How, When & Why to use
Prior to Google’s Panda algorithm, aggregating content online was big business. This is where websites would simple gather RSS feeds, news wires, and scrape sites, posting word-for-word copies of the content on their own site. Instead of taking time to create content of their own, these sites would instead focus on link building and marketing, and the strategy paid off very well for years. However, the Panda algorithm specifically targeted this strategy.
However, republishing and repurposing content that other people have created can still be a very successful strategy. What is of critical importance is that you now add value. This can be done in a few ways. First, curating content is critically important. This means that instead of simply publishing everything that comes through a feed, that an editor actually takes the time to pick and choose content that is high quality, interesting and compelling. It is important to be discerning in what you will publish on your site. The other important thing that you should be doing is adding value by doing things like comparing and contrasting articles from different sources, editorializing articles by adding unique and original thoughts or additional facts.
Curating content is an important strategy for any blog, media outlet or thought leader. By staying on top of the most important stories in your industry and sharing those stories and your thoughts about those stories with your audience, you become a resource for disseminating information and helping people understand.
Features and Functions
Curated content should combine the following features.
- Come from a variety of sources.
- Be categorized, sub-categorized and tagged appropriately.
- If content is simply being reposted, without any new information added, then full credit should be given to the author including links back to the original site and possibly social profile links.
- Reposting content with proper accreditation is a great way to get an introduction to a writer and begin building a relationship that could possibly get them to contribute original articles to your site in the future.
- If possible, an editorial introduction and summary should be added to infuse new original content into the article.
- Images, Infographics and/or video should be added if possible.
- Social sharing integration.
SEO Checklist
Everything we reviewed at the beginning of this course in the lessons on the basics of content optimization should be applied:
- Pages should be optimized as blogs or news articles following the SEO Checklists for static content, blogs, news aritlces, images, infographics or videos as appropriate.
- Appropriate credit should be given to the original source, including rel=”author” markup if no additional content is added beyond the original article.
- If original content is added, then rel=”publisher” should be utilized, but not rel=”author” unless it is pointing to the Google+ account of the content originator.
- Curated posts should be shared on social networks and efforts should be put into building backinks.
Marketing, Syndication, Distribution, Social Engagement
For any articles that are simply being reposted, the following strategies apply:
- Add contextual links from within the curated content to the important pages within your site such as the homepage, category pages, other blogs, articles, reports, product or service pages, etc...
- Curated content is a critical component of a good social strategy. Up to 80% of what you post on social networks should not be self-promotional. Curated content can provide a good portion of this non-self-promotional social content.
- Build links back to each page of curated content on your site from forums, comments and Q&A sites is still important to do.
Aggregated and Curated Content Can
Help You Present Yourself As A
Must Follow Thought Leader!
Next In the next lesson we will discuss the power you will get and the processes you should use for creating original