((This is a continuation of our series of posts about why content is your best investment as a business. To view the entire guide in reverse chronological order, click here)
Keyword Articles
Keyword articles, also known as SEO articles, are a type of content that uses strategically placed keywords and key phrases (usually focused on one per article) at varying densities in order to trick search engines into overvaluing their content. By placing a specific keyword X number of times throughout an article, search engine algorithms read the content as relevant to the keyword and reward it accordingly.
Keyword articles can be integrated onto your website, but they’re more valuable as part of an article marketing campaign (posted on other websites with a link back to your site). Keyword articles have three benefits:
First, they may rank well in searching engines for that specific keyword allowing your company to garner more hits.
Second, search engines often rank websites based on the keywords of pages with incoming links – so if an external website with a specific keyword points to your website, your website’s ranking for that keyword will improve.
Third, all relevant incoming links help your company improve its search engine rank, so each keyword article represents another addition to that pool.
Keyword articles often have a short shelf life, and while a quality copywriter can integrate these keywords seamlessly into your content, you may not want keyword articles on your website as they are often less engaging to the reader. However, keyword articles are extremely useful for article marketing, and a great way to receive immediate hits and boost your search engine rank.
Blog Posts/News
While it’s debatable how fair or useful this is to the online marketer, many search engines want to see that your website is changing. They reward websites that add fresh content and keep their websites updated with new information, even if it is adding a page or two once or twice a month.
Most companies do this with blogs, and while “blog” may be one of the ugliest words in the English language (tied with “gargle”), it’s easy to see why they are so popular. Blog content can be short, it may be less labor intensive (although higher quality content is still better), and you can update it any time you see fit.
Some companies do news posts instead, as these are more professional and allow them to avoid the word “blog.” It’s just an awful, awful word. Other companies simply add more articles to their informative article section/pages often, creating more and more static pages on their website until they are fresh out of content ideas.
All of these represent additional ways to add pages to your site, and each of them provides you with more opportunities to receive hits through long tail keywords.
Other Types of Content
Other types of content include authority articles, question and answer pages, product descriptions, and testimonials.
- Authority Articles – Authority articles are extensive articles about a single topic, for example “101 ways to save money on gas.” They’re often extremely long and rarely contain keywords, but if they have content that’s relevant to readers they’re excellent for link building, because other websites will link to your authority post in order to share information with their readers.
- Q&A Page – A question and answer page is any single page dedicated to some very small blurb, often to answer a question or define a term. They’re more valuable to readers than they are to search engines, but they do add pages to your site and may help with some keywords or search terms.
- Product Descriptions – Product descriptions are exactly as they sound – a paragraph or two about every product you have. Product descriptions are an important part of building any website, but if you have an eCommerce site, product descriptions may be one of the most valuable ways to enhance your current site and improve your SEO. Unique product descriptions are a rarity in the online world, so search engines often rank websites with unique product descriptions higher than websites without them.
- Testimonials – Testimonials are one of the few types of content that a copywriter or SEO expert cannot write for you, but testimonials are pages like any other, and as such they will help you add depth to your website and potentially improve your search engine ranking.
