Web Content Mix Strategy
Budding web publishers have been asking me about what they should use as a guideline for their web content mix. Here’s my current thinking:
1) Original content that you have the exclusive rights to should be a min. of 25% of your content. Ride the long tail including sub-tails and you’ll never run out of content generation ideas. This can also include ghostwritten content that you have the exclusive rights to. Lastly, before anyone complains that they don’t have the time to write a few thousand articles this year: Well, then get your writing team to do it for you and just be certain it’s original works and that you have an exclusive right to the content.
2) Original content that you distribute/syndicate in exchange for a link back to your website should be another 25% of your content. Some publishers syndicate 100% of their original content. I’m not saying this is bad or wrong, but if you have hopes to grow your own web traffic, you’ll need to lean heavily on #3 below to create enough ‘uniqueness’ to your website to create market trust.
3) User generated content should represent at least 10% if not more of your total content mix. Often times user generated content is original, but not guaranteed to be original. This can be in the form of blog comments, forum posts, submissions, votes in polls or online quiz’s, etc.
4) Syndicated content – ie: Content that is non-exclusive to you should never be more than 40-50% of your total content. I especially like this strategy when you can use it to go very vertical in a specific market niche. You can get syndicated content from sites like ours (25 reprint limit per site per year), our competitors, and especially from blogs or other RSS-aware sites that allow their content to be syndicated via XML feeds. Be sure to ask permission before using this type of content and always be a good netcitizen by reading and adhering to the TOS setup by the publisher of the feeds.
Notice that Private Label Rights (PLR) content didn’t even get added to the list. Garbage I say and not worth the headaches or liabilities.
One other web content type that I didn’t include is public domain content. There are very few that can use this type of content right and therefore I don’t advocate adding public domain content in your web content mix strategy.
Your thoughts about my content mix recommendations?
Chris ~ I agree with your content mix recommendations and I think it gives a standard that web publishers can work with to ensure having a content rich website that isn’t weighted heavily with duplicated content but more FRESH content.
Tammy
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