Internet Marketing Driver

  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
    • Algorithm Update Recovery
    • Technical SEO Audits
    • Website Redesigns and Site Migrations
    • SEO Training
  • Blog
  • Contact GSQi

Killer Content, A Loyal Community, The Twitter Effect, and Its Impact on SEO

May 14, 2009 By Glenn Gabe

Share
Tweet
Share
Email

How the social web, great content, and seo all work together.How’s that for a title? I witnessed a pretty amazing thing last week from an online marketing perspective. I love finding dynamic examples of how the social web works, especially when it unfolds right in front of your eyes over just a few hours. What I experienced last week was an outstanding example of how great content, a loyal following, respect in the industry, and SEO all tie together. It’s kind of like the perfect storm, but in a good way.

Organic Linkbuilding
First, I’m a believer that your best linkbuilding comes naturally. If you create killer content that provides value to your readers and visitors, you often will end up generating high quality links. In my experience, I’ve seen a direct relationship between the time and care you take to create content and the impact that content has from a linkbuilding standpoint. For example, I’ve developed content that took a relatively long time to create (days to write and sometimes weeks to research), but based on the popularity of that content, the buzz it generated, the targeted traffic, and subsequent inbound links, it was well worth the time. Compare that to content developed or written quickly, with little or no thought put in, provides little value, and subsequently has no impact. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Are you going to link to a quick post that provides no value and no original content? Probably not, right? But you might link to a post that greatly helps your efforts (for whatever you are trying to achieve).

How it Unfolded
So let’s get back to what happened last week? Here’s the deal. I watched an editor break a story on a website (providing killer content), I saw that content go viral on Twitter (due to a loyal following), then it got picked up by a popular industry website (due to respect in the industry), and then I saw that content go on to generate over 22,000 inbound links in a matter of days. I saw how the content ranked in just hours in Google (due to Query Deserves Freshness QDF), and then how it ended up ranking for dozens of competitive keywords in a short period of time. That’s darn powerful.

Let’s break down what happened and its impact:

1. Content
The content was great (a scoop), and probably wasn’t easy to come by. But providing valuable content (in this case breaking news), is only part of the equation. That news could have easily led to little traffic, no links, and no rankings, right? Everyone has heard about sites getting their scoops ripped off. That’s a good segue…

2. Loyal Community
Enter the next important part of the equation. If you’re publishing to a black hole, who cares about what you write. But, if you’ve built up a serious following, earned respect, and engage your community, then amazing things can happen. In this case, community members starting tweeting, then retweeting, and more retweeting. You get the picture. I scrolled through pages and pages of tweets linking to the story. For people that think Twitter provides no value, please read this section again. :)

3. Respect in the Industry
Ah, the point at which things can take a different path. What happens if people try to steal your scoop? For example, they find out the breaking news from you and then post their own version of it, essentially watering down your impact. I don’t care who you are, that’s a horrible feeling and happens more than you think. But, if you’ve gained the respect of your peers (even beyond your community), you might see an interesting effect, like what I saw last week. A major industry website wrote an article about the breaking news and linked to the scoop I mentioned earlier. A “hat tip”, so to speak. That hat tip ended up being the top referring source for a few days. Again, powerful (and a great link for SEO too.)

4. SEO Power
The culmination of what I listed above was 22,588 inbound links, including links from some powerful websites in the industry. Inbound links are the lifeblood of SEO, so gaining thousands of them from relevant and powerful sites is a good thing. :) This article generated quality links, and a lot of them. This resulted in top rankings for competitive keywords around the subject matter. Right now, the site ranks for dozens of keywords related to the subject of the article. And, that was after just a few days.

Also, I mentioned Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) earlier. That’s a part of Google’s algorithm that determines when a query requests information about breaking news and which listings to provide that reference the breaking news. Google determines this by monitoring the activity around a given subject. The content Google provides in the SERPs may be new blog posts or stories from trusted sites that don’t have any inbound links yet (or are in the process of increasing inbound links). The site I was monitoring is definitely a trusted site in the industry, and benefited from QDF. In case you want to learn more, Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz provides a video explaining the ins and outs of QDF. As usual, Rand does a great job explaining how it works.

Let’s summarize what happened:
So, after just a few days the article ended up being one of the most popular pages traffic-wise, it generated quality visitors, and incredible rankings in organic search. It’s a great example of how the social web works and its connection to SEO. A quick side note, the page wasn’t perfectly optimized for SEO, but it still ranks like mad. I think it shows which SEO factors are most important, right? (cough, quality inbound links) I can only imagine what the page would rank for if it was well optimized! :)

So, have you witnessed something like this? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

GG

Share
Tweet
Share
Email

Filed Under: blogging, google, SEO, social-media, Twitter, viral-marketing

Connect with Glenn Gabe today!

RSS Latest Blog Posts

  • Google’s December 2020 Broad Core Algorithm Update Part 2: Three Case Studies That Underscore The Complexity and Nuance of Broad Core Updates
  • Google’s December 2020 Broad Core Algorithm Update: Analysis, Observations, Tremors and Reversals, and More Key Points for Site Owners [Part 1 of 2]
  • Exit The Black Hole Of Web Story Tracking – How To Track User Progress In Web Stories Via Event Tracking In Google Analytics
  • Image Packs in Google Web Search – A reason you might be seeing high impressions and rankings in GSC but insanely low click-through rate (CTR)
  • Google’s “Found on the Web” Mobile SERP Feature – A Knowledge Graph and Carousel Frankenstein That’s Hard To Ignore
  • Image Migrations and Lost Signals – How long before images lose signals after a flawed url migration?
  • Web Stories Powered by AMP – 12 Tips and Recommendations For Creating Your First Story
  • Visualizing The SEO Engagement Trap – How To Use Behavior Flow In Google Analytics To View User Frustration [Case Study]
  • The May 2020 Google Core Update – 4 Case Studies That Emphasize The Complexity Of Broad Core Algorithm Updates
  • How To Remove An Image From Google Search Using The Outdated Content Tool (When The Image Was Published On Another Site)

Web Stories

  • Google's Disqus Indexing Bug
  • Google's New Page Experience Signal

Archives

  • July 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
  • Blog
  • Contact GSQi
Copyright © 2021 G-Squared Interactive LLC. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

Internet Marketing Driver
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

3rd Party Cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

This site also uses pixels from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so we publish content that reaches you on those social networks.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!