Relevant content generation has vital implications for search engine visibility and usefulness of your sites to your customers. And this fact is something that is now widely recognized. But for an often-talked-about area of website optimization, “relevant content creation” is surprisingly ill-defined.

Search-friendly content generation can be more involved and nebulous than other types of optimization, since it involves applying basic search principles and metrics to an otherwise freeform and creative art. But it isn’t that difficult to provide guidelines for how to generate effective content for your site.

But before we talk about some tips for how to create this content, let’s quickly discuss what we are attempting to do with it. As I see it, this sort of non-essential site content has two goals, one human-oriented and one machine-oriented.

Human:  Relevant content needs to be just that: relevant to your business, your market, your technologies. It should be something that people coming to your site, through whatever means, find interesting and enticing. And ideally, it should be something they forward on to their friends, coworkers, or associates. This means it has to be attractive to humans, something well-conceived and well-written, not just a jumble of jargon and search keyphrases.

Machine: But generated content also has to be judged to be relevant by an algorithm that thinks in keywords and keyphrases. Search algorithms try to determine the meaning of text by analyzing groups of consecutive words, and determining the frequencies with which those words are used in the context of the other words in that group. Which means that while you can write the content however you want, it will be most effective if you keep keywords and keyphrases in mind while writing it. Specifically, you want to include keywords and keyphrases that people would use to look for your products, services, or related information.

So this may seem kind of daunting, writing for two vastly different audiences at the same time. But there are some easy strategies to get started, and to keep content flowing to your site.

Stay current: You know what’s going on in your product or service area right now. You have to stay on top of new developments and trends, because your business depends on it. So write about that. Comment on news items that have importance to your business. You have a particular critical opinion in your area that is of value to others, so take advantage of it. And if there is a buzz about something in a particular area, it’s more likely people will be searching for information about it.
Important for: Humans, Machines

Use your staff: Don’t leave relevant content creation simply to your marketers. Get anyone involved who has something to share about their part of the business. The more broad your base of contributors is, the more likely you are to have something that appeals to your users. And having lots of contributors from different parts of the business means a broad keyword base.
Important for: Humans, Machines

“Relevant” doesn’t mean dry: This is a common sense one, but it’s important to remember all the same. It may not matter to search engines, but making your articles at least entertaining, and even better accessible, is going to make them more popular with readers. By all means put up some highly technical content if you feel it is something that would be of great use to your users, but technical and interesting is going to do better than technical and dull. Have a hook, keep it light but serious, have fun with it.
Important for: Humans

Write with a keyphrase in mind: If you plan your article around a keyphrase from the start, it makes it easier to incorporate that phrase compared with shoehorning it in at the end. It’ll help you stay focused on your goals, and using that phrase a few times in your article will help it show up on search engines.
Important for: Machines

Check twice, publish once: Again, common sense:  make sure you check over what you are writing. Mistakes can be embarrassing, and can adversely affect visitors’ opinions of your content.
Important for: Humans

With these suggestions to guide you, you should be able to produce useful content in-house. You have all of your staff’s expertise to draw on, and if you keep responding to current events, you can have a continuing supply of new content.

As a further strategy for content-creation success, you might offer incentives for people who write in order to keep content flowing. Another option is to hire a content writer to produce content for you, particularly if no one in your business has the time free to write content. Their efforts can be invaluable, but be aware that content writers are expensive, and are unlikely to know your market, your products, and your business better than your company’s employees. Dedicated content writers can be an effective part of a content creation strategy, but employee-driven content is an efficient way to supply much of your content needs.

So break the barrier between your company and consistent, relevant content updates. Get working on your content-creation strategy.

And if you found this content relevant, well, you know the idea . . .