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The Sydney Business Month has officially started and last week I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by Lynda Dyer. We had a lovely time talking about Google rankings and how good quality content impacts a website’s place in search engine results.

How do you make your website stand out from all the other billions of websites out there?

I hear many of my clients panic when I tell them that content marketing is the solution. They almost immediately start asking questions like, “How?”, “Why?”, “How often?”, “When?”, “How could I come up with constant ideas for content?”.

Well, during the Sydney Business Month webinar, this is exactly what I shared with those who joined us… What YOU need to understand is that Content Marketing is just the first step of the adventure. And if at first you feel a bit frustrated, then read on… in this article I am going to share with you:

1. How to get your hands on good quality content

2. How to syndicate it online

… all packed in 6 valuable tips to help you create, publish and syndicate your content online to attract more followers, spark engagement, and make your brand known on the internet.

But before I start talking about the 6 tips, there is one more important thing you need to know.

What does SEO REALLY mean TODAY?

SEO as we knew it a couple of year ago is dead, and thousands of people are writing about this. Black hat link building was a very popular practice of the past which USED to work; however, if Google sees you doing black hat link building (and they will!), your website will be penalised asap.

Nonetheless, SEO is still all about backlinks – but they have to be natural, and they have to come from good quality websites. Creating original, good quality content and syndicating it online on good quality websites will get you a good place in search engine results. And this is what we know as white hat linkbuilding.

This, and a couple of other factors influence your place in Google search results…

The 6 tips to get your content “out there” fast

1. Coming up with ideas for content

When you think about topics for your content, don’t try to come up with ideas that you think are interesting.

If you are having trouble answering this question, use this trick: go where your audience is. Keep in mind that your content needs to be engaging and relevant to your target market. How can you do that?

Have a look in forums and see what kind of information people are asking for. Join LinkedIn groups and Facebook Groups and pay attention to the “heartbeat” of the group: what are people talking about? What are their questions? What do they want to know?

Then get back to your website and write an article about it. Or, if you feel that writing is too time-consuming, then you have multiple other choices:

• create a Google Hangout and record a video from it
• use your smartphone and record a 2-3 min video

Don’t forget to share your content with the group so they know that you know. 🙂

2. Publishing your content in different, multiple formats

One thing that I think is very important for us to understand is that people consume content in multiple formats. If I like to watch short videos, that doesn’t mean that all of us prefer to do so.

Some people get their information from infographics. Others, from PDFs. A lot of people digest information in written format – articles, blog posts, press releases.

Once you understand this, you will want to publish your content in multiple formats to reach a broader audience.

For example, what I do is I create a video and from that I publish an article on my website with the transcription underneath. Then my team creates a PDF and an image from it. My writer creates a hand rewrite from the transcription. All this content is then published on multiple websites.

Speaking of which, don’t forget to:

3. Link back to the main authority website

Whatever format you publish your content in, don’t forget to link back to your website. Remember: SEO is still about backlinks.

So, while it is great that you are thinking multimedia style, always remember to include a link back to your website. This way you are offering a killer offer to your audience (free content, free information) AND you are opening other site channels to get people to YOUR website.

Nick Leeder, former head manager at Google said last year that video is absolutely huge. So create video content and share it online on websites such as Vimeo, YouTube, and Viddler.

What Nick also said is that social interaction is becoming increasingly important. This is why the fourth tip is..:

4. Syndicating your content across multiple channels

The viral nature of social media is becoming more and more relevant to search engine algorithms. Thus, whenever you publish content on your website, share it on all the major social media platforms: Google Plus, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the list goes on.

Bonus Tip 1: On LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Plus you can join communities and groups and share your content there. This is what I did with this piece of content and I got over 70 Pluses on G+. Cool, huh?

When it comes to promoting your content, there is one GOLDEN RULE that you must observe: don’t think about “getting people to your website”. On the contrary, think from the point of view of giving. If you have that “give mentality” people will come to love you, to want to follow you, and eventually, to do business with you.

5. Use social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is very similar to social sharing… but it’s bookmarking. It is a way of sharing content with other people, on a multitude of social media channels. These websites are some of the highest quality websites from the point of view of Google, and they have very high page ranks.

So… you’ll want your content to be there. How?

Use a tool called OnlyWire. It bookmarks your content to multiple sites with the press of ONe button. Pay attention though, as OnlyWire includes the big 4 social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest). I don’t advise you to link OnlyWire up to your premium profiles – this is where you want your content to be absolutely genuine.

Bonus Tip 2: So you may be thinking “Okay, I could do that, but that’s still time consuming – and I don’t have that kind of time on my hands…”

Don’t worry, you can save even more time if you implement my tip: hire somebody else to do it! Whether you choose to hire them locally (students, VAs), or if you want to outsource overseas, having someone to do all this work for you will definitely save you incredible amounts of time.

6. Get a strategic alliance

Find websites which are complementary to yours and which have the same target market as you do. Offer to write guest blog posts for them or to contribute your knowledge to their forums and groups.

Bonus tip 3: Before you seal the deal, make sure that the website is a good quality website (no spammy content, etc.). Talk with the website owner and have them include an “About the Author” section underneath your articles – include a link back to your website.

By doing this you are building your market leadership through opening yourself up to a new audience. The website owner will have happy clients, and you will have the opportunity of attracting new clients to your business!

How does this help your website to rank higher?

There are a few things Google takes into account with regards to your website. These features help the search engine decide if your website “deserves” it right on the first page… or not. Knowing how Google Search works will help you understand why you should implement my 6 content marketing tips.

These features are:

• The number of visitors which end up on your website, as well as the amount of time they spend on your website are of core importance
• Social media sharing is another important player
• Once people know who you are and what you do, they will start coming back (they are known as “returning visitors”)
• The amount of new content that you publish on a regular basis is also important for your rankings.

If you can’t do that all of a sudden, then start low, with one article a month or one article a week. Then slowly increase your pace.

That’s it for now!

I will be looking forward to seeing you at a new Sydney Business Month webinar.

Until then, don’t forget to let me know if you’re planning to implement either of these 6 tips for content marketing. Oh, and let me know if they work! 🙂