Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has quickly become the most important factor in the success or failure of an online business or website. Most businesses who have any level of online presence will be aware of some of the better-known SEO methods such as keyword optimization and backlink building. But SEO at its heart has always been about Content! Content! Content!
Your audience is always on the lookout for quality content and there are huge benefits to be had for the company or website that can provide it. But making enough content to satisfy the voracious appetite of today’s online consumer is next to impossible and that is where content curation comes in.
This is an SEO tool that is significantly less well known than keywords and links, but that can have a serious impact. This article is a guide to everything you need to know about content curation.
Table of Contents
1. What is Content Curation?
When you think about the word “curation”, you may think of a curator of a museum and actually you would not be far wrong. The curators of museums don’t just collect random paintings, sculptures and historical artifacts and put them in a room for people to see. Museum collections are never just a hodgepodge of things thrown together without design. They are a carefully and conscientiously assembled collection of items, with a coherent message or purpose. In museums that purpose is usually to enlighten or alter the understanding or perception of the museum’s visitors.
The curator, and later the museum visitor, ask themselves how one sculpture connects to the next, whether they are from the same period in history or a particular movement, and whether they illustrate a change in that movement over time. Content curators do the same thing but they do it with thoughtfully connected content that they carefully source online. Content curators explore the digital world for the most powerful ideas that relate to their client’s business or message and bring them together for their target audience. Content curators provide their value by offering that target audience a collection of content that will interest them, but that they may not be able to find on their own.
Even though the content curator, just like the museum curator, has not created the thoughts themselves, they have still added tangible value in a way that makes the content as a whole more valuable than the sum of its parts. The best content curators bring a context or point of view to the collection of online resources which, mirroring the thoughts of the museum visitor, incites their audience to ask how this piece of content connects to the next, whether they are about the same topic, and what can be learned or taken only from the collection as a whole, not from its separate pieces of online material.
2. What are the Reasons for Content Curation?
One of the most obvious reasons for content curation is that it can be very difficult to create enough content ourselves for optimum SEO results. For example, Twitter typically requires around 15 unique posts every day to maximize its SEO potential. It would be almost impossible for anyone but the most highly professional content creators to produce enough self-made unique content to meet that demand, but content curation can make up those numbers. There are a huge number of software and application options which can take the burden of content curation off your shoulders and do the internet scouring for you.
This provides your audience with more content that they are interested in consuming which will also boost your content SEO potential. Content curation is fast and cost-effective because you don’t need to use a lot of time and money producing all of the content that you require. This can save funds which can be used elsewhere in your overall digital marketing strategy. Every business is looking to spend their marketing budget wisely and content curation allows them to do this.
3. How Can Content Creation Boost Audience Engagement?
At the crux of all digital marketing is the conversion of your audience into leads, and then your leads into customers. New businesses or websites have an immediate curiosity factor, which as long as you take the correct SEO steps to drive traffic to your websites and social media platforms, you take full advantage of. Once you have built your target audience however, the next challenge is to keep them engaged. As noted in the Twitter example above, this requires a significant amount of content output every day.
If you don’t do this, your audience will get bored and move onto the next thing. The digital world moves so fast and what is popular now becomes yesterday’s news in an instant. It is vital that you keep your audience engaged or you will never be able to convert them into customers. Content curation is important for new businesses to build their brand but is equally important for established businesses to maintain their brand awareness or evolve.
These days, businesses that don’t evolve or adapt, that churn out the same content continuously, become stale and are discarded by their audience in favor of something fresher. Utilizing content curation means that you can provide your audience with content which reflects the hottest trends which will show that your business or website is moving with the times and is still relevant. Because there are so many ways that different pieces of content can be connected, you can create and portray any message that you like, that will reflect your brand, and boost the potential of your business.
The most effective SEO strategies utilize every possible avenue to maximize the potential of a business’s online presence. Quality content has always been a driving force in SEO and the appetite for it is only getting stronger. It is beyond the means of anybody to produce enough of their content to keep their audience satisfied and so content curation is a fantastic way to fulfill their demands. Think about your audience and what they want, consider your brand and your message and curate quality, engaging content that will boost your SEO rankings.
