Regardless of whether you think your content matters or not, one thing is for sure — effective content is an integral piece to the SEO puzzle. As link-building campaigns go, there isn't anything more valuable than strong content.

In a consumer-driven marketplace, providing bigger and better material to a consumer base hungry for the most up-to-date information remains one of, if not the most, effective ways to gobble up those sweet, sweet links.

If you don't want to just take my word at face-value, try the opinions of industry experts like Peter Himler of Forbes, Bill Gates, and SEO thought leaders who have consistently backed content as the cornerstone of effective digital marketing strategy.

Don't Like Opinions? Take a Look at the Data

Backed by all of these industry experts and stats, it seems like a slam dunk. Still, people get it wrong for a bunch of different reasons. One of the main reasons is that they're relying too heavily on industry experts and statistics.

The simple fact remains that there is a serious difference between the perceived effectiveness of two distinct approaches on the minds of consumers. Let's call them the egobait method and the raw data method.

In order to give you a better idea of the effectiveness of both, we'll use two separate examples of promotional content pieces that From The Future produced for our clients, and compare their respective pros, cons, and ultimate results.

The Egobait Method

For e-commerce sites, it's a well-established principle that adding customer testimonials can have a tremendous impact on increasing the conversion rate. It makes sense, then, that adding well-recognized industry experts to your content would increase the traffic and overall effectiveness of your piece.

By having definitive industry leaders provide their insights and knowledge to your content, your content will be valued more heavily. Customers in your industry should pay attention to your content over all of your competitors since you have enough sway to garner quotes from influential people.

As we were creating our home improvement retailer's content, we decided to implement a variation of the Skyscraper Technique — we went out and found some content pieces that were doing well for our primary keywords, and we blew them out of the water.

We noticed that DIY projects were some of the most searched for content in our vertical, so providing a bigger and better DIY piece was the natural response. After establishing our topic, the next step was to secure industry experts to contribute to our piece and confirm they would promote the article after it was published.

Through our outreach efforts, and a strict return link requirement structure, we secured 14 expert quotes from recognized voices in the home improvement space.

The Results

Our article did extremely well, given the market and the state of the blog that we were posting on. Our client's vertical does not contain many heavily trafficked keywords, and our client's writing presence was close to non-existent prior to our intervention.

Through our piece, we were able to see the following improvements in blog statistics:

  • 1,217.2% Increase in Total Pageviews
  • 1,271.0% Increase in Unique Pageviews
  • 331.8% Increase in Average Time on Page

Did It Really Work That Well?

For a relative nobody in this specific vertical to make this jump from one piece of content is great. But it makes you wonder why it worked and whether it is sustainable.

This piece worked well because of social proof and promotion. The beauty of performing this version of the skyscraper technique is that you start off your content piece with some guaranteed backlinks from trusted sources, and you confirmed them yourself. You are also adding in the promotion channels of a handful, if not all, of your industry experts.

They will promote the piece because it features them, and they will send it to their already strong base of followers. Suddenly, a brand new piece on a relatively unheard of site is able to reach thousands of additional consumers.

But Is This Traffic Sustainable?

Yes — to a degree. Over the course of an 18-day promotional cycle, the blog received 233 pageviews. In the 11 days that followed the content promotion, the blog had received 198 pageviews — about 18 per day — and visitors were staying for an average of 129 seconds vs. 88 seconds during the promotional period.

Simplified down: the blog saw a 138% jump in pageviews and 147% increase in average time on page in the post-promotion period. Not too shabby.

The Raw Data Method

This, in my opinion, is the more entertaining method for creating content. I have always found that providing real numbers and raw data is a way more compelling and engaging way to prove a point. As a reader, it is more entertaining to be able to see the raw data, delve into the numbers, understand what they mean, and then come to a conclusion.

In order to produce the piece we put together for our fashion retail client, we obtained real sales data for a specific set of products over the course of the calendar year and compared that data with non-sales statistics for the industry. The best part was that NO ONE ELSE produced any similar content prior to us in this field.

This was the first time ever that someone was able to obtain this type of information and attempted to make sense of the data based off of non-sales stats. The piece was a statistical look into the effects that NBA basketball player performance has on retail revenue.

Why did this perform so well?

The first reason is keyword research. We identified primary keywords in the space to focus on. While this piece was not solely an SEO play, the page itself began ranking for 32 keywords in this niche over a very short period of time.

Through a concerted effort to use familial terms around our targeted keywords, we were able to create the context around our target keywords that Google is looking for. Producing context around your primary keywords is the most efficient method to gaining traffic.

The second reason this piece was successful so quickly is that we promoted the article like a ringleader at the circus — the 80/20 rule for content promotion was in full display during this period.

The raw data results:

  • 616.6% increase in total pageviews vs. the existing blog
  • 921.4% increase in unique pageviews
  • 261.1% increase in time spent on page
  • 1.7k social shares compared to 28 for the blog itself

The Real Test: Head-to-Head Comparison

Let's put these side by side:

Home Improvement Retailer (Egobait)

Fashion Retailer (Raw Data)

By this measure, it would appear that the egobait method wins out. However, that may not actually be the case — let's delve a little deeper into the benefits and drawbacks of both methods.

The primary drawback of egobaiting is that you are just rehashing information that is currently out there, so any dream of being associated with original content and newsworthy statistics goes out the door. You won't establish a name brand for your blog without maintaining your presence over several posts of this style.

The Raw Data Approach Has Its Benefits and Drawbacks

On one side, you are able to create something from scratch, which allows your designers and developers the freedom and creativity to come up with new themes without being reliant on the client's standards. You are also able to create a brand new concept based on research your team performed, setting industry standards for what consumers should be looking for.

Nothing is more exciting than seeing industry experts pick up your research to support one of their points.

However, that can lead to the dark side of this approach — putting your conceptual ideas out there where anyone can steal them. When we were promoting our fashion piece, we reached out to ESPN as a long shot, received no response, and then watched ESPN publish their own version of a very similar concept weeks later.

In addition, there is always the concern that not having established readership will create a tough situation to spur up interesting discussions, and people may not be blown away by the information presented — numbers and stats don't resonate with everyone.

The Results

The primary purpose of this article was to explore whether the egobait method still works. We went about looking into this by comparing our egobait process against a raw data approach. Through this process, we discovered that both methods work.

The general idea is that if you work your ass off and put together compelling content, you will be able to see some movement on your piece. But this is a world of winners and losers, so we're not calling it a tie.

If you want to break it down statistically, at least in the cases presented, the egobait method still moves the needle more and has some staying power when looking at its overall impact on a client's brand.

There's some irony here. We went about making this point by using the raw data method. If you're still reading by now, I hope that wasn't lost on you.