Earlier this year, I experimented with a series of articles for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes on certain keywords, including my own name. I have to say that this experiment was wildly successful with highlights being:

• Ranking higher than a feature with a similar title on the New York Times website
• Increasing traffic up to 30-fold with a 30 day run-up

The key part of this experiment was to create content that will receive a decent number of inbound links (other sites linking to my website/article) which leads to better search engine rankings.

I’ve buried the experiment now, but I’ll share some of my findings with you here.

Topic

My topic of choice was the 2009 NFL Draft which was held in April. I counted down to the draft by writing a preview for each team during the 32 days before the draft. This gave me a nice temporary setting to experiment with as well as a run-up towards the draft so that my search engine rankings and traffic would peak during the draft days.

As a tip, I would focus on a topic that (1) enjoys great popularity; (2) is obscure and has a defined niche that will look for certain keywords; or (3) is a topic of interest that still requires (much) explanation/clarification.

Audience

I focused on football fans but tried to make it as accessible as possible. I used full names of coaches and players, and even appended positions to their names, e.g. HC Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady. This helps fans of other teams read the references easier but still isn’t considered as low-level reading for more savvy fans.

The language was simple in the sense that it used the same terminology that fans were used to from other websites and television. I wanted to avoid “coach speak” since that’s complicated and obscure to quite a lot of people.

Finally, the tone was neutral. My articles were positioned as objective previews where each team received an equal amount of attention.

As a takeaway, I would recommend looking at other websites of the topic you’d like to write about. Choose website that rank high in search engines, since you might be competing with them in the long run. Take a close look at how their choice of language reflects the target audience and its knowledge/skill level.

Format

As mentioned, my format was that I wrote about one team every day in the 32 days leading up to the draft. Using this format, I was able to target each team separately instead of providing long articles that weren’t always interesting to every fan. As a result, it also allowed me to analyze which articles for which teams were most popular.

This was the best format for me to use, but it’s worth considering other formats for your topics/articles. Popular formats include how-to guides, top X lists and collections/aggregations of existing content. With such formats, it’s also possible to create (reciprocal) inbound links by linking to other content.

Quality

I spent quite some time examining the needs of every team, some more than others because I don’t always watch every team in action. The thoroughness of my research did reflect in my articles and also resulted in positive comments from readers.

In terms of article length, I aimed for concise articles that didn’t exceed 600 words per article.

Make sure that—regardless of length—your articles reflect both the scope and the thoroughness that you intend to portray. Position yourself as the reader of the content to determine the value and direction of your content.

Timing

I posted one articles each day from Monday to Sunday and in the afternoon in the US. I counted down in reverse order of the NFL Draft, i.e. starting with the Pittsburgh Steelers and finishing with the Detroit Lions. In general, I noticed that articles scored best when posted on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Obviously, timing was not the only variable that contributed to readership. Team popularity also played a role and as a result, I will make some changes to next year’s series. Options are to either only post during the week or to reshuffle the order and post the articles on the most popular teams between Tuesday and Thursday.

Your mileage may vary of course, depending on your topic and audience. I would definitely recommend looking into posting during the weekend. There’s significantly less new content released during the weekend. This might help your content to stand out.

Media

I didn’t use any images, video, audio or other supporting media for my articles. In retrospect, this may have been a big missed opportunity and I’ll definitely look into it for next year’s series.

Think about how media can enhance your content. Sometimes, they can replace part of the content or they can clarify the content better than just text.

Next Steps

I will do another series for the 2010 NFL Draft and will use the experience I gained this year to improve my content and reach even better results.

I hope this post will be useful and will help you create more effective content. If you have additional tips, let us know in the comments!

Photo credit: Brandon Robbins

However, the need for real-time discovery has opened up the marketplace for new players who can specialize in this field. The best will be able to provide search feedback, keyword monitoring and intelligent recommendations.

• Search feedback will give you the real-time results for a certain query, which is particularly useful with current events or trending topics.
• Keyword monitoring allows you to monitor real-time activity on the words that are relevant to you. This will also be helpful in your search engine optimization efforts. This could also be a premium option that service providers can monetize on.
• Intelligent recommendations help you filter out the clutter by bringing you only the best and most relevant search results. This increases usability by decreasing overload. Furthermore, it’s a monetization opportunity for service providers to offer premium advertising space.

The key will be to find a tool that works for your search needs but prevents you from becoming overloaded.

Knowledge/Information Search Engines:

• Answers
• Yahoo Answers

Video Search Engines:

• Blinkx
• ClipBlast
• HelloMovies
• MetaTube
• VideoSurf

Audio Search Engines:

• BeeMP3
• FindSounds
• MP3Realm
• SKreemR
• Wuzam

PDF Search Engines:

• PDF Search Engine
• PDF Searcher
• PDFDatabase
• PDFGeni

Social Search Engines:

• Aardvark
• Mahalo
• Omgili

Decision Search Engines:

• Hunch

Look and you shall find.

• Title: This is the text that you see in the top bar of your browser and represents the title of the particular webpage you’re visiting. I tend to cringe whenever I see “Untitled Document” or “New Page” as the title because this is a missed opportunity. The title is the #1 ranking factor for Google and should contain at least your company/website name and keywords related to the page.
• Headings: Your content should be clear and easy to read and using headings is an easy way to separate the content. But headings also contribute to SEO, especially the H1 heading. If that contains relevant keywords, it will help improve your search rankings.
• URL: The webpage’s address (URL) is also a critical factor for SEO. I often see pages that have the URL www.yourwebsite.com/page1.html and this is a missed opportunity as well. By including relevant keywords in your URL is another step you can take to optimize your website for search engines.
• Meta Tags: There are two types of meta tags, meta description and meta keywords. The former is more important than the latter because the description is what appears under the page title in search results. Therefore, it is more important to have relevant keywords in the meta description than it is to include these keywords in the meta keywords.
• Relevance: I used the word “relevant” in relation to keywords because the relation between the keywords and the actual content is also an important search ranking factor. Using the keywords “Britney Spears” while your website is about refrigerators will NOT help your search rankings!

Look at your website critically and see where you can apply these quick wins to boost your search rankings.

White hat SEO refers to best practices that rely on quality to improve search rankings. White hat SEO is based on the premise that the quality of the content will naturally lead to high search rankings. It also encourages good design, which includes the clear use of titles, headings and tags. White hat SEO should not require the user to apply more tools/methods than there are available as standard and encourages users to make optimal use of those tools/methods.

Black hat SEO refers to “dirty” practices that often rely on quantity to improve search rankings. Black hat SEO tactics tend to consist of shortcuts that are able to boost a website’s search ranking quickly. A key search ranking factor is, for example, the number of back links, i.e. the number of websites that link back to your website. A typical black hat SEO tactic that makes use of this factor is to back links on “ghost sites” or “link farms”. Using an entire network of these back link-generating websites, the website’s number of back links is artificially inflated.

Black hat SEO tactics are frowned upon by search engines and generally result in major penalties, such as a lowered search ranking or even (temporary) removal from all search results.

Therefore, I discourage you to employ black hat tactics. If you’re working with a SEO consultant, make sure that s/he does not use black hat SEO tactics to boost your search rankings.

In part 2, I’ll be sharing some simple white hat SEO tips that will help you improve your search rankings.

Update: Here is Part 2

The main areas that will boast great growth are:

• Communication Tools: More tools will become available that allow people to connect and communicate with each other. Communication will transcend the boundaries of time and space (location).
• Publishing Tools: Blogging has been around for a long time but more scalable options will be offered to meet the desires of people. New platforms will be created that will act as hubs of publishing ecosystems.
• Multimedia Tools: We’re moving beyond the distribution of text and images. Through podcasts and vodcasts, people will be enabled to share more through audio and video.
• Administrative Tools: New applications will be developed where people can keep track of things like their personal finances, their bookmarks, their contacts (address book) and much more.
• Knowledge / Discovery Tools: Obviously, search engines and Wikis already exist, but this area will move in two directions. The first is toward more aggregation. People will be able to find more information through one tool/source. RSS has been a first step but there’s room for more aggregators and mashups. The other direction is toward specialization. Specific tools will be available for people to learn/discover more about a certain niche.

Be prepared and think ahead of the Bass curve. Familiarize yourself with new concepts and know when/if you’re ready to apply them effectively.