At a clip erstwhile anyone tin make content, the existent challenge—and opportunity—is successful saying thing new. 

I deliberation contented curation tin assistance with that.

Curation is each astir uncovering undiscovered stories and repackaging ideas successful ways your assemblage truly responds to.

In this article, you’ll larn wherefore contented curation is large for growth, and however to endowment scout prime underground oregon left-field content.

Gathering and sharing contented is simply a fashionable societal media tactic, but contented curation extends to mediums and channels acold beyond social.

Let’s instrumentality a look astatine immoderate examples:

Newsletters, successful particular, person go the go-to level for curation, since they’re reasonably inexpensive to tally and casual to set up.

The numbers backmost this up. A speedy look astatine Site Explorer shows newsletter level Substack experiencing a 373% leap successful integrated postulation from September 5th, 2023 to September 5th, 2024.

You tin spot immoderate large examples of curated SEO newsletters here: I Subscribed to 72 SEO Newsletters. Here Are My 11 Favorites.

Now you cognize astir contented curation successful each its forms and guises, fto maine archer you what’s truthful large about it…

From redeeming money, to gathering traffic, and cementing your authority, contented curation comes with plentifulness of benefits.

1. Content curation saves clip and money

At Ahrefs, we travel The Pareto Principle: the thought that 80% of the reward comes from 20% of the effort.

If you privation to amended your effort:reward ratio, curation is simply a large option.

I asked SQ astir the benefits of contented curation, and helium had this to say:

“One payment is that I don’t person to constitute an effort from scratch each week (which is what astir newsletters are).”

While contented curation has the imaginable to prevention you time, resources, and money, I bash privation to adhd 2 important caveats:

1. Curating niche, underground contented examples tin inactive instrumentality clip – particularly erstwhile you’re archetypal uncovering your sources.
2. If you’re doing deep-dive investigations into those examples, you whitethorn walk conscionable arsenic agelong curating arsenic you would creating.

2. Curation helps you physique links, traffic, and engagement

Marketing Examples is simply a goldmine of curated selling snippets.

Founder, Harry Dry, doesn’t conscionable stitchery contented — helium dissects real-world selling copy, sanction drops the creator, and breaks down their winning formulas, making it casual for readers to replicate that success.

As a result, his tract has earned reasonably accordant links and postulation implicit time, increasing organically by 88% successful the past two years.

Curating contented is an illustration of what I telephone “awareness you prepared earlier”. Your chances of driving traction are vastly improved erstwhile you crowdsource ideas.

Not lone bash your assemblage devour your curated content, they publicize it to their ain web via societal posts oregon reciprocal links erstwhile they get featured.

Some notation to this arsenic “ego bait”. Obviously there’s an constituent of flattery involved, but successful my experience, the apical curators prioritize contented that genuinely helped oregon inspired them, alternatively than chasing large names with the widest reach.

3. Curating contented is large for EEAT

Few radical person nonstop acquisition with each taxable they’ve ever written about.

But, since 2022, first-hand acquisition has go a prerequisite for ranking successful Google.

Curating others’ lived experiences and cognition successful your contented is simply a almighty mode to physique your EEAT and amended your rankings.

4. You go credible by association

We thin to categorize radical according to their societal radical memberships – this is known arsenic social categorization.

If you’re regularly associating yourself with respected thought leaders, your assemblage is much apt to radical you with them, and clasp you successful higher respect arsenic a result.

Mixing successful your ain contented and sentiment is important for gathering credibility, but beryllium cautious not to overdo the self-promotion.

Back to SQ:

“I don’t thin to see each of the blog posts we people connected our blog.“ 

5. You get person to your customers and community

When you curate, you devour contented holistically –like your customers– and halt being truthful introspective.

If you’re lone consuming contented from your marque oregon marque “friends”, there’s a bounds to the worth you tin bring to your audience.

Content curators crook to their assemblage to root content, truthful curating bridges the spread successful 2 ways: by helping them consume like their customers, and by giving them a crushed to connect.

6. When you curate, your contented gets better

To make is to curate. All ideas are shaped and borrowed from determination – that’s however cognition is acquired.

If I don’t curate, I thin to find my ain contented stagnates.

Curation introduces maine to caller ideas, reminds maine of the things I person forgotten, allows maine to physique deeper, much informed arguments, and yet helps maine nutrient amended contented – with a batch much successful the mode of accusation gain.

For instance, this blog started retired arsenic a elemental database of contented curation benefits, thunk up by yours truly.

But arsenic I came crossed chill examples of caller contented curation, it evolved into a much broad (and hopefully, much interesting) guide.

“Another payment of contented curation is that I get to support abreast of thing caller successful SEO and marketing, which informs my own work” 

7. You physique your idiosyncratic “brand”

Curation gives you the accidental to level your ain expertise and asseverate yourself arsenic a thought leader.

Take a look astatine the hunt measurement for 1 of the astir prolific curators successful SEO: Aleyda Solis.

Aleyda curates SEO quality and insights crossed her newsletter, SEOFOMO, her podcast, Crawling Mondays, her owned societal media channels, and manufacture talks.

As a result, her sanction present drives ~600 monthly integrated searches, according to Site Explorer.

And implicit 19K “in content” mentions, according to Content Explorer.

Curation is astir piecing unneurotic unrelated contented to uncover caller ideas and information.

You’re giving idiosyncratic else’s contented different changeable astatine engagement – sometimes aft a “failure” to launch.

“The aforesaid halfway accusation tin beryllium made much oregon little invaluable by changing its format. Great ideas are sometimes locked distant successful places that render them inaccessible to radical that would payment from them.” 

Here are 9 ways you tin “talent scout” caller content, and carve retired your ain curation USP.

1. Pay attraction to lesser-known voices

In each manufacture determination are sources that audiences defer to for accusation and ideas.

Look beyond them.

Scout for “rising stars” and underground sources to springiness your curation exclusivity.

Mark Williams-Cook, Director astatine Candour and Founder of AlsoAsked, does conscionable this erstwhile curating his newsletter: Core Updates.

“I’ve made a conscious effort not conscionable to travel the ‘big names’, arsenic determination are immoderate genuinely fantabulous SEOs that are precise quiescent connected societal media. I’d ever urge pursuing idiosyncratic if you spot them putting retired coagulated advice, adjacent if you’ve ne'er heard of them. I’ve made immoderate bully friends and fantabulous connections that way!” 

This is astir apt thing you’ll person to bash manually at first.

I effort to wage adjacent attraction to radical leaving savvy comments connected societal media posts and manufacture communities.

2. Build an X database of “ones to watch”

Once you’ve recovered the close “ones to watch”, you tin commencement gathering a database to notation backmost to whenever it’s clip to curate.

SQ uses X lists and subscribes to others’ Substacks:

“I person my ain Twitter database of marketers (getting poorer these days sadly) and travel different people’s substacks/newsletters and spot if determination are immoderate links they recommend.” 

3. Mine niche and atypical sources of information

Nicole DeLeon, Ed Zitron, Marie Haynes and different tech curators precocious mined Google’s DoJ proceedings documentation to analyse “buried” accusation connected however the hunt motor ranks content.

Search Engine Roundtable founder, Barry Schwartz, is ever extracting contented from Google rep societal comments, Google developer docs, and Google’s Office Hours video series to curate hot-off-the-press news.

Techemails mines leaked tech institution emails from tribunal filings and curates them crossed societal media and their website (p.s. they are preeetty eye-opening).

Finding and teasing retired obscure accusation is simply a large accomplishment to person erstwhile it comes to contented curation.

Here are immoderate much ways you tin do that:

• Set up societal media listening to stitchery user-generated contented (UGC)
• Curate cognition from companies that stock first-party information – e.g. (The Yelp Trend Tracker, LinkedIn Workforce data, Pinterest Predicts, TikTok Insights, Google’s Year In Search)
• Monitor changes to nationalist websites utilizing tools similar the side-by-side leafage substance changes successful Ahrefs’ Site Audit oregon the Wayback Machine

• Track updates successful institution documentation (e.g. marque Ts & Cs, Google Developer Docs, Anthropic Release Notes)
• Mine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition databases
• Monitor authorities information via information uncovering bodies (e.g. Indeed curates contented from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to pass contented successful their Hiring Lab)
• Study nationalist datasets released by probe institutions (e.g. Harvard Dataverse)
• Mine “hidden” oregon ephemeral contented (e.g. podcasts, webinars, manufacture talks, seminars etc.) to curate quotes and beforehand comparatively unheard information
• Monitor nationalist announcements and property releases from organizations

4. Track down caller and trending content

Be the archetypal to interruption and curate quality successful your industry. Start by searching for industry-specific keywords successful Content Explorer.

Then adhd filters to marque definite you’re seeing the freshest and highest prime content.

In my experience, I find that:

• Adding a minimum Referring Domain of “30”
• Adding a minimum connection number of “300”
• Sorting by “Date: newest first”

…shows maine the newest and champion SEO related content, but you should play astir until you find what works successful your industry.

This adjacent portion is truly important. Once you’re blessed with your configuration, deed “Save filters” truthful that you tin repetition this investigation for the adjacent instalment of your newsletter, podcast, societal post, article, oregon immoderate other you mightiness beryllium curating.

With the Content Explorer, you’re searching for instances of a keyword successful the title, content, URL oregon each of the above.

But applicable contented won’t ever incorporate the nonstop keywords oregon topics you’re searching for.

In which case, effort searching for keywords successful the anchor substance linking to that content.

There’s a preconfigured hunt for this successful Ahrefs’ Web Explorer. Just deed the “examples” tab, and prime “Most quoted recently published pages astir ChatGPT”

This volition load a afloat study of the most linked to pages astir the taxable “ChatGPT” over the past week. Then each you request to bash is update the study with your chosen topic, and set immoderate filters.

And deed “Save report”.

Another extremity for breaking quality was precocious disclosed by SEO adept and laminitis of SEO blog Detailed, Glen Allsopp, connected the Ahrefs Podcast (it’s a large occurrence – I highly urge a afloat listen!)

He spoke astir a method that helium refers to arsenic the “iPhone Link Building” method.

“The crushed I telephone it this, due to the fact that it doesn’t substance who you are, it doesn’t substance however aged your website is, it doesn’t substance however agelong you’ve been around. If you person a photograph of the iPhone 16 earlier anyone other and you enactment that connected [your site], the full tech satellite is going to speech astir it, right? You’re going to get links from each tech website connected the planet. Doesn’t substance that [your site] has thing to bash with tech and gadgets. You’ve got the archetypal iPhone link. People are going to speech astir it. So I notation to it arsenic the iPhone nexus building.“ 

To transportation retired “iPhone nexus building”, Glen sets up an alert utilizing Visual Ping. This sends him a notification arsenic soon arsenic there’s an update connected 1 of the webpages he’s tracking. If thing caller oregon absorbing has changed, he’ll enactment this into his adjacent portion of content.

5. Ask your network

Turning to your societal web for examples of existing contented is simply a large mode to curate.

Here’s Chris Haines, Ahrefs’ Senior SEO Specialist, doing conscionable this connected LinkedIn…

And present I americium posting successful Women In Tech SEO (my #1 community) for contributions to my article: So You’ve Been Asked To Humanize AI Content 

Often, Slack communities volition dedicate a transmission to self-promotion. This is different useful mode to find caller contented to curate.

“In the Women successful Tech SEO Slack group, we person a hashtag transmission (#wts-amplify-me) that serves arsenic a abstraction for members to beforehand their work, and it’s wholesome to spot tons of our members usage it to item the enactment of others! This transmission helps maine curate contented for our play WTSNewsletter. As newsletter creators, we are liable for amplifying divers voices, which was the driving unit down starting WTSNewsletter. The deficiency of diverseness successful manufacture newsletters motivated maine to make our precise ain play newsletter that showcases the superb enactment of underrepresented individuals.” 

Community contented sourcing doesn’t statesman and extremity with LinkedIn oregon Slack. Check retired different pockets of the internet, including niche forums, Subreddits, Facebook groups, and Mastodon instances.

6. Bookmark everything

Some of my champion articles person been inspired by the posts I’ve bookmarked.

Here are my apical tips for bookmarking curated content:

Use web highlighters

Use a web highlighter plugin to bookmark absorbing contented for aboriginal curation.

Organize examples successful a enactment taking app

Use a enactment taking app similar Notion oregon Obsidian to signifier your contented examples.

Bookmark your saved societal media content

You’ll undoubtedly person banked immoderate large contented connected societal media implicit the years, but navigating backmost to those archives tin beryllium a spot of a faff.

I bookmark excavation to my browser truthful I tin easy leap backmost successful (e.g. LinkedIn “Saved”, X bookmarks, X precocious searches, TikTok saved, Instagram saved etc.)

7. Set up writer notifications

Follow creators and journalists that animate you. Subscribe to their channel, crook connected notification bells connected LinkedIn and X, and acceptable up RSS feeds to get alerted whenever they propulsion retired caller content.

8. Set up keyword alerts

Get notified arsenic soon arsenic on-topic contented is published, with Ahrefs “Mention” alerts.

9. Use AI to extract and annotate content

AI broadly summarizes outdated content, and has a wont of forgoing (or wholly fabricating) references. In different words, it’s beauteous unspeakable for curating unsocial content.

Instead, usage it to extract, summarize, and analyse the contented you’ve selectively curated.

Extract nuggets from “hidden” content

I utilized AI to extract quotes and insights from webinars, interviews, and YouTube videos. The station I wrote for SpinSucks was inspired by contented mined from interrogation transcripts and bookmarked societal media content, utilizing Claude AI.

Reverse-engineer palmy contented formulas

I fed ChatGPT examples of top-performing blogs to recognize patterns of success, and pass my sentiment of what “good” contented looks like, portion updating the post: 6 Simple Blog Post Templates (Download & Edit Along.

We’ve covered a batch of ground, but determination are a fewer other details worthy mentioning earlier you leap into curation.

Make definite you person a clear theme

Curation isn’t conscionable astir sourcing and presenting the astir unsocial contented you can find.

Value besides comes from cautiously selecting contented that fits a cardinal conception or theme.

“[Content curation] helps physique my taste, which successful my opinion, is the hardest portion of curation, due to the fact that astir radical don’t look to recognize the conception of “curation”, i.e. selecting the best, oregon what fits a theme. They conscionable look to shoehorn each nonfiction connected the internet.”

Build your exclude list

Be discerning astir the contented you create. Set retired rules arsenic to the contented oregon radical you will/won’t include, utilizing your marque guidelines for inspiration.

Repurpose your knowledge

Content curation is usually cheaper and easier to produce, but don’t dainty it arsenic a “one and done” activity. Repurpose the things you larn some internally and externally.

“We really usage the quality – that Jack (Chambers-Ward) and I curate for the Core Updates newsletter – internally astatine Candour during 1 of our play meetings erstwhile we are discussing changes successful the industry. So it’s been a adjuvant task to marque definite the bureau is ever up to date!” 

Final thoughts

Content curation isn’t a “set it and hide it” tactic. It’s an ongoing process that demands a tenable magnitude of effort, but the payoff is worthy it. That’s because:

1. It’s a postulation magnet: Curated contented tin outperform archetypal contented successful presumption of integrated traffic, due to the fact that you’re cherry-picking the best ideas.
2. It builds your E-E-A-T: By sharing invaluable experiences, you’re signaling to users and hunt engines that you cognize your stuff. This tin boost your rankings crossed the board.
3. It’s a networking opportunity: When you stock others’ content, they notice. We’ve built relationships with manufacture giants simply by featuring their enactment connected our blog oregon play digest.

Great curation is astir adding value. You tin conscionable reshare contented verbatim, but you’re missing retired connected a invaluable accidental to adhd your ain insight, and explicate wherefore the contented you’ve painstakingly curated matters to your audience.

In a satellite wherever 70 cardinal blog posts are published each month, skilled curators basal out. They don’t conscionable stock contented – they physique communities, spark discussions, and go go-to resources successful their niches.

If you’re giving contented curation a try, experimentation with antithetic formats and way what resonates (our Content Explorer tin assistance with that too), past ticker your power grow.