I’ve written about aggregating and organizing content already.  Here’s a quick case study to help illustrate the value of doing these things.

I was asked to write about SEO on Performancing. At first, I thought of writing a really in-depth SEO guide that would show off my SEO expertise (I work full-time as a search marketer).  However, I realized that an in-depth guide might not be the best post for Performancing. It wouldn’t fit the audience well.

Performancing is about helping bloggers make money.  Their audience is commercially-oriented bloggers. I put myself in their shoes. What do they want in SEO?

In my experience and market research, most bloggers don’t focus much on SEO. They’re much more focused with social media marketing, networking, and writing quality content.

I realized that whatever SEO tips I give would have to be simple, easy-to-understand, and most importantly, easy-to-implement. Bloggers already have a lot on their plate. I didn’t want to add too much more to their busy lives.

So, I collected simple but effective onpage SEO tips. Here is the article I wrote:

Onpage SEO: 7 Tips That Are Easy to Implement

I got some positive feedback in the comments section. Without doing any marketing, my article got a couple links including links from two popular SEO sites (Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land).  Someone submitted the article to StumbleUpon and it got 24 stumbles.  15 people bookmarked it on del.icio.us.

What’s interesting is that experienced search marketers already know about these tips. However, I added uniqueness and value to the tips by aggregating them in a way was relevant to bloggers.

Here’s the lesson: You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be unique and get noticed. Oftentimes organizing pre-existing content in a unique, useful way can help you reach your target audience.

Too many web publishers don’t keep their audience in mind when they write. They just write what they want to write about without putting themselves in their audience’s shoes. But one of the hallmarks of good online business is knowing your target audience well so that you can write content that meets their needs and helps them reach their goals.

Have you ever organized pre-existing content in such a way to add value and reach a specific audience? If you have, please give examples.

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