The New Rules of SEO for Content Marketing

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, outlines five best practices for content marketers hoping to maximize SEO value in an ethical way.

1. Create content that people will have an incentive to share.
2. Do keyword research, so you don’t waste effort writing about things people don’t care about.
3. Put all your content on the same domain/sub-domain. (e.g. don't use blog.mysite.com, use mysite.com/blog)
4. Stand for something, and write about it. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
5. Don't separate your brand from your content. For instance, casino sites that make fascinating infographics about animal rights aren't going to last long.

Successful content marketing publications rely heavily on social traffic for timely impressions. They build search rank for their archives almost as a byproduct of good social content. Well-ranked branded publications like Red Bull.com adhere to Fishkin’s advice of producing “large amounts of content people find interesting,” combined with “solid UX” and SEO basics: clean URLs and smart markup.

Source: Mashable.com