State of Search 2015 – Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measure on Content That Grows Your Business

arnie

Arnie spoke on ways to create the right content specifically with the goal to increase your business. The 5 types of content that really work with this goal in mind are:

Cost
Problems
VS
Reviews
Best

We break that down here with more specific information about each type of content and how best to utilize it:

Cost – Blog posts regarding the cost of the product can be very much searched for and can result in a lot of sales. Users often search for the cost of products and services so make your site the one with the answer.
Problems – Don’t be afraid to discuss potential problems in your industry. Even if it may show flaws it will bring traffic to your site. You will be the information provider which is helpful and appreciated by visitors.
VS – Content that compares products. Some of this type of content can be the highest performing. Be sure to include the “vs” in the title, eg “running shoe vs hiking shoe”.
Reviews/Best (I lost track on where one ended and the other began so have lumped them together) – A piece titled “Who are the best pool builders in Richmond, VA?” The content created describes a bunch of companies, including direct competitors of the site who is providing the information. Some might be afraid to do this, however, this site ranks for its competitors brand 🙂 That’s a pretty great situation! Keep in mind not to go too far with this tactic though, no need to link to the competitors. It’s also ideal to list the companies in a bullet style list rather than numbered as to avoid the look of a rating system.

A different way to discover what content you should be creating is to look away from simply keyword research and look to search queries both via Google suggest and also locally via asking your staff what the questions they get asked are. This approach will help you to find ideas for good content that you know will give you good leverage as you know your client base is looking specifically for that info.

Ways to use Google suggest and YouTube for both B2B and B2C:

B2C – Google suggest – go to Google and start to type in queries to see what suggestions come up, maybe start with searches based on the info you have gathered from your in house staff. Do the same on mobile, usually the queries are essentially the same but good to look. Also, enter the title of any copy piece or content that you are planning to create and enter it into Google to see what results you get, through this you can see if it’s potentially a good opportunity or if someone has already addressed it how you can do it better.

B2B – Google suggest – do the same as B2C and also remember to scroll to bottom of the results page to see “related searches”. Look at what the results are for these searches to find great opportunities for content. Another great free tool is KeywordTool.io.

YouTube – Generally people are looking for entertainment or “How to…” videos. YouTube can give you great suggestions as to what users are looking for.

Collect data from your chat support if you have one. You can find good content ideas there. This is where your client base goes to get help when they need it, you will easily see where you could add content to offer better information.

Ultimately in the end no matter what you do the question should be, “Are you generating leads and gaining revenue?”, because that needs to be the goal with all of your content creation. Create content that people are actually searching for. Don’t ask “What can we write about?” ask “What are people asking or searching for?”

Arnie suggested following the hub and spoke model with your content creation, create a piece that you can spread out but keeps bringing the user back to you.