Search engine personalization and increased keyword phrase competition make it absolutely essential to build “themes” of content. That means having a dynamic Web presence with articles, blog entries, online press releases and multimedia that all enhance your offering around a particular subject matter.

Let’s say that you have a Web site focused on singer/actors, better known as “slashies.” You’d likely have articles, blog updates, photos, videos and much more about stars such as Will Smith, Jennifer Hudson, Barbara Streisand and Cher. Having such a variety and volume of stuff will build the relevance of your content in the results of the search engines. So, when people run a relevant search, your site will appear higher in the listings because Google accounts for your entire theme of content.

It’s this quality content centered around a consistent theme that is going to give your site the oomph it needs to break through the personalization and competition barriers and achieve top positioning.

So, create standard Web pages. Update your blog regularly. Look for any and all opportunities to add relevant, unique content to your site. With online videos, there’s even a way to optimize them to have all the proper SEO embedded – and have them link back to your content in a powerful way.

Just make sure you’re using good keywords in your content within the correct context. In other words, make sure the keywords you’re trying to build into the content match the subject matter of the site. That will ensure “high relevance” for your theme as far as the search engines are concerned. If there’s a mismatch, then they will be low relevance and the search engines won’t pick up on it.

The easiest way to illustrate this is to describe what NOT to do. If you have a fishing Web site, posting a blog entry about American Idol is not going to give you much help – even if you’re writing about an Idol contestant who loves fly fishing as much as you do. In this example, you’re going to have a much harder time getting the out-of-context content ranked; the Idol stuff just doesn’t have a high enough relevance in terms of everything else on your site.

Any kind of online content can be utilized as part of your theme. But the biggest mistake you can make is to try to map it all out and do it all at once, in a single massive effort. That approach is totally paralyzing because you’ll spend all your time trying to figure out “what is the exact thing you need to do.”

There is no exact thing. This isn’t a rigid procedure. It’s much better if it’s an organic process that evolves in whatever fashion comes naturally, building up unique content over time. Maybe it’s over a year. Just add to it consistently. Once a week, add a blog page. Once a month, do a press release. Whatever process it is you use to generate the content, just make sure it is a part of your plan on some regular, repeatable schedule. That will allow you to break it down into smaller pieces that are more easily managed.

Here’s a list to help you get started:

Ten Options for Creating New ‘Theme’ Content

  • Interviews
  • Top 10 lists
  • Product reviews
  • Tutorials
  • Tips
  • Strategies
  • “How-to” articles
  • Articles that offer solutions
  • Educational articles
  • Articles about industry changes & misconceptions

You can generate ideas around all of the choices above and write content that builds up your site theme. Remember, these don’t have to uniform pages. They can all be quite different, so long as you’re building out rich, related content that will benefit you in the search engines.

In the next post, we’ll talk about strategies and techniques for linking within your theme content to further boost your search engine results.