Great content will make every aspect in your online journey easier and more effective.

• You’ll create a loyal readership.
• You’ll brand yourself as an expert in your field.
• You’ll attract potential buyers of your products and services.

From an SEO standpoint, great content is even more valuable.

• You’ll attract backlinks quickly and easily.
• Google will give you preference in your industry.
• People will stay on your site longer and click through to more pages, helping UX metrics.
• You’ll continue growing your exposure with different search terms as you produce more content.

Who is your perfect audience?

Simply going after a broad audience isn’t going to cut it.

There are many questions you need to ask yourself…

You have to understand…

• What are their intentions?
• What are their desires?
• What are they interested in?
• What problems are they trying to solve?
• What questions do they need answered?

Asking these types of questions will give you a good idea of who they are.

You can then take it a step further and delve into a tool called Facebook audience insights.

With this tool you can access demographics (like age, gender, job role, location, etc.), information on what pages they like, purchase history, interests, etc.

You can take your desired target audience and find similarities and common characteristics within the data amongst Facebook users.

Simply type in a keyword and start discovering who your audience is based on raw data.

Before you get ahead of yourself and start researching who your perfect audience is, you first need to answer one question.

Think about your audience and end their search.

Providing content that helps your audience achieve their goals is the most surefire method to accomplish your own content development goals.

Imagine your audience is searching Google for an answer to one of their biggest problems.

You need to provide precisely what they’re looking for.

Put yourself in their shoes, at the very moment they’re searching on Google.

Ask yourself precisely what would solve their problem, answer their question, or scratch the itch they’ve got.

Then simply plan how you can provide this for your audience within your content.

As an SEO, I can’t help but recommend you focus on providing content that will end their search.

The reason why is not only will you benefit by accomplishing your goals, but Google will end up rewarding you more.

Google wants to rank the most helpful content that solves the searchers intent for any given query typed into Google.

Google doesn’t just track behavior metrics to provide a neat little tool called Google Analytics.

They’re tracking this information to also provide their algorithm with a clear picture of which content is best suited for any given keyword.

By answering the most prevalent questions, solving the most important problems, or providing whatever it is your audience is searching for; the behavior they exhibit on your site will be tracked.

• They won’t click the back button.
• They’ll stay on your site longer.
• They’ll interact with videos, forms, inner-page links, etc.
• They’ll revisit your site.

If these tracked behaviors outperform your competitors, this indicates to Google that your page is best suited to be shown at the very top.

This means you must provide the exact experience your visitors are looking for, and you must do it better than anyone else.

We’ll cover some smart tactics how to do just that in a later phase within this guide.

Before we get ahead ourselves, you must choose a topic that’s worth your time. This next phase goes hand in hand with identifying your audience and content goals.

Find a topic that is big & broad.

I want to address the importance of WHY choosing a broad topic is important.

This may seem counterintuitive based on your previously acquired SEO knowledge but stay with me and I’ll explain.

Yes, I understand there are obstacles in choosing broad topics…

• There’s more direct SEO competition with sites having powerful backlink profiles.
• There are more people competing for the terms.
• The internet is saturated with content around broad topics.
• It’s hard to “reinvent” the wheel.

However, Google wants to rank a page it considers the authority on any given topic.

The more in-depth you are with a topic, the more likely Google will consider you as the authority.

Using broad topics, you can really break down the sub topics and expand on them within your content.

This will enable you to hit on all points and give you an opportunity to provide the solutions and answers from all angles.

By providing such in-depth content for your chosen topic, your audience will stay on the page longer, click through to more pages, and interact more with your site.

Why? It’s hard to predict precisely what each visitor is interested in on a person by person basis, but it is easy to cater to their needs when you’re covering all angles.

There’s another reason why I like focusing on broad topics.

A huge driving factor on what topic I choose depends on how many backlink opportunities I believe I can benefit from.

I would much rather write one giant piece of content that overdelivers, covers every aspect of the topic, and outperforms competitor content once every 3 months VS writing a subpar article once every few days.

By producing content about a broad topic and making it the “biggest” and “baddest” piece of content out there, you’re setting yourself up for success with link building.

• The topics are more popular.
• There are more subtopics and angles you can address in one piece of content.
• You’ll be able to speak to a wide array of people.
• You know there’s already a demand for content on these topics.
• Your competitors have existing backlink profiles on this content you can benefit from.

Using simple keyword research tactics and Google “related searches”, you can uncover some incredible topics and subtopics to include in your content.

Let’s dive into the exact strategy I use.

Discover angles proven to resonate with your audience.

Success leaves clues.

By identifying the most popular content on your chosen topic, you can get a better idea on what your audience is really interested in.

Researching this is really easy.

With buzzsumo.com, you can type in a keyword and be shown the most popular content related to that term based on social shares.

Browse through the top shared content and steal some hidden gems. Really dig deep and start jotting down the hidden angles, themes, and ideas about your chosen topic.

Another great tool you can use for this is Ahrefs Content Explorer.

It’s my “go to” tool when finding related content that I can sort by the number of links it has.

What I like most about this tool is you can sort your results by “referring domains”, which will show related content in descending order from the highest number of referring domains pointing to that page to the lowest.

Choose a topic that needs a gap filled.

The great thing about web content development is that you have access to all your competitors content right at your fingertips.

With just a short Google search, you’ll find incredible content you can piggy back off of when creating your own – But sometimes you won’t find content that’s “incredible”.

This is a perfect opportunity to fill in the gap for the lack of content on your chosen topic.

Don’t just go searching for topics that lack substance.

Still consider your audience, your end goal, and the search volume when choosing your topic.

Sometimes there is content you think might be substantially covered already on the web, but with a keen eye; you can always spot how to make it better.

Just ask yourself these types of questions…

• What questions weren’t addressed?
• What problems weren’t addressed?
• Could the solutions be expanded on or explained better?
• Could the solutions be minimized and simplified?
• Could there be more than one solution?
• What audience is not being addressed with this content?
• Is the content outdated?
• How could you make it better by providing your own unique experience and insight?
• Does the content layout look ugly?

The list could go on and on. Just think outside the box, find a good topic, and make it the best content out there on the web.

Choosing the right topic is sometimes half the battle in content development. By strategically choosing a topic, you’ll level the playing field and attain your goals easier.

The next phase is crucial in your website content development efforts and if done correctly, will make your job a thousand times easier.

What your audience craves.

The goal is to create the best piece of content on the subject.

Sometimes that’s easier said than done.

A big reason why is because your point of view is subjective.

Often times, what we think is best for our audience is not quite what they’re looking for.

You can put yourself in your audiences’ shoes, but sometimes it’s not going to cut it.

Luckily, you have all the tools needed in today’s day and age to better understand exactly what they’re looking for.

The trick is to let the market and existing data tell us what’s most interesting to your target audience.

Only then will you be able to directly speak to them.

Take out the guessing work with the following strategy.

Note similarities between each piece of content.

The last step in the research phase is crucial.

Often times you’ll find niches that use a prevalent form of content.

As you’re going through your tools and Google, make note of what type of content is ranking the highest and has the most links / social shares.

• Are they predominately using listicles?
• How to guides?
• Is humor used?
• Is it fact driven backed by statistics?
• Are references cited to help the writer make a case?

Chances are if you find a pattern of writing within an industry, it’s that way for a reason.

While it’s important to be yourself when developing content; if I was a betting man, I’d feel safer following the trends and “voice” of an industries audience.

Now that you’ve done your research, it’s time to organize it in a way that makes sense.

Finding the right topic can be stressful, researching can be tedious, and actually writing your content may seem like a monumental task.

Outlining your content though is a breeze.

Partly because you’ve already done most of the work.

Now it’s time to fit the pieces together.

Creating a bird’s eye view of your masterpiece.

Get your blank slate and write “intro” and “conclusion”.

Then in between those two words, begin outlining your points.
Don’t worry about the order, just write.

Go through your existing notes and make bullet points of the major and minor points.

Start with the major points that need to be covered. Then list the minor points below each appropriate section.

Piece together the puzzle in the correct order.

Chances are you already have a good idea of how the content will flow.

Whatever your topic is, whatever argument you’re making or problem you’re solving, there is a logical progression of ideas.

Only you can know precisely how it fits together, but it’s important that you give it a little thought.

This is a fluid process. It’s almost like a dance.

This is where your creative content development skills will really help out.

You see, it’s not about being “creative” to find topics or content to write about.

All of that is already at your fingertips with just a short Google search away.

It’s about making all of your points fit together within a nice “tapestry” so to speak.

The ideas’ might not be your own, but the way you fit it all together ends up being yours.

Once you have a complete picture of where your content is headed, then you can add in your own unique ideas, insights, and experience.

Now it’s time to start filling in the blanks and expanding on each topic within your outline.

Remember when I wrote earlier that this seems like the “monumental” task?

If you properly researched your topic and outlined your content appropriately; this is actually quite easy.

Just write.

I had to include this as one of the “hacks” because it’s so darn simple it just works.

So many people say they have trouble with content development when really, they’re just being lazy.

Simply go down point by point from your outline and start writing.

• Don’t think too much.
• Don’t skip a beat.
• Don’t read what you’ve already written.
• Don’t stop

Often times, we all get caught up on making everything perfect.

You want things “just right” but you fail to realize that this is your first draft.

Make your mistakes! Get it all on paper.

That’s why editing exists.

THEN you can go back with fresh eyes and realize your “stupid” mistakes later.

Cure for the simple writer’s block.

Here’s the beauty of outlining your entire piece of content first.

All you need to do is expand on the topics.

If you get stuck on a topic and experience writers block, go over your notes and skim some material on that particular topic.

This will jog your memory, inspire you, and get you thinking in the right direction again.

It’s the simple steps that really make a good content development plan.

People like to overcomplicate things when really all it takes is just a little common sense and you’re back on track.

Ask your target audience.

You could study the most comprehensive content development training on the market and fall flat on your face if you don’t speak directly to your audience.

Sometimes the best way to do that is to just ask them questions.

If you’re a business owner, get to know your customers and ask them about your topic.

If you’re a blogger, engage your audience in conversation within your comment section.

Sometimes people will reach out to you via email expressing interest in your writing. Get to know those people and get their opinion.

Ask on social media groups, go to forums, find people that fit your audience in person.

• Ask them what their biggest problems are with your chosen topic.
• What are their biggest desires.
• What are their biggest questions.
• What are their biggest fears / concerns.

Ask your target audience these questions. Pick their brain.

You’d be amazed at how much useful and insightful information you can receive by just asking.

How to manage and hire a good writer.

Another approach is to hire a writer who’s in the industry on whatever your topic is about.

You can find local bloggers on the topic and approach them.

Here are a few rules you should follow when hiring writers.

• The writer must have knowledge of your topic.
• Avoid content writing services. (They usually produce poor quality content.)
• Ask for examples of their best work. (Did they get a lot of social shares / comments?)

It doesn’t have to be expensive. Hiring a writer full time is not necessary.

You can find people that will do it per project.

You can find writers from a few different strategies.

Upwork

You can post a job on upwork.com and wait for writers to apply. Simply review some of their work, gauge your budget with their asking price, and hire your first writer.

Upwork is a great place to find writers on the cheaper side.

Sometimes the quality of their work reflects their cheap price.

Other times you find that hidden gem that does great work at a low cost.

Problogger

This is another great option to find competent and knowledgeable writers for your website.

Visit their job board and simply post a job.

If I had to choose, I would encourage you to stick with Problogger.

They can help you find some incredible writers that know everything they need to know about whatever topic you’re working on.

Social Media Freelance Writer Groups

Another route is to join Facebook groups like this one.

It’s really simple. Join the group, post a job, watch the private messages roll in with qualified writers that know a lot about your topic.

Industry Leading Websites

The last strategy to hiring writers involves reaching out to people who write for industry leading websites.

Step 1: Just type in your niche keyword + “blog” into Google.

Step 2: Find contributors/authors who are writing for these sites.

Step 3: Try and find their author bios page, or search for their social media pages.

Step 4: Contact them via email (if you can find it), or social media and ask if they do freelance writing. Stress how you’d love to hire them.

It’s a very simple process that anyone can do. Don’t overcomplicate it.

How to coordinate and manage your writers.

The last piece of the puzzle is ensuring they do good work for you.

If you find a good writer, you don’t need to micro manage them. In fact, micromanaging them might not go over too well if they’re talented.

You can have a writer churn out some amazing content in 3 simple steps.

Step 1: Simply give them the URLs of the popular content you already documented.

Step 2: Show them your outline you created.

Step 3: Tell them to put the content in their own words and expand with their unique insight and experience.

If you decide to hire a writer, you might be tempted to overcomplicate things.

That’s what people tend to do when they’re stepping out of their comfort zone.

Resist the temptation.

Seriously, content development doesn’t have to be hard.

If you hired a good writer, did adequate research, and drafted a useful outline; the writer will do a wonderful job.

After you get your content written, it’s time to edit your masterpiece.

You don’t have to dread this phase if you look at it the right way.

I look at it as an opportunity to watch my hard work transform into the masterpiece it’s meant to be.

Taking a seemingly jumbled set of ideas I’m disappointed with, and turning it into something I’m proud of.

Here are a few strategies I use every time I edit my content to get the job done effectively and quickly.

Fresh Eyes

Take a break for a day and read it over with fresh eyes.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written my “masterpiece”, only to make dozens of changes just 24 hours later.

I don’t know the reason behind why this is the case, but I’m not complaining.

The simpler you can make your life, the better.

It’s a very easy strategy that can make a huge difference.

If you’re doing some web content development, don’t click the publish button just yet.

Sleep on it first.

Objective party

Sometimes taking a break from reading your draft won’t help.

You’re too mesmerized (or arrogant) by your brilliant writing skills.

Ask a coworker, friend, or relative to read over your draft and ask for their honest opinion.

If they truly care about you, they’ll be honest with you.

If you’re writing a lot and can manage, find someone to join your “buddy” system.

If they write something, take a look at it for them and give them your honest feedback, and vice versa with your content.

Making the Cut

The world might not be ready for that one revolutionary idea you included in your content, or maybe you’re just too “wordy” like me.

Either way, be ruthless with yourself and try to cut points that might not necessarily belong in your content.

This is a great content development methodology every great writer should adhere to.

Make sentences shorter, avoid adverbs, and drop your tangents.

Editing is an important step in your web content development process.

It’s time to take it to the next level and supercharge your efforts.

You get this next part right, and it truly will make everything else (lead generation, branding, link building) much easier!

In this day and age, putting a “pretty bow” on your page should be a fundamental part of your website content development strategy.

Looking “good” has always been a reality that we have to deal with on a day to day basis.

If someone is dressed well, they’ll be trusted more, gain more business, and look more successful.

The same goes for your website content, or anything else for that matter.

Our subconscious desire to judge based on the appearance of people, places, and things is often times overpowering and happens without us even realizing it.

The goal is to make your content look like “a million bucks”, but without breaking the bank.

Let’s face it, a huge part of the impression a website makes on us is how it looks.

I very rarely stay long on a cheap looking website.

Even though I logically know the aesthetics of a website in no way affect the quality of information on the site, my subconscious screams at me “amateur”.

You’re kidding yourself if you think it doesn’t matter.

Fortunately, there are many ways to address this quickly, easily, and affordably.

Easy visual upgrades

Option 1: Pictures

As you guessed it, pictures can go a long way to making your content more professional.

The higher quality pictures you can use the better, but sometimes the paid subscriptions can get pricey if you’re on a budget.

Sometimes it’s worth it though, so if you go that route, I would recommend you visit Shutterstock.

Using a lot of pictures is great to improve the look of your content, but it can slow down your page speed quite a bit.

This in turn can negatively affect your SEO.

A quick fix is to minimize the size of your JPEG, and PNG files.

Another great alternative is to utilize your screen capturing abilities. If you have a Mac, it’s already built in. If you have a PC, download Jing.

Screen shots are especially useful if you’re writing instructional pieces of content.

When you accompany steps someone can take online with a picture demonstrating the steps, you can really ramp up the usefulness of your content to your site visitors.

There are a ton of apps that can help you edit your photos by adding red arrows, boxes, etc.

Option 2: GIF

Believe it or not, GIF’s aren’t used as much as I think they should be used.

These can be instrumental in separating the quality of your content development with other competitors, especially when you’re showing how to do something online.

Maybe you have an online service – Using GIFs in your FAQ that show how to navigate the site is huge.

Maybe you’re selling a software – GIF’s can provide step by step instructions on how to use the software.

There are many uses a GIF can bring to the table, you just have to think outside the box.

I personally use Giphy Capture, which can help me make GIFs in under 60 seconds.

• It’s easy to use.
• It’s quick to use.
• It’s free.

Aaaaaand…. It’s only for MAC. Do your research and find a good one for PC.

Point is, in today’s day and age, you don’t need to have a degree in computer science to do web content development.

Everything you would need is at your fingertips.

It’s really quite simple.

Step 1: Define your “problem”.
IE There is a big block of text in the content.

Step 2: List the solutions that can be used to fix the problem.
IE Create a text box graphic / Add a photo / Break it up into a separate section with a slightly different background color / Create a dropdown affect

Step 3: Have your web developer document the code necessary to implement each of the desired solutions.

Step 4: Make it so that anyone on the team can access this “cheat sheet” at any point in time to get the job done quickly and easily.

The best way to do this would be to use Google Docs.

It’s a great way to collaborate with your team members efficiently.

Anyone on the team can access it, you can share information, you can edit it or make recommendations in real time.

It’s really a great tool to use.

Step 5: Rinse and repeat for all problems you’ll come across when visually upgrading your content.

This will help you save time and enable your web developer to move quickly to cover more ground.

This will also enable you to let any new web developer pick up your website content development process immediately upon hiring them.

So, you’ve created your masterpiece. Now it’s time to showcase it to the world.

I’m putting this chapter together because a big misconception is that all you have to do is create content, and the rest will fall into place.

• People will find your content.
• People will automatically link out to your content.
• People will share it and it will go viral on its own.

WRONG!

This is so far from the truth it hurts.

As someone who does this for a living, I can tell you that you don’t want to leave this up to chance.

It is absolutely a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Get this wrong and you might as well quit creating content. Nothing is handed to you, especially online.

So long as you created amazing content, your promotion phase will be relatively smooth.

Here are some quick how to guides explaining just a few promotional strategies you can use.

Repurpose your content | Social

Just because you worked so hard on your masterpiece, doesn’t mean you’re finished.

Here are a few extra steps to really stretch out your efforts.

Step 1: Post it on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Twitter and Facebook are pretty self-explanatory.

It’s LinkedIn I want to dive a little deeper into.

You can “publish” content on LinkedIn.

Obviously, you don’t want to just copy and paste your entire content onto LinkedIn.

What you can do though, is write a tiny blurb introducing the topic, or just post the first paragraph.

Then you can hyperlink to your actual content using “Read More…” as the anchor text.

I’ve found that LinkedIn can be an incredibly powerful way to repurpose your content.

Here are some other ways that can really boost your presence.

Repurpose your content | Additional Views

Step 2: Actively participate in other well-known sites.

Quora is a great place to get a lot of eyeballs on your content.

Quora is a site where people can ask anything, and industry professionals can answer.

What I like to do is find questions related to my content, answer these questions, and then link out to my “amazing” content.

Let’s say I wrote an article about “content development”.

Go to google and type (site:Quora.com “Keyword Here”) just like the picture below.

Go find relevant questions pertaining to your topic and answer them “linking to your content for a more detailed explanation”.

Reddit is another great site to promote.

You can’t just spam Reddit message boards though, you have to be strategic.

Do your research first and find a subreddit that will match the desired audience for your content.

The key is you have to find a relevant subreddit, but also one that has some traffic going to it.

You must submit useful content. I cannot stress this enough.

Do not submit content that is subpar or promotional.

If you’ve done a good job with your content development, this should not be an issue.

I stress this because Reddit is famous for having users who police their communities religiously.

Don’t post garbage content, or they’ll tear you apart with down votes.

Keep it up and you’ll get banned.

Don’t let me scare you away though.

It’s a great promotional strategy once you get it right.

Repurpose your content | Every sense of the word

Step 3: Participate in other types of media content development.

Take your existing content you have and create new content with the information you’ve already put together.

If you took my content development training to heart, you should have covered a lot of talking points.

Take a section of your content and make it into a video to publish on YouTube.

Create an infographic, podcast, turn your information into an online course.

You’ve already put the hard work in.

Why not benefit from your hard work and really stretch it out?

This next promotional tip will supercharge your promotional efforts, and you won’t break a sweat doing it.

With that said, the quality of influencers you can reach with Buzzstream far surpass any other influencer platforms I’ve come across.

You won’t be short of finding journalists, contributors, high status guest posters, etc.

Step 1: Type in your keywords.

Step 2: Click the “add to a project” button for every relevant influencer you find.

Step 3: Once you’ve built a nice sized list, go to buzzstreams outreach platform, export the data, find the emails, and commence the outreach phase.

Whether you’re using Buzzsumo or Buzzstream, as long as you’re promoting great content, you will see results.

What’s great about this approach is you’ll find people writing for some big sites and publications out there.

Pssst… A lot of PR agencies use these tactics and then up-charge their clients!

Don’t skip these tactics as it just might make or break your promotion campaign.

Here are 2 strategies that work wonders.

Work with your winners

Maybe you’ve already been participating in content creation for your website and seen some success.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take out the guess work for your future projects?

There’s a way to focus your efforts on activities you know will yield great results when creating content.

By spotting content that’s already performing well, you can really ramp up your efforts.

The trick is to know how to spot it.

First you take existing content that’s already performing well.

Get creative and really try to be honest with yourself.

Once you’ve chosen the winner, get to work!

Take the strategies laid out in this article and make it even better than before.

Then promote it to those who’ve already linked out and shared it.

First thank them for sharing or linking to your content.

Then explain how you’ve updated it with “XYZ information” and see if they’ll be willing to provide additional exposure.

This also opens up doors for exposure through additional shares and backlinks to give it even more of a boost.

If it was popular and well received then, it can only be better a second time around with the updates.

Not only that, but if it has an existing backlink profile, you might be surprised at how easy it is to rank after commencing your second link building campaign.

This idea originally stemmed from an old tactic we use at the agency.

By focusing aggressive link building campaigns on pages ranking on the second and third page of Google, we found that we could do more damage for our clients in the search engines in less time.

Why? Because they already have momentum and a lot going for them.

Bottom line is, it works.

Focus on user experience

Now more than ever, putting a focus on user experience with your content development is crucial to ranking higher in the search engines.

As I previously discussed, Google looks at certain metrics to determine exactly how useful the content is for the visitors they send your way.

A good content development process will include strategies focused on increasing these metrics.

Metric 1: Reducing bounce rate

Everyone is in a big hurry. This is no different when we’re searching online.

Your first goal is to let your visitors know that your content will solve their searchers intent.

This needs to be addressed in the very beginning of your content.

Ask yourself why someone would research a topic and want to land on your page. Once you have a good idea, word your introduction accordingly.

By assuring your visitors that their searchers intent will be addressed, you will decrease the amount of people who hit the back button and encourage them to engaging with your content.

Thus, reducing your bounce rate.

Metric 2: Increasing time on site

For obvious reasons, a higher time on site compared to your competitors is a huge indication to Google that your page is addressing the needs of your site visitors.

There are many ways you can increase the likelihood of people staying on your page longer.

• Increase the page speed so people don’t get frustrated and leave.
• Embed engaging videos within your content to keep people longer.
• Make it so that people can scan your page quickly with headlines and sub headers.

The importance of copywriting and content

When most people think about copywriting, they think of sales letters, newsletters, and headlines.

It would surprise some that having copywriting skills will actually help your SEO.

Let’s dive into 2 quick reasons why.

CTR: A higher than average click-through-rate from the search engine results page can help your rankings.

Yes, you should focus on your user experience even before someone lands on your page.

Take a second look at your title tags and see how you could make them better.

The scanners: There are people that don’t ever read entire pieces of content.

Good copywriting goes even farther than just focusing on call to actions and psychological motivators.

Set up your headers and sub headers in a way that your reader will notice.

The goal is you want them to notice and stop to read each section because of how enticing your headers and sub headers are.

Set it up so that a reader would still benefit and understand the flow of the content based only on the headers and sub headers.

If you can let a reader know what your main points are just by them scanning the page, you’ve done your job.

Here’s the problem though…

Most keywords that get a high search volume are very competitive.

Which means you need to increase your overall domain rating (DR) if you want your smaller sized content to rank without as many links built to your contents page URL.

Sure, if you have a DR of 70 or 80, go for it.

It won’t take too many links if any at all to help bump your small content to the top for a lot of keywords.

That’s where frequent content creation makes sense.

But for the vast majority of people out there, they don’t have thousands of referring domains linking to their site.

So, what’s the verdict? What’s the best place to start?

Start with longer content first.

• You can build more links.
• You can build a readership.
• You have a chance to “wow” people more often.

Once you’ve cranked out a few long pieces of content, commence some aggressive link building campaigns.

Stay consistent with it for a while.

Once you’ve built up your domain rating and you’ve built a sizable backlink profile, THEN go in for the kill with the smaller content if you want.

Or just keep developing longer content and continue growing your audience.

This leads me to my last point in my SEO content development rant.

Keep Your Crawl Rate High

Just remember one thing, the goal is to provide content that is great!

The last thing you want is for Google to crawl your site and find a bunch of mediocre content.

This will hurt your crawl rate, as Google bots will start categorizing your site as one that has useless content.

You want every page that Google crawls to be amazing! This will encourage Google to crawl your site longer and more often, which in turn will increase rankings and page views.