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Grow Your Audience and Rank Higher by Recycling Content
This is going to be a good one – recycling content – my favorite way to get a blog post rolling. In fact, like most of my posts, I’m going to demonstrate the recycling of useful content to grow my audience and rank in search.
Growing My Audience is Getting Easier
Most anyone who practices content marketing has the same goal – audience growth. The first and foremost, but also the hardest way to do this is by producing unique content that no one’s seen yet. (A great viral marketing tact.) The second best way (in my opinion of course) is to recycle others’ content – creating, improving, building upon, or clarifying an intended message with that content. “Well isn’t that illegal – to copy and paste?” Sure it is – if you don’t credit copyrighted sources, which should be done regardless of copyright. I know I’d balk if someone got credit for something I did and did better because of ti without mentioning me….
In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about this specifically! The idea is to provide old resources or original sources in a new or better way – creating unique value for your audience. Especially since the release of Panda, Google has been “up all night” working on ways to detect “unique value” and reward site owners for it. In my previous post about creating unique value for readers (cited above), Eric Enge gives us a hypothetical example of what unique value is. Very simply: Unique content is not necessarily “brand new content” but any content that provides a new reason for an audience to digest it: unique value.
Rand’s WBF On Content Marketing – Recycling Content
Content Marketing Tips to Grow Blog Traffic
- Make old content your own. You can’t just copy and paste. Take an article or video, image, or other work and share your opinions, build on a view, or clarify a message.
- Obviously, create your own content. If it’s your blog, we want to hear from you – not what you’ve copied and pasted from another site. If you’re recycling content, use it to help you write a post, don’t make it a post. Better yet – write an entire post. On your own. Yes – I know it’s hard, but at the very least, we know it will be completely unique and of your creation. Make sure to add some thing in your post that gives it value (something new or different) to the user if you’re writing on a highly discussed topic.
- Make the content diverse and use other mediums. Many SEOs and bloggers around the world think that Google has some sort of preference to text. This is NOT the case. For the sake of your readership and your insanity – throw in some images, video as much as possible, and any other mediums you can think of. The more you have – the better. Google loves it all.
What do you think about recycling content? What are your ideas for growing a blog audience? How would you rank higher using traditional content marketing methods? Share it in the comments!!
Meditation Can Help Grow Your Business
It’s been two days – two whole days since I last blogged. However – it was a good rest and now I’m back up and ready to send you some awesome words of wisdom about how to grow your business with meditation. Yes, you heard me. Meditation.
Meditation with Andy Puddicombe
WOW! This is quite the inspiring TED talk! Before watching Andy’s presentation I had always thought of meditation as some sort of hippie or “asian”/”monk”-like practice. Jaded views I know. I apologize, and I have reformed, setting times in the day to meditate as a method of stress-relief and focus.
In this TED talk, Andy Puddicombe walks us through the process of “How to Meditate”. Take a few minutes to listen to “All it Takes is Ten Mindful Minutes” and really think about what he has to say – really think about it. It may just change your life.
How To Meditate – All it Takes is Ten Mindful Minutes
My Favorite Quotes About Meditation
When did you last take the time to do nothing? Just ten minutes, undisturbed. And when I say nothing – I mean absolutely nothing. So, that’s no emailing, no texting, no internet, no TV, no chatting, no eating, no drinking, no reading. Not even sitting there reminiscing about the past or planning for the future. Simply doing nothing. I see a lot of very blank faces.
We’re talking about the mind. Our mind – our most valuable and precious resource through which we experience every single moment of our lives. The mind that we rely upon to be happy, content, emotionally stable as individuals, and at the same time be kind and thoughtful and considerate in our relationships with others. This is the same mind that we depend upon to be focused, creative, spontaneous, and to perform at our very best in everything we do. And yet, we don’t take any time to look after it.
Although a great number of people try meditation at some point in their lives, a small percentage actually stick with it for the long-term. This is unfortunate, and a possible reason is that many beginners do not begin with a mindset needed to make the practice sustainable.
Important Tips of How To Meditate
- Make it a formal practice. You will only get to the next level in meditation by setting aside specific time (preferably two times a day) to be still.
- Start with the breath. Breathing deep slows the heart rate, relaxes the muscles, focuses the mind and is an ideal way to begin practice.
- Stretch first. Stretching loosens the muscles and tendons allowing you to sit (or lie) more comfortably. Additionally, stretching starts the process of “going inward” and brings added attention to the body.
- Meditate with Purpose. Beginners must understand that meditation is an ACTIVE process. The art of focusing your attention to a single point is hard work, and you have to be purposefully engaged!
- Notice frustration creep up on you. This is very common for beginners as we think “hey, what am I doing here” or “why can’t I just quiet my damn mind already”. When this happens, really focus in on your breath and let the frustrated feelings go.
- Experiment. Although many of us think of effective meditation as a Yogi sitting cross-legged beneath a Bonzi tree, beginners should be more experimental and try different types of meditation. Try sitting, lying, eyes open, eyes closed, etc.
My Thoughts on Meditation and How I Plan to Use It
I have for a long time assumed that stress was normal – just a part of life and that one must deal with it and move on. While the latter part of that statement is true – stress is normal, and it is a part of life – it does not mean that we have to “rub some dirt on it” and get on with life. I’ll be honest – there’s a fair amount of stress in my life right now and I’m ready to try anything to subdue it. Some of it is self-inflicted, things that I choose to stress over, battles that I consciously choose to fight with myself and others. I see this in myself, I see it in others and I have four words to say about it. It’s time to heal.
I’m Going to Use Meditation to Bolster My Focus and Relieve Stress
During the day (usually towards the afternoon) I get so sluggish – so incapable of intelligent thought, that I just want to give up and go home. Just go to sleep. Maybe take a shower to unwind. Relax the muscles. I’ve learned that while it can momentarily distract me, it does absolutely nothing to alleviate any of the original thoughts or fatigue coursing throughout my cerebral cortex. I am now convinced that meditation is the key to this. I am prepared to take myself – and by extension my business, to the next level. It’s incredibly obvious to me now, and has been before, that this stress that clogs my brain slows me down, allows me to forget important meetings and obligations, and is largely the cause for my occasional bitterness and discontent.
What to Do: The Leap Into Future Success
If there’s something you’re going through – at any time during the day – and you need to unwind, or focus, a task or feeling that you need to power through, an argument you need to think over, a decision that requires reflection: I suggest you try meditation. I am. Are you?
Google Says Press Release Links Don’t Work
WRONG! Google’s head of Web Spam, Matt Cutts has never said that links in press releases do not pass pagerank. What he actually said was:
I’m appalled (I’m really not – there are some gullible SEOs) that so many SEO professionals would spin up in reaction to such a simple – non-declarative statement, and simply decide to believe that it means links in press releases no longer count. Check out the original thread yourself.
In a recent Search Engine Journal article, Alan Bleiweiss expresses a legitimate concern for some SEOs ability to accurately assess statements about search algorithms and expresses the deep-seated issues with digital press releases.
Alan Bleiweiss:
The problem with press releases, of course, is a problem common to most any marketing task that myopic SEO “gurus” turn into spam. Press releases are just one example. On any given day, there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of crappy content filled press releases that aren’t really press releases at all, but are purely filler content designed to push links out to the world to falsely prop up site rankings. And most companies that sell press release services either offer no editorial control, or weak, easily manipulated editorial guidelines, so most of that garbage goes out, polluting the web.
Worse, countless sites exist designed to scrape press release content, intentionally or ignorantly, to fill up content on their sites “because Google likes fresh content”.
Alan makes a great point – black hat and some grey hat SEOs have single-handedly, heavily polluted press release distribution networks with endless amounts of useless drivel in a weak attempt at obtaining anchor text rich links from high profile news outlets. While it’s debatable on how effective they are, would you not disavow those ill-intended press release links if you were Google? I sure would.
Sending Out Press Releases, More Than Links
If you’re sending out a press release – the idea is for people to see it, so I’ve listed a few quick tips on how, when, and why press releases are necessary.
- Only send a press release when there’s news worth releasing. Rather than sending a press release about how cool your SEO company is, send one detailing new partnerships, acquisitions, special market reports – anything of actual importance. Extra link opportunities is not a reason to send a press release.
- Keep the content unique, informational, clean, and purposeful. Press releases should be of your own writing – published nowhere else, clean and edited for professionalism in the faces of thousands of potential readers, and designed to make the reader act. “Learn more” “Call now” “See our report here”
Unique Content with Unique Value is King – Interview with Matt Cutts
They need to ask themselves, what really is their value add? – Matt Cutts
There has been much debate over what makes content unique in the last few years. “Can I reword other content?”, “Can I post others’ YouTube videos?”, “Can I copy and paste quotes or important parts of other content into mine?” are just a few of what is an extensive list of questions concerning how unique content needs to be to perform in search results. In an interview conducted by Eric Enge last year, Matt Cutts very specifically explains the importance of unique value and why certain unique content may not rank, due to lack of such value.
Matt Cutts and Eric Enge Discuss Unique Value in Content
In a very simple example using “Frogs” as the search term, Mr. Enge sets up a search scenario involving the same content presented uniquely on several different websites, each not being what the searcher is looking for. Here’s that caption:
Eric Enge:
“The scenario is one where a user searches on “frogs”. The first result looks promising, so they click on it, and they get something that looks like this:
However, they don’t see what they want, and they return to the search results and they click on the second result. Here is what they get:
The resulting page isn’t a duplicate of the first, but the information provided is the same. So they go back and click on the third result and get yet another non-duplicate page that still does not have what they want. At this point, they’re very frustrated. It turns out the information they’re looking for is what frogs eat, and they’re not finding the information they’re looking for.
The reason I use this example is I am trying to show clients that being non-duplicate is not enough, and they need to do more to expect to rank in the search results.“
Matt Cutts:
That’s absolutely right. Those other sites are not bringing additional value. While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with what these people have done, but they should not expect this type of content to rank.
Google would seek to detect that there is no real differentiation between these results and show only one of them so we could offer users different types of sites in the other search results.
An Example of What Unique Value Means in Terms of Content
I find this interview very interesting – and what Matt says is similar to much of what Rand Fishkin has been preaching for quite a while now. Unique content is all great and wonderful, but what is content without value to the reader regardless of whether or not it’s unique content? For example:
- Say that you’re looking for tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress website. You search and happen to find a good, in-depth article detailing very specific methods to speed up your website’s load time.
- This type of content isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, so instead you head back to Google to find a wonderful, 3 minute video tutorial series broken up into individual, graphically represented steps.
- This has value to you because you learn better via visual and auditorial mediums than through text. (Just an example.)
- This unique content serves the same purpose, with the same outcome(s), just presented in a different manner that makes it valuable to the reader. You.
Important Quotes from Matt Cutts’ Interview
Matt Cutts:
If it is already a crowded space with entrenched players, consider focusing on a niche area initially, instead of going head to head with the existing leaders of the space.
Find something that the entrenched players do not do well, and focus on that. Establish a reputation in that niche, become a leader in it, and then expand from there.
One great example of this is hipmunk.com for travel. They offer great visualizations of what your trip is going to be like. It’s a fantastic UI, and it’s attracting the attention of a lot of people.
Matt Cutts:
Regarding the concept of link building: “It segments you into a mindset, and people get focused on the wrong things.”
It leads them to think about links as the end goal. It’s important to think about producing something excellent first. If you have an outstanding product, world class content, or something else that sets you apart, then you can step back and start thinking about how to promote it.
Sharing Video with Email Can Bring Big Results
Sharing video through email can bring huge returns if executed correctly. When you email someone – it’s a very direct form of communication. Add efficient contact methods to engaging content like video and you’re in conversion heaven. Ask yourself this: “If a big-box store sent me an email about a new product they carry, and it’s full of descriptive text and images… would I click learn more?” Then go one step further and think: “Would I be more likely to investigate if all I had to do was watch a video?” For most people – the answer is always video. That said – check out the latest video marketing tutorial from Chris, detailing how to share your video through email.
Cool Tips for Sharing Video in Email
- Get to know your current audience. If you know who you’re talking to – you can find out who they socialize with and leverage their connections in social media.
- Keep it short and sweet. Keeping your videos short and to the point will keep viewers watching and engaged – giving you the opportunity to capture their conversion.
DIY Office Video Studio Setup Tutorial
Video can be incredibly useful to business, particularly when done in a series or as product videos geared towards increasing conversion. However, making video can just as expensive and technical as it is helpful. So, with the help of Wistia, I’ve brought in some video tutorials designed to make the video production process as smooth and affordable as possible.
Turn Your Office Into a Video Studio
In this short video tutorial, Chris shows us how to turn a conference room or office into a video studio.
Tips for Office-Based Videos
- Set a backdrop. Use a solid colored background, easily accomplished with paper, as opposed to the same boring white wall everyone else uses.
- Use studio lights. Seal the room to light as much as possible and use three equally spaced and angled lights to get the best image.
- Amp up the audio. Speak clearly and don’t rush. Don’t forget to dampen audio reverberation by hanging reverb panels or blankets/cloth for clear audio.
- Leave it set up. If you can dedicate office space to being your video studio, leave it set up. This will make video production attempts much easier and efficient.
Unique Content is Important, So What Makes Content Unique?
WOW. This is probably – no – definitely my favorite Whiteboard Friday video in almost a year. Last Friday Rand chose the topic on “Unique Content” and what about content makes it unique to Google. He goes in-depth describing specifically what parts of a page are considered content and what exactly makes that unique content.
For my team and I, our SEO copywriter is like a hand is to an arm – an extension of the body, a part of every day life. If you cannot budget in a copywriter, you need to find someone on your team – or yourself – to consistently create new content where possible and uniquely share other’s content, adding your own unique value to each post. Whatever that may be – from opinions to images or video commentary, there needs to be identifiably unique value in the content you publish online.
Important Quotes About Content Uniqueness from this WBF
For SEO purposes, search engines like to filter out what they view as duplicative content, things that are exactly the same. They never want to show you a set of results where result two, three, four, and five are all exactly the same article or are essentially the same three paragraphs repeated with the same photos embedded in them.
The first thing that I always like to talk about when we get into a discussion of content uniqueness is that content, when we talk about the content that the engines are considering for this, we’re referring only to the unique material on a page. That excludes navigation, ads, footers, sidebars, etc.
Uniqueness applies to both internal and external sources. Copying either one can be trouble. It could be that these are other pages on your site and these are other pages somewhere else on the web where this content exists, and you’re taking from those and putting those pieces on your site. That can be a problem in either of those cases.
However, when I say that, what I don’t mean to say and what I know a lot of people get confused about in the SEO world is this doesn’t mean that you can’t take a paragraph from Wikipedia and put it in a bigger article that you’re writing, or cite a blogger and include a couple of phrases that they say, or take a piece from New York Magazine or from the Wall Street Journal, from Wired, or wherever you want and take, “Oh hey, I’m going to caption this, and I’m going to have a little clip of it. I’m going to put a video that exists on YouTube already.” That’s not duplicative so long as you are adding unique value.
There’s this imagination that exists in the minds of folks in the SEO field, and has for a long time, that there must be some mythical percentage. If over here, “Oh, this is 100% duplicate and this is 0% duplicate, 100% unique and this is the 50/50 mark, there must be some imaginary, magical, if I just get to like right here at 41%, that’s the number. Therefore I’m going to create a huge website and all my pages just have to hit that 47% mark.” That is dead wrong. Just totally wrong. There’s nothing like this.
Bloomberg and Business Week are constantly producing the same articles. Business Insider will produce articles from all over the place. Huffington Post will take articles from places that writers submit, and it’ll be published in different places. People will publish on one site, and then they’ll publish privately on their own blog. Sometimes Google will list both, sometimes they won’t. It’s not about a percentage. It’s about the unique value that’s provided, and it’s about a very sophisticated algorithm that considers lots of other features.
Duplicate and low value content, because of Google’s Panda update from 2011, Panda means that low quality content, duplicative content that exists on one part of your site can actually harm your overall site.
Savannah SEO Experts Are Few & Far Between
Note that I say *SEO experts. There are plenty of people in Savannah that claim to be top-notch SEO professionals who’ve made their clients rank for ‘huge’ keywords like “Savannah Lawn Care”. Firstly, ‘Savannah Lawn Care’ – really much of anything with Savannah in it – is hardly a ‘huge’ term. Call me when you get your client on the 1st page for ‘Cupcake Classes‘ nationwide. Second, Savannah SEO specialists aren’t the only people in the industry who claim to be something they’re not. Unfortunately.
When Hiring an SEO Expert in Savannah:
It bothers me that so many SEOs tell hyperbolic lines of how they got their clients thousands of new visits. Ok, so maybe they did, and maybe they aren’t lying, but was that in a few months’ time or a few years? Was it page views or unique visitors? Folks – when you hire an SEO, you need to be prepared. Don’t let them fool you – don’t be the next JC Penney. Below I’ve listed my top 5 tips to hiring an SEO expert – especially in Savannah.
My Top 5 Tips to Finding the Right SEO Professional
- Check to see if their site has a portfolio. Do their clients rank well for any of the terms they listed? Do they list any? Do the testimonials sound hand-written or too good to be true?
- Call in and ask for a 30 minute consultation. If they can’t devote 30 minutes to try and sell you on their service – they either don’t know what they’re doing or they don’t have time for you. Either way, it’s a disaster.
- Do your research. Ask as many questions as you can and make notes. When home or back in the office, double check their answers online through top SEO forums like the SEOmoz Q&A Forum.
- See where they rank. Does their site rank on page 1 for the terms they target? (This isn’t the best because most SEOs are too busy helping their clients rank well to manage their own site.)
- Do they have any reviews? This goes for any service or product-based company. If they don’t have reviews, it’s usually for a reason. If you don’t find any online, don’t be afraid to call in and ask for a reference or cold-call their clients if you can.
These tips are essential to weeding out the wannabe SEOs of the world. If ever you’re in doubt – feel free to ask me. The Savannah SEO expert.
Matt Cutts in TED Talks: Try Something for 30 Days
I don’t know about you, but I have a big issue with creating new habits. It’s really hard for me, and it’s the most discouraging thing to be really excited about a new daily routine or other goal, only to have it crushed by the ingrained regularity of every day life. In this TED Talks video presentation, Matt Cutts (who happens to be Head of Google Web Spam if you didn’t know), talks about his experience with trying new things for 30 days in the attempt to eliminate bad habits or start good habits.
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Vide Transcript: Matt Cutts TED Talks: 30 Day Challenges
A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American Philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit – like “watching the news” – from your life.
There’s a few things I learned while doing these 30 day challenges. The first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture every day for a month. And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30 day challenges, my self confidence grew.
I went from a desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work – for fun. Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that adventurous before I started my 30 day challenges. I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days.
Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000 word novel from scratch in 30 days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’ve written your words for the day. You might be sleep deprived, but you’ll finish your novel. Now, is my book the next great American novel? No! I wrote it in a month. It’s awful! But, for the rest of my life, if I meet John Hodgman at a TED party, I don’t have to say “I’m a computer scientist.” No, no. If I want to I can say “I’m a novelist.”
So here’s one last thing I’d like to mention. I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There’s nothing wrong with BIG, CRAZY challenges. In fact, they’re a ton of fun. But they’re less likely to stick. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 30 looked like this.
So here’s my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days. Thanks.
