3 Reasons Why Shareable Content is Good for SEO
While a nice byproduct of any effective content strategy, shareable content is also good for your SEO. Shareable content impacts key off-site signals that are crucial to improving your organic search ranking, including backlinks, customer engagement, and brand awareness.
We all know that shareable content is good for your online marketing efforts but what constitutes sharable content and how can brands create shareable content?
Creating shareable content, or potentially viral content is typically a well-planned effort that requires planning and strategic content development. In this article, we’ll discuss why shareable content is good for your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and how to discover shareable content topics.
Here are three reasons why sharable content is good for your SEO strategy:
1. Increase in backlinks
A couple years ago, Google disclosed that backlinks (links from other external domains) are one of their top three ranking factors. These days, backlinks (aka external links) are still among the top correlated ranking factors for organic search.
Having shareable content increases the likelihood of gaining external links from other sites. Creating high-quality, engaging content is the backbone of any good link building strategy.
One of my favorite examples of high-quality, shareable content is the NY Times interactive article “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which has over 114,000 backlinks (according to Ahrefs)! That’s an amazing ROI on one high-quality piece of content.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html
2. Increase in in engagement
As one of the goals of any SEO strategy, driving engagement with your target audience can lead to more conversions and interactions with your brand. User engagement signals and user experience have become more important over the years for organic search ranking.
Particularly with user experience, Google has had algorithm updates over the past few years prioritizing site speed, mobile friendliness and intrusive pop-ups hindering user experience.
There’s also a known correlation between click-through-rate (CTR) and better ranking in organic search. Google can understand the “long click” versus “short click” from search results and prioritize results with “long click,” knowing users are interacting more with that particular piece of content.
3. Increase in brand awareness
Brand awareness is another byproduct of having shareable content and by having more individuals see your content. This can increase repeat visitors to your website and increase trust with your brand.
Google understands the percentage of branded and non-branded queries that users use to find your site (they have referral query data in Google Search Console). Having a stronger, more reputable brand can increase your visibility in search results and drive more organic search visits.
How to discover shareable content topics?
Now we know why shareable content is so important, the big question is how do we discover shareable content topics? There are a few ways to research and plan new topics that are already popular to inspire your shareable content creation.
Social listening
Using social listening can help determine what kind of content your target audience is interested in by seeing what’s being shared and liked on social channels. This includes researching your social profiles as well as competitors to analyze user behavior.
Third-party tools
Using third-party tools to see what is popular within a particular niche can be helpful. For example, searching in Buzzsumo will show the most shared and popular pieces of content for a particular subject.
Source: Buzzsumo.com
Competitive insights
Ahrefs is also a useful tool to see what content is most popular with your competitors. For example, looking at REI, we can see specific ‘how-to’ and expert advice articles are among the most shared and linked pieces of content across their site.
Source: Ahrefs.com
Conclusion
Wrapping up, shareable content is important for improving organic search signals and should be part of any SEO strategy. Shareable content can impact your search engine optimization strategy by:
- Increasing backlinks
- Increasing engagement
- Increasing brand awareness
Discovering content ideas for shareable content starts with understanding your audience and what’s popular within your niche. Use third-party tools, such as Buzzsumo or Ahrefs, to find popular content within your target market or topic.
What other kinds of shareable content have you found work for your brand, blog or SEO strategy?
Kristan is an independent consultant with 15 years of experience in the SEO industry. Kristan previously founded the award-winning SEO agency Conifr. She’s worked in agency and in-house SEO leadership positions, most notably as the SEO Director at Zillow Group, overseeing a channel that received over one billion web visitors a year. Kristan is a freelance SEO consultant who built and sold a seven-figure agency and now enjoys helping others develop their freelance business.
