For successful content marketing, focus on authority over SEO
Image: Mashable composite. Cienpies Design
Building authority continues to be critical in search engine results, regardless of the fall of Google's semantic authorship markup. Optimizing your meta data, headlines and being on top of trending keywords helps your news content rank. No question about that. But quality content conveying expertise, authority and trust plays a key role in gaining positive organic search results.
"Authoritative authors tend to do better in search because their content generates the kind of responses that lead to actual, present-day search signals," says Mark Traphagen, senior director at Stone Temple Consulting and a Google+ expert.
Whether or not search engines continue to evolve and incorporate author credibility as a ranking factor, authority and influencer tools enable brand publishers to have even more control over the quality and credibility of their content.
Your goal as a marketing or public relations professional is no longer to have SEO-heavy content on your brand's newsroom, website or blog. Today's goal is more about increasing the amount of powerful and magnetic content on your site while following optimization best practices and finding the right authors to create that content.
However, the archaic rules of yesterday that resulted in drab titles, flat copy and trite themes no longer apply. What's current, what's now and what can move the needle on your public relations news and marketing content clout in a positive direction is subject matter authority both the technical and human aspects of it.
At the core of any public relations framework should be the creation of newsworthy, relevant content that's leveraged on every level to reach the right audience, and subject matter experts, authority and influence should be part of that equation. Once you have authorship integrated into your brand's publishing strategy, the next step is to find influential writers to contribute to your branded content who understand and have authorship established on their ends.
The goal of most brand publishers is to have journalist-quality authors (in-house and external) who are subject matter experts in your industry. Your team of writers must lead visitors through a path to conversion through their compelling, unique content.
Finding contributors with content authority is invaluable for your brand. But, the question remains: How do you vet the authors?
Through leveraging trusty influencer tools like Klout (social-based), BuzzSumo, Inkybee (blog-based), or sourcing authors the old-fashioned way at industry events, you can certainly find the right voices for your brand's content.
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For successful content marketing, focus on authority over SEO