Dividing Your Content Publishing Time Correctly
It seems that every month another new platform comes to the market with free content publishing features and one of the latest ones to cross my screen is IM Faceplate. I have included a screen shot from my profile page which can be found at: http://www.imfaceplate.com/automotiveseo
The platform allows you to create a username which also becomes the URL of your page. This can help you with your SEO and branding goals. However, creating your own URL is nothing new and it really comes down to whether this platform has strong search authority. If I am going to continue to use this new platform, it will be because my articles are viewed more within the community or my articles appear in Google SERP's.
That bring up an interesting dilemma: Where to publish? I have website accounts on Posterous, Blogger, WordPress, NING, TypePad, MerchantCircle, Slideshare, and a host of smaller players. With so many choices how does anyone know what the right balance is?
My litmus test is how long it takes are article to appear on Google Page One for a near matching search of my title. If a platform can not get to Google Page one, when it is highly optimized, there is little value of using the platform. My favorite publishing platform is WordPress and not the free hosted version. For example, GoDaddy.com offerss WP hosting for $50 a year. I have created thousands of WordPress websites for my clients and my most powerful blogs and microsites are on WordPress.
That said, Posterous has shown itself to be a strong platform as well as Blogger and NING. I think that if I were to pick the top four I would include WordPress, NING, Blogger, and Posterous. When you map a domain name to sites like Posterous, you can get on Google Page One for your targeted search term. This site has a search keyword target of "Automotive SEO" and it is on Google Page One nationally for that phrase.
By publishing content on a variety of website platforms, I also believe that you increase the frequency in which your content can appear in SERP's. As long as the content is unqiue, it is possible to have multiple platforms show on page one, all controlled by your content publishing strategies.
An example of this can be seen by doing a search for "11th Digital Dealer Conference". You will see listings in the SERP for content posted on Posterous, WordPress, Digg, and Businessweek.
So, pick a few places to post and carefully measure the sites ability to boost your content in the search engines. Everything does take time so be patient. Once you have a collection of well ranked blogs, you will find that content publishing can grow your brands and increase sales at a very low cost.
