Optimising articles to generate business

This article was originally published on 27 October, 2011

A single highly-linkable article can attract tens – sometimes hundreds – of links from relevant and valuable sites.  By making that article sell, you’ll potentially drive a similar number of leads that come pre-qualified and ready to talk business.  How then do you merge the practice of creating linkable content and the strategies of content marketing to maximise the value of your publishing efforts?

The core task of appealing to your market with content is to understand its needs.  Thinking about your market needs in terms of content, and not goods or services can sometimes prove difficult.  In short, your content needs to:

•    Help meet an aspect of your market’s needs through information or guidance;
•    Always remain factual and helpful and engage with your potential audience;
•    Target key stages of the buying cycle.

Relevant links from targeted sites
Addressing your market’s needs with informative content increases the likelihood that it will be “linkworthy”.  Just because a piece is informative doesn’t mean it will be highly-linkable.  It’s important that your content appeals to the most important and influential people in your market.  This means you need to determine who these individuals are, and identify what gets them linking.

Content that creates leads
Creating linkable content that meets your market’s needs is a good start, but you must be sure to sell your company.  This statement shouldn’t be taken as encouragement to pitch your products and services, but rather to write on topics that illustrate your professional competence, knowledge, or expertise along with the core values of your organisation.  You may find that in the process of communicating the values that make your organisation unique you end up with content that’s more linkable and more likely to generate leads.

Link baiting
This is the sphere in which “link bait” (any content or feature within a website, designed to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website) often misses the mark.  Especially when targeting the multitude of mass market distribution networks for attention acquisition.  Building links with content that isn’t relevant to your target market can lead to brand confusion and ineffective visits.  Though you’re unlikely to pick up links quickly, by creating and distributing content that appeals to your target market, you ensure an experience that resonates with your company’s brand, values and capacity for meeting your market’s needs.

The words you put on a web page have no life of their own until they get read.  And those same words will not gain prominence in search engines until the words are linked to by relevant, authoritative sources.  Creating compelling content is a long-term strategy that will add value to your overall goal of converting site visits into revenue.