Today’sWhiteboard Friday explains the content types and how to use them to satisfy searcher intent, match them to the right projects, and enhance overall strategy. The types of content and content formats that tend to work well for SEO are discussed below. It is important for those who are working on content strategy and content marketing to determine which content formats they should use. The 10 content formats that are familiar and appear regularly include:

1. Blog posts that have regular updates or are republished on a regular basis
   An example is Live & Dare’s“Benefits of Meditation” (ranks for Meditation Benefits)
2. Short-form evergreen content and articles
   An example is Jim Collin’s piece on “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals” (ranks for BHAG)
3. Long-form articles
   An example isWait Buy Why on “The Fermi Paradox” (ranks for Fermi Paradox)
4. Photo and visual galleries, A lot of these rank, especially for things that lend themselves to it (men’s haircuts styles, for example).
   An example isRight Hairstyle’s“100 Cool Short Hairstyles for Men” (ranks for men’s hair styles)
5. Detailed and information-rich lists of information
   An example is Wareable’s“Best Fitness Trackers of 2016” (ranks for Fitness Trackers)
6. Interactive tools and content There are some good examples of these.
   An example is Zoopla’s House Prices Tool(ranks for property prices)
7. Comprehensive category landers, This includes searching for kitchen designs.You might land on Houzz’s page of various kitchen designs, but it’s meant to be a lander to get you into more content. It’s not technically a content marketing piece by itself, but it leads you into content pieces or could.
   An example is HGTV’s Kitchen Ideas (ranks for kitchen remodeling ideas)
8. Multi-page guides, include things like Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
   An example isBates University’s “Painless Guide to Statistics” (ranks for statistics guide)
9. Data or complex information that is visualized
   An example is CNN’s Election Results (ranks for election results 2016)
10. Video includes YouTube or embedded video on a particular page. Whiteboard Friday itself is an example of that.
    Whiteboard Friday itself (ranks for Unique Content)

There is an eleventh format that is not recommended, even though it is in search results quite often. The format is the formal research documents that are usually PDFs or PowerPoints. The reason they are not recommended is because they are hard to parse.They’re particularly hard to open on mobile devices. They’re not very user-friendly, and most of the time the reason they rank well is simply because they’re cited by lots of other things. But when you see content marketers invest in one of these spaces and make a document in one of these other formats that’s more comprehensive, more useful, and more user-friendly, they do a much better job and tend to rank better too. The following are important notes:

• Don’t ignore new formats.
• Recognize that you shouldn’t use a format just because it’s new.
• Learn from who’s already ranking.
• Do not copy somebody else’s format because it’s easy to do and familiar.
• Look at these content formats and find ways to get a competitive advantage from them.
• Use a multi-keyword approach in this analysis.