How can SEO become a dependable source of constant quality traffic for any online business?

To answer this question we must address the core element, the life blood of SEO. There are many factors that influence SEO ranking but one of them is what triggers this whole repertoire of variables and this is the Content – your greatest asset online.

For content to make a difference in your traffic reports, it must be built in an organized manner. You want to think about this content production formula more how a TV producer would, namely, by fragmenting it into distinct phases with their unique mechanics.

These content creation phases will be analized in the following lines

1.Content scheduling

First thing that needs to be taken care of is evaluating your content necessity. Analize your blogging topics, establish what is your niche market interested in and scarcely covered, what are the gaps at informational level within your market.

After approximating the volume of content you have to creat, start evaluating your assets. Do you have certain skills you migh want to employ whem composing your content – writiting, speaking, making and producing videos-? What is your available time to tackle this process? Do you have a budget to allocate for hiring freelance writers and ghost writers?

An extremely important aspect to consider when producing content is to create a buffer where you have enough content created ready to be released which covers your publishing schedule for at least one week (when you first start), thus lifting the preasure from your “production department”.

2.Content research

In order to produce up-to-date and attractive content that generates quality traffic back to your webpages, you must make a habit out of this phase. Doing so, you’ll keep under close observation the following components of your market:

-your competitors, the marketing materials they release and their marketing tactics;

-what’s being published in your market;

-what’s being perceived as valuable content by your prospects, both in terms of information as well as of the format in which information is transmited.

All your research data should be archived for continuous use into a “swipe file” categorised by the market’s components. A good platform to build your “swipe file” in is Google Docs.

What makes this service so great is that you can permanently supply your research database no matter where you are, as long as you have an internet connection. Plus, inserting your extracted information is a simple copy-n-paste process, whether it would be that of an URL or text excerpt.

3.Content development

This is where your content is starting to take shape. After fixing the core ideas and concepts you what to build your content around, the next phase is creating the structure on which to put your information in a coherent manner.

If it’s an article, you write the headline and sub-headlines, choose the style of your writing. If it’s a podcast will you make an interview or a plain narration of the information available? If you plan on making a video, will it be a desktop tutorial, a powerpoint presentation? you name it.

4. Content creation

Whether articles are written, podcasts recorded or video produced, it all happens in this phase. Make use of your personal skills (writing, speaking, video producing) or/and hire someone else to compensate your weak points.

5. Content release

Needless to say that your publishing efforts should be directed towards the top informational platforms that set the bit for the online community, namely YouTube – Videos, GoArticles, EzineArticle – articles, iTunes – podcasts, etc.

Keep in mind to post your content on your blog first so that your website gets the credit for containing new content, thus increasing authority. After that, it can be syndicated to other Social Media platforms or Article Directories.

A short side note reguarding the “duplicated content” issue. There are opinions which state that Google will give you no benefit or worse, even penalize you for posting same content across different websites. At the polar opposite there are others which see no harm in publishing content to different websites, e.g. article directories.

I must admit that for a perioud of time I’ve embraced the radical opinion of Google penalizing those who use so-called “duplicated” content across different sites.

After thorough research in different marketing forums, reading and listening to SEO experts I can now conclude that it’s absolutely OK to use an article (piece of content, in general) to different web localitions (including your website) as long as you are not (or Google believes you’re not) the owner of these different sites.

Also be sure to post your content firstly on your own website so you benefit from Google indexing it. By posting it on multiple websites you gain backlinks – very, very important element that contributes to your site ranking.

Releasing content on the web must be scheduled. You don’t want to put out tons of content all on the same day and be absent for the next two weeks. What you’re looking for is a constant flow of traffic to your webpages and no radical fluctuations between high peaks and flat zero.

Let your infomation be diggested by the community. Don’t rush the process because it will bury good quality content before it had time to work for you.

6.Content syndication

Interconnect all the social media and submission platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Delicious, Technorati, etc. and get your content viraly exposed. This is done by taking advantage of the wide gallery of plugins and widgets that enhance the functionality of these platforms.

7.Content promotion

Supplement syndication throughout social media by starting to actively promote your content with your mailing list, on forums and topic-related blogs.

That’s the seven-step formula on how to produce quality and targeted content for improving your SEO stats and ultimately generate traffic to your business webpages.

If you have something to add, please do it in the comments area below.