SeaWaves Blog

A wide-net resource article is a single article that targets the long tail of a popular search term. The wide-net resource article does not attempt to compete directly at the level of the popular search term, but rather it uses the popular search term as the foundation for multiple qualified phrases built from the popular search term.

Let me explain by using an example. Over at College Crunch, we have built a wide-net resource around the phrase “starting salary” – but we are not really interested in that specific phrase. Rather, we are interested in phrases like “starting salary for engineers” or “average starting salary for biochemists”

The phrase “starting salary” is just the singular phrase that all of the many search phrases we are targeting have in common. By creating a very large resource article that discusses the starting salaries of many careers, we are accomplishing multiple tasks at once:

1. We are building a unique resource that is link worthy from many different types of sites
2. We are creating a single, strong, authoritative page (rather than diluting the strength over hundreds of smaller pages)
3. We are reinforcing our common keyphrase (starting salary)
4. We are creating an expandable resource that can be made more valuable by adding new informational units (adding careers)
5. We are creating a platform from which to quickly gain search traffic for related phrases by doing Post-Hoc keyword researc

In general, I encourage every serious website to build out a few Wide-Net resources each year. Once you see the benefits of building big, structured content like this, you’ll want to do lots more.