Curation is the key to consistently delivering relevant content to your target audience, but how can you measure the SEO impact of curated content?
Over the past few years, curation is a term that has been thrown around a lot, especially as the Internet is flooded with white papers, insightful Tweets and unique blog posts. To prevent information overload, businesses have been curating their content – scheduling it out and sharing content that has been created by others in the industry.
However, the rules of SEO still apply to curated content, and businesses need to make sure that there is SEO value in what they distribute. An unfortunate result of sharing content that may already be out there on the Internet is that its SEO stock may have plummeted.
Types of Curation and Best Practices
Mashable reports that there are five types of content curation: aggregation, distillation, elevation, mashups and chronology. Aggregation is cited as the most popular, involving the curation of existing, relevant content into one location (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn).
There is no correct way to curate content, but one tactic that may help marketers maintain SEO value is mashup. Mashable defines this method as merging different pieces of content to create a unique point of view.
Take a blog post, for example. When you use an existing piece as the basis for your own content, you can potentially maintain the SEO value of your post – and there’s proof in this method.
The Impact of Curation on SEO
Virginia Nussey of Bruce Clay, Inc., conducted an experiment to determine exactly how much curation can impact SEO. She referred back to a traditional piece of blog content that had already been published, then replaced it with three different variations of curated content. She proceeded to use the SEOToolSet Ranking Monitor to track the long-tail keyword, “learn how to code for internet marketing,” in the new variations.
In two of the variations of the post, the SEO value dropped, but one showed surprising results – the piece that contained a portion of the original content and curated links had earned a top ranking.
So what did this experiment prove? Not all curated content is destined to lose SEO value. Specifically, content that is curated from an original piece has the same ranking potential as fresh content.
How to Keep Tabs
Keeping tabs on the performance of your curated content can help you ensure that your SEO strategy is on point. One of the easiest ways to measure the impact of your curated content is to run it through an SEO analytics tool, just as Nussey did with the SEOToolSet Ranking Monitor.
MajesticSEO is one service you can utilize to get an idea of the external backlinks, referring IPs and referring domains of your website according to the Site Explorer tool. MOZ is another option you can consider if you want data visualizations of your SEO performance and compare your statistics to the competition.
One way to give your curated content the best chance of ranking high is to link back to insightful, quality websites. Diverse links will also help you win over Google, which is constantly checking for these types of traits in SEO-driven webpages.
As you look to provide fresh content to your audience on a daily basis, content curation may be the perfect strategy for your business. However, tracking SEO is critical to making sure that your content is still ranking high on search engine results and reaching the masses.
And if you’re interested in leveraging the benefits of content curation for SEO, check out our complete guide.
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