If you’ve been following the articles on this website, you know we’ve been hitting the post-Panda SEO scene quite a bit.
This is no accident. See, even though it’s been seven whole months since the Panda Update, we still haven’t figured SEO out. In fact, we’re just BARELY scratching the tip of the iceberg. We do have progress, though, and in this blog, we share the latest and most up-to-date SEO information as soon as we get it.
As time goes on, “backlinks” are becoming more and more obsolete. Instead, social media “likes,” “+1’s,” and “tweets” are taking over – slowly but surely.
Now, before I go on, I’d just like to say we don’t have 100% concrete PROOF social media votes will completely replace backlinks. In all reality, backlinks will probably never go away. This is because no matter how much social media grows, websites will still link to each other.
The main focus is definitely being shifted, though.
So now, instead of creating SEO strategies focusing on getting links, we need to find SEO strategies that’ll help us thrive on the new “social net.”
Content curation is one such strategy.
What is Content Curation?
Content curation is a relatively new SEO strategy. It involves collecting the most interesting social information within your niche and posting it in one place. This way, when people in your niche are looking for content, they can simply go to your website instead of spending hours digging for it themselves.
This strategy is relatively new because, before the massive explosion of social media, it was more difficult to find as much interesting content for any given niche.
Although it’s easy to see how casual web readers can benefit from someone doing content curation, what’s in it for us business owners and internet marketers?
The New “Link Bait”
In SEO, one of the most popular strategies is “linkbait.” This is writing content that’s controversial or unique and interesting within a specific niche. The idea is once people see your unique and controversial content, they’ll link it to other people to see what their thoughts are on it.
Link baiting is such a well-known strategy because it produces phenomenal results when done correctly.
With content curation, we’re essentially doing the same thing. The difference? Instead of links, we’re looking for social votes. Thanks to how social media pages work, once a user “likes” a specific page or article, they get instant notifications whenever that page is updated.
In other words, if you use content curation to provide the most interesting content in your niche, people will “like” it to receive instant updates whenever you update the original website.
Think of it as an RSS feed. When people like a blog, they’ll subscribe to the RSS. This way, whenever the blog is updated, they’ll receive an instant notification.
This is exactly what’s happening with content curation, except since social votes are beginning to count towards SEO authority, when someone “subscribes” to your website, you’ll also receive some search engine juice.
How to Curate Content
Fortunately, content curation is relatively easy to start doing.
The first step is to identify your niche. If you’ve already done keyword research for your website, you’ll already know your “main keyword.”
The next step is to plug that main keyword into the various social media websites. Think Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. When you search, look for the most interesting content that shows up.
Lastly, make an article related to all the most interesting topics and content popping up in your niche at any given time. Within each article, you should link a variety of social media websites to ensure your readers are always getting a large variety of new content.
Of course, you should also make sure you have a badge for your Facebook page, so when people realize they can read interesting content from your website at any time, they’ll give it a “like!”
Providing Value: the New SEO Mindset
Although many people look at SEO as a way of “gaming” the search engines, it’s important to realize you can’t rank well unless you provide value. By providing value (in the form of content curation, for this article), we attract customers to our website.
Since Google and other search engines are making the push towards counting social votes more than backlinks, whenever you provide value, the chances your website and articles will get “liked” or “followed” increase dramatically, therefore increasing your overall rank in the search engine positions.
Although we still don’t know everything about the post-Panda world of SEO, we’re making steady improvements.
To get instant updates whenever we learn something new about the big G, like SEOSiteCheckUp’s new Facebook page!
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