0 Cascade Content for SEO

Cascade Content for SEO

Share Your Expertise for SEO & More Customers

When you write a blog post or article about something that matters to your customers and prospects, make sure you get the utmost value out of it. After all, it's not so easy to produce a piece of writing, especially for busy business owners and one-person marketing departments ;-)
You'll reach a wider group of people who find your content relevant to their needs and concerns if you adopt a cascading content strategy. By promoting your content on the social networks - and in email - you can attract more visitors interested in your topics, and demonstrate your expertise. That can inspire greater trust and lead to more sales.

Don't forget that search engines use social signals to help them rank websites for relevant search terms. If you can get people to retweet and share your content with their friends and followers, that will tell search engines your website is valuable, and can help you rank higher for the keywords you're using in your content and posts. That in turn can bring more visitors to your site.

Cascading Content Is Efficient & Effective

Let's say you own a store that specializes in urban homesteading supplies. You've just discovered a great new way to quickly compost yard debris and food scraps, so you write an article and publish it on your blog.
Certainly, some people will discover the article there, and realize your store is a great place to stock up on urban homesteading supplies - especially if you've been thoughtful enough to include an RSS feed so people can subscribe to your blog.
But what about people who haven't subscribed to your blog? There's a world of potential customers out there you want to reach. You can do it, too, by cascading your content to your email list and through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and for B2B (business-to-business) companies, LinkedIn.
Basically the idea is to write a long piece once, then publicize it multiple times over multiple platforms. Like a waterfall that starts high and cascades down a rocky slope, breaking into smaller streams, your content will flow through several channels, spreading out to many more people. And if you've written compelling pitches for each platform - always including a link - you'll bring new people to your website.
Bonus: If your content really is valuable, and your social "hooks" are persuasive, people who follow you will retweet and share your posts (and your links) with their own friends and followers.

People reading your blog post may choose to share the post itself, too, as long as you've made it easy by providing social sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon and more.
It's not just people who notice social mentions of a website. Search engines do, too. To learn more about how social media helps SEO, read our article, Boost SEO with Social Media.

So, Show Me an Example of Cascading Content

I'm glad you asked! Refinery 29, a fashion and shopping site based in New York, makes money by selling apparel and other fashion items, and through ads it hosts on its site.
Yet Refinery 29 writers don't blog only about things they can sell. They also blog about stylish people they find on the streets of various cities, bizarre products they've spotted, beautiful food blogs and anything else that lends itself to great photos and fun, engaging writing.
Refinery 29 also makes a point of tweeting its blog posts and publicizing them on Facebook. Here's an example of tweets from the Refinery 29 Twitter account. Note that each tweet has personality and wit:

Here's a Facebook post about a recent Refinery 29 blog post. Note that five people like the FB post and two have commented.

The blog post itself got 18 Facebook likes, 11 tweets, 1 StumbleUpon share and 13 comments. There are bloggers who would kill for that kind of attention.
If you like impressive numbers, here are a couple more: Over 109,000 people have "liked" Refinery 29 on Facebook, and about 280,000 people follow the company on Twitter. Yowza!

So Is Refinery 29 Making Money?

Judging from an article by Tricia Duryee in All Things D, it sure is. In October 2011, co-founder Philippe von Borries told Duryee that Refinery 29's revenues were at an annual run rate of $15 million, up from total revenue of $2 million in 2010. That revenue is driven by 4.3 million unique visitors (as of October 2011). That's a lot of traffic, especially for a site that's been online less than six years.