A Guide To SEO Timeline for Development Projects

SEO for Development Projects

If you’ve ever worked on a development project from start to finish, and you don’t operate on a fully integrated design, development, and digital marketing team, then you may be familiar with the struggle of prioritizing which SEO steps should be taken when. Full disclosure, this list does not detail how to complete each step in this process. Instead use this as a guide to keep the SEO arm of development on track so that nothing gets left behind because it was forgotten or *cringe* "we don’t have time for that."

Pre-Development

Before development begins you should start discussions about site architecture, technical SEO, such as the need for HTTPS, and defining project goals. Your initial work should lay out like this.

• If you’re redeveloping your site, crawl the old site and complete a site performance analysis. This provides a baseline that you can compare to after the new site launches.
• Talk to the content team (your designers, copywriters, and site owners) about a new site structure. SEO fundamentals are dictated by your content decisions, so you need to get everyone on the same page about what pages are staying, going, or being added to the site. Users persona development can help your team understand how each piece of the site is meant to serve its users.
• Your site structure should help you build a sitemap that the meets your content goals and establishes a strong user flow. Just be aware that you’ll likely revise the sitemap more than once during the development process, and that’s OK.
• Once you have an understanding of the new content direction, determine if you’ll be sticking with the current keyword strategy or revising it to connect with different site users or goals. If you need a keyword strategy overhaul, you’ll want to carve out time for this during the development process.
• Determine any gaps in knowledge among your team as it pertains to technical SEO – if your team is creating a custom CMS, make sure URLs don’t cause duplicate content, or ensure the right canonicals are in place so you don’t get dinged. If your team is using WordPress to build the site, make sure they know which plugins are needed to manage on-page SEO like title tags and meta descriptions. I’d also recommend creating a list of redirects you think you’ll need during this stage of the process. It may feel too early, but thinking ahead is the best way to ensure nothing is forgotten when it’s time to launch. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to make this process easier.

During Development

During development, spend time with your team to understand what challenges they may be facing or what project roadmap changes may occur during the process. You want to ensure there aren’t any surprises in terms of change of project scope or priorities that impact where you need to focus your efforts during development.

Related articles

• SEO TACTICS AND STRATEGIES YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS YEAR
• What's Next for Twitter Advertisers: Video, SEO, & Expanded Audience
• Recover From Panda? Follow These 5 Steps to Avoid Future Panda Hits
• Combining Social & Content to Earn Visibility & Earn $$$

For example, maybe your time is best spent ensuring the technical setup goes as planned. Alternatively, you may need to focus your time on a post-launch content strategy if organic traffic is the primary means of attracting conversion-ready visitors to the site.

• Revisit your keyword analysis. If you need to come up with a new strategy, now is the time to do it and ensure your thoughts are integrated into any existing or new content that is created. Spoiler alert: I bet you’ll realize you need a page you didn’t think you’d need before when you complete this step.
• Create a post-launch strategy. Understand the site goals and needs after it goes to market. Determine the plan for driving traffic and conversions during the first several months after launch. If you’re launching to a new domain or you’re concerned about initial traffic dips after a launch, consider paid media to keep traffic flowing.
• You may also want to make sure technical SEO requirements are in place so you catch anything that should be changed well before the launch.
• Measurement is a key component of any Web project, but it’s often the last thing developers are concerned with – so it’s up to you to ensure your developers are building the site to be thoroughly measured. If you can identify analytics data such as scroll depth or CTA clicks to track post-launch and you can set up tracking code with Google Tag Manager ahead of time, do it.
  
• Be your own data Quality Assurance. If you notice that a sign-up form is being coded as a single-page experience when you know that you’ll need to track users who may fall out of the funnel, suggest splitting the process into multiple steps. You can set up tracking later, or you can speak up early before you become a roadblock for the rest of your team.

Project Launch

When it’s time to launch the project, hopefully you’re able to relax a bit by using this time to double check things, rather than looking at things for the first time.

• Review that technical SEO checklist again.
• Set up tracking for buttons, scroll depth, or goals if you weren’t able to do so before the site launch.
• Crawl your site to check for 404s or any faulty redirects and fix the issues you find as soon as possible.

Post Launch

We’re never really "done" when it comes to digital marketing or SEO. After a project launches it’s time to verify whether or not your assumptions or new strategies work and make adjustments accordingly.

• Monitor your data and compare it to your baseline metrics. This information should help you determine how you can improve the user experience and positively impact conversions.
• Implement your post-launch strategy, whether than means building up site content through blog posts, launching paid media campaigns to draw traffic, or building out a marketing automation strategy. Every step of the way, make sure you’re using a variety of tools to gain user and data-driven feedback to improve your campaigns. Tools like UserTesting.com, HotJar (Note: this is still in Beta), and Google Analytics can help you gain this information.

Summary

Thinking ahead during the development process and staying connected with the rest of your team is always the best advice when it comes to making sure none of a website’s SEO needs fall through the cracks. What are your struggles or tried and true steps when it comes to ensuring SEO is smoothly integrated into development?

Source - http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2395381/an-seo-timeline-for-development-projects

Penguin, Panda – What is the Next? 10 Major Predictions

Predictions on Penguin, Panda

Twitter has been alight for previous times few several weeks with information that the newest Penguin criteria upgrade is almost prepared for activity.

For those still affected by the preliminary "shock and awe" methods applied by Look for engines some 12 several weeks ago, "official news" that a renew is on its way is fantastic information indeed, given plenty of interval of time between reruns.

We know that the deliver is about to cruise again thanks to the welcome information from On the internet search motor professional Grettle Illyes that disavow data files are now no more being prepared for this next upgrade. It’s near.

The query is, however, what will this upgrade carry to the celebration and how can web page owners prepare?

Penguin 3.0

Clearly no formal assistance has, or ever will be, given here but what we certainly do have is both information from previous times operates and also, seriously, from the modification of "sister" algorithmic upgrade Panda to help us comprehend where Penguin is going.

Panda Lessons

As we know, and can see from the visual below, Panda first released in Feb 2011 as a confusing, issue-ridden but incredibly influential upgrade which mixed out worldwide within six several weeks.

The information systems part for a narrow centered mainly on on-page aspects, however, was much more uncomplicated, as it didn’t include applying the whole weblink graph and understanding ever nuance. That intended the edition strategy grabbed speed quickly and, as skilled information professionals do, they started a sequence of more compact up-dates followed by research, edition, and modifications.

To time frame there have been at least 30 of those we know of in a interval comprising just more than three-and-a-half decades. If ever there was evidence of Google’s technique, it is there for all to see. We know then that the same is organized for Penguin, the task has basically been the actual quantity of information that has needed to be prepared to be able to get it "right" with the link-quality-based upgrade.

While Panda calculated, amongst other aspects, the rule platform of a web page and its material, Penguin has had to map, determine, and evaluate the whole weblink graph and to do that google needed help. And you thought it, that help came from web page owners and from those affected from the first five versions of the "penalty." The perform with disavow permitted looking group to make use of a large variety of other "experts" to deliver through an incredible variety of illustrations of "poor-quality" hyperlinks.

That human-sorted information set will certainly now type the reasons for the next update; a much more brilliant versioning depending on real "big data" understanding of what describes a excellent hyperlinks from a bad one. Or, more accurately, a value-adding weblink from a useless one developed to control PageRank only.

So, if we know they have used some fairly intelligent gamification methods to collect key information and help "process" the weblink graph already, what can we anticipate from an upgrade that has been a whole season in the making? Here are some predictions:

Penguin Predictions

1. Understanding Communities and Bloodlines

A key part of the next versions of Penguin will certainly be its capability to comprehend the "provenance" of any weblink value that a web page "earns" from any weblink positioning on it.

Rather than getting a weblink on experience value, it is crucial for the narrow to truly comprehend how that web page has got its own value in the first position.

It’s like understanding the record of a car you are purchasing. If it’s losing plenty of support record postage stamps and there are then also suspicious maintenance done on the body-work, you would be right to query whether it really is the audio automobile the supplier says it is.

Links are the same and in my perspective a lot of the delay has been due to Look for engines searching into the weblink graph in a way that allows an criteria to evaluate not just the value of the weblink on experience value but by looking at that site’s "history."

If you look at the weblink graph, it is created up of a sequence of "nodes" that, when extended out, look a little like this:

In almost all conditions you can track weblink value right returning to "neighborhoods" of distributed "equity" and by doing this it is possible to perform out where the "good" and "bad" ones are. Of course, like in the actual world, you get excellent and bad individuals in excellent and bad neighborhoods and determining that stage of perfection out will be part of the continuous edition procedure that we will certainly see in the arriving several weeks and decades.

The key, of course, will be getting in with the right, virtuous, audience and keeping away from those websites that have tried to activity their own value.

2. Getting More Specific

Another factor that Panda has trained us is that Look for engines prefers to begin with whole-of-site effects, understand from the information, and then use that reviews to make more focused effect.

We will see this in Penguin with websites hit at classification or web page stage in contrast to arbitrarily or across the panel. This will make verifying weblink information at that stage more essential.

3. Operating More Consistently With Smaller Impact

As with Panda, we will now see a more frequent renew, as the hard work is over. This should mean that those awaiting restoration should see caused by their perform much quicker, in either route.

And along with a shift toward page-level effect in contrast to site-wide, this should mean Penguin becomes less of a business-destroyer and more a "clip-behind-the-ear" eventually.

4. Less About "Anchors," More About Importance and Trust

Initially the algorithmic upgrade focused very much on apparent alerts such as anchor-text neglect, but as the information perform gets wiser we will see weblink relevance and hat above mentioned provenance, or believe in, come more into perform. This will, of course, carry more difficulties to those trying still to outsmart the program, as formerly "hidden" weblink systems and sector power designed from very highly effective, but unrelated or artificial, websites will be more quickly identified.

We know also that Look for engines has a new certain for Panda that also looks at anchor-text use in the perspective of keeping track of incoming weblink anchor-text as part of the on web page computation for material. That generally indicates that even webpages that are very organic "on page" may still be punished for junk if they then have a lot of actual coordinate anchor-text off web page. Another purpose to stay away from that tactic!

5. Exclusive Connecting Websites and Natural Balance

Unique IP or sector weblink depend has always been essential, but it will take on another sizing with upcoming versions of Penguin. Getting that organic stability between enough and too many for your market will be more essential. Unnatural will keep out and dark flagged, creating an understanding of opponent stability very essential. What is appropriate in one market will be very artificial in another and a wiser Penguin will quickly smell that out.

6. Hilltop

Google has lengthy organised its Hilltop certain and it would make sensible feeling for Penguin to use factor of it to comprehend believe in and relevance. For those that do not know it, the certain looks at "Expert" and "Authority" webpages, interpreting the former as a web page that hyperlinks out to plenty of other appropriate webpages to add value to an article/page, while the power is the web page connected out to.

The really useful hyperlinks are therefore those that come from professional webpages and making plenty of these is the way to position well and prevent Penguin. The only way to do that, of course, is to discuss awesome material, becoming a believed innovator and power in your area.

7. Strong Link Ratio

The quantity of hyperlinks that go into further webpages will also be considered as part of that shift to more accurate statistic. Excellent websites generate deep hyperlinks, but where there seems to be too many to a professional web page may induce Penguin problems. The more secure technique would appear to be domain-level hyperlinks and hyperlinks from professional records into believed management webpages, which will most probably be discovered on your weblog site, or within a material or sources area.

8. Do Follow/No Follow/Mentions/Shares

This may be a little bit more of a expand, and could type part of Panda in contrast to Penguin, but the connection between the variety of hyperlinks you have and the quantity your product is "talked about" on the internet is a very sensible way to confirm weblink power. It’s something I have published about formerly and creates overall feeling as a feeling examine for understanding if a weblink information is actual.

Google speaks a lot about "brand building" and one of the best methods to evaluate product is to do so via "listening" through either public or Web refers to and feeling. Tools to discover these aspects are simple enough to develop and so the might of technological innovation skills at looking organization would have no issue doing that at range.

9. Visitors Data – From Link Sources?

Finally there is the part around utilization information. We have certainly seen symptoms and symptoms of that sneaking in on the Panda part as Look for engines looks to comprehend not just what a web page, or web page, might "look" like to a spider or headless web browser. Looking at, or calculating, the quantity of "traffic" from certain hyperlinks is within their achieve through statistics and would be another way of verifying weblink top quality and relevance. After all, who mouse clicks a non-relevant link?

10. Amount of "Suspect Links Allowed

I wrote a publish on here a season ago analyzing some of the information the group at Zazzle Press had produced from latest web page restoration tasks. It indicated toward a decreasing portion of permitted "suspect" or spam hyperlinks in a information. The graph below reveals how that developed and we’ll be examining again publish Penguin 3.0 to see how far that has been taken.

What to Do Next

The upcoming is unclear and the forecasts above are clearly just that. One factor we do know, however, is that Penguin will get wiser and, having had a whole season to perform on it, the next edition will be much more accurate at doing its job: eliminating unrelated linking actions.

The broader task for those hit, of course, is identifying Panda effect from Penguin and as the two approach together, and as Penguin is mixed into the primary criteria just as Panda has been, it will be more and more hard to discover the right "fix."

For those being affected by it this simple Look for engines Charge deceive piece is developed to help.

Source  -  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2375404/Penguin-What-Happens-Next-10-Data-Led-Predictions

SEO Tactics and Strategies You Need to Know This Year

Effective Online Marketing and SEO Strategies

As search engines continue to evolve, marketers must improve their skills to keep up. According to reports 70 percent of the links search users click are from SEO. Also, inbound leads (i.e. SEO) cost 61 percent less than outbound leads (i.e. cold calling).

SEO has a better return on investment (ROI) as well. "SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7 percent close rate," according to the same report.

Now that you know SEO is the way to go, here are 11 SEO tactics that you need to know in 2015:

1. Creating Incredible Content That Earns Links

Even after all of the changes with the search engine algorithms, inbound SEO links are still the biggest influence for search engines. This is unlikely to change. On the other hand, other methods of link acquisition have changed. Earning a link from a high-quality, relevant website will not only help with your SEO but also with referral traffic, which can lead to more sales and brand exposure. Creating incredible content that people will want to share is still the best way to earn links. Every time a search engine finds your website next to your competitors, it tells them that your company is in a related niche. To get co-citation links, do a search for "best" or "top 10" items in your niche.

2. Co-Citation Links

Example: top 10 blue widgets

If you do this search and don’t find your business in the results, get in touch with the publisher and ask that your company be added to the list. Be prepared to justify why your company should be included and where appropriate, give them a summary to go along with a link.

3. Editorial Links

Editorial links can be some of the most powerful for SEO because they come from other publications in your niche mentioning your company. They can also come from thought leadership guest posts that you write and get published on third-party sites.

The easiest way to get editorial links is to create outstanding content that people will want to share with their readers. Another way is to guest post on a high-quality site that is in your niche. Be prepared to create incredible content that may be heavily scrutinized before publishing.

Interviews are another way to get editorial links.

As part of the interview, you should be allowed to cite your work in your responses. This can lead to even more backlinks and traffic.

4. The Broken Link-Building Method

Here’s another white-hat link-building strategy that can be quite effective. In this case, you’re actually helping publishers fix broken links, which can be helpful to their readers. However, this only works if your content is good enough to replace the lost content. To do the broken link-building method, you must find broken links on a site that is relevant to your niche. You then contact the webmaster with the broken link and recommend your site as an alternative to the broken link. To find out more, you can read the broken link-building Bible at the Moz blog.

5. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation can help you get fresh links by finding broken links to your site and having the publisher fix them. Examples:

• Find brand mentions about your site and ask the publisher to add a link
• Find places where your content has been used without attribution (places where people have used your post or infographics without giving you credit) and request a link from the person

According to Kristi Hines with kristihines.com, "A lot of people think of link reclamation as just 301'ing pages they have moved that still have a lot of great backlinks. But I like to think of reclamation as more than that. I like to think of it as not just reclaiming, but claiming links you deserve." In order to make this automated, you can set up a Google Alert to email you whenever your company’s brand is mentioned. You can then check that page to find out if they link to your site.

6. Link Outreach

Link outreach is a bit "old school" but can still be quite powerful. To do this, find a website that is relevant to yours and get their contact information from the site. Send them an email or call and politely ask them for link. This works better if the site has a slightly different business than yours but may share a common audience.

7. Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is nothing new, and companies have been researching their competitor’s links for years. However, by looking at the competitor’s backlinks and manually reviewing which links are worth having, you can then perform a link outreach and try to get a link from the same referring site.

8. Focus on ROI Instead of Keyword Rankings

While we all enjoy seeing the keywords rank well in the search engines, this doesn’t necessarily mean your SEO campaign is successful. It’s possible to rank number one for many keywords that have no real ROI. Instead, you should focus on metrics that bring conversions.

9. Create an SEO Strategy That Maps to an Audience

Over the past few years, we’ve lost most of the keyword data in Google Analytics and other tools. This has required marketers to change from traditional methods of SEO to create new ways of segmenting their audiences. In order to do this we must find new keywords to focus on, new ways to approach neighboring markets, and determine where our competition is succeeding with SEO and how you can do it better. The days of stuffing keywords into bad content and having it rank are long gone. Now your content needs to focus on your target persona and your keywords need to flow within the content. This is why it’s so important that content and SEO be tied closely together.

10. Optimize for Yahoo, Bing, and Others

Search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo may slowly take a bigger piece of Google’s pie in 2015. Yahoo is now the default search engine for Firefox. Safari had a deal with Google, which is supposed to end in 2015, and Yahoo and Bing are both trying to become the default search engine for the browser. As other search engines become the default Web browsers instead of Google, it makes sense to optimize for those search engines as well.

11. Mobile SEO

Mobile is becoming more popular every year. Every website should have a mobile marketing strategy for 2015 and beyond. "May [2014] turned out to be a banner month for mobile as it delivered on some huge milestones which underscored just how impressive the medium’s ascendance has been in the past few years. Mobile platforms – smartphones and tablets – combined to account for 60 percent of total digital media time spent, up from 50 percent a year ago," says comScore.

Mobile should be a core part of any SEO plan in 2015. However, you must be cautious as configuration errors caused a 68 percent loss of traffic, according to BrightEdge.

Conclusion

Creating an SEO strategy can give your company and brand a boost in the search engines. Why not improve your ROI today?

Source - http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2396193/11-seo-tactics-you-need-to-know-in-2015

Quick Fast SEO Competitive Analysis

How to Analyze Your SEO Competitors

This is part two of a series on fast SEO competitive analysis. In part one we focused on keyword research, using the competitive landscape as a foundation for strategy, understanding, and finally using search volume estimates to get clients excited about the opportunity in search. In part one the groundwork was laid for identifying areas of high opportunity, and part two we will look at:

1. Understanding search behavior and choosing target keyword categories.
2. Competing content comparison

Tools used:

• Google Sheets (Excel works)
• Advanced Web Ranking

1. Understanding Search Behavior and Choosing Target Keyword Categories

Continuing the example used in part one of Google Sites, which describes itself as a "...free and easy way to create and share webpages," it makes sense to filter out highly competitive keyword categories like business, design, and blogging. Removing these, branded terms, and unrelated terms (quick manual scan) from the pivot table from part one leaves us with an ideal list of targeted keywords, all of which Google Sites should easily be coming up in search for.

Related articles

• 10 Growth Hacks to Drive New Search Traffic From Your Content
• Fast SEO Competitive Analysis Part 3: Search Presence
• Panda Audit 101: The Roadmap to Complete Panda Recovery
• Fast SEO Competitive Analysis
• How to Gain SEO Seasonality Insights Using Google Webmaster Tools

While the filtering process can definitely get tedious, it is used as a benchmark to track ongoing progress. Time well spent if it’s going to help showcase SEO efforts over time. Boiling down the relevant keywords people are using in search and having the mindset that these are the avenues in which customers will eventually find your client’s content is also rewarding!

For Google Sites, relevant keywords people are using to find content they should be coming up for in search, is as simple as customers wanting to build/create/make/start page(s)/site(s)/website(s)/webpage(s), and they want it to befree/easy/online.

Using the filtered Pivot Table (copying and pasting into a new tab) as a template, we can begin pulling other relevant metrics and creating a dashboard, to help understand the competitive landscape of these search trends and ultimately form some solid SEO strategy.

2. Competing Content Comparison

Now that we know exactly what keywords Google Sites should be coming up for in search results, we need to understand the extent to which existing content reflects how people are searching.

To do this we can look at the top ranking search result on Google.com for our target keyword. Then limit the search to a specific domain in Google and compare.

Looking at the term how to build a web page , the top ranking result ishttp://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml in Google search results.

Limiting the same search to the google.com domain using site:google.com how to build a web page ,https://support.google.com/sites/answer/153197?hl=en is seen as the most relevant in the eyes of Google’s algorithms.

As seen above, sites.google.com doesn’t come up in search for this example of a relevant keyword, even when the results are limited to the google.com own domain. We can use this as a starting point to understand where our content needs to be to achieve our goal of eventually coming up for this search.

Automating Competing Content Comparison

Let’s apply the concept explained above to all of our target keywords. Using Advanced Web Ranking, we can pull the top 10 search results for all of our keywords, then pull that data into our dashboard using VLOOKUP.

Conclusion

Comparing the content Google sees as most important on your site vs. the Web can help you understand where your site is lacking. For example in the image above, Google Sites is seen as the most relevant page when people are looking to build a website, but not so much when they are search how to build a web page. Subtle nuances make can make a big difference, and perhaps adding a little verbiage to the target page would be enough to begin coming up in search for a whole new category of keywords.

Making sure the page you want to come up in search is seen as the most relevant when the search is limited to your own domain should be seen as step one. The goal here is to meet and beat your competition from a content perspective for all relevant keywords. In part three we’ll be taking a look at this in more detail by slicing and dicing the ranking data, in an attempt to understand exactly which competitor pages, per category/search trend, Google likes the best and why.

Source - http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2378742/fast-seo-competitive-analysis-part-2-competing-content-comparison

Writing SEO Friendly Content for Search and Social Results

Search and Social Media Writing

We’ve come a long way in the past 10 years. Hiring nameless, faceless, anonymous writers from underground sources at $25 a pop is so yesterday. Poof! No more. Garbage in, garbage out. Today’s smart brands are putting their money where the return on investment (ROI) is, investing in the growth and development of real authors. 2015 brings a new set of standards, the art of producing real, genuine, authentic, and high-quality content coming from an accredited and trusted real person with a notable byline.

Fast and furious content days are over. Search and social experimental writing is history. It’s the dawn of authenticity where bots, fakes, and frauds can’t survive. We’ve entered the era of intelligent content that is laced with smart optimization and is penned by qualified writers who have a name, rank, and serial number of credentials and influence.

Related articles

• 8 Innovative SEM Tips From Those in the Know
• 37 SEO Experts You Should Be Following on Twitter
• Content Creators Ranking Checklist: How Quality Scores Influence
• The Future of Link Building: 5 Important Messages
• 26 Free Must-Have Tools for PPC Success

Follow Google’s Right Way to Write

Where do brands begin with gaining quality content? Start by hiring writers with a reputation backed by:

• Expertise
• Authority
• Trust

Brands and marketers can gain inspiration from the E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust) concept outlined in Google’s Search Quality Guidelines when creating quality content guidelines for Web pages, social media posts, press releases, or educational guides.

After all, don’t we want to influence the quantity and quality of traffic to a website or blog from search and social? If we look at just Google search traffic, organic results dominate, receiving about 80-82 percent of its search traffic, while ads receive a mere 18 to 20 percent of search traffic. In today’s race for attracting quality eyeballs, the most influential factor can be in the writing quality of a brand’s content, down to every last title tag, meta description, and tweet.

"High-quality writing conveys expertise and trust signals," said Virginia Nussey, content and media manager at Bruce Clay, Inc. "The better the writer, that is a trust signal of their understanding of the topic."

SEO and Writing - It’s So Meta

Optimization and writing go together like peanut butter and jelly. If you think about it, it should be easier to teach experienced writers how to optimize than to teach technical SEO programmers how to write. Make it a best practice to invest in educating writers, content creators, and even your public relations team with basic SEO training. This can turn your quality content into search- and social-friendly content that can be better found in search, whether that searcher is performing a Google search or a Twitter search.

Provide writers with data such as targeted keyword phrases and trending hashtags that can help them help you optimize better. Invest in your writers with training and resources so they can deliver. Utilize reliable SEO resources that offer free guides, content, and tutorials on writing for SEO; these organizations make a living offering free SEO educational materials and tutorials:

• Hubspot
• Moz
• Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Digital Relevance

Tip: Free can cost you if the information is outdated! Be sure to offer your writers resources that are provide current and up-to-date information that follow, for example, Google’s and Facebook’s ever-changing algorithms.

The Long and Short of Content

Let’s face it - as brands and marketers we are writing all forms of content ranging from 100-character tweets to 600-2,000+-word blog or news articles. We are writing for the attention deficit mobile user and the desktop power researcher. The one thing in common is that the content, regardless of size, must be well-written and optimized to maximize the search results and social sharing opportunities.

Going for the Hail Mary of long-form content such as a case study, guide or in-depth analysis? Make sure to:

• Use bullets
• Tell stories
• Use call out quotes of some of the main points
• Keep it visual with charts, graphs, or infographics
• Think about the mobile use and have a visual slideshow version

As brands morph into news publishing-like models, it’s important to take note of what types of content work best on news sites.Experts say to avoid 500-800 word counts because it’s not long enough to have substance and too long for the average reader’s attention span. But quality content of 400 words is about what today’s social and mobile readers really have time to read. Hmmm…makes sense now that newswire services such as PRNewswire recommended word count is around 400 words.

"I recommend blog posts be at least 1,000 words in length and offer up the most detailed content," said expert blogger Ian Clary of Razor Social. "But that does not mean a 400 well-written post can’t be successful."

Pinpointing the Persona

Regardless of size, the target audience is what is important to a brand’s writer. Who are we writing for and targeting? The more specific information we know about our buyer personas, the easier it is for the writer to create content and for the marketer to properly target - ultimately impacting the brand’s results. Creating persona profiles that will illustrate who the content is intended for can create a magnetic win-win by reaching the right audience with the right message. Take Starbucks as an example - you might be writing for Sally Sales Executive who is a frequent coffee customer looking for reliable Wi-Fi and a temporary desk with a latte on the side. Or you could be writing for Stay-at-Home Dad David who has five minutes to get his java fix refill before the after school carpool. Both are possible personas for Starbucks, but both require two different types of writing style of content.

Share Words of Social Influence

If you have research and data that will help a writer include words that work best for social networks or tips in email writing, do share it with them! QuickSprout produced an infographic to help writers understand what words work best in different social media networks:

• To gain more retweets on Twitter use the words "Free," "Retweet," or "New Blog Post"
• Facebook users respond best to words such as "Inspires," "Discounts," and "Submit"
• Looking to land a deal on LinkedIn? The best words to include are "On Time," "Accomplished," "Created," and "Researched," but skip the overused words such as "Creative," "Responsible," and "Strategic."
• Google+ users take action on words such as "Share," "Promote," and "Increase."

User-Generated Content

When going for the trust factor, your brand is actually not your best and most reliable source of content for your customers. It’s the reviews that matter most to today’s social-savvy consumer. So although you want to invest in the most qualified writers, your best writers don’t actually have to be hired guns; they can be your biggest brand advocates who are ready and willing to write reviews for your products and services.

Less Is More

Filling space with junk content results in junk audience or no audience. It’s most important for businesses to spend more time writing less content that's better content. So that means reduce the editorial calendar work and publish less with an eye on a more focused execution.

When Facebook finally admitted that organic reach was down for many businesses, they explained why by pointing out that Facebook is dedicated to show only the highest-quality content and reducing the amount of spam-like content in the newsfeed.

"Organic content still has value on Facebook, and Pages that publish great content — content that teaches people something, entertains them, makes them think, or in some other way adds value to their lives — can still reach people in News Feed," noted Facebook’s Brian Boland in Facebook’s Product News.

Bottom Line: The search engines and social networks are drawing a line in the sand and calling for quality content. This means it’s up to brands and marketers to invest not just in hiring quality writers, but also training and educating writers in SEO best practices, content styles, and trends as well as being included in the brand’s research process and findings such as buyer personas profiles.

Source - http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2378743/writing-your-way-to-the-top-of-search-and-social-results