The importance of content for successful outreach

Marketing

What kind of impact does good content have on an outreach campaign?

The problem with links

If you’ve got a website, and your website has pages, then we can build links to it. Technically speaking, you can build links to any page on a website, and some might think that’s a good thing.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

So, how can you make sure that your content is relevant enough that it’s passing on as much SEO value as possible? Consider two main things: the hosting site and the content.

The Value Breakdown

Many experts will claim that if you create good content, then the links will follow – and there is truth to this. However, unless you are Forbes or Apple or similar, you still need to work the content. And that’s where good outreach comes in. Good content + good outreach = a lot of value for your website.

But, one without the other, while it will still be effective, won’t result in the link value you want. If we’re carrying out outreach activity on a brochure site, and it looks great, is fully functional, and is just generally a nice site, we’ll get links, sure, but, what are these links doing? Google places value on natural links that are informative and valuable to the users clicking on them. If you’re just linking to a plain old product page, or a nicely-designed, yet boring homepage, you’re not going to reap the full benefits of that link value.

The more value you’re providing the user, the more trust Google (and other search engines) place on your links, and in turn, your website. If you point a user to a product page, and your link is, let’s face it, sticking out like a sore thumb, it’ll pass on value, but not much. If you point a user to an informative article that is completely relevant to the content they’re clicking through from, it’ll pass on heaps of value.

Increasing the success of your outreach

And having good content on your site makes the authority sites you are targeting more open to linking to them. Anyone that’s even slightly SEO savvy will be able to spot a commercial link that is pointing to product pages and advertorial pages. But, if you’ve got informative and valuable content on site, it vastly increases the success of your outreach, and the chances of authority sites linking to you organically.

But, the value doesn’t stop there. This is where the beauty of Google’s algorithms come in – oh, they are so beautiful. Most may think that the flow of authority just runs from the linking site, to the linked page:

The importance of supporting content

Okay, it might not look exactly like that, but, it stresses my point. The flow of authority can benefit more than the linked page alone, if your content serves to benefit these other pages, too. And that’s why good content is so important – it helps increase search engines’ understanding of your sites purpose, your audience, and its benefit.

Valuable supporting content is also vital to organic search in general. The more information you are providing users, the better you’ll perform in rankings, naturally. With over a quarter of search queries now in the form of questions (upped through the use of voice search), it’s important to be answering questions in your content.

In summary

Having a page that just states your thing and what you do is fine, but, the real value lies in the following:

What your thing is

What it does

How it does it

Why it does it

Who it does it for

How it helps them

How they can use it

And that list goes on. You’re not going to answer all of these questions on one page! You need supporting content to answer these questions. You need supporting content to gain properly distributed link value. You need supporting content to be successful. Link value gained from strong links, driven by good content improves your rankings for whole sections, if set up properly.

If you want to learn more about our Outreach team and how they use winning content, feel free to drop us a line.

Don’t work harder, work smarter.