What is it we SEOs do? Most of our answers probably boil down to this; we help webpages rank higher at search engines by improving each of the three cornerstones of SEO. The first aspect; technical problems - like indexable content, meta robots tags and URL structures - has been cracked by SEOmoz’s awesome web app. Suddenly we can get a complete dashboard of errors to go and sort - easy.

Then of course, then there’s the “trust” issue. Getting authoritative and relevant links; and with Open Site Explorer where advanced link analysis and data is now only a click away. And with the a huge range of link building tips, strategies, and tactics here, it’s fair to say that we’ve got the SEO ninja skills to go and create “trust-worthy” websites.

So that leaves content…

Content is abstract. It’s irrational. It’s hard for CEOs, managers and influential decision-makers to get there heads around. It’s fantastic.

What's the point in what you read?

We consume content to solve problems, be entertained and to satisfy curiosity. Based on where you are in a decision making process, you can divide ‘content’ into four different categories. This post is all about defining each category.

In an age of tweetdeck, rss, five sentence emails and the internet making us stupid, supposedly, who on earth is hanging around to read meaningful stuff? I mean, it’s a bit over-rated when you’ve got to be checking your inbox every five minutes, keeping current with Twitter, and all these feeds, and then some...

IMAGE via: Geek and Poke

The reason such technology exists is so we can be on the edge of stuff.

We can see and read the latest ideas, news and commentary. We can connect with people who share common interests and start a conversation. That kind of ‘content’ is a) meaningless to those who aren’t in the know and b) not particularly relevant a week or so down the line.

This is what is making the web at the moment - current conversation. Everyone can chip-in on what other people have to say. We all have our own circles of influence where we can share and spread ideas. We’re all wittering away with our own little thoughts - it’s not cohesive and it’s unlikely to be useful to an outsider trying to figure it all out - at least on it’s own. I call this Blurb.

Blurb Content is conversation.

It’s two way. Blurb is exclusive in that it’s meaningless to those who don’t understand the community, who don’t know the secret handshake and who aren’t clued up on the topic - but for those who are “in the know”, blurb is where discussion, debates and drama define opinions and leads to decision making. Within the club, blurb is awesome.

We’re lucky on blogs like this to have really great conversations, fleshing out theories and the results from experiments; it attracts intelligent two-way conversation. It’s why you might tweet about it more, because there’s so much value in the conversation. It’s why you’re more likely to take action, because you’ve heard it thrashed out by a handful of the industry brains. It’s why you're more likely to come back for more conversation.

Equally, there’s pretty useless blurb. “Great post” “really enjoyed it” or “tldr” which has no real value to other visitors, and therefore no real value to search engines either. The real power of blurb and UGC is things like this (YOUmoz), Threadless and - dare I say it? - Wikipedia. People have been empowered to go and create their own awesome corner of the web.

The Rule of Blurb - Culture Valuable two-way Conversation.

Conversation is the fuel of the web; and with hundreds of millions of us online, that’s the potential for a big conversation. The problem we face, both as SEOs and marketers in general is initiating that conversation.
 

Who’s Gonna Break the Ice?

IMAGE: UrologyOnline

We can do this two ways:


1) Create content and ask for conversation (tweet this, leave a comment, let’s connect on facebook)

2) Create a system where you encourage other people to initiate conversation

Which way do you think is harder to replicate, will be more scaleable and have more influence across the web in the long term? You said two, right? The question is - how. Let’s go back to the SEOmoz model (because most of us have had a good look around this site and know it well, so it’s doubly relevant):

What got you to the point of chipping into the conversation on here? What qualified you to know what you were talking about, and pitch in with something valuable? I bet that this blog post hasn’t taught you everything you know about SEO (and if it did, you’d probably reside to saying: “great post. really interesting stuff” anyways).

The reason why is because at some point in your SEO education, you’ve stumbled across someone or something with “the answers”. Something that answers your questions fully. Where somebody has simply communicated the concepts behind SEO to you in one or more pieces of content.

• A good book...
• An awesome video...
• A seminar...

The fundamental difference is it’s a one-way conversation.

Consider this scenario; your lost in an foreign city - you were supposed to be in an office meeting fifteen minutes ago. What do you do? You ask a local. They tell you how to get there. You listen and do what they say. They’re the expert, so you listen.

Example two. You have a medical problem. You go to your doctor. Your doctor examines you and tells you your problem, and prescribes a cure. Sometimes you might be reluctant, but you trust their skills and expertise so you do exactly what they say.

You watch a talent show on TV and want to take up the guitar. You find a teacher and hang on their every word whilst trying to work out how to play chords. You may ask them to go over something again, but it’s still a one-way conversation.

This behaviour is typical of “newbies”. You’re mind is like a sponge, you're being entirely receptive to someone else's ideas and explanations and because of this you’ll be able to understand and talk about the problem and solution - i.e. you can engage in the conversation on the web. This kind of content focuses and concentrates attention on one specific problem.

This is called Definitive Content.

This brings up three things:

1) Definitive content cultures conversation and decision-making

Definitive Content educates people so, with their expanded knowledge can engage in conversation and make informed decisions. This content is educational. People who are searching for information have already identified that they’re not comfortable making uninformed decisions. They’re looking for “the answer”

2) Definitive content must be remarkable + awesome + white-paper-worthy.

In a world where attention is a scarce resource, your definitive content needs to stand out from the crowd and be worth the time spent consuming it. It must be remarkable in order to have conversation about it. It must also be jaw-droppingly awesome so reactions and remarks are positive. And it must be white-paper-worthy in order to address the problem fully without “selling” (that comes later).

3) Blurb is frustrating for learners becuase it isn’t definitive

That’s why bloggers teaching stuff bitterly frustrates me. Back to basics, a ‘web log’ was originally meant for journalism, commentary and personal tales, and yet the platform has been stretched over other uses. So people now create niche blogs and post about something specific, perhaps offering tips. So far, harmless blurb…

Then they try writing something “definitive”…

This doesn’t work for three main reasons:

• Bloggers are afraid of completing the article – they thrive from the conversations that evolve from a good blog post which doesn’t quite close all the doors.
• Bloggers are afraid of forcing their readers to spend too much time reading for fear they’ll get bored. Bloggers are dependent on ‘little and often’ readership.
• Bloggers are possibly even afraid of spending extra time on “definitive content” for fear that they won’t be able to produce enough posts so readers will lose interest.

And what’s sad, is that after the first few days after the post is published, the traffic will drop down to a mere fraction of what it was, since your readership has simply “been there, done that”. Congratulations; you’re now in a business where your ‘product’ becomes worthless practically overnight.

Blogging is about the person, not the problem.

Blogging has it’s place creating blurb content, not definitive content (when you confuse the two, you have a personal problem). In fact, blogging could be considered a response to definitive content; it’s the ultimate example of user-generated content, or rather... user-generated conversation. The early days of SEOmoz saw Rand posting his commentary to SEO news.

Now, that’s not a stab at blogging - more a criticism of how people blog. Some of the best blogs about blogging use definitive content in order to bring newbies up to speed so their regular blurb is both relevant and newbies can talk about it. Darren Rowse’s Problogger is one of the biggest and best blogs about blogging, and even so Darren suggests buying the ProBlogger book in order to get all the details on starting up all in one place. And that makes sense, doesn’t it?

Everyone’s blogging like sheep, churning out loads of mediocre content. The world doesn’t need more content. It needs more remarkable, definitive content. Suddenly, those creating Definitive Content become somebody. Blogging has it’s place in it’s roots; a platform for commentary on news, personal affairs and creating conversation - not being manipulated out of place creating definitive pieces.

(There was a really interesting article about the Death of the Boring Blog Post which essentially outlines this problem from a design perspective. Apparently the answer is 'blogazines' - but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem of answering the problem people are typing in. Pretty is impressive but doesn't necessarily mean it's the best.)

Definitive content is the stuff which you reference, re-read, remember and in some cases - recite! Ever been in a position where you’ve been telling someone about an awesome book, or video that you’ve gotten a bit obsessed with? And what’s interesting, is even if it isn’t necessarily “current” or trending on Twitter, you’ll still reference it ‘cause it’s awesome. Hence, Definitive Content is evergreen - which means in the long run it’s a high effort-reward strategy.

Definitive Content Strategy

Step 1) Find an in-demand niche within a niche.
Step 2) Go be king.

In emerging industries, rarely have people launched with awesome definitive content. Instead, as the industry matures and begins to fragment - then the niche players can identify and distinguish themselves. A great example is looking at the search marketing industry:

1. Cindy Krum created Rank-Mobile.com ~2007; a website selling her mobile marketing consultancy services. She’s established herself by being the go to girl for all things to do with mobile. She’s enforced this by literally writing the book on Mobile Marketing, and then supplementing this with her blog commentary on industry news- her blurb.
2. David Mihm is ‘local search guy’. His collaboration to create the Local Search Ranking Factors (currently in it’s third volume) with other top brains in the industry helps not only define the fundamentals of search but also positions him and his website as experts. On top of this, he blurbs about local search all around the SEO space.
3. Perry Marshall wrote the book on Google Adwords in 2006 as businesses began to wake up to Adwords and the program really began to take off. He offer expensive consulting-based direct marketing products to his email list which he’s also built up by offering freebie definitive content for signing up (email courses, PDFs, mp3s etc.)
4. SEOmoz! Countless Definitive Content pieces like the Beginners Guide to SEO or the Search Engine Ranking Factors articles which get referenced by hundreds of SEO blogs and professionals. This is then supplemented with an the SEOmoz and YOUmoz blogs with the weekly Definitive 'Whiteboard Friday' videos fueling the fire.

Timing is important with creating Definitive Content - I think there are two important factors:

• Be the first.
• Do it yesterday

All three of these people followed these two principles and suddenly you’ve got four excellent examples where ‘content is king’. No one’s anointed these people as experts - instead they’ve written their way to the top and they were first to do it.

Definitive content is all well and good, but if no one know’s about you and it, then it’s not going to be of much benefit. This is where my earlier question of creating content asking for conversation vs. creating a system that asks for conversation comes into play.

You’ve created your Definitive Content; now you’ve got to use your network, your social sphere of influence, your ‘leverage’ to promote it. Naturally, they use content - perhaps a review post, video, google ad - or even just a tweet - to introduce your Definitive Content. This is called Manifesto Content and this in itself is a behaviour search engines are also looking for.

Manifesto Content does the simple job of introducing the problem, introducing you, and introducing your way of answering that problem

It pre-sells your Definitive Content. Think about the weight of links in this context; the origin of your inbound links will contain content of some sort (at least to provide value to a visitor) - that content is Manifesto Content. It's kinda like a CV for the Definitive Content, and the better the Manifesto Content, the better your first impression - and first impressions count.

IMAGE: CartoonStock.com

Manifesto Content distribution is a better way to consider link building. Link building is a game about numbers; Manifesto Content distribution is about building unmeasurable things like trust and credibility - which shows up to search engines as “link getting”.

• Do link directories offer great introductory content to you and your website with just a title, few lines of text and dozens of other pieces of similar content around them?
• Do guest posts or interviews for relevant related blogs offer great introductory content to you and your website?
• Does a Twitter ‘win a widget’ competition asking for retweets offer great introductory content?

As I said at the beginning, content is abstract, hence the philosophical-esque questions! However, this thinking is essential if you’re to come up with your own Manifesto Content   marketing strategy. Here’s a handful articles on getting your Manifesto Content shared:

• Top Ten Things You can do to Get Blogged
• The Internet Marketing Guide to Infographics
• Seven Scientifically-Proven Ways to get Shared on Facebook
• Reel SEO Viral Video Tips
• The Secret Strategies behind many Viral Videos
• Learning the Art of Guest Blogging
• Top Ten Viral Email Tips

The size, strength and distribution of your manifesto content will determine the overall strength of your web content, and of course good SEO practices of ensuring it gets indexed, it targets specific problem keywords and is “technically tidy” to ensure your Manifesto Content gets targeted traffic and click-throughs.

Great. Now Show Me the Money.

Now, you’ve been introduced as a credible source of information, you’ve educated them and cultured conversation-making abilities so they can engage in blurb. They’re now in an informed discussion about their problem, and likely, your solution if you target your blurb correctly - and all the while, you’ve been earning trust and credibility as someone who know’s what they’re talking about...

Why wouldn’t they consider your solution you’re selling?

This removes the need to “hard sell”. You don’t need to be a copywriting jedi because you’ve already built a level of equity that can’t be copied, even by the best copywriters - they’ve already know you and trust you. To hard sell would simply be a sign of insecurity and stupidity. That said, you need to be able to write sales copy with confidence so you don’t fudge the important bit! Luckily, the brains at Copyblogger will teach you how to ‘sell without selling’ - here’s their best definitive article on writing sales letters (with part 2 and part 3)

Roundup

That’s rather a lot to take in; so a quick roundup. The best way to illustrate how content strategy works is by comparing it to a jet engine.

A what...?!

Bare with me on this. A jet engine, at it’s most basic, has four parts. A front fan, a compressor, an ignition stage and the back turbine with a nozel - or very simply; suck, squeeze, bang, blow (excuse the innuendoes) - and these exactly map onto our four-part content funnel.

It’s essential that they all work together in order to produce results, like this:

• Manifesto content is the Suck. It draws people into your content funnel.
• Definitive content is the Squeeze. It focuses attention and educates prospects.
• Blurb is the Bang. It’s where conversation and the magic happens.
• Copy is the Blow. It’s where decisions become actions and the whole thing moves forwards.

What I like particularly about this analogy, is that the actual physics matches the real life SEO analogy:

• Most of the power of the engine comes from the front fan - the size, strength and distribution of your Manifesto Content will correlate to the overall output of your web content strategy
• Without the compression stage, air doesn’t have nearly as much pressure for when it’s ignited - without Definitive Content, your content funnel doesn’t have nearly as much focus and attention to culture conversation
• The burning reaction releases energy - conversation leads to decisions being made, opinions being formed and CHANGE.
• In a jet engine, “exploding” gas is only going to go backwards - highly targeted, focused prospects with a problem, who are educated about their options and are engaging in conversation about their problem - are likely to make decisions (and buy).
• The flow of fuel keeps the engine going round - the flow of conversation keeps the content funnel functioning and growing.

What this also helps explain is why guerilla-content SEO is so much better than ‘traditional’ advertising which is more like a rocket. Create a reaction of advertising bucks and “targeted” prospects and point it in some direction is complicated (it’s rocket science) and not sustainable without continued effort.

This compares to the Manifesto > Definitive > Blurb > Copy content strategy which is “evergreen” once you’ve created it. A ‘definitive’ piece of content will always be there, as will the articles linking to it. What it means is your web content strategy (including search) is dependent on how you culture conversation. Let me introduce the concept of Tribes -  Tribes are created when you connect people around a cause

Seth’s talk on TED explains...

(If you haven’t come across Seth Godin before, you’re in for a treat Everyone who I’ve worked with who I’ve asked to watch this video has viewed it all the way through said it was awesome. Net result? We’ve both gotten more done.

So take just 17 minutes out and watch Seth’s talk to understand why Tribes will shape our future. If you really don’t have time now, keep this tab open and watch it over lunch or something.)

Finished the video?

This is what I see SEO as - getting in the problem solving business... and not just solving your problems. “I’m not ranking number 1 - I’ll go and build some links”. Put that in context on Tribal SEO. “I’m not ranking number 1 - I’ll go and promote manifesto content”. Creating a tribe will drive your content. Tribes need to connect via blogs, online communities, social networks - in any case you need to be at the helm and leading.

We have the responsibility to create awesomeness.

You’ve heard the ‘Voice of Google’, Matt Cutts, bangs on and on about creating content for visitors vs. creating content for search engines. He’s absolutely right - if you’re trying to make crummy content and webpages rank, just like trying to sell crummy products and services, then shame on you!

I’m gonna end with a couple of questions and an apology. I've broken one of the cardinal unwritten rules of blogging (keep it short, stupid!) and you've probably spent waaaay too much time reading and watching all this. Whoops...

But then again, does Defintive Content need a cap on the length. Shouldn't it be as long as it needs to be? Which begs the question, how would you classify this post based on the scale I’ve talked about?

• Is it Manifesto Content? Does it introduce you to new problems, people and answers?
• Is it Definitive Content? Sure, I introduce a few ideas and articulate them in a way you’ve perhaps not seen before - but I haven’t “written the book” on Tribal SEO so to speak. Heck, I’m just a kid - why would you share and bookmark this? So far this is just a hypothesis - I need to enlist help in defining and proving these principles, which leads me to...
• Blurb. Is this merely a topic for discussion, something that’ll be todays topic of conversation and yet will be forgotten by this time tomorrow?
• Or is it copy? Me, shamelessly trying to promote myself or the Mozzers in a bid for private gain!

Secondly, how do you see this Manifesto > Definitive > Blurb > Copy content cycle fit in with this Whiteboard Friday concept of ‘The Path to Conversion’ and your business?

And finally, do you think that ‘Tribes’ make an effective long-term SEO strategy in your business, or any other business that springs to mind?

Let’s chat.