3 Foolproof Techniques to Prepare Your Content For 2015

The New Year has been rung in: 2015. Can you believe it? I can’t either. I’m sure I will be saying the same thing when 2016 is on the horizon, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. If anything was learned in 2014, it is that high quality content is not going away. It seems like content is continuing to dominate both the search engines and digital marketing strategies, with its value only continuing to increase. It’s safe to say that content is not a trend or ploy to pull traffic in your direction; it is an online marketing staple with nearly limitless potential.

When it comes to preparing your content for 2015, you might be asking yourself exactly which direction you should take. Content marketing has several layers, and they nearly all need to be tapped into in order to yield the best results.

To help you prepare your content for the New Year, we are breaking down the essential steps to getting your content on track in 2015. Furthermore, we will provide you with a guide to finding the best content to share with your readers, and we’ll throw in a few helpful how-to’s on getting inspiration and producing the very best content in your industry.

It’s another big year for content in 2015, and here are the best 3 prep techniques for reaching your audience and converting that content into cash.

Foolproof Technique #1: Starting 2015 With a Bang . . . And an Audit

So, audits are not exactly fun, but they are a very logical starting point for preparing your content for 2015. There are several strategies for performing content audits, and the best approach really depends on how what tools you have access to and the platform that you use.

The Manual Audit: Overview of Keywords and Word Count

If your website contains a high volume of content, start with an Excel spreadsheet that lists the URL of every individual page. Take note of the keywords used within the content, the date it was published, and the word count. This is an opportunity to discover what content on your website needs improvement, whether it is from a word count standpoint, or your content is simply outdated and no longer relevant.

Broken Links Bring Down Page Value

Another essential step in your content audit is to identify broken links within your text. Google considers websites with broken links and bad information as low quality, which can ultimately hurt your website search rankings. Whether the link is internal within your own website or outbound, clicking on all existing anchor text can save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

Identify Content Gaps: What’s Missing?

Although you are analyzing all of the existing content on your website, there is another audit approach that’s just as important: content gaps. Identifying content gaps will help you understand where your website falls short in terms of content. For example, you built out your website several months ago, but forgot all about adding an About Us page. Believe it or not, Google looks for signs of a legit business through your content. If you are missing pages such as About Us or Mission Statement, it could potentially hurt your rankings.

Identifying content gaps is also important from a competition standpoint. In fact, this is yet another way to help determine what’s missing from your own website. When you are visiting your competitor’s website, take note of the content that they have available. What do they have that you don’t? Whether it is a blog or a staple subpage, competitors can leave clues to what you are missing. In order to stay in the content game, you need to know where your content gaps lie.

Extensive Guide For Manual Content Audits

Manual content audits can be grueling, but luckily there are extensive and helpful guides that can help you through the process. In particular, Moz has a pretty in-depth guide that explains the process and purpose of a content audit. Following this guide can give you a clear understanding of the content audit.

If you are looking for reading that is a little bit lighter, here is a shorter version of a content audit breakdown with some informative instructions.

Performing Content Audits: Wordpress Edition

Wordpress is a large-scale content management system that is used by amateurs and professionals alike. It’s the perfect solution for publishing content, as well as implementing SEO techniques with built-in plugins like Yoast for Wordpress. Yoast is a highly effective plugin that helps content marketers properly optimize their websites using the best SEO practices. If you happen to be using Wordpress as your content management system, you can easily perform your very own content audit with the help of this tool.

Using Yoast as a Guide to Audit Content for 2015

Yoast is perfect for filling in the missing pieces of those little meta tags. Meta tags might be small in terms of content, but they are essential pieces to solving the content auditing puzzle. Your meta tags in Yoast can give clues as to how your audience views your website in the search engine pages, and they even impact your click-through rate that influences your web traffic.

When you’re looking at the Yoast plugin, take note of your keyword and meta description. The first step to finding the best keywords for your website comes down to thorough research; this can be achieved with industry-leading keyword research tools such as SEMRush. Once you have your targeted keyword in place, be sure that it is used sparingly within the body of your content. The Yoast plugin also tracks keyword density, which is another vital factor to successfully ranking your content on Google. A high keyword density in your content can lead to trouble when Google’s Panda update rolls around.

Your focus keyword should be primarily present in your meta description. Since the meta description is so short, you only need to use your keyword once in this instance. Always fill out your meta tags; they may be tiny, but they can make or break your click-through-rate.

Questions to Ask Yourself During Your Audit

Asking key questions during your content audit can drastically change your results. The right questions will help you discover content gaps and find out how you can increase the overall value of your content. While you are combing through your content page-by-page, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does my content serve the needs of my audience?
• Does it educate, engage, and entertain?
• Is it too long or too short?
• Does it carry a consistent voice?
• Do I contribute valuable information to my industry?
• Am I using effective visuals?
• Is it still relevant today?
• Would I personally read this content or share it with friends?

Unfortunately, these questions cannot be answered with a simple auditing tool. In order to get relevant questions to these answers, a content marketing expert should review your content for best results.

Foolproof Technique #2: Curating Your Way to a Better New Year

Curating content in itself isn’t exactly new, but the importance of curating content has received a big push as of late. In case that you’re still in the dark on the wonders of curating content, it is the act of collecting and organizing high quality content to distribute to your audience.

The key to successful content curation involves discovering content that has that engagement factor while adding your own valuable comments. Copying and pasting a link is kind of curating, but thought-leader curating requires your own expert insight.

Now that you understand the goal of curating content, here is how you can start your curation strategy off with a bang:

 

• Invest in content curating tools to escalate efficiency. While manually curating your content is an option, the downside to this is the amount of time that it takes. Browsing the Internet for hours on end is out of the questions for most marketers. You already have enough on your plate, and there are just not enough hours in a day to curate.Fortunately, there are highly efficient tools that help make your life much easier. One of those tools is called Scoop.it; it gathers all of the top content in your industry at the click of the button. From there, you can cherry pick the best results to share with your audience.
• Add curating to your content calendar. Curating content is an efficient way to supplement your existing content. Sometimes it can be difficult to come up with original content week after week. The goods news is that content curating can give you a break from brainstorming; all you need to do is add a bit of expert input.
• Build new relationships with content curation. One of the advantages to curating content in the first place is establishing new connections. Tagging or tweeting your sources from your curated content is the perfect starting point. The goal is to get your primary sources to recognize your brand, and hopefully your sources can return the curation favor in the future.
• Establish Credibility With Content Curation. If you are looking for a fast track to establishing credibility, content curation can help move you to that level. Sharing helpful and relevant content can get your audience accustomed to perceiving you as an information source. Furthermore, ensuring that your curated content is from credible sources also adds to your credibility while helping your rankings in the search engine.

Best Tips For Curating Content for 2015

The beauty of curating content is that it consistently serves as a fresh content stream. In order to keep churning out relevant curated content, there are several techniques to tap into the best content available in your industry. Other than using curation tools such as Scoop.it, here are some manual options to help you curate.

• Explore social Q&A websites. An often-overlooked content curation source exists within social question and answer websites. One popular example is known as Quora. Quora is a community-based Q&A website that hosts thousands of questions and answers. These can easily be churned out into curated content.
• Dive into Google News. Depending on your niche, topics regarding your industry might be discovered in the news section of Google. If your industry happens to be news-heavy, this is the perfect opportunity to curate content on a daily basis.
• Dig on social media. Find the popular pieces of content that others are sharing. Content that is heavily shared and re-tweeted can give insight as to what is hot and trending in your industry. Use this to your advantage and share with your audience, along with added an original thought or two.
• Explore different content types. Curated content does not always have to be in the form of a blog post. Consider curating content like infographics, slideshows, and videos. This will stretch your curated content base while offering more data to your audience.
• Tap into the unknown. There is an incomprehensible amount of content on the Internet with millions of sources at your fingertips. Instead of always reaching for the same old sources, expand your horizons and dig into the unknown. There are plenty of content sources with untapped potential, such as Digg’s newsletter The Daily Digg, and even your own e-mail inbox. Here’s a great list that highlights 17 unique places to discover new content.

The future of curating content is looking bright in 2015. It is helpful for filling up your editorial calendar, establishing credibility, posting content on a regular basis, and becoming a thought leader in your industry. If you have yet to implement content curating into your content marketing strategy, 2015 is a great time to start.

Foolproof Technique #3: Creative Strategies For Original Content

Brainstorming unique content ideas is a tough gig. It’s difficult enough to compose an engaging blog post, but coming up with a new idea for every blog can turn into a huge hassle. Although your content does not need to come from your own brain 100 percent of the time, at least 65 percent of your content should be original to your brand. That’s a lot of pressure, even for a professional content marketer.

As tough as it seems, I’m going to let you in on some content secrets of the pros. Fresh topic ideas are everywhere if you know where to look; and I’ll tell you exactly where to find them.

• Overview your competitors’ content. Your competitor’s content can give all kinds of inspiration for new ideas if you know what you are looking for. Similar to a content audit, dig deep and find what content they have that you don’t. You can also review their existing content and see what options you have for building off of their content. Just remember: if you choose to build off of your competitor’s content, it needs to come from an entirely new angle and offer new insight.
• Explore the comments area of your competitors’ websites. The comments section can be a gold mine of new content opportunities. Analyze the feedback and take note of any unanswered questions. Those questions can turn into a brand new blog post for your own company.
• Take advantage of Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator. I personally love this tool and recommend it whenever I get the chance. To use the tool, enter 3 nouns that pertain to your industry. The generator tool then gives you a list of ideas blog topic ideas. Keep in mind that not all topics will apply to your niche, but it can help you branch off in other directions.
• Repurpose old content. There’s a chance that you may already be sitting on top of new content opportunities without even knowing it. If you have spent the last year perfecting your blogging skills, now is the time to try something new. Take those old blog posts and present the information in a new light, such as a slideshow or infographic.
• Google’s auto fill search helps fill in the gaps. Type in a search phrase or keyword for your industry into Google. Google’s auto fill search provides an additional list of opportunities that you can turn into new content. The auto search feature showcases key phrases that are commonly searched, so there’s no question that there is an audience for your new topic.
• Don’t forget YouTube. YouTube is video based, but it is the second largest search engine with over 6 billion hours of content. That means you could watch content on YouTube for 684,477 years without stopping. Still think there’s no opportunity on YouTube?

2015 is here. Quality content marketing opportunities are nearly limitless for the upcoming New Year, and having a strategy in place will help maximize your efforts. With these foolproof techniques in place, you will be well on your way to dominating your content for 2015.

 

Featured photo credit: Tomwang112 / iStock