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You should definitely consider content seeding as an online marketing strategy for you and your brand or company, because it makes a valuable contribution to the off-page optimization of your website. It involves strategically placing high-quality content where it will generate reach.
Content seeding emerged as a marketing strategy from the modern way of using media. It creates an interface that makes it possible to satisfy both search engines and your target group and their questions with valuable content.#
In marketing in general, the goal is classically to sell something – that can be services, products or even ideas. Content seeding is also a strategy from (online) marketing, but it is not primarily aimed at making a sale. Rather, it is about creating touch points between your brand and the users. Among other things, it has a good effect on your ranking if many other websites refer to you or recommend you and your content. The success of content seeding can be measured by:
But not only that: valuable and helpful content will increase awareness and trust in your brand. Ideally, you will be perceived as an expert or first contact in your industry.
Another advantage: If you are textually confident, know SEO and can actively apply this knowledge, you usually don’t have to spend a really large budget on a content seeding campaign compared to other marketing measures.
If, on the other hand, you have an e-book created by experts from the industry, the costs will naturally increase accordingly. Text creation can be considered the biggest cost item in this context, but it is also the supporting aspect for the success of your campaign.
Measured against its high potential for success, content seeding is unfortunately neglected far too often. Basically, however, it is highly recommended for all brands and companies that want to sustainably increase or stabilize their online presence and thus also their Google ranking.
The following aspects or steps in particular are crucial for successful content seeding:
For the implementation of a seeding campaign, it is crucial in the first step to consider the actual seeding potential of various topics and formats and to bring this into line with the typical wishes, ideas and needs of your intended target group. This usually involves a comprehensive customer analysis that takes into account demographic (gender, age, income) but also psychographic (hobbies, preferences, usual expenses) aspects.
These considerations are important because they must be included in content creation. If you are addressing a younger audience, a relaxed, open and fresh writing style is recommended. If your content is aimed at professionals, a more upscale writing style makes more sense to reach them.
To define suitable or potential target groups, it is important to determine exactly which groups of people will find which topics and formats interesting and, above all, helpful. In many areas, this includes not only questions about typical interests, but also about the financial situation or general life situation of these target groups. It is always advisable to look beyond the obvious and include topics that serve specific niches. So if your brand or company is primarily in the area of sports and fitness, it may be interesting for you to include the topic of sustainability in a meaningful context. In this way, you reach new communities and position yourself even more broadly.
A successful and sustainable seeding campaign lives from its content. Content seeding therefore does not start with the “seeding” of the created content, but already in the content creation. Here, the right keywords must be considered as well as all determined results of the customer and target group analysis must flow into the text creation.
Important for the creation of good texts in terms of their ranking:
Depending on the target group, your content should also be neither too general nor too specialized. This means that users should neither be bored with information that is already widely known nor be overwhelmed by topics that are too specific.
It is also important that you create your content visually appealing and clear. Guides should be designed in such a way that the most important information can be read and understood in a short time. They must score points for clarity. You can achieve this by using a good structure with appropriate subheadings, bulleted lists, statistics and infographics. In addition, high-quality images liven up your texts.
The biggest don’ts in terms of text creation for your ranking are:
If the Google bot recognizes that the content on your page is repeated very often or that you have copied content from other websites, this will be penalized by poor rankings.
Good and unique content is usually evaluated positively by Google and therefore weighted more strongly in terms of ranking, while bad content is penalized. A penalty means that your website slips very far down the Google search results pages. In the worst case, it is even possible that it is completely removed from the index and can no longer be found by users.
To avoid this, content seeding is about creating posts and articles that deliver added value. They should answer more or less urgent questions from different areas of life. While this content should be placed as strategically and wisely as possible, promoting a specific product takes a back seat here. The goal is to first increase your brand awareness and create as many touch points with your brand as possible.
In addition to conceptual aspects and high-quality content creation, relevant contacts and a comprehensive network of so-called “multipliers” are of central importance for successful content seeding campaigns.
This classically includes:
Such a network is crucial, as influencers usually have a loyal community that trusts them and follows their advice. Provided your content is high-quality, relevant to the topic, and offers real added value, bloggers are often willing to accept and share contributions “from outside”. Ideally, they are so convincing that they are voluntarily distributed by the community and even shared via social media. This area currently offers enormous potential, because you can reach a large number of potential customers in a short time, especially via Instagram and TikTok.
With large magazines or well-known websites, it can be difficult to even be allowed to present the best articles, technical or advice articles to the corresponding editorial team or a relevant contact person. The important thing is to keep at it and try different avenues. LinkedIn and Xing have established themselves here as particularly congenial ways of establishing (and maintaining) contacts. It’s always worth approaching editors or bloggers here. The likelihood that you will reach them with your topic and get them excited about it is much higher on these platforms or on their social media channels than via general editorial addresses or the customer hotline.
To check if your seeding campaign is successful, you can use tools like Google Analytics or SISTRIX. If your article ranks conspicuously poorly, you should check it for keywords and think about optimizing it. If users spend only a short time on your guide texts and the bounce rate is relatively high, this may indicate that they are not answering the questions they should. However, a high bounce rate is not always directly a negative sign and should therefore definitely be considered in context.
Also important is the development of the overall visibility of your website. Ideally, this has improved a lot since the beginning of your seeding campaign. If the opposite is the case, the reasons can be quite different. It is quite possible that this development is based on quite harmless causes that do not necessarily require action. However, it is also possible that your website has long loading times, is unclear and not attractively designed. In this case, you should definitely start a new or redesign.
The goal of content seeding, in conjunction with high-quality content creation, is to bring together the requirements of search engines and people. You can achieve this by:
This has a positive effect on your Google ranking, increases your recognition and brand awareness. In the long run, a content seeding campaign contributes to a higher visibility, awareness and recognition of your brand.
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