There’s a reason I named my online PR and social media training company Planet Content: because the nature of online marketing puts the emphasis right there – on the content. What content you produce, where you seed it, where it’s shared, by whom, where, when and what readers do with it in turn defines the success of your organisation on search engines and, ultimately, as a business.

It was great to see Top Rank Marketing boss Lee Odden’s inspirational speech in a packed room at Search Engine Strategies (SES) London yesterday. To set the scene, with the majority of consumers using the Web to research for products and reviews the competition is rife for high search rankings. The questions marketers need to answer then are a) what’s going to get you that high ranking and b) once people find your site how will you engage with them to convert into a sale?

The answer, Odden says (and I agree), is content. Odden says there are two approaches to content: create and disseminate your own content and curate others’ existing content to breathe new life into it. To create and manage that content, and also oversee subsequent interactions over social network sites, marketers need to create social media-literate, SEO-literate teams of content creators and disseminators.

Odden recommends marketers audit their existing content and optimise priority content following best practice SEO. Keywords should be identified as well as target customers’ search habits to help build and disseminate useful, optimised, shareable content.

“How can you realise your business goals by helping your customers reach theirs,” was the challenge Odden set down to attendees.

Starting with the keywords, companies should organise a keyword glossary to use, plus formulate an editorial calendar that covers off all areas of social media: blogs and articles, video, PowerPoint presentations etc and sync up where possible. For example, if you’re using images in a blog make sure you also load them to Flickr (and tag appropriately), or transcribe YouTube video into a blog etc. “Tie social media efforts together,” Odden advised listeners.

Content marketers need to think about their linkbait activity (i.e. content they know will draw attention, such as top ten lists) and should also be aware of how different types of Internet user consumes content, for example, StumbleUpon users tend to like images, whereas people may bookmark longer features with Delicious.

Hub and spoke approach to content optimisation

I thoroughly recommend everyone serious about content optimisation downloads Top Rank’s free guide, one illustration of which covers the “hub and spoke” approach to content marketing. At the centre (hub) of all activity is the company website and linking off as spokes are its Twitter feeds, video sites, Facebook page, Flickr site, article marketing sites, blogs, industry publications and social media news release feed, plus any other “external” activity. This multi-channel approach provides a diverse range of traffic to the site.

Odden believes that there is a cycle of social media and SEO. It starts with the creation of useful, optimised content. It’s then noticed, voted on and shared by users. From there it expands outwards and people subscribe to channels, become “Likes” (or fans) of Facebook pages etc, it increases the amount of links and social media exposure for your site and, ultimately, drives more traffic and links to your site.

At the end of the day, as I hear very often nowadays and wholeheartedly agree, marketers need to think like publishers and think about how their content could be shared as widely as possible amongst their target audience. It needs to be relevant, timely, well-written and optimised.

Marketing in 2011 is all about the content.