Tips for Writing Content Discussed at the Boston SEO Meetup

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Comments (3)

By: @BrianHawkins an assistant organizer for BostonSEO.org and Affiliate Marketing Manager for Pingo.com an International calling card provider

Boston search engine optimization meetup held its 47th networking event with about 51 attendees. The event kicked off with drinks and goodies from food sponsor Todd with Keyword Advisors that provide home improvement sales leads online. The conversation was focused around content creation based on the events guest speaker @ByronWhite, founder of LifeTips.com & IdeaLaunch.com a content marketing agency.

About Idea Launch:
IdeaLaunch.com is a content marketing agency offering a full range of services including content creation, content optimization and content testing. Our portfolio of deliverables includes articles, books, case studies, content widgets, eBooks, podcasts, microsites, slide decks, webinars, workbooks and more. We optimize content with a proprietary toolset that measures performance. And we deploy A/B and multivariate testing to find the best path reader engagement and conversion rates. For about the cost of adding one staff member, ideaLaunch offers a team of in-house editors, SEO specialists, project managers, engineers and expert writers in your industry to deliver a steady stream of content assets to grow your business and offer the ROI you demand.

Content writing for the web:
“The art of listening to the wants and needs of your customers and the science of delivering it to them in a compelling way”

Presentation Notes:
The future of web content:
The new way of writing content is to do A/B & multivariable test to let your readers decide what they want to read & see. This makes the reader in control of the future of online web content.

“The only marketing left is content marketing” Seth Godin Author “The Purple Cow”

The goal of writing content is to try to sell without selling. It’s trying to provide thought leadership to push trust rather then products.

Monitor User Behavior:
Idealaunch tracks registered user behavior in there content marketing center to see what people view and download. This integrated system uses points to learn who there potential customer are to feed Salesforce with information to help its sales team position the right services.

What should I write about?

- Follow thought leaders
- Topics to debate
- Contribute to communities
- Opportunities to voice your opinion

Start by researching your customers needs & wants in creative ways. Search out keyword research tools, social media & surveys. Then the best option is to speak directly to you’re your customer service reps that are working the front line of your customer’s feedback and concerns.

How to build traffic?
You need to find opportunities to create traffic through content. Idealaunch has its own tool to look for keywords that are currently on page 2 to 4 which then help its writers to focus on additional content that could help boost its clients site rankings through internal linking structure. There tool also has a keyword cloud to push the top keywords based on variables of keyword cost, migration of the keyword ranking pattern & client suggested keyword priority. Byron then showed us a client case study of going from 100 top 10 keyword placement to 1,400 top 10 keyword placements over a course of about six months.

What to publish?
- Knowledge centers, like articles
- FAQ
- Printed books: IdeaLaunch has printed over 60 books to help leverage there position as though leaders.
- White papers
- Video content
- Ebooks which had a 68% increase in sales from 07 to 08. 113million sales in 2008
- Micro-sites: Example: Byron built a mini-site for CornelReunion.com to connect with classmates. Great for extremely focus niche.
- Webinars / Podcasts: They host a weekly radio show on WebmasterRadio.fm
- Slide Presentations on slideshare.net, sliderocket.com, slideserve.com,
- Case Studies
- Tip advice centers like LifeTips.com

See the presentation slides at http://www.slideshare.net/ideaLaunch/content-marketing-webinar

Open Q&A:

Q: What about building a micro-site, doesn’t that kill your links to your main site?

A: If you build a micro-site for links, then you’re really building a link farm. Build to add value to a micro niche.

Q: How do you pick thousands of keywords?

A: Look at google analytics & current rankings. Plus Spyfu.com to find competitor data.

Q: How do you decide what articles to write about with so many related keywords to pick from?

They decide by the weight of the client suggestions, keyword price & volume to try to help see what has the best potential to rank at the top of the search engines.

Byron then discussed the old way of content generation was to give your writer 3 to 10 keywords to write about. But you really want to build a targeted relevant article and not just a bunch jerked in keywords over stuffed into the article.

Q: What are the top 3 things you should do to get started?

A:
Step 1: Do your keyword research with tools like Keyword Discovery
Step 2: Create a blog to build your self as an industry thought leader
Step 3: Then figure out your user acquisition cost to define your goals to expand.

Q: Are metatags still important?

A: Yes, it’s important to provide all the meta tag content because search engines still use some of this data as copy for your natural search rankings.

Q: What do you do for anchor text on 200 articles?

Best tip of the night in 2 sentences

I had a “big beef” with my boss today. I had a great steak for dinner though.

If “big beef” was the anchor text link, how would the search engine bot determine the keyword meaning?

You want to surround your text links with relevant keywords. In some cases this provides more value for rankings then the anchor text link itself.

Read the event recap reviews:
http://www.meetup.com/BostonSEO/calendar/10333375/

RSVP for the next Boston search engine optimization event!

Aug. 3rd with guest speaker Ryan CEO of GourmetGiftBaskets.com
http://www.meetup.com/BostonSEO/calendar/10760112/

Sept 1st with guest speaker Chris Baggott CEO and of Compendium Blogware
http://www.meetup.com/BostonSEO/calendar/10760094/

Comments (3) Category: Content Development

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3 Comments

Comment by Byron White

Made Wednesday, 15 of July , 2009 at 5:06 am

I enjoyed speaking to this group last night. And thanks for the nice Summary of the Content Marketing presentation.

You’re a bit off with the About ideaLaunch summary in case your readers want clarification:

IdeaLaunch.com is a content marketing agency offering a full range of services including content creation, content optimization and content testing. Our portfolio of deliverables includes articles, books, case studies, content widgets, eBooks, podcasts, microsites, slide decks, webinars, workbooks and more. We optimize content with a proprietary toolset that measures performance. And we deploy A/B and multivariate testing to find the best path reader engagement and conversion rates. For about the cost of adding one staff member, ideaLaunch offers a team of in-house editors, SEO specialists, project managers, engineers and expert writers in your industry to deliver a steady stream of content assets to grow your business and offer the ROI you demand.

But your very on with the rest of the summary of information, so thanks for taking the time to compile the story of content marketing…. so thanks again for the opportunity and attendance.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 15 of July , 2009 at 5:15 am

@Byron White – Thanks for the correction, I just updated the post recap with this information…:)

Comment by Brian Hawkins

Made Friday, 17 of July , 2009 at 11:12 am

Byron – sorry for not correctly explaining your company. I’m not a content writer and should have hired your firm to do this guest post for me.

Nick- thanks for updating the about us section to help represent IdeaLaunch’s services.

See yah all next month