Content, content, content. That's all I hear...probably because that's what I am always saying. Content! I think people don't fully understand me when I tell them let their content do the work work for them. Usually, it's the other way around. People write content to post on their blog, for creating a page to put adsense on and to write articles. These are all very good ways for you to use your content. What you need to do is create not just content but Content That Works (CTW). This is something I created to help me keep my writing goals in mind.
CTW is content that either creates a buzz or is used to start a conversation, so to speak. It's content that gets people involved in what you are writing It could be positive, negative or neutral. It's a way of thinking. How many times have you written an article just so you can submit it for backlinks? I think just about everyone involved with SEO has at one time or another. But how many of those articles gave people something to really talk about? Not too many, I would assume. The same goes for messageboards, blog posts and other places where you can use CTW.
We all know content spam is bad. But that doesn't mean you can't give people on a blog a reason to see your site. Who is the most popular person blogging in your field? I bet he receives a lot of hits. You can steal some of those hits and gain more readers for yourself. The key is to have knowledge of the topic and give people a reason to leave and see your site. It could be an article you wrote or a podcast you made related to the topic. If your opinion differs from other bloggers and you can back it up, people will flock to your blog or site out of pure curiousity.
Articles are the best way to use CTW. I know we all have written some not so terrific articles. Why was that? Were you pressed for time, short on ideas or perhaps you just didn't care? The more you care about what you are writing about, the better your article will be. What was the message? Their was a message, right? How attuned are you to what people in the industry you are writing for want to read? I wrote an article about how to spam Google and get away with it. It really had nothing to do with spam. The title alone, however, generated a lot of buzz. That article is one of the the most posted articles I have written to date. It not only created a buzz, but it created traffic. People on message boards discussed it. Some agreed with it, others hated it. The bottom line is, it served its purpose by creating buzz.
Do you frequent messageboard? Are your posts with CTW in mind? Anywhere you can write something that other's see is a place where you can potentially gain a new visitor, sale, listener or notoriety for yourself. All if these things are important. I know, we all want backlinks. We want high rankings and we want to brag that we are on the top of Google for our keyphrase. That's fine. But, with every algorhythm change their is a risk of your methods not working quite as well as they use to. Or, maybe you get banned, or overrun by your competition. Whatever the case may be, as long as you use CTW with everything you write, Google and all those other search engines can never take that away.