may love to read.

 

  1. Promote an article on new social media channels

Have you recently started using a new social media channel? Instagram, for example, is going from the strength to strength, and maybe somewhere you’ve only recently started placing your attention. If so, you may not have promoted some of your older content on this new platform.

 

  1. Share in Facebook and LinkedIn groups

Similarly, you may have joined certain Facebook or LinkedIn groups recently. Many groups have days of the week when you can post promotions or links to your blog, presenting a great opportunity to re-promote existing content to a new audience.

 

So, there you have my 39 favourite ways of getting more mileage out of existing content.

Do you reuse your content once you create it? If so, what are your favourite methods for repurposing, refreshing, recycling or re-promoting?

If you currently neglect your old content, are there any methods from the list above that you’re keen to try?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the Comments below.

Hopefully, this article hit the spot. If so, can I ask you to use the social buttons below to spread the word? It takes seconds and means a lot. Thank you.

 

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5 Reasons Why You Should Be Guest Blogging

By 32 Comments

Guest blogging has become increasingly popular and not without reason; building your online authority through this inbound marketing strategy has a massive impact on business growth.

The combination of awareness, personal brand building, referral traffic and links that guest blogging provides has the power to significantly boost your online visibility and your sales.

Why You Should Be Guest Blogging

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging involves writing blog posts for other websites.

But that’s not nearly all:

Writing high-quality and insightful content for other similar blogs in your industry is an excellent way to establish your authority.

Creating authentic and originally written posts on topics which are relevant to the blogging site is mutually beneficial; the blogging site gains good fresh content, while the author bio on the guest blog provides an introduction to the guest blogger and includes a backlink which ensures that the writer is genuine while also attracting traffic from the blogging site to the author’s.

It’s a straightforward quid pro quo:

When you write a blog for another website as a guest, you promote your own brand. It’s the perfect trade to gain recognition and receive more targeted visitors to your site.

Still not convinced about the benefits of guest blogging? Take a look at these 5 big advantages of this inbound marketing strategy.

 

The 5 most significant reasons to guest blog:

    1. Establish authority: Good quality content is paramount in gaining relevance and popularity for your website. Well-written and authoritative content that speaks to the readers in addition to engaging them and keeping them hooked is the perfect type of content for blogs and this will help establish the website as an authority on the subject.
      Search engines love sites that provide useful and authentic information. Through guest blogging on such sites the guest blogger benefits by way of exposure to the readers of a niche category who are genuinely looking for relevant information, resulting in the guest blogger establishing his or her authority as a quality writer.

    2. Visibility and targeted traffic: One of the biggest benefits of writing a top-quality guest post is the instant exposure it brings. Done the right way, guest blogging will result in targeted traffic and sales. To boost your chances of conversion you should optimise your site’s landing pages and CTA’s.

    3. Improved search ranking: When you write and publish several guest articles on authoritative blogs, your search rankings will improve. Guest posting earns you link juice which translates into higher rankings in the search engine results.
      One of the main ranking criteria for search engines is the relevancy and quality of links that point to a website. Guest posting on high-quality and relevant websites will earn high-quality and relevant links pointing towards your site, which will increase your search ranking.
      However, always remember that your focus should be on the quality of the content that you’re creating rather than simply a link to your blog or website.

    4. Shares, followers, and leads: Guest blogging not only increases the number of social media shares to your content, it will also boost your number of followers and generate leads. Contributing to an authoritative blog earns you trust as they are essentially vouching for your brand.
      Remember to customise your contributor profile and include links to your social media accounts to make it easy for your new fans to follow you.
      Winning your target audience’s trust and turning them into active social media followers is just the first step, reward them with regular updates and useful information that aligns with their interests.

    5. Guest blogging builds relationships and trust: Good content is the foundation of any blog. Bloggers and website owners are in search of kickass content for their blogs and websites. When you gain a reputation for providing that type of content to people in the blogging world, it will help you promote your business, resulting in increased website traffic, more subscribers to your blog and ultimately more people that trust you and want to do business with you.

Conclusion

A guest post can help you achieve so much more than traffic, links and brand visibility. It can bring in quick sales and increase revenue.  Guest blogging is a very effective inbound marketing strategy, especially when you carefully research industry blogs and create high-value content that people can’t find elsewhere.

As Neil Patel says: “Great content does one essential thing: improve your brand image. It also gives the right audience a strong reason to listen to you.”

Guest blogging allows you to communicate with the right people for the right reasons and is, without a doubt, a crucial step for online marketing success.

Do you guest blog already or is this something you’ve been thinking about? Were you aware of all the benefits of guest blogging?

 

Would you like to contribute to SEO+?

SEO+ are currently accepting guest blogs. If you’re in a similar space and think our audience would find what you have to say interesting send us a message here.

Would you like to contribute to SEO+?

 

PS – If you enjoyed this post, please comment, like and share below, Thanks!

You might also find these articles helpful:

39 ways to get more mileage out of your existing content
How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content
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The Main Tools and Trends That Will Influence Content Marketing in 2018

By 12 Comments

With the availability of information being ever on the increase, it’s no surprise that the task of reaching customers and creating a strong brand image has become increasingly difficult. With the new digital age heralding a dynamic shift in the way that businesses reach prospective customers, content marketing has become an area of huge importance and intrigue; it is forecasted that 64% of all paid media on mobile by 2020 will fall into this area.

Content Marketing in 2018

Traditionally championed by small business owners for being a methodology that creates results on a low budget, more and more big corporations are now coming to understand the power of this domain. So, with more players on the field how do you keep ahead? With so many tools and channels available, which should you focus your time on? Well wonder no more, these are the key points to focus on in 2018 to keep your business ahead of the trend.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Okay, so the use of video is nothing revolutionary, but a report from Cisco predicts that by 2019, up to 80% of all internet traffic will be dominated by it. If just one picture can tell a thousand words, then imagine how much more you can say on film. Not getting aboard this trend will be almost impossible if you wish to make any impact at all on your market. To maximize engagement, zoom in on these vital areas and watch your content take off.

by 2019, up to 80% of all internet traffic will be dominated by video

  • Live Stream Video

Storytelling is at the basis of all good content media. We want not to just engage peoples’ heads, but their hearts too. Savvy business owners will be keeping people up to date with their actions and inviting the viewer backstage in their operations. This transparency translates into trust and understanding.  The figures speak for themselves, with recent research showing that Facebook live streams increase engagement – over regular posts – by 178%.

  • Immersive Media

If storytelling is the aim, the purpose is to immerse viewers within the brand image, and the use of new technology is certainly set to play a significant role here. Already head-mounted cameras have made their mark with leading brands, such as GoPro, now going one step further and introducing a 360° video feature. Use of augmented reality and computer-generated content overlaying video can add an extra dimension and help set your media apart from the rest.

  • Short, Snappy and Accessible

A key component to making video a success in the upcoming year is accessibility. With more media now being accessed through smartphones and tablets than through desktop computers; making sure that your media is user-friendly is crucial. The design and length of a video will also be under scrutiny, with a shorter more conversational style preferred by the viewer. There are plenty of inexpensive phone apps that can help you accomplish this style. Finally by embedding video within blogs and social media posts you can increase stay time on your sites. This means not only higher sales, but it also improves your search engine optimization.

 

Websites That Think for You

2018 will be the year where we work smarter, not harder. Employing computer learning to our websites could cut out hours of complicated data analysis. This is why DWP Dynamic Web Personalisation is set to take off.

Dynamic Web Personalisation - Websites That Think for You

The use of web personalization has recently started to grow, this is a logical step to help direct the audience you want to the relevant content for them.

Using computer algorithms to recognize and segment website visitors – in order to display information targeted to them – has had clear and proven results. Research shows that personalized calls-to-action do have a 42% higher viewer status than non-personalised calls-to-action – this is a staggeringly indicative statistic. Such a method streamlines the search process for both viewers and customers, helping them to see more of the things that they’re interested in. Effectively, this gets more people to the right place at the right time. To get the step on your competition, you should employ these tools and have the most efficient and user-friendly website possible.

 

Strike a Match & Watch the Fire Spread

self-propagating contentAs previously mentioned, we should be working smarter not harder, and, ideally speaking, what all businesses want is self-propagating content. For this, you must make it meaningful and relevant enough that others want to take it upon themselves to share it for you. In the past, using celebrity endorsements was the main vehicle for this, but with the rise of blogging, social media, and youtube channels, anyone with a passion for documenting and creating can become a helpful ally.

UGC User-Generated Content shared through non-endorsed channels is much more likely to be trusted and therefore shared; creating greater reach.

  • UGC User-Generated Content The trends have shown that the most engaging content has to be meaningful. You need to strike a chord with viewers; amuse them, inspire them, inform them and so cajole them into sharing your content with others. The use of content funnelling has demonstrated results. Companies are creating videos with no emphasis on selling, and instead making short stories or documentaries that can appeal to a wider audience. Some great examples of such methods can be seen in Billabong’s ‘I surf because’ campaign. Or Volvo’s hamster steering video.

    •  

  • By approaching their brands in a novel way and creating interesting media, people are more likely to share it. This has a knock on effect of reaching more of your target audience. By casting your net wide, you can, in turn, funnel your actual audience towards more product driven content using links to these original videos.

These methods show results, but, how do you decide what your audience finds meaningful? Obviously, money can be spent on experts that will help you creatively; film producers, designers, and so on, but for smaller businesses, this may not be in the budget. Instead, an effective solution is to partner up. Do your research – see who is hitting your targeted markets, and then see how you can get involved with them. By collaborating you can share the workload whilst increasing your reach. Popular social media platforms are becoming increasingly expensive to feature content on; whilst also becoming increasingly ignored by users, who feel bombarded by advertising. This year it is crucial that you find new contacts and therefore new channels to reach your audiences.

 

Feeding the Future

Finally, a trend that will see you through 2018 is automation of content sharing.

a trend that will see you though 2018 is automation of content sharingContent marketing may seem a relatively new phenomenon but it has been very much a work in progress. The key to success is to think long term. It takes time for you to gather followers, but by making sure you are consistent in releasing and engaging your audience, you can expect it to pay off.

However, this can be time-consuming and difficult for smaller businesses without personnel dedicated to marketing. There are many tools that allow you to schedule your media releases, creating a strong presence. It is, of course, important to remain flexible and to make sure you remain up to date on your content to keep it relevant. Creating a content calendar also works in reverse, allowing you to review past content and revive it, if still relevant for today’s market.

 

In conclusion

Digital Marketing Trends in 2018Content media will be something no business can ignore if they wish to carry on engaging their markets in 2018.

  • The main vehicle to win your viewers hearts is predicted to be video. Opening up your business with live stream and shifting the focus away from selling – is a must.
  • Investing now in new filming technology to immerse your viewers will give you an edge on your competition. Whilst websites that are streamlined and media that is easily accessed on all devices, will become the norm and therefore crucial to dedicate time to.
  • Emphasis on making meaningful content, with little to no focus on selling, will accomplish a wider reach; with users taking on the role of propagators.
  • Finally, invest in technology that thinks and acts for you, with websites that are personalized and that can automate the scheduling of content release.

Most of all, keeping on trend will be a case of constantly adapting and searching for novel ways to capture your audience. Stay connected and keep innovating – then, it may even be your content setting the trends for 2019.

 

If you found this article helpful, we’d love it if you could share it – thank you
 

You might also find these articles helpful:

39 ways to get more mileage out of your existing content
How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content
How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content
User Experience – what you need to know and how it impacts SEO
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10 Content Marketing Tools You Need In Your Life

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As a brand, making your job as easy as possible will save you time and give you the confidence you need to make bold marketing decisions. If one technique fails, you can quickly ‘bail’ and try out another. You can even pick out tools that will come up with campaign suggestions – perfect for those days when you’re just feeling a bit uninspired and not sure what to try next.

Your content marketing tool collection should include software that helps you schedule, gather feedback, auto-generate and customize easily. They should also be intuitive and packed with features that open up unexplored avenues.

Content Marketing Tools

Here are the 10 content marketing tools you need in your life:

 

Outbrain

If you’re hosting native ad campaigns, you will need a hosting platform like Outbrain to help you connect with your target readers and publications. With a tool like Outbrain (or Taboola) you can amplify your native articles and get them on the leading sites across the world.

These places attract millions of views per day. Provided your articles provide useful information and meet the requirements for publishing, you can upload news stories, articles – even videos. This site will help you spread your message far and wide.

 

Hubspot

Hubspot is the one-stop marketing platform that will help you track and schedule all things social media related, all from one dashboard. Hubspot will offer customer support tools and ‘how to’ tutorials on everything from social media analytics tips to scheduling posts for maximum engagement.

You can also track your conversion rates, your site’s organic traffic, and access other sales and marketing software functions. The website is designed to make automating your content marketing ‘a doddle’ and boy, does it ever deliver the goods!

 

Copify

As all content marketers know, high quality copywriting is vital for holding your audience’s attention and compelling them to make a purchase. Good copywriters don’t come cheap. But, if you are looking for a reliable site, Copify is an excellent service. You can find editors, writers, proofreaders, and researchers.

What makes this a tool rather more than a pay-as-you go service is its subscription pricing model. For £69 a month, you can access their Blog Package. Membership includes eight posts per month, social shares, and royalty-free images. You can, however, also choose to pay for services as you use them.

 

Clearvoice

Clearvoice is a content marketing ecosystem like Copify, only it attracts very high profile names, including writers from Mashable and Forbes. If you are looking at pitching ideas for marketing campaigns, this should be your go-to site. You can set up collaborations with high-end writers and mold your content ideas into fully fledged creations.

 

Buzzsumo

This social media analysis tool helps you build a highly detailed picture of your audience’s social media usage across different networks. Use it to search for popular niche terms and find out the most popular shares and networks. You can also find details on the content characteristics that attract the most hits from your fans. Buzzsumo is a must-have tool for link-building campaigns.

 

Sniply

It’s no secret that the second biggest site in the world, Facebook, is a social media site. These platforms dominate much of internet users time and attention. Therefore, if you’re a brand looking to get noticed, try making the most out of your aggregated content with a tool like Sniply.

If you spot a piece of content related to your products, Sniply lets you attach a small ad to the bottom of it. You can then choose to share this modified content in the hopes that you attract a few clicks to your site. Make the most of the Sniply service offerings by including some sort of lead capture or opt-in when linking back to your site.

 

Shopify

If you are looking for an easy-to-use option for creating an online store, Shopify offers all the features you need to build a great-looking store with sophisticated features. With its vast onsite app marketplace, you can automate everything from retargeting ads, to personalized recommendations, abandoned cart emails, and much much more. All sites can be built up from templates, and there is access to help and support 24/7.

 

OptimizePress

This is another highly effective program for creating lead capture pages. OptimizePress can be synced with your WordPress site. This allows you to generate high-converting landing pages with ease. Membership sites can also be set up with OptimizePress.

The service is designed to keep your precious information safely behind a paywall for buying customers. If you are looking for ways to create a highly targeted and efficient sales funnel, this could be a tool worth exploring.

 

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a fantastic social media scheduling tool that offers you full visibility of your social media presence online. Combine your feeds and messages into one easy to navigate dashboard and forget about ever missing out on a story again. You can even choose to create multiple dashboards and schedules for different subject areas. If you’re a fan of social media, you should definitely check out some of Hootsuite’s extensive features.

 

AWeber

AWeber is a great email marketing platform that’s been around for a very long time. It is reasonably priced, and it allows you to create and collect emails for multiple email campaigns. You can also use it to make forms and responder emails for targeted campaign segments.

One of the standout features of AWeber is the RSS to email connectivity. This tool allows you to automatically turn your latest blog post into an email campaign and get it blasted out to your subscribers in seconds.

 

So there you have 10 of the best content marketing tools you need in your life.
As an apparent 11th tool to add to the list, you will, of course, need your site to be connected to Google Analytics. Once you are up and running and ‘crunching the numbers’ through Google Analytics, use any or all of the above-listed tools to help you boost your traffic figures across all channels.

 

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You might also find these articles helpful:

39 ways to get more mileage out of your existing content
How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content
How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content
User Experience – what you need to know and how it impacts SEO
User Experience – what you need to know and how it impacts SEO

How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content

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Don’t be a victim of Google’s quality score. Find out how to quality control your content and increase your search engine rankings site-wide!

Did you know that Google Panda assigns a hidden ‘quality score’ to your domain based upon their own internal algorithm, and that this affects rankings for ALL your pages?

I know I talk a lot about quality content, but I can’t stress enough how important this is – to both your website visitors and to Google. Many websites have been impacted by Google’s recent August update and with these quality updates happening with greater frequency it’s more crucial than ever to review your content and significantly increase your quality score for the long-term.
 
How to protect your website’s quality score by ditching low quality content

What is the Google Panda Quality Score?

As the name would suggest, Google Panda’s Quality Score is a way of assessing how likely searchers are to find the content of a page engaging, helpful and relevant to their search. Although every page is given a unique score, Google Panda adds all of the Quality Scores together and divides them across your total number of pages to create a Quality Score for your entire domain.

This means that your Quality Score will decrease substantially for ALL of your pages in Google – downgrading the value of your best pages – if you have low quality, thin, and definitely duplicate content anywhere on your site. This can rot your site away, affecting its visibility and undermining your hard work.

The good news is that there’s a flipside to this, i.e. your Quality Score increases substantially if you are super diligent and only have valuable, higher quality pages in Google’s index. In other words, quality control your content and your rankings site-wide should increase next time Google applies their Panda algorithm, which is usually on a monthly basis.

 

Low quality vs. high quality content: What’s the difference?

The message is clear. If you’re committed to SEO and securing those top Google rankings, you need to be committed to producing great content and weeding out any less than stellar pages.

But what makes low quality versus high-quality content? How does Google decide? When auditing your pages, how do you determine what stays and what goes (or at least gets rewritten)?

Personally, I would define high-quality content as content that attracts audience engagement versus low-quality content as content that gets overlooked and ignored.

Google’s guidelines to quality content

Google gives plenty of advice about what it views to be quality content – it’s even covered in this Google Search Console course about creating valuable content.

It tells us that quality content is:

  • Useful and informative – e.g. includes location, opening hours, contact information, prices, product or event details
  • More valuable and useful than other sites – i.e. when compared to your competitors
  • Credible – e.g. includes citations, links to original research, author biography, genuine reviews and testimonials
  • High quality – e.g. includes unique, specific and relevant content that hasn’t been outsourced to other websites; free from spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors
  • Engaging – e.g. features relevant, high quality images, opportunities to comment, social media widgets and sharing options, updates, and links to related information

Google also recommends that we steer clear of:

  • Automatically generated content
  • Errors such as broken links or wrong information
  • Link schemes
  • Cloaking and other black hat SEO practices, e.g. hidden text or links
  • Grammar or spelling mistakes
  • Excessive amount of ads
  • Taking part in or promoting irrelevant affiliate schemes
  • Spam such as comment or forum spam

To help you examine the quality of your content at a deeper, more critical level Google released some guidelines around identifying high quality content back in 2011 that still hold true today.

These are the questions suggested by the search engine to provide a helpful steer:

  • Would you trust the information presented in this article?
  • Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it shallower in nature?
  • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
  • Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
  • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
  • Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
  • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
  • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • How much quality control is done on content?
  • Does the article describe both sides of a story?
  • Is the site a recognised authority on its topic?
  • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
  • Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • Would you recognise this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
  • Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
  • Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
  • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
  • Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
  • Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
  • Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
  • Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
  • Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Of course, these questions will only take you so far – you may simply be too close to your own web content to view it objectively. If you’re struggling to cast a critical eye over your site, you could always try asking a friend, trusted member of your network, or even some of your most loyal customers for their opinions.

 

Using data to assess your content

Even with different viewpoints, it can be hard to get a consensus about the quality of your content. It’s therefore helpful to regularly review the data you have at your disposal about how your content is performing. This can help you to make objective and informed decisions about what stays on your site and what goes.

 

  • Identify your least visited pages

Google Analytics – as we explored in this two-part blog – offers a wealth of information about how pages on your website are performing. A good starting point is to log in to Google Analytics and choose Behaviour>Site content>All pages from the left-hand menu. I would suggest changing the to and from dates to cover the last three months for a more balanced overview of which pages are most and least visited.

From the data you’re given, you can see which pages have attracted very few visits (although what this number is will depend on your typical traffic volumes), as well as the pages with little to no dwell time, and/or a high bounce rate.

If you have pages that have had less than 10 visits in the past three months, no dwell time when visited or a 100% bounce rate, now is the time to review them by asking Google’s questions above.

You might find that the page needs updating or rewriting to give it a new lease of life. It could be that the page is no longer relevant and needs to be removed from your website. Just remember that if you do decide to remove a page from your website, people using its URL will not find the content they are looking for. Is the information they’re seeking available elsewhere on your website?

This helpful post from Yoast explains how to properly delete a page from your website, including how to redirect visitors to the information they need.

I would also recommend reading this post from Moz about 301 redirects.

 

  • Identify duplicate content

The next step is to check your website for duplicate content. If you have a WordPress website, this can be a critical issue.

Although you may have just one page on your website about a particular topic – let’s use ‘SEO’ as our example – due to how WordPress works, you may have unintentionally created six different URLs that let people access that page, e.g.:

  • http://www.yourdomain.com/SEO
  • http://yourdomain.com/SEO
  • http://yourdomain.com/tag/SEO
  • http://www.yourdomain.com/tag/SEO
  • http://yourdomain.com/category/SEO
  • http://www.yourdomain.com/Category/SEO
  • http://yourdomain23.com/SEO-post (External website)

Google will not know which URL is the most relevant and will pick one of the six, which may not be the one you want to promote, while penalising your website for duplicate content. It is therefore imperative that you check whether this issue could be affecting your site.

You can do this in several ways.

    1. Go to Google and type ‘site:’ followed by your company’s web address (e.g. site:www.seo-plus.co.uk) and Google will return every URL that it has indexed for your site. It will take some time, but you need to work through the URLs to check whether any link to the same pages. With a WordPress site, you may typically find that your categories, tags, authors and archives are the root cause for any duplicate content issues.
    2. Alternatively, you can identify duplicate content using a free tool such as Siteliner.
    3. Log into your website’s dashboard. If you have a WordPress site and use the Yoast SEO plugin, click on the Yoast SEO Settings option and choose Titles & Metas before clicking on the Taxonomies tab (see below). Under the ‘Meta Robots’ option for Categories, Tags and Filter, change from the default ‘Index’ setting to ‘noindex’. This will stop the search engines from indexing these URLs.

Next, go to the Archives tab next to Taxonomies and make sure that your archives and authors are set to ‘noindex’ too.

Once you’ve done this, I would also recommend clicking on the Yoast SEO ‘Advanced’ option in the left-hand menu and opening the Permalinks tab. In this, select the option to redirect attachment URLs to the parent page URL and save your changed settings

Yoast SEO for content

        1. To manage the issue of duplicate content caused by multiple URLs to the same page, you should also consider applying a canonical URL tag to the web address that you do want Google to index. The canonical tag tells search engines that a particular URL is your preferred one and should be prioritised over all others. If you’re unsure how to apply the canonical tag, check out this helpful post from Yoast for the ultimate rel=canonical guide.
  • Weed out poor quality blog articles

If you’re writing blog articles for SEO purposes alone, you could be doing Quality Score and rankings more harm than good. Google’s questions above suggest that the search engine seeks to weed out shallow content that doesn’t give much value to the reader, or blog articles that repeatedly target the same keywords.

If you’re featuring short ‘content mill-style’ 300-word blogs on your site riddled with variations of the same keywords, week in and week out, now is the time to cull them from your site, or re-write the content to a greater depth.

Equally, there’s no point writing long, complicated blog posts if they don’t have valuable content and are hard to read.

My advice is to forget about word count and use as many or as few words as you need to make your point. Review your blogs by asking:

      • Does the blog have a single focus?
      • Is it well written and easy to read?
      • Are there obvious takeaway points?
      • Does the article include links to blogs on your site about related topics?
      • Can you back up and link to reputable sources for any factual information or quotes you’ve used in the blog?
      • Is the content helpful?
      • Does the article go into sufficient detail?
      • Is the article easy to skim read?
      • Do the headings and subheadings make clear what the article is about?
      • Are the images relevant to the content?

 

High-quality content will please more than just Google

Ensuring that your website boasts only high-quality content isn’t just a move that will put you in Google’s good graces and grow your website’s overall Quality Score. Your potential and existing customers will also thank you, and you should see an improvement in your conversion rates and sales.

As we’ve discussed, people want to spend time on websites that provide a good experience. They want to feel that if you give away this much value for free, they will get so much more by hiring your services or buying your products. They want to know that you are an expert in your field and that they won’t regret choosing your business over your competitions. Therefore, creating unforgettable content will go a long way to increasing your brand visibility and influence, and providing that all-important reassurance that yours is a safe pair of hands.

 

Helpful Resources

You may find the following articles and resources helpful when it comes to increasing your website’s quality score:

Were you aware of Google’s quality score and that this affects rankings for ALL your pages? What kind of content have you been experimenting with and what has reaped the most results for you? I’d love to know – please leave a comment below.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful.

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