How To Use Scoop.it For Content Curation And Website Traffic Generation

Content CURATION continues to be all the rage in the internet marketing world. If you can't keep up generating your own unique and quality content, you can still generate traffic, mindshare and market share by curating relevant and related content of others in your niche or area of interest.

Scoop.it is a fantastic site for curating and sharing your favorite content whether it's your own - or others. And a great SEO strategy is to leverage Scoop.it's PR7 authority and high daily traffic levels to help boost your own authority.

Like Pinterest is to photos, Scoop.it is to blog posts and static pages. You simply enter the URL of your own - or other's content, it extracts a snippet and photo, and then you have the opportunity to curate with a comment, and tag the post for better visibility. When linked to your other social media accounts, your new scoops then get shared across the net to critical places like Twitter, FaceBook, Linked In, WordPress or other configured sites when you hit 'post'. VERY powerful stuff! It can be a simple AUTOMATED Social Media Marketing tool much like Buffer or OnlyWire.

Like Pinterest with Pin Boards -- You create one or more ideally tightly themed 'Topics' on Scoop.it and curate related content within each.

To really leverage the traffic and SEO power of Scoop.it - Here's some essential setup tips to get your free account set up right from the get-go. (Study my http://www.scoop.it/t/mac-seo-tools page for an idea of a completely configured Topic page}

1. Fill out a complete account profile that includes a http:// link back to your preferred site in your description.
2. Choose your 1st and subsequent Topic Titles carefully with a succinct 2-4 words, preferably an important keyword phrase. The URL permalink to your topic page will be created from your Title and should look like this: scoop.it/t/MY-TOPIC-KEYPHRASE for maximum SEO and ranking benefit.
3. Make sure you fill out a good 2-3 sentence keyword loaded description about your topic. Again there's an opportunity for each topic description to have a clickable http:// link in it at the end.
4. Explore your Account Settings more deeply - and LINK UP a few of your Social Media Accounts to automate distribution when your Scoop goes live.
5. Scoop your first item. It could be a page or post of your own - or anything you like related to the topic. You can manually past in a URL - or install their Browser Toolbar Button to Scoop anything you visit on the web.
6. EDIT the original content's title - It's an important opportunity for the Scoop post to target slightly different keywords than the original content. i.e. You blog post might have targeted 'How To Choose A Yoga Mat' - but you now have an opportunity to alter it and go after 'Yoga Mat Shopping Tips' for the Title when you curate your Scoop.
7. Choose a different - or Upload a better photo if need be to make sure the scoop is eye-catching.
8. Add your curation comments in the box provided. Highlight why the content is interesting, you can optionally add another raw http: link at the end of your curation comment to target another page on the site scooped or anywhere related that you like: A Twitter account, a FaceBook Page, URL, etc. Anywhere you might want to send traffic to.
9. Check your 'Share' Tab Settings: Your FaceBook post text or Twitter tweet content can be customized.
10. Click the 'Advanced' Tab to see options to Tag your posts with a few succinct tags. 1 or 2 word tags, not long complex phrases are best here.
11. Double-check everything - Then hit 'Publish'

Once you have a live Scoop topic up and running with it's first post - Here's a few more 'Best Practices' to really leverage the platform both withing Scoop.it's community -- and to send traffic to your money site(s):

1. Share, Bookmark, Tweet or promote your your main Account Topics Page.
2. Promote the URL to each Topic you create. Build 2nd-Tier links to boost your Topic rankings
3. Copy the RSS Feed URL automatically created for each topic and submit that to some feed sites so new Scoops automatically get links built to them and crawled quickly.
4. Get CONNECTED. Find other Topics and start Following those you're interested in - and ideally one's that are very active and have a lot of users and views. Some topics don't.
5. RE-Scoop articles by others to help broaden your topic's appeal. Other users will be notified you shared something of theirs, become aware of you - and are likely to start following and sharing your stuff in return. It is after all a Social site - so be a bit social with other Scoopers and you'll be rewarded.
6. Most of my scoops are to my own content and money sites - but it's important to mix-it-up with other things of interest and dilute your own self-promotion to avoid being heavy handed.
7. Stay ACTIVE! Find a tidbit or two to post or re-scoop to keep the momentum going each day when you get started with Scoop.it. It may take a week or three to flesh-out your Topic(s) and start getting real traction for your content.
8. Monitor your score and activity: Scoop.it has graphs and stats to give you feedback on your Topic's performance.
9. Scoop BETTER and MORE than others. Scoop Topics increase in numeric rank with more activity and sharing - and rise higher in the internal 'Search' function of Scoop.it. Strive to get your Scoop Topic SCORE above 50 and you'll rank higher there than most of the other idle, occasional, passive users! The eyeballs go to those who simply do a little bit more than the average user.

In conclusion: Scoop Topics and Posts can rank on Page 1 of SERPS at Google and Bing/Yahoo as well! That's how powerful it is as a platform - and why spending a few minutes each day there can help grow both DIRECT and ORGANIC search traffic to your site. Like Pinterest or Tumblr, you'll find the SEO value of Scoop.it to be much better for ongoing, long-term traffic -- and not like Twitter or FaceBook which can fade within hours or a single day. In this era where many have lost much or all of thier organic traffic from Google, Scoop.it can be another important piece of your 'SEO safety-net' by being a steady, supplemental source of referral traffic.