Skyword Corporate Blog

Skyword Study: Measuring the Lift from Search-Optimizing Content

As we set our sights on growth during 2012, one thing is certain: Google and other search engines will continue to update their algorithms to guarantee relevant and high-quality content appears first in their search results. To help you succeed in this changing world, we regularly adapt Skyword’s content production platform to ensure that our clients’ content meets their evolving standards. Skyword provides feedback to writers and editors to help them write with a “21st Century Style Guide” designed for search and the social web.  As they work, we systematically analyze each piece of content and provide them with an article scorecard, offering specific suggestions on how to improve content performance.

Measuring the Social-Search Feedback Loop

People share the content that they discover 36 billion times each month on the largest social networks (30B on Facebook, 5B on Twitter, 1B on Google+).  Increasingly, search engines weigh this social sharing when determining how to organize content in search results.  Equally important, when content is found more frequently in search, it’s more likely to be shared.  This social-search feedback loop plays a large role in determining the audience generated by an individual piece of content.

But how big of a difference does sharing content make?  Is it worth the investment?  Until now, it’s been hard to quantify the impact of the search-social feedback loop.  With thousands of news and evergreen articles being published each month using Skyword’s content production platform, we’ve amassed data that clearly demonstrates that the feedback loop exists and that its impact is significant.

Skyword Study: Add Images to Improve Content Performance

In the 10 months since we announced the launch of Skyword’s content production platform, our clients have produced tens of thousands of pieces of content for their media and brand sites on our system. Skyword measures the performance of their content down to the individual article level, allowing our partners to analyze and optimize that performance over time. As a result, we sit on top of a rich data set that, taken in aggregate, allows us to identify specific content characteristics that measurably improve how content performs in both search and social. We plan to use the Skyword blog to share our findings with our clients and agency partners (as well as those really smart folks out there who are thinking about working with us).

A Backstage Pass for Gather.com Skywriters to the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards

Two of Gather.com’s very own Skywriters attended Sunday’s 63^rd Primetime Emmys award show. It was a first-time experience for both writers, and needless to say, a rewarding and memorable one.

Skywriters Ann Arntsen and Heather McTear created exclusive Gather.com content live from the Nokia Theater Media Room. During TV’s biggest night, not only did they have the unique opportunity to work on location, but they also had the chance to talk to some of Hollywood’s biggest television stars. It was a fast-paced environment and even an overwhelming one at times. But both writers kept their cool and produced exceptional content for Skyword!