When is it smart to focus on viral-worthy content and clickbait? When is it not? To see fruitful returns from these kinds of efforts, they need to be done the right way and used in the right places. Rand discusses what kind of content investments make sense for this type of strategy and explains why it works in this week's Whiteboard Friday.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about when and where you might use clickbait and linkbait and viral-focused content as compared to other types for your SEO-driven campaigns.

There's a lot of savvy sort of folks at the intersection of SEO and content marketing who are practicing things like this right now. We've actually spoken to a few agencies who are specifically focused on this, and they have really solid businesses because many brands understand that these types of investments can produce significant returns. But you have to apply them in the right scenarios and the right spaces. So let's walk through that.

Content investments

Let's say that you're a payroll software provider. Your goal is to increase traffic and conversions, and so you're considering what types of content investments you and your consultant or agency or in-house team might be making on the content front. That could be things like what we've got here:

A. Viral, news-worthy linkbait

I don't necessarily love the word "linkbait," but it still gets a lot of searches, so we're putting it in the title of the Whiteboard Friday because we practice what we preach here, baby.

So this might be something like "The Easiest and Hardest Places to Start a Company." Maybe it's countries, maybe it's states, regions, whatever it is. So here are the easy ones and the hard ones and the criteria, and you go out to a bunch of press and you say, "Hey, we produced this list. We think it's worth covering. Here's the criteria we used." You go out to a bunch of companies. You go out to a bunch of state governments. You go out to a bunch of folks who cover this type of space, and hopefully you can get some clickbait, some folks actually clicking, some folks linking.

It doesn't necessarily have the most search volume. Folks aren't necessarily interested in, "Oh, what are the hardest places to start a company? Or what are the hardest versus easiest places to start a company?" Maybe you get a few, but it's not necessarily going to drive direct types of traffic that this payroll software provider can convert into customers.

B. Searcher-focused solutions

But there are other options for that, like searcher-focused solutions. So they might say, "Hey, we want to build some content around how to set up payroll as an LLC. That gets a lot of searches. We serve LLCs with our payroll solution. Let's try and target those folks. So here's how to set up payrolls in LLCs in six easy steps. There are the six steps."

C. Competitor comparison content

They see that lots of people are looking for them versus other competitors. So they set up a page that's "QuickBooks versus Gusto versus Square: Which Software is Right for Your Business?" so that they can serve that searcher intent.

D. Conversion-funnel-serving content

So they see that, after searching for their brand name, people also search for, "Can I use this for owner employees, businesses that have owner employees only?" So no employees who are not owners. What's the payroll story with them? How do I get that sorted out? So you create content around this.

All of these are types of content that serve SEO, but this one, this viral-focused stuff is the most sort of non-direct. Many times, brands have a tough time getting their head around why they would invest in that. So do SEOs. So let's explain that.

If a website's domain authority, their sort of overall link equity at the domain level is already high, they've got lots and lots of links going to lots of places on the site and additional links that don't go to the conversion-focused pages that they're specifically trying to rank for, for focused keyword targets isn't really required, then really B, C, and D are where you should spend your time and energy. A is not a great investment. It's not solving the problem you want to solve.

If the campaign needs...

• More raw brand awareness - People knowing who the company is, they haven't heard of them before. You're trying to build that first touch or that second touch so that people in the space know who you are.
• Additional visitors for re-targeting - You're trying to get additional visitors who might fit into your target audience so that you can re-target and remarket to them, reach them again;
• You have a need for more overall links really to anywhere on the domain - Just to boost your authority, to boost your link equity so that you can rank for more stuff...

Then A, that viral-focused content makes a ton of sense, and it is a true SEO investment. Even though it doesn't necessarily map very well to conversions directly, it's an indirect path to great potential SEO success.

Why this works:

Why does this work? Why is it that if I create a piece of viral content on my site that earns a lot of links and attention and awareness, the other pieces of content on my site will suddenly have a better opportunity to rank? That's a function of how Google operates fundamentally, well, Google and people.

So, from Google's perspective, it works because in the case where Google sees DomainX.com, which has lots of pages earning many, many different links from all around the web, and DomainY.com, which may be equally relevant to the search query and maybe has just as good content but has few links pointing to it and those links, maybe the same number of links are pointing to the specific pages targeting a specific keyword, but overall across the domain, X is just much, much greater than Y. Google interprets that as more links spread across the content on X makes the search engine believe that X is more authoritative and potentially even more relevant than Y is. This content has been referenced more in more different ways from more places, therefore its relevance and authority are perceived as higher. If Y can go ahead and make a viral content investment that draws in lots and lots of new links, it can potentially compete much better against X.

This is true for people and human beings too. If you're getting lots and lots of visitors all over Domain X, but very few on Domain Y, even if they're going in relatively similar proportion to the product-focused pages, the fact that X is so much better known by such a broader audience means that conversions are likely to be better. People know them, they trust them, they've heard of them before, therefore, your conversion rate goes up and Domain X outperforms Domain Y. So for people and for search engines, this viral-focused content in the right scenario can be a wonderful investment and a wise one to make to serve your SEO strategy.

All right, everyone. Look forward to your comments below. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com