If you have heard that content marketing is dead, you need to think twice about getting any other information from the source that is telling you that. In my opinion, there has never been a better time to focus on quality content marketing – written text or even songs or video. Today, we’re going to take a look at why marketing with content is far from dead as a long term strategy. I’m feeling generous, so maybe I’ll drop a few tactics as well.

Content Marketing Defined

Basically, content marketing is defined as using content to attract visitors, customers and others to a brand or website. The quality of the content and the frequency at which it is released as well as the channels used to get it out to people are all important.

Content marketing is not something that appeared with the Internet, but the world wide web makes it easier for more people to benefit from marketing with content because it can be easier to create online – without expensive print costs.

The trick is using all that saved money to buy or produce better content, but this is usually not what happens unfortunately. Below we are going to take a look at quality content marketing, including some specific tactics and tips that you should keep in mind when employing these proven methods to help your website.

Quality Content Marketing

One of the important things to remember when using content for marketing is that you want to make sure you use high quality content. If you use inferior content (like spun-stories for example), what are the real chances you are going to engage someone and want to get them to come to your website? Not very good.

On the other hand, if you are using great content that is not only unique but also entertaining and full of useful information, there is a good chance you are not only going to attract new visitors to your website, you are also going to be able to keep them there. If they really like the content, there’s a good chance they will bookmark the site and return or even recommend it to all their friends – which is the real payoff for content marketing that is done right.

Here are some tips to think about.

• Quality over Quantity – It may seem like you are hearing this everywhere these days – especially post-Panda – but there’s a reason for this! It makes sense and it can really help your SEO efforts if you put it into practice.  In the past brute force SEO methods that relied on quantity worked, but more and more it has become easy for Google, Bing and others to simply devalue mass web spam littering useless links all over the Internet. (Ever wonder why there are so many services to backlink your backlinks?!)
• Practice Makes Perfect – Whatever niche you are in, it is going to take a while to figure out exactly what your audience wants from you when it comes to content. Making it easy for visitors to get in touch with you and let you know what they want is the easiest way to get this information and use it to create great new content. Putting content up is practice in a way, allowing you to

Tactics for Marketing with Content

Here is a look at some short term tactics you can use to increase the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

•  Avoid Spinning - If you think blanketing the Internet with thousands or hundreds of thousands of spam pages that are simple spun copies of an original text is a good idea, you must be trapped in 2005. While the technique worked to varying degrees after 2005, that was the beginning of the end for a lot of duplicate content as the search engines really began to crack down on web spam.
• Avoid Spamming - In addition to not spinning stories, you should also avoid spamming or polluting the Internet in any way possible. While it is easy to justify it in your mind – for some people – you need to think long term and the effects that polluting the Internet can have on your brand or website.
• Do This Instead – If you stop buying link packages and SENuke blasts on Fiverr for a while, you should have enough money to pay a content professional enough money to come up with quality content that can really turbocharge your content marketing.

There are many other tactics and techniques that you should be using, but the main point is that focusing on content and not just getting links is one of the best long term SEO moves you can use to succeed. With good content marketing, the links are going to come as a side effect (and look more natural, which is important.) If the links do NOT come, you need to increase the quality of your content.

While you can buy more content from Asians and others at a penny a word or less, do you really want your visitors to see that and think of you or your brand? And beyond that – even if you are using them on Web 2.0 properties – will it be too long before they’re found out and devalued as links and end up just being another dead page on the Internet taking up space and using up bandwidth?

Whether you think content marketing is dead or not, we would love to hear what you think. Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. Additionally, if you have some tips that we missed or something you do that you would like to share, please leave a comment below and let us know!

I would say Alex, but I don’t want to get sued. Still, Latent Semantic Indexing is a great topic that I want to go into a little more. While not as advanced as a $500 question/post, we are going to go a little beyond the basics that you have seen elsewhere. You should expect that from Lease a SEO, however.

 Basics of LSI for Content

In the past, to some, LSI is a myth (or even BS) when it comes to SEO, but to me it always made a lot of sense. As with any tool in the SEO’s arsenal, it can be overused or abused, of course, but it is a good way to get variations on content while staying on topic and theme.

LSI stands for latent semantic indexing. According to the Latent Semantic Analysis Project at the Colorado University Boulder website, “Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a theory and method for extracting and representing the contextual-usage meaning of words by statistical computations applied to a large corpus of text.”

Basically, it is a way to compare documents (web pages) and see while are similar. The data can also be used by search engines to analyze and categorize web pages. Google used LSI for Adsense when it first appeared years ago. Since then, the debate over whether LSI is used or not for organic search results raged for a while in the blogosphere. Today, it’s known that it is used (at least in part) in creating Google and Bing SERPs.

Back to the Future for LSI

The thing is, LSI has been around for a while. In fact, even before the Internet we know today it was being bandied about as a means to categorize and access texts and documents on computers. While some say that LSI cannot scale to the size needed to use it on the Internet, if any company could pull it off it would be Google.

In 2009, it was announced that Google search was semantic.  Times were changing in the SEO world (as they always have), but the speed of changes began to leave some of the players (Internet marketers) unable to keep up. Additionally, many started to look at LSI as the magic key (along with keyword density of 1.24%), and this was a bad thing for them.

As you may or may not know, Google uses hundreds of “signals” to rate web pages and rank them in the SERPs. Additionally, they are constantly rolling out changes to their software and bots to stay one step ahead of the SEO crowd – all of them good and bad. Because of this, relying on just LSI as a magic bullet isn’t a good idea.

Related Words & LSI Technology

The Charlie Rose of SEO (Aaron Wall), has a great post on Latent Semantic Indexing. In it, he goes over the definition. He also shares some insight on how it applies to Google.  The post linked was from February of 2005, but it still contains a lot of good information that is relevant today. (This may be one reason that it is ranking so high for terms related to this topic.)

Also be sure to check out his Patterns in Unstructured Data, which is a very easy to read summary of Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. Wall is very good at not holding back the punches when it comes to reporting about Google and what they are doing in the SEO world. At the same time, he knows what he is talking about and any research of latent semantic indexing should include him!

LSI silo structure

Over at Noble Samurai, they have a good write-up on LSI. They define LSI Silo Structure as, ” …categorising content in a logical keyword structure, and grouping content on similar topics together, in a way similar to what search engines expect to see.”

They also go into debunking myths about LSI. The thing is, even they’re not sure whether or not the big G uses LSI for finding the best organic search results. When it comes to the SERPs, Google has been pushing more and more organic space “below the fold,” making a top listing even more important for some.

This is why I think LSI is a good thing for your content and can help give a quality signal. However, it is not something that will work wonders all on its own.  Still, something like a LSI silo structure for a new site (or a site redesign) sounds like a great idea to me.

LSI in 2011, 2012, and Beyond…

If the world does not end in 2012 as the Mayan’s and others have predicted, there is a good chance that LSI will continue to play a role in SEO. While it may not be the holy grail that many seek, there is a good chance that using it will help make sure you are following other “good ideas” when you are putting together websites and also fine tuning them for better performance. Latent semantic indexing may not be the holy grail or magic bullet that some hope it will be, but it helps build a solid foundation for any website or long term SEO campaign. (Notice I said longterm SEO campaign. Spammers usually work hard to get a top spot but fall quickly as their method or technique becomes copied and loses its value…)

If you have any further questions about LSI or SEO in general, feel free to leave a comment below and we will get back to you with an answer or at least another way to look at the problem. Whether you have had success with LSI or still think it’s a myth, we’d love to hear from you. Drop your thoughts in the comment box down there and let us know.

Stay tuned for more…

Yes, a new year is almost upon us. The 2011 holiday shopping season is here and websites – retailers and affiliates alike – are still either scrambling or putting their plans into place last minute … again. To help with the 2012 holiday shopping season (it’s a little too late this year) I have some tips and techniques and guidelines you can use for better content marketing in the years ahead.

12 Month Content Marketing Plan

The exact specifics of your twelve month plan will vary depending on your niche, of course, but this is a good place to start.  Even if you do not think you have a tie-in to a holiday like Valentine’s Day, you may be able to find a way to fit it in.

1. January – Begin studying content from last year to see what keywords and phrases are getting traffic and if possible which of that traffic is converting or turning into dollars. In January you should plan out the next six to twelve months of content for your website. You can always add more, but you want to have a game plan to start with.
2. February – Valentine’s Day is big this month, but it’s also a good time to start thinking about tax returns – and what people are going to be doing with their money.  You will also want to make sure that 30 days into the new year you are still on track for your content schedule and are publishing as much quality content as you can.
3. March – Seasonal weather will have different effects in different parts of the world, but those in colder climates may start thinking about spring content at this time and getting visitors in that spring mood.
4. April – Spring fever is really starting to catch on in some geographic areas, and this is a great time to kick out content.
5. May – Graduation and other events happen frequently in May, allowing you to create content around them.  This is also a good time to begin concentrating on summer traffic and visitors. Summer is a time when traffic is lower for some sites, although others may experience increases in traffic during the warmer months. It all depends on the niche.
6. June – In online marketing, you usually want to stay about three months ahead at least. So around the end of June and into July, you want to start thinking about Halloween and holidays. Yes, you want to start this early. While others start earlier in the year – on January 1, 2012 – you want to make sure you don’t go too far too fast with Christmas too early in the year.
7. July – The summer months are low traffic and revenue for some, but this is not a time to rest on your laurels. You may even want to consider increasing the frequency of your publishing during the summer months – especially July – so you don’t lose that many visitors/traffic.
8. August – By August you should already be starting your winter holiday content – getting articles written by experts in your field and then having them go through an editor to make sure they are high quality. If you can get a third person – a designer – into the mix, you can usually get a really good piece of content about any topic imaginable.
9. September – This month you want to start your Halloween marketing more heavily while still thinking even further out to Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas and New Years. With so many big holidays in a row so close together, it’s usually a time of high traffic and sales for many different websites.
10. October – If you have done everything right, your Halloween content from last month is ranking and you’re still adding a post a day. If you can’t find a Halloween hook to your theme or niche, just make sure you are increasing the number of quality posts you make per day or week during October and all of Q4.
11. November – Well into holiday and Q4 traffic, this is a good time to take stock of how the year has gone and start planning for the next year of content. You still want to make sure you maintain whatever posting schedule you have come up with.
12. December – During the Christmas and New Years holidays traffic at many websites increases, and it’s a good idea to make sure all visitors are getting fresh new content. Even if you have an ecommerce site you can and should have a blog that you can add new information to on a daily or even weekly basis.

Other Tips for Content Marketing

Here are some other tips for quality content marketing in 2012 and beyond.

• Quality over Quantity – The biggest thing you want to remember is that you want quality over quantity any day of the week. This will be even more important in the months and years ahead.
• Freshness and Relevance – Especially after the latest big Google change, freshness and relevance of your content is important on many levels.
• Interesting and Unique – In the past being unique alone was enough, but now you need to be interesting with your content.

If you have any of your own thoughts or ideas, leave a comment below and let us know. Next week we are going to continue with a few more great topics. Until then, let us know what you’re thinking. We really care!

Quite a title, huh? Captain Quality here. Yes, I’m back after a day.

I guess we should start here when we are talking about quality content. You see, when you’re talking to a reader – trying to turn a casual reader into a loyal reader – it is important to keep talking.

You want to make sure you do not just throw out fluff that you pay a penny a word for someone to write about – someone who perhaps does not even know anything about the topic. Is that the way to treat a reader?

If you are honest with yourself, the answer is going to be no.  So, already we have two key elements for good content. It is consistently given and it should be written by someone who has intimate knowledge and/or passion about a subject.

Are you going to be able to buy that for pennies a word? Most likely not. While you may get lucky and find someone in need of fast cash who has the knowledge of your topic and the skills to write it all out eloquently (not to mention being able to give it a sales pitch tone if needed.)

The chances of getting someone to produce “quality content” – which readers love and will share (attracting natural links, which are good) – at pennies a word is very slim. The question becomes, however, is the extra money and effort worth it. While in the short term it may be difficult, in the long term the quality content is going to attract readers that will be loyal to your brand (or website – there’s another post there, the difference between running a website and having a brand…) And beyond being loyal, if you are lucky they will also become passionate.

And when people become passionate about something online, it is easy for it to spread quickly like wildfire. If you know anything about SEO, you should know that incoming links are good. Over the last few years, however, the quality and consistency of the links have become very important more than the sheer quantity of links. A large number of links is easy to fake with spam, but low numbers of consistent and quality links from authority or trusted websites (in the eyes of the search engine) are difficult to fake. (Note I didn’t say impossible.)

Qualities of Quality Content:

Here is a short list of some of the more important elements of quality content.

• Trusted Source – While you may not have a brand built up (there’s that word again – expect to hear it a lot more), you want to make sure you come across as a trusted source of information. This can mean anything from making sure you don’t have too many ads on any page to making sure certain types of ads do not appear. For visitors and potential readers, the quality and degree of trust of a website is important. And more and more people are getting better at being able to identify a “legitimate” or trustworthy website.
• Beyond Just Unique – As I mentioned before, you want to make sure you go beyond just making sure you meet the MINIMUM requirements for unique content. You want to go beyond that to really get unique and useful content. There is nothing new under the sun, but if you can solve a problem or present information from various sources together better, you have a good chance of attracting a lot of eyeballs – and even transforming some of them to loyal readers – the goal of quality content.
• Consistent Frequency - You do not necessarily need to post 5 or 10 or any set number of times each day or week, but you should be consistent at least on the week by week level. If your readers do not know when you are going to be writing next, they may forget about you. Always remember, however, to keep quality level up even while producing more. This is key for many reasons we will go into more at a later date.
• Pleasing to the Eyes – Beyond being simply informative or something that contains “just the facts,” you need to make sure it is easy for the reader to digest. If something is difficult to read, there is a good chance you are going to lose readers right off the bat, which isn’t a good thing if you are after the coveted loyal readers. Make sure the presentation of your content is top-notch.
• Timely and Relevant – Especially with the new Google Fresh Update, you want to make sure your page(s) are always up to date with the very latest information – no matter the topic or niche you are in. When writing or creating content, you want to make sure it has the most relevant information. This will not always be the latest information on a subject, but sometimes recent news could be helpful even for a more evergreen piece.

There are more facets of quality content, of course, but these should get you thinking – and hopefully adding a comment below.

Great Content About Quality Content

I guess this post itself could be a little better, but I’m warming up I guess, as I try to learn more about my audience – the readers out there refusing to leave a comment for whatever reason. Still, perhaps writing a top-notch quality post about quality content would have been better.

As I mentioned in the beginning, however, it’s also about consistency and frequency. Online publishing may seem easy, but it actually an intricate dance, a balancing act of sorts. Once you get a pulse on your readers, however, you are going to have a great chance of being able to produce high quality content that people want to devour and even link to from social networks or their own websites.

And this is what SEO is really all about – long term quality over short term quantity.

Your Thoughts on Quality Content?

As always, we want to hear from you, our loyal readers. If you have any thoughts about quality content, please leave your thoughts below and share your wisdom with the world. In the 21st century, writing is a two-way process sometimes. This is a very good thing for everyone involved. The more you interact and comment, the more I will be inspired to keep producing even better content.

Stay tuned for more … soon!