Viral Content for SEO

Viral content is one of the most powerful methods for conveying content across the web. People enjoy content, videos, images and general media, and, if they find it funny enough, or very informing/useful then they'll more than likely share it. Viral advertising has been around for many years and has evolved with the evolution of the web.

But how does viral content impact on a websites SEO performance? Viral content can be branded so that large exposure leads to many visitors either linking to it's source, or visiting the website directly. The external linking activity of those who share it can impact on a websites SEO profile in many positive ways.

Correctly utilised, viral content can be used to increase brand awareness and the websites linking profile. Because the links come from external resources without any intervention, the organic link growth offers many benefits for SEO. Providing the viral content itself is branded in a way that users will link back with optimal anchor text, the value can be utilised to increase the websites external link authority.

Methods for doing this include:

• Including a brand image within the content that references what the brand offers or specialises in, although many will link back using brand name, others will link based upon the services the brand has to offer.
• Including a small A HREF html block with linking instructions has also been seen as effective.
• Provide the content on the website so that it can be linked to externally rather then distributing it.

Here are some examples of viral media that can be used to promote brand awareness along with the website.

• Creating a comical and unique Youtube video that includes references to its source.
• Creating a useful Youtube video that provides guidance, advice or tips on essential everyday needs.
• Identifying a hot topic or trending discussions and creating a Youtube video that can connect with a wide audience on the topic/subject.
• Creating a comical image based drawing, cartoon or photo that relates to a wide audience.
• Writing articles, guides or interactive books that a wide audience can utilise / engage with.
• Creating an article about a hot topic that goes beyond typical news based discussions, videos & other media.
• Engaging in large scale debates with constructive feedback videos, images and/or tools.
• Creating a useful desktop application, online application or mobile based application that can revolutionise tasks, data manipulation etc.

The key is to identify a market where you can exceed standard reporting sources with more information, useful tools, guides, resources or comical feedback.

A great way to find a gap in the market for your proposed viral media is to use tools like:

Google Insights for Search

http://www.google.com/insights/search/ 
Google insights for search allows you to research popular searches and trending topics, identify a gap in the market, and fill it with one of the many available content types/streams.

What the Trend

http://whatthetrend.com/
What the trend is a great way to see what is trending throughout the Twitter network, again, a great place to identify an area where viral content can be created and placed. Remember, finding popular trends is easy, creating content for it isn't.

Google Trends

http://www.google.com/trends/
Use Google trends to find popular worldwide trends directly. With Google trends you can monitor trends over a given time period. You may find some trends are short-lived whilst some maintain popularity for a while. This is key to understanding what's hot and how long it's likely to remain popular for.

Strategy for Viral Content & SEO

It is essential that your viral content is created in the right way and is exposed at the right time to kick start viral sharing. You are likely to find that it can take multiple attempts before you see some succession from the efforts. The level of success is dependent on how good the content/media is and how well timed that content/media is shared with the initial batch of web users.

The first attempts will require you to share with a group of people who are already aware of your brand, their sharing activities will introduce thousands of new opportunities which will continue to grow.

Successful viral campaigns are incredibly difficult to achieve, however if achieved the results can be phenomenal. Hundreds, even thousands of organic links can grow in a short period of time, often within weeks of the media/content going live. The growth of the websites link profile can appear un-natural to Google, however the diverse sources and rapid growth help stabalise the SEO value of newly acquired links.

Generally, some forms of authoritive source will also link back, these linking signals will also contribute towards the sourcing websites SEO link profile.

Your strategy for Viral Content should include:

• Identifying hot topics, trends & potential worldwide events that are yet to happen.
• Understanding the duration of trending topics and upcoming trends/topics.
• Finding relativity between hot topics and trends and your business/website/services.
• Creating content/media that is powerful and relates well to your target market/audience.
• Incorporating either a useful approach, comical approach or intelligent approach within your viral content/media.
• Releasing the content/media at the correct time to ensure enough time elapses for people to find the content before the trend/topic becomes yesterdays news.
• Actively sharing the content through as many social networks as possible.
• Actively measuring the success of content sharing and social activity.
• Frequently analysing website traffic and linking profile.

Below is a table rating the value of content types for viral media.

Based upon 1,200 data sources as of April 2012 (Data subject to changes)