Creating topical content seems relative easy, simply see what news is trending and blog about it. However, like most things in life it’s not that simple.
Target the sexy topics
Take a popular topic such as Bitcoin and mix it with the topic of the site such as here with Ecigarettes and Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been covered extensively by the mainstream media recently. Before that is was avidly talked about on social media and even before that it generated lots of content on specialist websites.
Where there is conversation and news around a popular subject there is a potential to pick up links and social signals. Of course it’s become far easier to pick up social signals these days than links as blog owners are savvy about the value of their linkage. However, an authority blog would never simply link because of payment and would do so along the lines that the content is both useful and interesting to its readers.
The content should not take advantage of tragedy
Producing content around human misery is for proper news organisations, not marketing types, as discovered here by Hubspot with their now removed 5 Hurricane Sandy Newsjacks from Marketers. Newsjacking is similar to reblogging or curating topical content however is better described when it is creating an additional element of news such as I did here with the Bongo Bongo Land Newsjack. Where the additional element of a pair of bongos was introduced to the story. Any newsjacking is made more effective if an offline element is introduced.
The content has to have some connection with your core subject.
Back in the old days you could simply throw up any kind of content on a well linked to website and have it rank. But Google is continually investing in contextually correct information in their search results, Hummingbird is the latest iteration of this goal, but it is ongoing and has been in continual operation for many years. Rand Fiskin of Moz has an interesting take on Hummingbird. Most seo bloggers seem somewhat shocked that Google is constantly improving their results, but Google has been focused on producing better results for many years now. Which is why content has to be contextually correct. At a stretch you could blog about something like, How much is Twitter worth on a website dedicated to saving people money and the cost of things.
Feed your rabid fans
Content should be geared towards your fans, of whom you should know what kind of content that gets them excited. As long as your core fans are happy. If you are in the keep fit niche, make sure you create content which appeals to your core fans, as this content about How a Tough Guy can test fitness, which not only appeals to the core fans of this website, but also offers useful, interesting information for a wider group of people. With the Tough Guy race