RankReveal Blog

The Ultimate Guide To LSI Keywords: Rank Higher Where It Matters

Welcome! If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been frantically trying to figure out what exactly LSI Keywords are and what exactly you’re supposed to do with them. If that’s the case, then congratulations! You’ve come to the right place.

In this article, I’m going to define LSI keywords, their uses and advantages in an online marketing context, as well as giving you advice on how to find them, how to use them, and what effects you can create with them.

We will help you understand the power of using related concepts and establishing context in your content, to play the game the way search engine algorithms play it. This will help you generate a better ranking for your content, resulting in more traffic and conversions. In short, LSI Keywords can be the key to unlocking greater content marketing success.

Sound good? Then let’s get started!

What Is Latent Semantic Indexing?

The not-so-important definition of Latent Semantic Indexing

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing is a fancy name for a mathematical methodology that determines the relationship between terms (specific words) and concepts (specific ideas) in content. Latent Semantic Indexing was utilized by sites like Google to provide better results to their users.

LSI helps to give words greater context, resulting in better accuracy. A great example is apple vs Apple. One is a fruit and one is a technology company. That capital letter makes a big difference to what you’re searching for. If you want information about apples and you end up with information about Apple, it isn’t going to help you very much.

So, Google and other search engines use contextual clues. For instance, if you put in “apple recipe” it’s very unlikely you’re trying to create an iPhone at home. By contrast, if you put in “Apple repair”, it’s equally unlikely you’re trying to fuse pieces of fruit back together again.

What Are LSI Keywords?

LSI Keywords are keywords thematically related to your main keywords based on its context of use.

Broadly speaking, LSI Keywords are words thematically related to your main target keyword.

For example, if I was to look for “sword fight”, thematically related words might be “sword fighting game”, “sword fighting olympics”, “sword fight training” or “Sword fight scene”. Each is a very different thing in itself, but they are all thematically related to the world of sword fighting. You could also have large groups of different related items, such as “sword fight gloves” “sword fight mask” “sword fight classes”, “pirate sword fight for children’s birthday” – the list goes on and on.

LSI Keywords aren’t quite the same as long tail keywords, but there’s a lot of overlap. Another good way to think about LSI keywords is to think about synonyms – different ways people might be looking for the same thing.

Why Use LSI Keywords?

Fortunately, there are many great reasons to use LSI Keywords, as they confer a number of distinct advantages. Here are some of the top highlights to convince you of how worthwhile the practice can be:

LSI Keywords give your content greater context. By using semantically related terms, you help search engines understand HOW your website, product or service relates to the primary keyword and strengthens that relationship to ensure more accurate traffic is driven to your site. For example, if you’re a plumber called Mario, you’ll want to use related terms like ‘pipe repair’, ‘boiler maintenance’, ‘fixing leaks’ and so on so you don’t get useless traffic from people looking for the popular video game franchise. Just typing “Mario plumber” over and over again won’t help you rank for your industry.
LSI Keywords make it easier for search engines to categorize content accurately. If you’re a plumber called Mario and you specialized in commercial boiler installation, you wouldn’t want to be categorized under ‘emergency call outs’ for residential customers. Because the internet is so stuffed full of options, categorizing them becomes essential to providing a good service. The more relevant LSI keywords you employ, the less likely you are to be wrongly categorized.
LSI Keywords make it easier for search engines to match and rank you for the right keyword. Every LSI Keyword you use reinforces your ranking for the keyword they are related to. What’s more, you can introduce LSI keywords into your content a lot more easily than simply stuffing the same phrase in there over and over again. It allows you to write more naturally, while augmenting your ranking for that all important search term.
LSI Keywords help users learn more topic-related terms. By educating your readers about the different terminology used in your sphere, you make them more likely to use that language when creating their searches in the future. If they do, and they learned it from you, this will of course help bring them back to your content, when your LSI Keywords then become their primary search.

How Do I Find LSI Keywords?

A lot of people seem confused about how to find LSI keywords, but the truth is right under your nose.

With instant search, Google will give you autocomplete suggestions based on their LSI algorithm. This means you simply have to type in your keyword to see related terms. If you’ve never even thought about LSI before, this is enough to get you started.

If you’ve exhausted the few related terms they give you through autocomplete, Google fortunately has three other ways to discover LSI Keywords.

Google related searches helps you see what Google suggests to users when their search terms are vague, and the related searches provide helpful hints as to how to get the best from the keyword you’re trying to rank for.
Google Trends is another free and very useful tool from Google. You can put in your search term to see how it is trending both short and long term, and it comes with related topics and related queries, together with information on where geographically the term is most popular. This can give you plenty of inspiration for what audiences to target and how.
Google Correlate is a relative new tool designed to help people find relationships between keywords that relate to real world data. This throws up some pretty interesting things. When we searched “Mario Plumber”, one of the strongest correlations was “2010 Dodge Avenger”. This is obviously not helpful for our commercial heating installer, but another strong correlation was “number for Facebook”, which may be worth including.

What LSI Keyword Tools Can I Use?

If this all feels a little much, then never fear, there are tools that can help you make the process as easy as possible. A couple of our favourites are:

LSIGraph – A great online tool that allows you to put in any keyword and see the most popular long tail and semantically related terms being Googled for right now. It will generate up to thirty of the best terms for you to use, which allows you to simply copy and paste them into a note for inclusion into your later content. Every LSI keyword you use strengthens your relationship to that individual keyword, so it allows you to go very easily from strength to strength, without having to do the research yourself.
SEOPressor Connect – a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your keyword density, with in-page suggestions for related LSI keywords, so that you can include them as you go along. It comes with a number of features designed to optimize online content for maximum impact, and of course LSI Keywords are an important part of that. By including On-Page Analysis, SEO Intelligence, a Semantic Builder, Crawler Control and Link Management, the tool gives people everything they need to optimize content before publishing.

How Do I Use LSI Keywords?

So we’ve told you the what and the why, and we’ve given you the tools. Now what? It’s time to talk about how to harness the power of these keywords. This requires two basic processes across a number of touchpoints.

Select the right LSI Keywords based on search intent. As we’ve explained so far, context is everything. You need to know what people’s search intent will be when you want them to find your business. Understanding this will give you insight into what terms they will use when searching, and what are the appropriate terms to use. Believe when I say, if you run a fencing school you don’t want to select “Sword Fighting urbandictionary” from the available LSI keywords. By searching the keywords themselves and seeing the results, you can better understand what intent is behind them.
Implement your LSI Keywords. This is a simple enough process at first sight, but the way you choose to include them can have a massive impact on your overall success. Some recommendations:
1. title tag – your title tag is an HTML title element critical to both SEO and user experience, helping search engines identify the title. Including an LSI Keyword in the title is a great way to improve your ranking. That said, the title should also definitely include the keyword itself.
2. description tag – The description tag uses an HTML excerpt in a web page header to summarize the content of the page – this is the best possible place to position your LSI keywords, as it provides the broader context of your piece.
3. header tags – by paraphrasing your topic area in your header tags within the content itself, you can redouble the association of your title with your topic area.
4. permalinks – the link used to share your article is also commonly analysed by search engine algorithms and putting LSI or Longtail keywords in the permalink can boost your traffic, especially when considering the increased adoption of voice search.
5. anchor text – Your anchor text on your links will be analysed, and provide a great place to reinforce your association with the product or service area.
6. first and last 100 words – these are given precedence by search engine algorithms as they provide your first and last impression. By ensuring you get your LSI’s into these passages, you can amplify how useful they are.
7. Replace overused keywords – because of ‘keyword stuffing’ – the practice of simply getting the keyword in as often as possible regardless of sense – search algorithms will now punish websites with >2% keyword density. Replacing over-common instances of the main keyword with similar LSI keywords allows you to reap the benefit while avoiding the punishment.

Call In The Reinforcements

A lot of people wrongly think of LSI keywords as diversifying their target keywords or as diluting the focus on their main keyword of choice.

From this article, you should now know exactly why that’s the wrong attitude. LSI keywords don’t dilute, the reinforce. LSI Keywords can improve ranking for the exact keywords you’re targeting. They do this because they are semantically related, provide greater context, and anticipate the intent of your target customers. They make your content marketing more accurate, not less.

While this is the single biggest reason to utilize LSI keywords in your approach, there are far more great benefits that come from this practice. Maximizing the variation of your target keywords not only reinforces the main keyword performance, it helps content look and read better. It increases engagement and expands the functional vocabulary of your audience when discussing your product or service.

What’s more, there are tools available to make it as easy as possible to seamlessly incorporate them into pre-existing content. As such, there has never been a better time to bring LSI keywords into your daily online marketing practice, and start seeing the rewards for yourself. With the information in this article, you have all the knowledge, tools and approaches you need to make it a success.

Do you have experience with harnessing LSI keywords? Have you discovered a particular positioning or strategy that has delivered unexpected success? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below!

Equally, if you have any questions or require any clarification on the overview we’ve created here, comment below to get more information from our growing community of online marketers.

Updated: 1/6/17

The Only 14 SEO Tools You Will Ever Need

Let’s be honest here, there are tons of SEO tools available on the market, and it can be hard to choose between all of them.

It doesn’t help that different businesses have different needs, so there’s no such thing as a list that’s perfect for everybody.

While most listicles focuses on the biggest list of SEO tools they can compile, I’m gonna try something different.

I’m going to list down the 3 major sections of SEO I usually do, and the exact tools I use to excel in each. No frills. No fuss.

On-Page SEO Tools

On-Page SEO is the cornerstone of any SEO campaign. From doing keyword research to implementing them into your contents, there’s a lot of tools that’ll help you achieve them in an organized, effortless and time-efficient manner.

1. LSIGraph (Free)

LSIGraph is a free tool to generate LSI Keywords, or Latent Semantic Indexing if you prefer complicated jargons. It basically means keywords that provides context to a target keyword.

For example, juice, healthy and salad tells you “apple” means a fruit. Tim cook, iOS and airpods tells you “apple” means the tech piece. Using the right LSI keywords will make it easier for Google to rank you for the right keywords.

Now LSIGraph is good for 2 things – one, is to actually give LSI Keywords suggestions to be used to improve your content theme.

Two, I use it a lot to get ideas on additional, more precise keywords to target based on my broader, more general target keyword.

find keyword suggestions with lsigraph seo tool

LSIGraph can also help you expand broad keywords and get specific ideas on what should be covered.

Once I get a list of additional keywords I’ll head down to..

2. Google Keyword Planner (Free)

Google Keyword Planner is the easiest place to go find the monthly search volume for the target keywords and LSI keywords you found from LSIGraph.

This is to make sure you target the right keywords with actual search volume and traffic. Just stick select few keywords from LSIGraph into Google Keyword Planner and find out which have a decent amount of search volume.

You don’t actually need to be using AdWords in order to get value from Google’s Keyword Planner. Just go through the initial setup process and you’ll be able to use the keyword planner to get keyword suggestions and volume for free.

It’s important to set the right expectations here. Most companies will go through their ‘main’ search terms fairly quickly. At that point, things can feel like they’re slowing down, but it is important to keep working at it. Search Engine Optimization is a long-term marketing strategy, and the longer you do it, the greater the results will be.

3. Website SEO Checker (Free, with optional paid plans)

Now that you have a list of target keywords and LSI keywords, it’s the time to start implementing them into your contents and Website SEO Checker is the fastest and easiest way to help you do just that.

This tool will check how optimized your webpage is for a specific keyword you put in and give you an SEO Score to show how easy will it be for you to rank for that particular keyword.

You’ll also be given a list of SEO suggestions you can use to further improve your SEO Score and rankability as well a list of LSI Keywords you can add into your content.

Now, many companies like to “set and forget” the content on their site, but that’s actually bad for them. Search engines like Google regularly update their algorithms, and SEO tools like the Website SEO Checker are updated in response. By regularly checking on the status of each of your keywords, you can be sure you’re still getting the most value from them – without doing this, changes in search algorithms could reduce or even eliminate the value of the effort you put in.

We recommend checking each of your keywords at least once every three months. If you have a particularly large number of keywords – and in fairness, some sites do – break it into segments and check them on a rotating schedule instead. SEO tools only show their true value when used properly, and regular checkups are a key part of getting the most value from this tool.

4. SEOPressor Connect ($9/month)

SEOPressor Connect is Website SEO Checker’s big brother, offering you unlimited SEO Score analysis and both SEO and LSI Keyword suggestion.

But that’s not all. SEOPressor Connect offers complete SEO care for WordPress sites. This includes Sitewide SEO Settings, SEO Score Manager, Site Analytics and more.

Basically the WordPress SEO plugin solves all the on-page SEO needs you’ll ever have on your website.

5. RankReveal ($5/mo for 100 keywords, slides up)

Now that you have done the keyword research and optimizing your contents based on the right keywords, it’s time to track how well you’re actually doing.

RankReveal is a useful tool that helps you quickly figure out your search engine rankings, including results for good keywords you may not have even known you are ranking for. This applies for both global and local searches, and even allows you to track and pay attention to how well your competitors are doing.

This service saves you countless hours flipping through pages after pages of Google search results and present them in an organized and insightful format. Best of all, you can track the ranking of an unlimited amount of websites and the payment package is super affordable, scaling up with the more keywords you want to rank.

Off-Page SEO Tools

After you’ve covered all on-page SEO factors of your site, you’ll need to beef them up with doing off-page SEO and start building and earning external links back to your site.

Many tools offer ways for you to do backlink checks to let you know how much backlinks you have, where are they from and which part of your website they’re pointing to.

6. Moz Open Site Explorer (Free, with optional paid plans)

The Open Site Explorer allows you to research links pointing to your site, uncover places on the web where links could be added, and see which links – if any – are proving to be damaging to your site’s overall SEO score. If you find any, you can start looking into remedies. Given the amount of drag that bad links can cause your site, it’s definitely worth checking up on them.

Moz also offers unlimited use and additional functions with their Pro plan although they can be quite pricey ($149/month). You can opt for a 30-days free trial to see if it’s worth it and I can tell you beforehand that it is.

7. Majestic SEO (Free, with optional paid plans)

If the price of Moz Pro doesn’t exactly fit your budget, Majestic is another alternative that starts off free and can provide a decent amount of information, though you’ll have to log in to get to the most useful pieces of information.

That said, even the free plan allows for the use of plugins to help you improve your site, as well as the ability to create ‘campaigns’ where you can track the relative performances of multiple websites you own. This is a helpful, at-a-glance way to do A/B testing of your content, and it’s definitely worth investing at least a little time in.

Their Lite subscription plan starts off at $49.99/month – a fair bit, but still much less than Moz and better for companies that don’t have a lot of room to spare in their budget.

8. Ahrefs ($99/month, other plans available, annual billing is cheaper)

Another solid choice for off-site research, Ahrefs allows for things like tracking your backlinks, getting reports on content and keywords, and even getting alerts for new (or lost) links to your website, mentions on the web, and keywords you’ve started to rank for.

All of these are quite useful all by themselves, and much like Moz, Ahrefs’ paid subscription plans come with access to many of their SEO tools. That said, we do recommend getting at least the standard plan ($149/mo) so all reports can be obtained at least weekly. Unless you’re just starting out, monthly reports are a bit too slow to properly manage your growth with, and the added frequency of reports will almost certainly earn you more than you’re paying.

9. SEMRush (Free for basic checks, otherwise $99.95/month, other plans available)

By now, you’ve probably noticed that most of the off-site SEO tools do similar things… and you’re not wrong. Ultimately, checking on things like links and other websites is all you can do off-site, and that’s why most of the basic functionalities here are the same.

That said, SEMRush offers more than a feature-rich SEO analytics suite. You can also get a reasonably robust report that includes things like search traffic, main organic competitors, and a site audit to help you generate more leads… most of which can be done for free. Their sample report doesn’t tell you everything, but it is an affordable way to see where you’re currently at.

Local SEO Tools

Local SEO tools are a little different than the rest – while most tools focus on general web presence, local SEO works differently and you’ll need to do specific things to rank well there. The following SEO tools are either entirely focused on local results or have good performance there as a major component.

10. Whitespark Local Citation Finder (Free, but $20/month for reasonably full functionality)

Whitespark offers an excellent suite of local SEO tools, but the most useful one is undoubtedly the Citation Finder. This tool focuses on finding mentions of your business, with or without a link. As they define it, a citation can include your company name, your phone number, or your address.

This is an important tool for figuring out who’s been mentioning and referring you – and it’ll also help you find conversations where you can step in and add something to the discussion.

Other tools include help with building your website’s reputation and getting reviews for your site, both of which can significantly improve your local SEO rankings.

11. SEOProfiler ($69.95/month, other plans available, annual billing is cheaper)

SEOProfiler is one of the most powerful tools available , and it’s priced accordingly. Its features are broken down into a few different areas:

Ranking Checks and Monitoring focuses on how you’re performing in each region, and includes reports for the over 90,000 cities and locations that customers may be put into. This offers precise and accurate information about how you’re performing in different regions, and you can use that information to help tailor your marketing strategies.
Website Audits include a weekly check of your site for things that could be harming your SEO score.
Web Page Optimization can be done more affordably with tools like SEOPressor, so it’s not why you’d get this, but SEOProfiler does allow you to get reports that tell you exactly what to do to optimize each page.
Link Building and Management helps you find places to get backlinks, lets you manage those links, and even helps you get contact information. Note that the Link Disinfection tool (which helps to remove links dragging your website down) is not available in the basic plan.
Competitive Analysis focuses on the companies you’re trying to beat, and can tell you about the keywords they’re ranking for and even the strategies they’re using – a particularly powerful insight that will let you either avoid direct competition or confront them head-to-head.
Keyword Research focuses not just on suggesting the right keywords for different languages and countries, but also notes on which are genuinely likely to provide a good return on your investment. Eleven different optimization tools help calibrate the precise lists of keywords to aim for, and if used well, this alone is worth the cost of your subscription.
And as if all of that wasn’t enough, there’s also the use of website analytics, uptime monitoring, and generating reports that you can share internally or even give to your clients (if need be).

The point I’m trying to make here is that this is an extremely comprehensive tool (both for normal and local SEO), and you can scale your plan up as your business grows.

Unfortunately, the strength of this tool is also its weakness – this is not the right tool for companies that just want basic reports and suggestions. Rather, this is the tool for experts and companies who have someone working full-time on making their web presence the best it can possibly be, and who need as much information as possible in order to make the correct decisions.

Remember, SEO tools do different things – not every tool is appropriate for every company. If you are in a position to use this tool properly, though, get it – it really is worth it.

12. MozLocal ($9/month, other plans available)

Given the overall quality of their SEO tools, it’s not surprising that Moz is on here twice… and their local plans, while not as robust as SEOProfiler, are affordable on practically any business budget.

The most useful feature here is probably the Directory and Aggregator submissions tool, which allows you to deliver information in real-time to useful repositories like Apple Maps. After all, it’s pretty hard to be found by people using mobile devices if you’re not actually in their system.

That alone is easily worth the cost of this tool, and the basic plan also offers useful things like syncing Google My Business listings, claiming a place on Yelp, eliminating duplicate listings, and monitoring reviews. All in all, this is very much a worthwhile tool to use.

13. BrightLocal ($29/month basic plan, $79/month for real access to reports)

BrightLocal is the tool for companies who are more interested in basic reports and overviews, rather than the robust, almost endless streams of data that the other tools can generate.

Honestly speaking, the full reports from the two previous tools are better – but if you just don’t have the people or the budget to devote to it, the basic reports can get the job done until you’re ready to really dive into improving your local SEO efforts.

The introductory plan includes three search ranking reports with 25 keywords in each report, as well as ten Google My Business audits and three looks at your online reviews each month. You’ll also get one full SEO audit and sales report, though if you want to hand anything to clients and customers, you’ll have to move up to their $49/month plan for the white-label options.

14. Serplify ($167 flat fee, upgrade available)

Serplify is basically a cheat among the various SEO tools, since it allows for easy ranking in local search results without using the sorts of techniques that will get a site penalized.

With this tool, you can quickly generate entire websites – complete with unique content and optimized to take advantage of the way search engines measure and rank sites. Thanks to the power of automation and an understanding of what works, it really is possible to quickly generate a fully-functional site… and at a cost that’s drastically lower than doing it in pretty much any other way.

Whether you want to create a site that you can customize to your needs or you want to use the generated site as-is, Serplify is easily the fastest way to get started, and we recommend it for that reason.

Conclusion

We’ve just gone over a lot of great SEO tools that you can use to help build up your business, but there are a few things you should know before you get started.

The big one is that tools are only good at making things easier when you know what you’re doing. Even Serplify’s automatic website creation requires you to have an idea of the sort of website you want to create and how you’re going to use it to attract local visitors to your store, and that’s about as easy as current technology allows.

Now that we’ve done with RankReveal’s major update we’ll be sharing more blog posts on SEO and internet marketing. Be sure to follow us and subscribe to our newsletters to get more tips and insights on how to make your online business a massive success!

Updated: 24/5/17

[Announcement] RankReveal Is Updated And It’s Ten Times Better!

Greetings everyone! A development process to enhance and upgrade RankReveal was started a while ago and now, we finally came up with a massive update!

After a year testing new features and improving the old ones, we are finally satisfied to put them up on the live version and I’m sure you’ll love it!

Now better than ever, RankReveal aims to reach new heights and revolutionize your SEO once and forever.

Wait, What Is RankReveal?

For those unfamiliar with our product, RankReveal is the first Reverse Rank Discovery tool available in the market.

RankReveal is the one-stop shop for all your keyword discovery needs.

This essential SEO tool lets you keep track of high-traffic keywords you’re ranking as well as reveal more keywords you didn’t know you’re ranking on.

Here’s what RankReveal does:

Keep track of keywords you put in to see if there’s any of your content are ranking for it.
Reveal new keywords related to your niche that your website is ranking high on.
Alert you when a new keyword is discovered that your website is ranking high on.
Track the ranking of an unlimited number of websites
Let you track even your competitor’s website, allowing you to identify their strength and weaknesses, giving you the competitive edge.

With RankReveal, you don’t have to manually search every keyword to find out if you’re ranking for it. Pretty neat huh?

What’s Changed In The All New RankReveal?

That’s how great RankReveal is at the time of the first launch. Now the new RankReveal is updated to be even stronger and beefier with a slew of new SEO features.

A number of insights are added on top of the core keyword ranking discovery feature so that you can plan out SEO actions to be carried immediately.

On top of the basic features of the first version of RankReveal, it now includes:

Page Insights – Get a list of all the keywords ranked by a single page.

The new Page Insight feature list down all the keywords you are ranking for that single page.
Keyword Insights – List every page in your website currently ranking for a particular keyword.

The new Keyword Insights on the other hand, lets you know the pages you are ranking for a certain keyword.
Competitive Insights – Now this one is very interesting. RankReveal will show you the current top ranking results for a certain keyword for you to analyze what is needed to rank for the position. It will also show you the results ranking in positions close to where your result is ranking right now. These information is vital for you to not only gauge the strength of the competition, but also use their strengths to your advantage.

The Competition Insight reveals the Top Performing competitors as well as Immediate Competitors for a particular keyword.
Global Search Volume – You no longer need Google Keyword Planner to get search volume for keywords you rank. With the GSV, you can prioritize on improving the most impactful keywords first.

Global Search Volume allows you to focus on keywords with high traffic without needing to use another separate tool.
Keyword Length Sorting – You can now sort your keywords based on whether they’re short tail or long tail keywords.

You can now sort your results based on the length of your keywords.
Integrated Search – You can now filter your results and choose to search based on either the target keyword, page URL or both at the same time!

You can now search based on Keywords, Page, or both using the Integrated Search Bar.
Features-On-Demand – We are currently eyeing for potential venture with SEOPressor and Social Metrics Pro Team to develop SEO and Social Media Insights respectively. But we want to know what you think. Vote if you want these features in and we will do the arrangement and get it done!

Let us know if you’re interested in these new features and we will build it for you!

The new changes focuses on what you can do to improve and widen your search engine ranking domination in addition to revealing the ranked keywords.

Legacy RankReveal Access

RankReveal users registering before March 2017 will be given access to the Legacy RankReveal dashboard to help ease transition. This means that you can still use the original RankReveal you’re familiar with while slowly adapting to the new UI and features.

Legacy users can then transition into the new app through the new login page.

Happy Tracking, Ranking And Dominating!

RankReveal is the integral SEO tool for you to center your SEO and keyword research efforts.

From improving the ranking of high traffic, high potential keywords to revealing new ones, RankReveal help you direct the direction of your SEO and content marketing far more effectively than any other tool.

It might sound cliche, but believe me when I say it’ll change the way you do SEO!

Updated: 8/5/17

Be Seen As An Expert in Your Field – Harness the Power of Content Curation Like a Boss

You and I both know when it comes to hosting a stellar website, content is King. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to write 100 percent of your content by yourself. Writing high quality, original content on a consistent basis takes a lot of time and effort and is difficult to keep up with.

However, providing quality content on a consistent basis is extremely important to your followers, who check for regular content, and for SEO, since site activity is one of the main ranking criteria used. Relying solely on original content that you personally write might sound like a great goal, but it carries with it the likelihood that gaps in your writing and posting will occur. This is not a beneficial long-term solution. You can fill these gaps by utilizing content curation!

What is content curation you might ask? Contrary to content creation (which sounds almost the same) where you only produce your own contents, you instead incorporate contents from external sources that you personally aggregate or curate to provide a wealth of consistent content for your site. While content curation may sound like a daunting task, it actually consists of three simple steps: Content Aggregation, Value-adding, and Sharing.

Step One: Content Aggregation

^{And your job is to regulate and distribute the water burst.}

The first step to creating a site filled with powerful content is to aggregate, or discover, that content. However, simply searching for information online is not good enough. The Internet is saturated with far too much information. While there’s plenty of information available on just about every subject you can think of, traditional manual searching, such as Googling, takes a lot of time. Even after all the time and effort you put in to find information, chance are still good that you’ll wind up with information that’s outdated, of poor quality, or in the wrong format.

Content aggregation tools exist to help you sift through the junk and develop a stream of relevant, high quality, and timely content that your audience will love and search engines will respond positively to. Content curation tools typically include a content aggregation feature, which helps you automatically find content for your site. Standalone news feeds also exist, such as Buzzsumo and Meltwater, which are excellent tools to add to your pool of content curation resources.

^{Tools like Scoop.it allows you to specify multiple keywords to generate your content stream}

^{Buzzsumo is famous for its ability to display the most popular contents with the most shares}

Content aggregation provide you with a constant stream of related, fresh news from all over the Internet. These informational links are sent to you based on the keywords you provide. Sometimes content aggregation is all you need in order to sift through the sea of content available online and find the snippets of information your audience will love. At this point, you can choose to manually upload the content you found to your website. A lot of these tools can be used for free but is limited in certain ways (limited number of search stream or results) compared to paid version, but usually enough to cover the basic content discovery needs,

Step Two: Value-adding

^{Small change, BIG difference!}

Curating a wealth of relevant, useful, and timely information is just the first step in a solid content curation strategy. The next step is to contribute with your own personal touch. Adding your insight to the content you’ve curated allows you to communicate your stance on the subject with your audience. It also provides you with an excellent opportunity to share additional information you know about the topic at hand. Commenting on the pieces of content you share also gives them added value.

^{Hate to burst your bubble, but..}

Furthermore, it demonstrates to your audience that you genuinely understand the topic and have a deep interest in whatever you’re discussing, not simply clicking the share button on random articles, videos, and pictures. You can also use this platform to suggest further links to your audience, so those who want to explore the topic in further detail can do so. It’s important to consistently share the right kind of information, as well as provide useful insights in addition to the content itself. Predicting future trends, explaining things the article missed or only covered vaguely, and providing your personal experience are all great ways to add value to the content you post and stand out as an expert in your field.

Step Three: Sharing

The final step in creating a fantastic website full of a consistent stream of engaging content is to share that content and spark community involvement. You do have the option of sharing your content manually, but most of the time you’ll want to use the features provided to you by the content curation platform of your choice that assist you with automatic sharing. Among the most useful of these tools is the one that allows you to share your aggregated content to multiple platforms all at the same time. If your business runs several social media accounts across the same or multiple platforms, this feature is particularly useful. You can also use this tool to share your curated content on your own blog, email newsletter, and other websites at the same time, which increases efficiency and creates a consistent theme across all your online platforms.

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Time your posting for maximum exposure.}

Another highly useful feature of content curation platforms is the scheduling feature. Using this feature you can schedule the sharing of your various pieces of curated content, and you can automate when those shares happen. This is particularly useful if you cater to a particular audience in a different time zone, or have specific needs for when your clients do and don’t want to receive notifications. Scheduling also comes in handy when combined with analytics. Using the information you receive from your analytics reports, you can see when your audience members are most active online and schedule your posts during those hours. This will help you reach your main audience right when they’re using their social media accounts, which can drive traffic, shares, views, and sales.

^{You don’t need a TARDIS to be a Timelord.}

You can even go so far as to prepare and schedule content for the entire week or month, all at one time, by scheduling them in one or two blocks of time. This helps you prepare for holidays, plan a strategy behind your content, and free up the rest of your time for other important business tasks.

Tips on Social Sharing

Social media is an excellent tool for sharing your curated content. However, content curation should go far beyond simply posting everything piece of content on your website and leaving it at that. Even after you engage with your content, you need to be aware of a few things when posting on social media.

The social media “rule of threes” or “rule of thirds” is a good rule to go by to ensure that your social media streams don’t become a never-ending list of sales pitches and content links.

The First Third – The first third of your social media marketing should be geared toward promoting your business, converting your audience, and otherwise generating profit and making money. This third is the “sales” third of your social media activity.

The Second Third – The second third of your social media activity should be designed to share content, which is the third that will integrate most closely with your content curation efforts. Sharing stories, articles, and other media is included in this third.

The Final Third – The last third of your social media efforts should be focused solely on building relationships with your audience. This third is where you’ll reply to comments on your content, thank readers, and interact with those who are following you.

By integrating your content curation efforts with the rule of thirds, you’ll ensure that your social media outreach and overall marketing platform is solid. It will also help you avoid the pitfall of inundating your readers with too much of one type of post or content, keeping your web presence fresh and relevant.

Tools to Use

Some of the top content curation tools you can use to help you further your marketing efforts, draw in new readers, and keep your site relevant are as the following:

Scoop.it – One of my favorite content curation tools – Scoop.it features one of the best content aggregation function that lets you use multiple keywords to discover contents and the results are updated in real-time. You can also follow other users who curate similar topic as yours to get ideas on what to share. Signing up is pretty convenient – just by using your Facebook or Twitter account you can start using the service for free, albeit with less (but enough) function than the paid version.

Hootsuite – Hootsuite is a great tool to use because you can curate content using its content curation tool, and you can also schedule posts. Taking an hour or two to schedule a week of posts across all your social media sites is a great way to save time in the long run, and Hootsuite allows you to do that using a streamlined dashboard that’s easy to manage. You could effectively run all of your social media through Hootsuite’s platform without ever logging into your social media sites individually again.

Curation Suite – Curation Suite is another great tool you can use to specifically focus on content curation. While Hootsuite focuses more on managing your social media streams, CurationSuite helps you curate a large amount of high quality content that you can use to keep your readers engaged and active. They just added a new feature called the Listening Engine, which “listens in” to your social media followers and provides content suggestions based on what they’re talking about.

Storify – If your audience is more apt to seek out long-form content, like long articles and stories, Storify offers a great solution for you. Instead of aggregating and curating shorter links and pieces of content, Storify helps you craft a story with long-form content that keeps readers engaged and coming back for more.

No matter which content curation platform you choose to use, keep in mind that the goal is to curate content that is relevant and useful to your readers. So much content exists that it’s easy to get caught up in what sounds interesting to you, instead of focusing on what your audience will come back for again and again. Using these tools is a great benefit to you, because it provides you with an efficient system for delivering consistent, high-quality content, and benefits your audience because they’re receiving the content they want on a regular basis. This combination of characteristics allows you to become an expert and a thought leader in your field in the eyes of your clientele, building trust and cultivating long-term customers and loyal fans.

Updated: 11/6/15

Author: Azfar Hisham