You will hardly find a business not doing Search Engine Optimization, or simply calling – SEO. In past few years, search engines have changed its algorithms & users have changed their patterns of browsing content.

From ‘SEO driven content’, we have moved to an era of ‘content driven SEO’.

If you are still busy creating content that serves your SEO requirements, hold on. Take a breathe and read on this guide to know what ‘Content driven SEO’ or SEO 2.0 as I call it, is all about.

Did you know: Search engines are using AI & machine learning to deliver best search results. It’s supremely important to deliver best content browsing experience to both robots & readers – if you want to be ranked higher.

SEO 2.0 framework

3Cs of SEO 2.0 are: Content, Content & Content. Our SEO 2.0 framework revolves around it & why not! As marketers, our job is to spread content – through SEO, Tweets, facebook posts, videos or email – all that we do is spread the content. If done right, your content will go miles… fetch millions of views for you & eventually get you moolah. Here’s how to do it right:

1. Content research:

Content research starts with understanding your audience. If you know what they care about & what they seek – creating content becomes easy. Start with few basic questions such as:

Who are they? (Demographics, psychographics etc.)
What they seek? (What they search, from whom & what are relevant keywords)
Where do they seek it? (Search engines, social media, forums, wiki etc.)
What can you offer to them? (Value proposition)

By now, you’d know which of their needs you can meet with your expertise. This is where content research starts. Use tools such as Keyword planner, Google Trends, Quora etc. to find content gaps & opportunities

2. Content creation:

Once you have defined your topics, do a little bit of homework to identify what’s available on the web & what gap you can fill up. Smart content marketer will come up with unique content ideas by now & set to start the creation process.

Keep these in mind while preparing the content:

Objective: to answer unmet needs of your potential user.

Three elements of kick-ass content: Unique. Easy to consume. Valuable.

Format: Choose best fit which meets above elements. Choose from Blog, Infographic, Video, GIF, Podcast or simple image.

Content structure: Well defined. Create relevant title, meta data & tags for your content.

If you’ve done this effectively, kudos. You’ve won half the battle!

3. Mastering on-page parameters

Before you publish, it’s time to go back to basics of SEO & make your content better by adding right on-page parameters. Three unavoidable parameters are:

Title tag: This is face of your content. Make SEO friendly, keyword rich title tag. Keep it within 50-60 characters & use right keywords.
Header tag: use proper H1 & H2 tags to make content discovery effective.
Meta Description: This is ‘trailer’ of your content. Keep it intriguing enough for users to click on it. A well crafted description will drive actions from both robots & readers.

Pro Tip: Don’t overuse keywords. 2-4 instances of keyword per page is enough to drive attention of users & crawlers. Spread it across your content naturally.

4. Outreach

This is the most important & time-consuming part of the framework. Once your kick-ass content is out, move back to #1 where you figured out frequent hangout places of your target audience.

Spread the word using most relevant from below:

Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Linkedin etc.)
Article sharing platforms (like Medium, Quora etc.)
Social bookmarking platforms (Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg etc.)
Guest posts, Collaboration & article submission
Forums / Q&A platforms
Wiki

5. Measure

The obvious part of marketer’s life. See how your content is performing. Are your showing ‘thumbs up’ to your piece? How many of them have seen it & reacted to it?

Keep a tab on clicks, CTR & traffic sources. Figure which sources are working the best. If needed, move back to #3 & optimize on-page parameters.

Remember, perfection is a process of improving yourself every moment. So, keep bettering your efforts in achieving the epitome of SEO 2.0. Do share your creative content creation process in comments below.

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