Owned Media & SEO
Owned media is part of three things - earned, paid and owned. I previously talked about earned media here. This post will talk about owned media and your SEO efforts.
Let's start with a definition. Media like this refers to online properties that showcase content you've created and that you own and/or control. It consists of:
- Websites - the website(s) you own and operate are part of your earned media efforts.
- Blog site - if your blog isn't part of your site (hosted someplace else like Blogger or WordPress), it's another piece of owned media to promote your brand.
- Social media channels - any social media profiles, pages, groups or communities you create and manage are also part of your efforts.
- Email - yep, emails you send out as part of your marketing campaigns.
- Mobile apps - if you've created an app for your business to help existing customers purchase from you, or just as a service to anyone in your target market, this is owned media as well.
This is all about how you promote your brand and get the word out about your products and services. You can also think of owned media as other digital marketing channels that support or make your earned media more effective.
More Owned Media You Can Use
With owned media, you control your marketing campaigns. It extends your reach with social media and blog posts above and beyond static service and product pages. Owned media content can be a mix of the following:
- White papers
- Case studies
- Videos
- Infographics
- Podcasts
If you're producing these content pieces in-house, owned media can be very cost effective.
It can take awhile for your owned media to gain traction. Why is that? Because SEO, that's why!
Everything mentioned here is another opportunity to optimize using long tail keyword phrases - both informational and transactional. Text that you create is going to be optimized for titles, descriptions, image tags, the content itself, file names and the relative URL that's associated with the text.
If you're promoting an optimized content piece on social media, you'll use your SEO skills to put the featured keyword phrase or topic on social media elements, such as a title and description for every social media channel you use.
Your white papers, case studies and podcasts can also be created using long tail keyword phrases or topics of interests. Ideally, you create a separate page for each owned media property and optimize the page elements to help the content show up higher in search results.
You've been creating this kind of media all along; you probably just didn't know it was called that. If you're doing everything mentioned in this post, keep on doing it and realize that branding yourself is as much about SEO as anything else.
If you'd like to know more about optimizing various content like videos, blogs, white papers and more, consider taking an SEO class with Invenio - you'll be glad you did!
Get online SEO training now with us!
Until next time, keep it safely between the ditches!
All the best to you,
Nancy McDonald
