Are you wondering what content marketing is? Curious to know how it works with SEO?
Let our guide help you with it all.
Your Guide to Content Marketing & SEO
What is Content Marketing?
To fully understand how content marketing works, you must know what it is.
According to Yoast, “content marketing comes down to sharing valuable and relevant content with your audience. Your audience will benefit from the information and will perceive you and your company as experts in a particular field. In the end, your expertise will be the reason why people will buy your products or services. And probably the reason they will keep coming back to your site.”
The Content Marketing Institute also states that content marketing “is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Types of Content Marketing
Various types of content marketing can be maximized to your benefit. Here are some of the most common and in-demand types of content:
- Blogs (both on your website and off it. The former helps build consistent content on your website while the latter helps build links and authority)
- Videos (these a popular and powerful content tool to use for your campaign)
- Infographics (digestible and readable, an infographic can highlight important content without the need to overload it)
- Case studies (a smart way to utilize personal experiences and showcase your worth to customers)
- Testimonials and customer reviews (getting and responding to customers reviews on your Google My Business profile or social media helps build relationships between the two)
- Social media posts (anything from Facebook to Instagram can provide your customers with premium content that relates to their needs)
- Emails (reach out to your customers personally with these targeted messages)
- Podcasting (they’re all the rage right now, and it can help spread the word of your business if you do the same)
Why Content is Important for SEO
Content and SEO go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other, particularly if you want results for your website.
For example, how can you rank on Google for a particular keyword without having the content to back it up? You need to explain the details of the keyword and how it relates to your business – and that stems from the content you write.
Content also improves your website’s visibility, helps build authority and trust, drives traffic to your website and encourages people to purchase your products/services.
But it’s not just about what you do on your website. Google requires websites to have a lot of valuable content to provide their users with the information they need. It’s part and parcel of their entire platform – and that’s why it is so crucial to the success of any SEO campaign.
How to Bring Together Content Marketing & SEO
So, how do you bring together your SEO and your content marketing? It requires planning and a focus on generating readable and usable content for your audience. Here are the best ways in which you can merge together your content marketing and SEO:
Establish Your Keywords & Audience – You need to know what your audience wants and the keywords they’re using to find their product or service. By establishing your audience and the keywords they use, you can develop your content campaign.
Consistently Create New Content – To really make the most out of your SEO, you need to create and post content consistently. The more content you post (be it your blogs, social media posts and so forth), the more interactions you have with your audience while optimizing your primary keywords. Google will also recognize your website as a reliable source of information thanks to your consistent content creation and engagement with your audience.
Create Content with a Search Engine Mindset – That does not mean keyword-stuffing your content. It means creating content with Google in mind. What do they want? Informative content (well-researched with plenty of links and from reliable sources) loaded with images, infographics and/or videos, has a mixture of keywords and phrases, and answers the search enquiry that the audience wants!
Ensure Your Website Design Maximizes Content Readership – How your website is designed, and flows will impact how your audience reads your content. When creating your website or landing page, make sure the content flows correctly, so it lowers your bounce rate (how long users stay on your website). Use shorter paragraphs, dot points, and FAQs to make your content smoother.
Build Links To & From Your Content – Links are crucial for maximizing the potential of your SEO and content. You need to build links to and from your website to your specific landing pages, reliable websites and domain authority. Not only will this make your content more engaging to users, but it also signals to Google that it’s valuable reading.