This is a curated recap of the weekly #SEOchat on twitter, in case you missed it. There is a LOT of useful insights in these tweets, but it goes so quickly you might miss it! Here’s my best effort at bringing all those answers and questions into one place.
How do you define content strategy?
Content Strategy is a well-thought-out approach to sharing ideas & Influences to connect with others & promote the sale of goods and the use of services.
Bill Slawski
I would say [content marketing] definitely extends past the website and digital realms. Billboards are content. Magazine ads are content. Etc. #seochat
Dan Patterson
Well, certainly it extends to social as well. But larger than that I think it’s your perspective on the industry you’re in and the content that they want.
Michael Buckbee
What’s the biggest blocker to scaling content production?
“One of the biggest problems in meeting Content Creation is in coordination – Getting everyone on a campaign to work & succeed together Often the best ideas are brainstormed ones, which means multiple participants & everyone on the same page makes the dream work.”
Bill Slawski
“Producing the content brief at volume and reviewing work from writers before publishing.”
Drew Larose
Keeping the bar high as you scale content is a huge challenge. Yet, we can’t let our audience down or we’ll lose them, right? All the extra time reviewing and editing feels redundant. But Google has high standards these days, so we need stay on the ball.
Jonas Sickler
“Writers. Def writers! So hard to find good writers and therefore maintain quality and cadence”
Mordy Oberstein
tips on where to find great writers? Freelance or for hire full time?
I’ve worked with a boutique communications agency that had former journalists on staff. They interviewed real people from the vertical about tactics. Better information and a better read with original quotes. Certainly original.
Mark Alves
In addition to finding good writers, I also feel that we need to set realistic deadlines for pieces. Expecting someone to write well-researched, structured content that is engaging all within 2 hours is too much of an ask
Vasundhara Mohan
Goals and deadlines keep folks on track, but they must be manageable in order to avoid burnout. Writers are invaluable and should be appreciated for their craft
Jonas Sickler
How Do You Integrate SEO In Your Content Strategy
[B]y creating content that aligns with business goals and puts the user first by offering them the information they are looking for (answering their questions, etc)
Celeste Gonzales
Look beyond keywords for topic/entity authority. Group keywords into topics, divide topic keywords into sub-topics that better reveal intent. Optimize content within striking distance of authority. Use authority content to elevate valuable content that is struggling.
Marianne Sweeney
I’ve worked with a boutique communications agency that had former journalists on staff. They interviewed real people from the vertical about tactics. Better information and a better read with original quotes. Certainly original.
Mark Alves
What are the key elements to include in your content strategy?
Be careful with the usage of personas! I once asked a CEO who used their site, and a couple of weeks later received a booklet in the mail with 17 different personas, helpful for TV, Radio, and Print, but not so much for the Web. It was nice work and it was useless
Bill Slawski
Marketers like their fancy personas, but sometimes a lot of the information can be useless or worse – misleading it’s really important for SEOs to have a seat at the table when personas are being created. How folks search is rarely in a typical persona.
Jonas Sickler
[A] page and post prune audit as well as asking the client questions about their services. we have to know what content we are working with first before we can decide to create anything new, AND we need to understand what they do
Celeste Gonzales
Content audits and pruning are so important to a well organized content strategy. Especially if you’re planning to scale quickly. You’ve got to know what’s already there.
Jonas Sickler
Competitive breakdowns can really help answer the why and how
Jon Larson
I included all these in my most recent content strat proposal and broke them up into planning (goals, USP, personas, audit, journey+relevant content), creation (calendar), delivery (content mktg), governance
Vasundhara Mohan
It’s getting a lot easier- the overlap between the 2 has really narrowed for me. Trying to predict user needs goes really well with creating a quality experience and in aligning to specific user intents
Mordy Oberstein
What Technology Do You use to scale your content publishing efforts
We often use Slack to brainstorm and share ideas when we conceive a campaign, which works well with a remote working force.
Bill Slawski
SEO platform for authority content (and on what), what is opportunity content (and how to elevate) and possible investment content to build authority on high-value topic areas. SEOs have a lot to contribute to neural information retrieval. And that’s for another chat
Marianne Sweeney
How Do You Amplify Or Promote Your Content?
Internal linking between semantically similar content items works best for how search engines are ranking content these days.
Marianne Sweeney
That’s All Folks!
I tried to capture all of the relevant threads that forked off, and attributed with links to whomever participated. If you want me to update, change your attribution, or add your own quote to any of these prompts, hit me up at @seoarcade
More SEO Insights From Twitter
We gather insights from Twitter and slack that can help you lean into your SEO. Here’s some recent wins:
Regex in Google Search Console is your key to uncovering keyword insights
Don’t include Thank You pages in your XML Sitemaps
Steps to drastically improve your /blog main display page
Create an SEO “Forecast”
This crazy sitemap trick can help your indexation
Change your keyword research when optimizing small local business clients