SEO Campaigns Have Evolved Into The Content Marketing Process

Before we dive into the content marketing process (as we’ll go through in the next lesson) let’s take a little step back and take a look at the bigger picture, see how far the web has come, and get some context for the development of ultimately how the “SEO Campaign” has evolved into the Content Marketing Process.

Right now, there’s a big buzzword back and forth about SEO and Content Marketing... The debate is mostly useless since it’s primarily just an argument over an individual or company specific “definition” for what either of those terms encompass.

You can’t argue with most SEO’s because they’ll always find a way to be “technically right...” LOL

Suffice to say, the process of scientifically understanding, analyzing, and optimizing all the factors that contribute to your web pages being found at the top for your relevant search terms, called "keywords," fall under what’s known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Since those rankings, and the resulting benefits of targeted search traffic, lead generation and sales are highly valued for businesses of every kind, AND because the actual "secret code" is intentionally “hidden” therefore-leaving us to only speculate and test to validate our theories…

An entire industry was born.

Rewind To About 10 Years Back

For years i’ve been telling my clients and students that SEO is a tiny technical factor that is a part of your content marketing process, and NOT the other way around.

Some may say that Content Marketing is the new SEO, but I say it’s always been about Content Marketing, and that today, more than ever it is about content “strategy,” and content marketing CAMPAIGNS to build your brand.

Anyway, traditional SEO is a thing of the past. While for me, as a content creator from the very start, SEO was simply a technical process for “labeling” my content so that people could find it in search...

For me It started out 10 years ago writing the best articles I could possibly create about my passion for music production and home recording, and then following the couple very basic processes-that a buddy of mine who knew about this thing he called “SEO,” had taught me called “backlinking..”

Just as we launched this idea, i was deployed to a tiny little hell-hole in baghdad that turned out to be one of the most active war zones occupied by U.S. forces.

During downtime after missions when my buddies were facebooking or phone calling their girlfriends, I was writing about my passion for music, staying sharp on my subject, and backlinking in baghdad.

It was tedious and time consuming to go and try to “do backlinking,” it sounds so silly when you think about the process of what you’re actually doing....

Here I was a dumb little grunt trying to do the best he could with the little bit of tools he had. Im proud that I was proactive, and it really was probably the most formative period of my life for better and for worse, but man if i’d have only known then, what I know now.

Anyway, the fact is that at that time, it REALLY was all about a mass amount of those “backlinks...” otherwise, your stuff don’t get found.

Your article that you spent sometimes a whole WEEK writing and editing would just sit there in cyberspace unless you knew how to get traffic.

I wasn’t offering anything for sale, I didn’t have any affiliate offers, I didn’t even know i should be building a list, so paid traffic wasn’t the solution and I certainly didn’t have the time, the credibility or simply the knowledge to try and contact big name sponsors or potential partners to help promote me...

So it really was ground zero where i started from. SEO was not only the ONLY traffic generation method I had even a basic understanding of, again a buddy gave me a crash course, and the only tactic i knew was manual backlink submission!!

So, like an ignorant moron, I submitted the hell out of those backlinks... How freakin funny is that!?

So, upon a REFERRED recommendation I hired a company that I paid good money to for them to take care of it, just so that i could compete.

It worked.... I got lots of traffic.

But, uh... then all of the sudden it stopped.

Not only did my site disappear from the serps and my ranking was stripped, i had NO IDEA what had happened, and I had NO IDEA how to solve the problem!

This was a freaking NIGHTMARE.

I didn’t know exactly what the problem was, how to fix it, and there was NO ONE TO CONTACT!

Now, it’s not like I was out there writing crappy content, spinning articles, spamming directories or doing anything blackhat or even greyhat...

All I was doing was writing the very best articles that I could. I mean, I would spend days sometimes weeks researching and writing the highest quality articles I could.

I took all the appropriate steps to try to “clean up my act” and then “humbly resubmit” to googles almighty wisdom, yearning that their magical wand would recognize the mistake they made, and make my business findable again........

It was a mystical, anonymous secret code that apparently no one knew exactly how it worked, and everyone just said you are screwed, scrap the domain.

Scrap the domain?

I had invested over $17,000 dollars of my hard earned money, not to mention over 1,000 hours, more money and time than i had spent on anything else in my life, ever...

What ended up happening is still not completely known as I never received any response back to my multiple contact attempts, process forms, forum posts, and “reconsideration requests...”

Almost certainly though, the “penalty” that shut my little business off, and drained my bank account right before it had the possibility of paying off was due to this SEO company I hired to “mysteriously make me show up in search engines..”

I learned my lesson though, and I told myself that I would have to understand each and every aspect of the pieces that directly effected my business as a content publisher in the modern world.

So I went and listed out the skills I wanted to master and made it my duty to achieve that mission. I studied everything I could get my hands on for years and years and years, I got mentored from the best and became great at MARKETING, SEO, Social Media, Traffic Generation...

Otherwise, i’m apparently a lost cause.

In addition to results I got for myself, I got results for clients ranging from small professional service businesses like chiropractors - all the way to author/speaker/coach and artist brands as well.

The SEO Campaign Evolution

The content, the tools, the opportunity, and the search engines have come a long way since the turn of the century, and it looks like we’ve got MOST of the bugs out of the system, and have finally reached that tipping point.

The algorithmic evolution has more or less “grown up” and now, the search engines have begun to restore power to the publishers and providers of high quality content, they place emphasis on the less easy to game factors such as social sharing, view counts, and individual author rankings.

SEO is and has always been a PART of Content Marketing, NOT the other way around. SEO is an industry born out of selling a service that you cannot predict and if you try to be proactive, and do all the right things, the right way, you can still get thrown out with the bath water.

Basically, it was like a process of narrowing down, or creating the best filtration system so that they could close the gap to drill down to what, where, and who the valuable content was coming from.

Their job is to deliver the most relevant search results to a specific user searching for a specific type of information, they’ve messed up in the past and their algorithms have penalized a lot of people who had to take it on the chin, but they are doing a better job now, at least a little better, for now at least.

The SEO foundation

The whole foundation and USP for google was this thing called “PAGERANK” (Larry Page - Co-founder)

To gain rankings, credibility, and authority in natural search you need great content and you need links. (What many people used to refer to as “backlinks...” Please note, you do not need to use this term anymore. Just use LINKS. Because that is all they are. A link is a link is a link. Don’t think about the link.)

In the primitive stages early on it was mostly about links... Lots of them, from wherever and however.

When it all comes down to it, many articles ended up being written for search engines and not visitors. (Still are) Those who wrote for people needed to also figure out how to optimize for search engines, or risk NOT showing up for those looking, losing out to the people who were writing just for search engines. A problem indeed.

A whole lot of evolution with natural search and content creation, and here we are.

2013.

Things are finally coming together, and the majority of the big shifts have been made.

Your content represents your brand, and these links represent your referrals, or votes.

All links are not created equal, and it is no longer a battle of quantity.

For a long time all the SEO'ers would test, hypothesize, and report what the search engines liked and didn't like.

What ended up happening was you had a large amount of people who understood SEO, but didn't care about content… Well, not from a USER’S perspective. ...And on the other hand you had a large amount of people who focused on creating high value content, but didn't know SEO.

Today, it's much less daunting, the search engines have evolved, and SEO is as it always was intended to be, a NOT SO simple formula for labeling, tagging, and describing the contents of a page.

I know you’re most likely not all that concerned with the whole evolution and the back and forth arguments that effected a LOT of people…

You just want to know what you need to know.

So today, as a Modern Content Creator in 2013 and beyond, here is what you need to know.

You need to know what your page is all about, and you need to know how to identify and optimize the "labeling" of it so that your audience can find it at the top in that universal index of information we call Google.

This includes understanding keyword research, as well as on and off-page optimization factors.

These are easily learnable factors, and with sound understanding of the fundamental principles (which I will teach you all about tomorrow) involved, you'll need to know nothing else about SEO if you so desire.

Let’s Get To The Content Already!

Now, onto the real issues... The meat and potatoes.

Creating high value content and putting it in front of as many of the people who are seeking it, as well as the people who may be interested in it, as you possibly can…

This is called Content Marketing, it is ACTUALLY the name of the game.

SEO is just one part of effective Content Marketing.

The goal of content marketing is to create targeted traffic generation directed or cultivated for a specific purpose or objective.

In other words, you create high value content that you give away in order to build brand awareness, credibility, an audience, and loyal customers who love you for life.

As a Modern Content Creator, you are a publisher, not a marketer. Marketing is simply a part of publishing and being a MODERN Content Creator.

You are not a marketer, any more than you are a "person who communicates".. Everyone has to do it, not everyone does it well.

Marketing is simply a part of the content marketing process. You'll notice it's the second word. ;)

You aren't marketing or selling anything directly, you are just communicating in a valuable way to whomever you are talking to.

You are becoming the go-to person in your niche, on your topic, by only delivering valuable content, establishing a reputation in your community, and developing a relationship with your audience.

This is the most effective way to build a brand as a Modern Content Creator.

It's especially valuable to Artists, Experts, Writers, Personal Brands and creative professionals who're not completely comfortable with blatant self-promotion, hard selling, or sketchy third party marketing tactics they see everyone regurgitating on and offline.

Like-wise its a super win-win for your audience because its simply good old fashioned relationship building at its core.

Content Marketing includes SEO but is primarily focused on leveraging high value content -to create relationships, traffic, and links.

You are going to learn both.

Content Marketing for Modern Content Creators

SEO Campaigns Have Been Replaced By The Content Marketing Process.

Today it’s all about building a valuable brand. Brands are built by audiences through valuable content in the form of communications as well as experiences.

The key to success for Modern Content Creators of any kind, from expert, to comic, to painter, to coach, is all about 3 dimensional brand loyalty.

Trust. Connection. True Value. That’s the future.

In the New Economy, you claim YOUR custom KEY by building a loyal audience that loves what, why, and how you do what you do. That’s 3 dimensional brand loyalty.

In the New Economy you build that brand, as well as test ideas, establish credibility and create value through CONTENT MARKETING.

Content Marketing is different than writing a blog post. It is quite simply a strategic combination of content created and distributed via the content marketing process, and through targeted CAMPAIGNs built to achieve specific outcomes and results.

The “strategy” piece is the main ingredient missing for most “aspiring bloggers.”

Since this post is already starting to get exceptionally long, i’m going to chop it off here and we’ll pick back up again tomorrow covering the SEO Factors, and then get into the Content Marketing Process.

If you’re ready to step up to the next level, go deeper, and become indoctrinated as a Content Creator...

The Official Content Marketing Bootcamp For Modern Content Creators is OFFICIALLY LIVE!

This is the 12 Week Content Marketing, Audience Development, & Traffic Transformation Program for those who CREATE the content!

This WHOLE COURSE, ALL the content, is my gift to you. I want you to know that you deserve it, and that it is my honor to be of service to you in a way that no one has before. Enroll today with a full scholarship while their are still seats available.

Be Your Best,

Jamie