Have you ever wondered what the driving force behind successful online businesses is? It is not SEO or social media, but it is Content Marketing. Content marketing, when done correctly, can change the fate of any website. Follow our ten actionable content marketing tips to increase your website’s rankings and traffic!
Online Content
First, though, it’s crucial to define content in the context of content marketing. Content, then, is anything published on the web. For example, text, videos, images, infographics, graphics, audio, pdf, podcasts, and slide shows are all considered content marketing. Overall, it’s information that can be made available in digital format.
Content Marketing
There are many sophisticated definitions of content marketing. Still, my simplified version is: Content marketing works when content increases web traffic, gains new customers, makes more sales, or increases brand awareness.
Take a moment and think about what the Internet offers people: various types of content through different channels (websites, social networks, email, applications, forums, etc.). Content marketing makes this type of communication more official. In other words, instead of simply posting content to the web for no purpose, you create and distribute content to meet specific marketing objectives.
Content Marketing Is Vital for Rankings
Content marketing is essential because it attracts the right people to the website, turns them into potential leads, then into customers, and finally into brand promoters. Thus, it helps increase brand awareness, increases sales by driving traffic to the website, and builds trust among the public.
The Advantages Of Content Marketing
Content marketing has many advantages to offer to an online business since the content is the starting and ending point of any online campaign. According to Funnywill.com, the benefits of content marketing includes:
- More targeted visits from search engines. Good content can get higher rankings and more targeted traffic from search engines.
- More visits from social networks. Valuable content is more likely to be shared on social networks, generating more traffic on the site.
- Increases user engagement. Users interact with good content, providing feedback, criticism, and ratings.
- It’s good for SEO. Good quality content is at the heart of SEO. Sites that combine good content with proven copywriting tips are better than sites that don’t have good content.
- It increases brand awareness. Posting great content is one of the best ways to promote your brand and reputation online.
- More conversions. Quality content can drive more leads and sales.
Now that you have a clear understanding of content and content marketing, it’s time to follow these ten tips to boost your leads, rankings, and traffic to your website.
1. Design A Content Marketing Plan
A successful content marketing campaign begins with a good plan.
When we talk about content marketing, the first thing that comes to mind is blogging. While blogs are an essential aspect of content marketing, it’s just one way to execute your content marketing plan.
2. Publish “Evergreen Content”
The first element of your plan is the type of content to be published. For long-term success, you need evergreen content. Evergreen content is unique and original, useful, and always relevant. In addition it is complete, detailed, and informative, thus also making it searchable; it covers topics users search for on Google.
Evergreen content helps establish a solid online presence. Overtime it also helps boost rankings on Google, which generates more traffic.
3. Write For Users, Optimize For Search Engines
It’s a little cliché to say it, but it’s the truth: when thinking about content, you must write for users and optimize for search engines. While some may disagree with this approach, both writing styles are equally important.
Search engines have a purpose: to make users happy by answering their questions or queries.
If you only care about what people want to read regardless of what search engines can understand, you will post great content that no one will read at the end of the day. On the other hand, if you think first about the users and the type of content they need and then optimize them for search engines, you have a win-win situation.
4. Build Topic Relevance
When you start posting content to your website or blog, make sure it’s related to your niche and area of expertise. For example, if you’re running a tech blog, you shouldn’t blog about cooking just because you like it. No one will punish you for it, but you minimize your chances of making a profit from that post or for your followers to take you seriously.
The best approach is to post related content that is in line with your site’s overall goals. For example, suppose you sell coffee machines online, in addition to providing all the technical information about your products (specifications, photos, reviews, videos). In that case, you must also offer a blog with articles related to coffee (manufacture, drink, recipes, tips, etc.)
5. Publish Content That’s Thorough
When it comes to text content—like blog posts—several studies found that lengthy content (over 1000 words) ranks higher in search engines. It also tends to be more shareable on social media.
Overall, these studies show that it’s better to publish a long and detailed post covering all aspects of a topic instead of publishing 2-3 smaller articles.
Since long content is more shareable on social media, this means that you’re not only upping your interoperability to search engines but also offering users what they want.
6. Publish Content Others Want to Share
You need to search social media and find out what kind of content people like. For example, fashion seekers may want to see more images and videos than text content. Because of this fact, you must adjust your content marketing strategy to meet this need.
Some ideas for content that can be shared and that are suitable for all niches are:
- Top # lists…
- The best of the lists…
- How to…
- # ways to…
- Most popular forms…
- Top tips for…
7. Publish Content Often
In addition to providing accurate and up-to-date content, make sure you keep a consistent publishing schedule. Having a predefined publishing schedule will help you better organize your time and also build a list of loyal followers.
Don’t forget that new content is also an incentive for:
- Search engines to visit your site
- Get more visits from your newsletter and RSS feed
- Get more visits to social networks
- Keep your regular visitors happy
8. Create Engaging Titles
The title of a page or post is essential for several reasons. A good title:
- Helps search engines understand what the content is about
- Helps social networking sites understand what you are sharing
- Attracts a user’s attention and encourages more clicks to visit the specific page
So before hitting the Publish button, make sure your content has an optimized and engaging title.
9. Create Content that’s Better than Your Competitors
Content marketing is a great way to increase traffic and sales, but that’s just good news. The bad news is that you are not alone, and if you want your content to work well, it must be better than your competitors.
Before creating your content, search Google, Facebook, Twitter (or the network closest to your target audience) and analyze what type of content appears in the top positions.
Look at things like content size, type, quality, and format, and try to improve your content in every way. Content that is no better than what is already ranked on Google has no chance of high rankings. Therefore, it is better to spend more time improving content than to rush to press the publish button and waste time.
10. Promote Your Content
Don’t wait for your potential customers to search to find your site, visit and buy your products.
When you post new content, you need to promote it to get the attention it deserves.
There are several ways to promote your content without exaggeration and risk. Therefore, the next immediate step after pressing the Publish button is to make a good promotion. Your best bet is on social media because the results are speedy and immediate, but never underestimate the power of email and RSS.
Contact Us
Content marketing is vital for all types of companies. The benefits of content marketing are many. Recent studies show that many people (over 70%) prefer to read articles about a company over reading advertorials. Contact Emagine Web Services! We can help you design your content marketing strategy, to find the right balance between content creation, user satisfaction, and conversions.
