What [insert topic] means for [insert your market]?

What [insert topic] means for [insert your market]?

November 1, 2012

 

November 1, 2012

 

What [insert topic] means for [insert your market]?

WRITTEN BY

Tony Hallett
Managing director

Tony set up Collective Content in 2011 so brands can more easily become publishers and tell stories. This built on 15 years in media, from reporter to publishing director at Silicon Media Group, CNET Networks and CBS Interactive.

I was tempted, trust me, to exploit the very thing I’m about to criticise. How often do you see a headline along the lines of: “What the Oscars mean for content marketing”? Quite a bit, I’d suggest.

Some subjects are valid. This past week it is conceivable that big topics such as Sandy or the US general election have all manner of implications for all sorts of areas in business.


What irks is when someone clearly just monitors what is trending on a platform like Twitter.

A cursory glance today and the mercenary might be writing pieces called:

What the PPI scandal means for Facebook marketing

What 1st of November means for headhunters

What [sometimes dazzling Portuguese winger] Nani means for dairy farming

Some companies – content farms, mostly – have based whole business models on this approach.

The idea is to use this type of search engine optimisation (SEO) to drive more traffic to your site. It could be about using any type of content, not just conventional stories, how-to pages or site copy for products.

But at least two things are important:

  1. Remember search engines (OK, you mainly care about one of them) are changing all the time What gets you traffic today might hurt you tomorrow – what you post endures, in both good and bad ways, so be careful about trying to game anything.
  2. Don’t think SEO is the same thing is content Good content will help SEO but content created purely for SEO purposes often reads poorly and stands out to something more important than Google, namely the human audience you want to do business with.

This site isn’t the best SEO’d in the world. But then we set out, at the start of this year, to get most of our readers via social media, newsletters and a few other means.

I’m so glad.

Next time: What the Collective Content website reveals about SEO. (Only joking.)

Here are some useful links:

Why Paid Search for B2B Companies is Dead (or Dying) [SeachEngineWatch]

Ex-Googler: “To Please Google With Your SEO, Forget About SEO [SearchEngineLand]

6 Big Myths About SEO [Inc]
*photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

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