King Content

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. – Ecclesiastes 1: 9

It’s all been done before – Barenaked Ladies

In the time since Al Gore invented the internet the deluge of content on it has become overwhelming. Millions of articles, covering just about every topic possible, are written and posted every day.

Our biggest challenge as SEO’s is finding a way to break through the slush clogging up the pipelines of cyberspace. It is a daunting task. Especially if BNL is right and everything has been done. The problem gets larger when you are writing for long term clients, then you aren’t just repeating what others have said you are often repeating yourself.

I wrote four articles about dentistry this month. Next month I will write four more. It is getting difficult to come up with anything original. I’ve spent so much time doing research that I am afraid I might suddenly raise up on my desk, take my shirt off , twist it round my head, and spin it like a helicopter all while screaming dental terms like expletives.

BICUSPID!!!

How do we say something that has already been said, by ourselves or by others, without losing our minds and without boring our audiences?

Lets look to a case study for help on the matter

King Kong

The original King Kong came out in 1933. Since then the movie has been remade several times.

What…? My Mozbar is showing …? How embarrassing.

Each version follows the exact same story line; Kong lives happily on a previously undiscovered island, he meets an alluring girl, he is captured and brought to the city, he gets loose and uses the Manhattan skyline as his jungle gym.

Even though the story has been repeated, the latest version was very successful. Peter Jackson’s 2005 film has an 81 rating on Metacritic and 84 on Rotten Tomatoes.

What was it about his approach that turned an old story into a fresh and exciting one?

Successful Recycling

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. – Andre Gide

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. – Ambrose Bierce

The great thing about human beings is that we forget stuff. I imagine the world would get boring really fast if we didn’t.

The first two Kong films were separate by 43 years, the third came 29 years later. They were sufficiently spaced so that the viewing public did not get burnt out on the subject.

Luckily for us, the attention span of the internet is shorter than a 5-year-old’s in Disneyland. We don’t need to wait for years to recycle a story. If your article is older than 6 months, unless it went viral, chances are no one remembers it but you.

When a well researched article isn’t shared it is not because the ideas are bad, it is because they aren’t packaged in an interesting way. Your content can do a lot more work for you if you simply repackage and repost.

Let us look at some specific ways that the King Kong story has been repackaged.

Popularity

In 2005 Peter Jackson was fresh off the success of the Lord of the Rings thrillogy. He was the hottest name in Hollywood. If people didn’t care about the giant monkey, they went to see the movie because Peter Jackson’s name was attached to it. Universal capitalized on his popularity to resell an old story.

How can this work for us?

If you are following our twitter account @utseo, you might have seen this article, entitled Angelina’s Leg and User Friendly Web Design. If you don’t know what this article is referring to you either live in a hole in Canada or you tried really hard to avoid any news about the recent Oscars.

This article would probably not have grabbed my attention without its intriguing and timely title. If we use trending topics to help promote our tweets we need to do the same with our articles. An old article suddenly becomes fresh when it is tied to a timely topic.

Update

The movie industry is constantly being forced to adapt to new technologies. After the first movies with convincing CGI were released, movie goers were no longer appeased by old graphics. This simple change opened the door for all of the movie remakes we have seen in the last few years. Hollywood hasn’t run out of ideas they are just taking the easiest and most lucrative option to them. Why write a new story when you can take an old one, spend a little money on special effects, and re-release it to make millions?

Even though the 1933 film was still a good movie, watching it now, the special effects are laughable. Even the 70’s version was a little hokey. The 2005 release gave the story a facelift and made it more palatable to a modern audience.

How can this work for us?

Technology is always changing and not just for the movie industry. Keeping up with the newest ideas in your clients’ field is important if you are going to stay relevant. But if you have already written an article on the newest updates you can easily repurpose old content for a compare and contrast. Some industries, like SEO, are changing so fast that this technique could be a gold mine for new content.

Branch Out

So far we have only talked about the three movies that carry the title of King Kong. But there are numerous derivations. Mighty Joe Young is almost exactly the same story and there were two versions of this film in 1949 and 1998. Notice that both of these movies were made to fill the giant ape gaps left by the Kong movies.

I won’t even talk about the TV shows and other related films that have split off of the original idea. The world must not be getting its fill of the big monkey.

How can this work for us?

The old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” doesn’t just apply to your lawn mower and the 70’s Schwinn sitting in your garage. No matter how many “how to” or “top 10” articles are written on a subject these headlines will always get some attention.

Your best source for new ideas is to look through old content. Often you will find some little section that you can expand into a full article. Or you could take the entire article and fit it into a new format like the two already mentioned. Don’t waste your most precious resource, yourself.

Find a New Voice

These Geico ads are a great example of a new voice for old ideas. Just look at their campaign, the three little pigs, woodchucks chucking wood, Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd; all of these stories have been around for a while. All these advertisers did was add a new and interesting voice.

This is the same thing Universal did when they brought on Peter Jackson. His voice telling an old story made it new and interesting.

How can this work for us?

That article which has been sitting unshared and lonely in the black expanse of cyberspace only needs a new voice to brighten it up and bring it some friends. If you have a lot of old content lying around that is all written in a dry, informative, or academic style try adding a new tone. Make it playful or sarcastic, anything that is different and interesting. Revising the tone of an article is so much easier than writing a new one.

The End

With everything we have on our SEO plate we can’t afford to waste any resources. Take a lesson from King Kong, let your content do work for you. Don’t waste time doing new research and coming up with new ideas when you don’t have to. Use these simple rules of recycling to save yourself time and money.

Although the AdWords Keyword Tool was designed for PPC campaigns, it works pretty well as a starting point for organic keyword research too. The keyword tool builds lists of keywords based on your own ideas or a website URL and shows useful data to help you decide which keywords to target.

Step 1: Settings for SEO keyword research

From the keyword tool, log in to your Google account if you have one. If not, you can still get a list of up to 100 ideas per search. Under Match Types, uncheck the box next to Broad and check [Exact] (You may need to minimize the “Saved Ideas” box first). A Broad search will show you data for a group of related keywords rather than just the one shown (useful in a PPC campaign but not so much for SEO). Changing it to [Exact] will give you search volume for specific terms that will be more helpful for organic keyword targeting. Even here, Google’s not going to give you exact numbers, but it will be a pretty close estimate of search volume.

To get a broader list of ideas, leave the “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” box unchecked. Google recognizes synonyms, but by checking this box you’re telling the tool to limit its suggestions to only phrases that contain the exact words you put in. This can drastically reduce the ideas you get.

Your location and language will be preset based on the country you are in and your computer settings. You can also select the kind of device you’re using to search.

Now click the tab “Keyword ideas”. By default, the keyword tool shows Competition, Global Monthly Searches, and Local Monthly Searches for each keyword idea. Local Monthly Searches tells you the average search volume per month for the country for which your location is set. If you’d like to get data for a specific city or state, join the club. Unfortunately, the keyword tool doesn’t allow that yet.

If you don’t need to know what people around the world are searching for, you can hide the Global Monthly Searches column. Open the “Column” drop down menu and remove the check next to the column title. If you’ve signed into your Google account you can add the Local Search Trends column to see how search volume rises and falls by month.

Step 2: Priming the keyword tool

Before the tool can generate ideas, you need to tell it what you’re looking for. Brainstorm a small list of search queries people might use to find your business.

• How would you classify your business? Ex. “SEO firm” “Web marketing company”
• What types of products and services do you offer? Ex. “PPC services” “social media marketing”
• What brand names do you carry? Ex. “WordPress blog design” “Facebook marketing”
• Which cities/states do you serve? Ex. “California SEO company” “Salt Lake City SEO”
• What words do your competitors use on their sites to describe themselves?

Start your search by putting three to five keywords in at a time (one per line). You can also add the URL of your website or your competitors’ to have the tool search for relevant keywords.

Step 3: Sorting through keyword ideas and expanding the search

Scan through the list of ideas and select keywords you might want to target. This will save the result as you continue searching. You can initiate new searches based on suggestions you select by opening the “More like these” drop down menu and choosing the list of keywords you want to expand.

Once you have a good list of keyword ideas, open the “Download” drop down menu and choose the “My keyword ideas” list. This will drop all your selected keyword ideas along with the displayed data for each into an Excel document.

Step 4: Narrowing the list

Evaluate each keyword by relevance to your business, search volume, and difficulty of achieving rankings.

Don’t be too tempted to choose keywords simply by search volume. Searchers tend to use broader keywords for initial searches, but they’re not all searching for you. More focused keywords, while they might account for fewer searches, are generally more relevant and often easier to rank for.

The “Competition” score from the keyword tool isn’t much help in determining difficulty, so you may want to hide this column as well. This number measures how hard advertisers are fighting for it in their PPC campaigns, not organic competition.

For a better idea of the difficulty of ranking for a keyword, the simplest way is to Google it. If your competitors dominate the first page and you can tell they’ve put effort into SEO (keywords in the title and meta description tags) then it’s going to be hard to muscle in. On the other hand, if Wikipedia is in the first or second spot and you don’t see many of your competitors, the keyword probably isn’t that relevant. Just ask yourself if you’d be happy with that list of results if you were looking for something like what you sell. If not, it may not be worth pursuing that keyword.

Conclusion

Of course there is more to keyword research than we’ve covered here, but the AdWords Keyword Tool will start you out with a much better list of keywords than simply guessing. If you have any other questions or tips, leave them below.

You may be thinking, “Riiiiight, that’s a little more detail than I care to remember. What’s the short cut?” In that case you can get a free keyword recommendation and estimate of what it would take to get a professional SEO campaign going by clicking here.