Keep It Current To Boost Traffic

Topical content will generate more interest but has a limited shelf life. The best SEO strategy will have the perfect blend of topical and evergreen content.

Which of these headings do you suppose would have garnered the most clicks during this summer’s football transfer window? Neymar transfers to PSG for record £200 million or A look at the biggest transfer deals in football history.

Chances are, you are edging towards the first one. The second sounds like an interesting read for football fans, but the first represents news that was hot off the press, and the name Neymar was trending like crazy in August.

But suppose you ran both those headlines today. The first would look like last year’s Christmas decorations still hanging up in March. Neymar’s transfer is old news, it was done to death and all but forgotten about by mid September, while the second remains exactly what we described it as before – an interesting read for football fans.

And therein lies the dichotomy that SEO copywriters face when deciding what sort of content would be of greatest value to their clients. Here we look at the benefits of topical copywriting and how it can enhance your overall SEO campaign.

Add Your Opinion

To stick with the Neymar example, it would be easy to simply put up a headline worded along the lines we suggested earlier, summarise the basic facts and perhaps link to the full story on a site like BBC or ESPN. The trouble with this approach is that you will be drowned in the flood of other sites that are doing the same thing. What you need to do is add your own spin to it.

So in this example, by all means summarise the facts, but don’t be afraid to editorialise with your own views and perspectives. What are the implications of Neymar’s £200 million transfer? Will it lead to PSG winning the Champions League? How will Barcelona spend the money? Will transfers like this become the norm or is it a one off?

The beauty of it is, there are no right answers. But by providing an incisive and interesting piece on a topical issue, you will send traffic through the roof and have visitors linking to you and coming back for more.

Topical And Evergreen

This is not to say that your site or blog should only cover topical issues. Sure, it is great for boosting traffic by tapping into search peaks, but evergreen content on the subjects that matter is essential to build your reputation as an industry leader and expert.

Finding The Right Content

Sometimes, topical stories come to you and there is no need to go searching. In our earlier example, the football world was full of not only Neymar but numerous other deals and rumours during the transfer window. In other industries, however, it can be more of a challenge to find something newsworthy to discuss.

Of course, you can trawl the news channels to search for stories in your industry, but why bother when Google Alerts can do it for you? This is a great tool that will send you notifications of the hot topics as and when they start trending, based on the keywords you specify. Give it a try!