[revvx]

Some super-basic things I learned at a past job that might help newbies:

1. Use a subdirectory instead of a subdomain for your blog. That alone helped half of our customers get better ranking.

2. Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date. Somehow Google picks this up, and people also bounce when they see outdated information. That was a quantum leap for certain blogs where we tested this approach.

3. Picking the right keywords is more important than relying purely on feeling. Lots of our customers fought that and wasted money. SemRush, Moz, etc can help you.

EDIT: And how could I forget...

4. Outsourcing content (and content alone) has great ROI but outsourcing strategy (at least to an agency or another company) is a money pit and a scam, and you'll still end up having to do A LOT of work yourself anyway.

[paulryanrogers]

> Keep editing older posts so they always stay up to date.

Sounds like a bit of a rat race compared to just writing more timeless articles, or just leaving dated topics for reference.

While newness may be a great metric for Google I'm not so sure it creates the best incentives for building an Internet full of useful, quality content.

[manigandham]

Not everything can be "timeless". Plenty of content is about the state of X at time Y. Things change and if your article is good and getting a long-tail of visitors, it's in your best interests to keep it updated with changes, or at the very least add a note to where newer information can be found.

[revvx]

The metric isn't exactly "newness" but relevance.

Timeless or "evergreen" content doesn't have to be updated. It's alright to keep them as is.

But keeping obsolete content online is a pain in the ass for users, so they will increase your bounce rate. Either update them or show a big notice on the top with a link to a newer article. Google will hopefully pick them up and the internet wins.

[throwaway_9168]

That's a somewhat odd thing to say. StackOverflow would be better off not leaving dated topics for reference (as you can see when someone leaves a comment about how they wish the highest voted answer was actually up to date with the latest changes in that technology), and aspiring to be the StackOverflow of your niche is actually not such a bad idea (in the sense that they do allow and encourage updates to the answers). Besides, in some domains which overlap heavily with technology (e.g. marketing automation), writing timeless articles is pretty hard. Lastly, updating genuinely out of date content is a big favor for your readers and one that they will appreciate, even if your overall view is simply "Fk Google!".

[vonnik]

Can confirm: long posts that you update as new knowledge surfaces actually work well. Think of your site as a wiki.

[dhimes]

"Think of your site as a wiki."

That's an elegant way to put it.

[rcarrigan87]

When outsourcing content have you always just hired freelance writers or hired agencies?

I didn't want to manage a bunch of freelance writers so I went out looking for an agency to help execute our content strategy but it seemed almost all agencies were pitching way more on helping with strategy and less on their ability to create content.

[revvx]

Actually I've been in this business for 5 years and worked in both agencies and content companies, so I have more insider knowledge rather than experience as a customer, hope it's ok.

Most agencies are just hiring freelancers and putting a 10x markup on it. Since they're probably using multiple freelancers per customer, they can't guarantee consistency, which is why they need internal reviewers (which adds to their overhead).

The strategy part is not a lot of work, and I've seen the people that do it working with up to 50 customers simultaneously, so it's not as if it takes a lot of time. 75% of the secret sauce is just picking words out of SemRush. I'm not even joking.

The best ROI right now, IMO:

1. Have one or two good freelancers you trust. You'll have more consistency in your texts and you won't have to manage much. Most freelancers already know how to do the SEO part, because agencies already hire them to do it. They're cheap, so it is easy to "test" them before committing. Good freelancers are low-maintenance.

2. Outsource the strategy to a freelancer. This way you won't be tied to an expensive contract with heavy fines and they'll be able to spend more time. Sometimes they'll also produce content, other times they'll be able to manage other freelancers for you.

3. In my experience, most agencies use run regular consumer tools behind the scenes: Buffer, Semrush, Moz, Mailchimp, Hubspot, and A LOT of Google Docs. SEO checking is done using Yoast, which is free. Most of those tools are simple to use.

[capkutay]

This might be a stupid simple question, but where do you post your blogs once they're live? just share on linkedin or other social media? HN is obviously one destination but its a tough place to get large visibility.

[revvx]

I don't really have a company but I've been in the industry for 5 years, my advice isn't much personal experience as it is insider knowledge. Hope it's ok.

The answer: it really depends on your audience and your goal with the blog post.

- 1. If you just want people to find you on Google with certain keywords, you really don't have to post it anywhere. This is very common for non-technical audiences, and they will mostly find it by themselves. Tell them in the end of the blogpost to follow you on social media and add an option to get their e-mail, if this is the kind of audience that does it.

- 2. If it's something that might interest to your current followers and further engage them (such as long form content), post on your own social media accounts and send to your newsletter subscribers. Avoid posting the things from #1 on social media unless it is interesting to your followers, because people will get fatigued.

- 3. If it's really high-quality content that will bring brand awareness, then post on aggregators. Hackers News and Reddit doesn't work for traditional marketing, keep that in mind. Examples: don't use marketing language ("by the way, did you know we make..."), never push readers to follow you on social media or subscribe to the newsletter (icons and a form at the end are more than enough) and don't even talk about your product unless it's absolutely necessary. People are smart enough to find about it by themselves.

- 4. Technical tutorials and wiki-like content, like Digital Ocean and Cloudflare do, work great for technical audiences. You only have to post the REALLY good ones into HN. People will find out about the others by looking into your blog sidebar, or archives, or by searching Google. There are aggregators and subreddits that allow other kinds of tutorials.

- 5. Try making tutorials and "behind-the-scenes" content for things related to features you release. Example: I just noticed that your company released a Google Cloud DB Migration service. Try to find out what kind of tutorial people need related to Google Cloud and put make a blog post. Then post them on aggregators related to Google Cloud. Make them easy to find via Google. Make specific mailing lists related to Google Cloud. Oh, and since your company is working with multiple cloud providers, comparison posts work wonders too ;)

A tip: take a cue from sociology/psychology and forget about your "target audience" for a moment. Instead, focus on two or three very specific "personas" that make sense for you business. Imagine a person and set a gender, an age, job, location, salary, everything. This will inform you where you need to post, how often, the language you have to use, sometimes even which platform you have to use.

TL;DR: Know your audience.