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Is Repurposed Content ‘Stale’?

What is repurposed content? Is it stale or can it work for you?

There are two kinds of repurposed content: Effective and ineffective. You want your content, repurposed or not, to be effective. Here’s how you can make it be.

Take your old content which has done well and rewrite it, repackage it, and repurpose it for a new medium. For instance, let’s say you have an article that has been used extensively all over the web and has done a good job of giving you solid backlinks to your website. It’s five years old and has done a spectacular job. You know it’s quality content, but it’s a tad bit old.

Take that article, update it with new knowledge that is current, and rewrite it – for your blog. Or you might turn it into a video. Maybe it would work well as an iPhone app. Choose the medium that you think would be most effective for that piece of content today and repackage it for that medium.

If you do it right, repurposed content won’t be stale. In fact, not only will it not be stale, but it could be better than ever.

The key is in carefully selecting the right content to repurpose. That content must be outstanding content in its old form. It must have been popular content even if for a short period of time. And its usefulness in its current form must have run its course.

When you do repurpose old content, the biggest danger is creating content that is duplicate. You can avert that by ensuring that you do new keyword research (maybe you should target a different keyword for the content while keeping the spirit of it intact) and by rewriting the content from scratch so that you don’t use the same phrases again. If you stay clear of duplicating your content, you can repurpose old content and make it sing anew.

Is Link Bait Plannable?

If you’re scratching your head wondering whether link bait is plannable or if it just happens, let me help you decide. It’s a little bit of both.

You can do everything you can to create the best kind of link bait on the planet and people can still not find it linkable. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. In fact, there are a lot of things you can do to make your content linkable, but you don’t have to follow the crowd. In fact, you SHOULDN’T follow the crowd.

Don’t just create content that you think people will link to because you’ve heard that certain kinds of content makes great link bait. The only real link bait that exists is valuable content.

So what makes for valuable content?

If it’s information that you can find anywhere on the Web, then don’t count on it being valuable content. Before you start creating your link bait, you should take the time to plan it. That means more than just doing a little bit of keyword research and throwing an article together. It also means planning whether or not you’ll use graphics with your article and how long your content will be, what subheads you will use, and even where you will promote your content to.

Link bait is a great addition to any website, but it doesn’t just happen like a magic carpet ride.

Fix Your Broken Links

Every website sooner or later is going to have broken links, especially if you do a lot of outbound linking.

I’m not suggesting that you should link out from your website, but it doesn’t hurt to do so every now and then. After all, if you build value for your site visitors, then they’ll return that value to you. That’s the philosophy behind outbound links. Do it, but not too often.

Still, a good thing in moderation can often lead to something getting broken. The more you link out, the bigger your chances of ending up with broken links. So how do you fix them?

First, you have to diagnose them. And for that you need a diagnostic tool.

You can pay for such tools, but you don’t have to. Google’s Webmaster Tools provides you with reports on your websites. All you have to do is log in and run the diagnositcs. Google will tell you if you have broken links.

Once you determine which links you have that are broken, go back to the web pages where those links exist and try to find another resource to link to. If you can’t find another source to link to, then you might have to revise your content and remove the link altogether.

What does that do for your website?

For one thing, it invites the search engine crawlers back to crawl your site again and re-analyze it. Then they’ll re-index it and re-rank it based on the latest crawl. That’s always a benefit.

Fixing broken links is something that you should do about once a year.

2 Things All Content Must Do Well

Do you know the 2 things that all content must do well? I mean, besides search engine optimisation?

Whether you are writing a blog post, an article, website content, or anything else, every piece of content you write MUST do 2 things really well. The same two things.

The first thing is your headline.

Your headline must be attention grabbing and make your reader open the article, blog post, whatever – and read. If your headline doesn’t induce your reader to actually read what you wrote, then it has failed. It must spark action. That action must be to make the reader read your content.

The second thing every piece of content must do well is the first sentence. It must compel your reader to read the second sentence.

The only job that first sentence has is to make the reader read the second sentence. The second sentence should force your reader to read the third, and so on. Every sentence must drive your reader to continue. If any sentence fails in that regard, then your writing fails. Back to the drawing board.

SEO is important. Social media promotion is important. A lot of marketing tactics are very important. But when your reader gets past the marketing and to your content, all of that is for nothing if they aren’t reading.

Write a compelling headline. Follow that up with a dynamite first sentence. Keep them reading or they will go elsewhere.

Anchor Text: How And Why

Anchor text is an important concept for Internet marketers to grasp. It’s simple, but sometimes difficult to achieve effectively.

The first thing to know about anchor text is that it is a phrase – the phrase you use to link from one page to another. For instance, “SEO” is the anchor text in this sentence.

Good anchor text should do two things. First, it should use a phrase that is relevant to the page being linked to. If I used the phrase “dog catcher” to link to the ASM web page about SEO, that wouldn’t be relevant. It wouldn’t make sense. And the reader would be confused. So relevancy is important for anchor text.

If an anchor text link is relevant, then it will pass good link juice and provide some help for search engine marketing.

Another thing good anchor text should do is serve as a call to action. In other words, it should entice the reader to click the link to find out what information is to be found on the other side.

You could just say “click here.” Sometimes, that’s effective. But it doesn’t pass very good link juice. So what if you want to pass good link juice and offer an effective call to action? In that case, you’ll choose a phrase that is relevant to the page you are linking to and that entices your reader to click the link.

So if you want your reader to learn more about effective anchor text, then link to a page that discusses the SEO benefits of anchor text and use that link to draw the click. It’s that simple.

How To Own Your Content

In today’s search engine marketing culture, owning your content is one of the most important things to focus on. The reason is because search engines will not hesitate to de-index duplicate content. That’s a problem for one primary reason.

Let’s say you manage to publish the same article twice on the same website, or perhaps two competing websites. You own both articles, but one is de-indexed due to its duplicate nature. That’s not a huge issue since you still have a website with your byline and a link published on the Web. But let’s look at another scenario.

You have an article with your byline and a link. A scraper takes your article and re-publishes it with a link back to their website. The search engine de-indexes your article and the scraped article gets a high search engine ranking. Now, that’s a problem.

You’ve lost ownership of your content.

There are a number of ways to prevent this from happening. One way is to insert a bit of a code into the article to prove your ownership. One thing that works extremely well is a number at the beginning or end of the article. Something innocuous that identifies you as the author.

Set up a Google Alert for that number. For instance, you could insert a parenthetical (AUTH5439) and give each article a different numerical sequence. If you ever have to file a DMCA notice, you can use that identifier as proof of ownership.

That’s just one method for determining ownership of your content and it can go a long way to discouraging scrapers.

5 Reasons To Use A CMS

Content management systems (CMS) come in all different shapes and sizes (metaphorically). Each system has its perks and one CMS might annoy you while another could be your favorite piece of software ever. But almost all CMSs do a few things really well.

If you’re wondering why you might want to use a CMS, here are 5 reasons why you should consider it.

1. No HTML – When you design a website with a content management system you don’t have to learn HTML (or any other code, for that matter). All of the design work is done for you by the CMS.
2. Easy content management – A CMS is supposed to make managing your content easier. If it doesn’t, then you’ve got the wrong CMS.
3. Search engine optimisation - A good content management system provides search engine optimisation benefit to your website. Your pages will be easier to optimise and the optimisation will be just as good as an HTML website.
4. Image management – The best content management systems make managing your images and other media extremely easy. You can upload them seamlessly, resize them as necessary, and optimise them for search.
5. Make more money – Because you’ll spend less time fixing broken HTML code, FTPing files to your server, and dealing with hosting headaches, you’ll be able to focus on the things that really matter about running a Web business.

Manage your website with a content management system and watch your online business succeed beyond your dreams.

Three Kinds Of Online Content

Web entrepreneurs typically speak of two kinds of content – website content and other kinds of content. But I’d like to suggest there are actually three types of content. And I’m not talking about breaking it down into video content, articles, etc. The three kinds of content about which I speak are

1. On-Page Content
2. Off-Page Content
3. and Code

So what signifies each of these types of content?

On-page content is any kind of content that a website owner would put on their website. It includes articles, blogs, ads, videos, photos, widgets and anything else that would appear to human eyes and sits on your web pages.

Off-page content is anything that benefits a particular web page but exists on another web page on the Internet somewhere.

By these definitions, a link on a web page that points to another web page on the same website could be considered both on-page content and off-page content. In terms of being keyword-based textual content, it benefits the page it is on. But in terms of being an inbound anchor text link, it benefits the page it is pointing to. The title attribute in that link, however, is of the other kind of content: Code.

Code is anything that is visible to search engines and Web browsers, but not to human eyes. This would include HTML tags, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, meta tags, and other kinds of “behind the scene” content that readers of your web pages cannot see.

These three kinds of content make up all the content you’ll find online. Use them wisely.

5 Ways To Generate Fresh Content

Unique, fresh content is perhaps the most important ingredient for a well-optimised website. Of course, there are different ways to create this fresh content.

Here are 5 ways to get better fresh content today.

1. Start a blog and write to it every day. Perhaps the best way to get fresh content on your website daily. You can write it yourself or hire a ghostwriter. Either way, a blog will provide your website with the fresh content it needs to stay relevant.
2. Add a forum to your website. A forum can be a great place for people with similar interests to meet and discuss topics they find relevant. It’s also a great source of relevant, fresh content.
3. Write press releases. Press releases are crawlable and often indexed by the search engines. Link them to your website.
4. Stay active on social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ – they’re all crawlable and indexable content fields. Use them to market your content and draw people back to your website.
5. User-Generated Content. UGC is powerful because you don’t have to manage it. You can rely on others to provide the content for free. All you have to do is build a community around your product or brand.

Now more than ever fresh content is necessary to stay relevant and rank well in the search engines. Build your content strategy around fresh content.

Why Your About Us Page Isn’t About You

The most confusing page on any website is probably the About Us page. I don’t mean it’s confusing for the website visitor. It’s confusing for website creators. Everyone seems to think the page is there to describe their business. That’s not really what the page is there for.

The About Us page on your website is really about what your customers need to know in order to do business with you. That’s a very important distinction.

Your customers have questions. They have needs. They expect their questions to be answered and they need to know that you can answer them. If you can’t, they’ll go somewhere else. Your About Us page should tell your customers what they need to know to determine whether you can meet their needs or not. It’s about them, not you.

That said, what information should you include on your About Us page to help your website visitors determine whether you can help them or not? Here are 5 questions you should answer on your About Us page.

1. When did you get started in your line of work? Tell your site visitors when your business opened its doors and when you started working in your sector.
2. What inspired you to start your business? What problem does your business solve?
3. Why are you different than the competition?
4. Define your service area.
5. What community service projects do you support? Be charitable and let it hang out.

If you answer the right questions about your business, your website visitors will want to stick around.