That famous marketing wisecrack that the best place to hide a dead body is on page 2 of Google’s search results? It’s painfully true; if your audience can’t find your webpage on search engines, you’re immediately losing out on potential business and traffic to your site.
Acheiving a good search engine ranking can be a daunting task for any business, but when it comes to SEO—search engine optimisation, for the uninitiated—content marketing is your best friend.
Content marketing and SEO can be viewed as two parts of one puzzle, going hand-in-hand for a successful digital marketing strategy. Mastering content marketing is will instantly improve your SEO, and vice versa.
How? Well, here’s how…
Knowing your audience
The first step to any strategy is to know who you’re talking to and what they want to hear; both content marketing and SEO are built upon those foundations. Consider who your clientele are right now and who you’d like to attract in the future; try and get inside their heads and write content that relates to them.
This way, people who search for such content will be directed to your site and will likely stay for longer. Creating content that your audience finds valuable and insightful is the entire purpose of content marketing; it just so happens to be the driving force behind organic web traffic, too.
Using keyword research to your advantage
Many tools are available to help you see what your audience is searching for most frequently. Sites such as Google Keyword Planner and Answer The Public are great ways to assess what words are best to include in your content for maximum reach. Assess the trends, and make sure your content is always fresh and up to date.
It’s important to use these keywords organically if you’re trying to up your SEO, so creating original and relevant content is key. Compelling content that includes organic keywords suitable for your target audience is the ideal way to place your pages higher on search engine results.
Cross-linking
While it might sound like a dance move, this is simply linking your content—and allowing your content to be linked. Once you’ve begun to populate your site, it’s not enough to just leave it stagnant, with individual pages working in isolation. Cross-link other articles on your site where relevant, and add call to actions at the end of posts leading your audience to other similar content.
Not only will this improve your SEO and make the most out of the content you create, but it will encourage users to stay on your site for longer.
Quality over quantity
When it comes to content marketing, quality always wins over quantity. Small amounts of well-crafted, insightful content is much better than a mass of irrelevant content. The more tailored and original your content is, the most search engines favour it.
Remember that search engines crawl through thousands of sites and only display what they rank as the most relevant, also taking into account image descriptions, and URLs. Utilise this to your advantage, making sure any images you share on your site are saved under specific file names. Make sure that everything on your page is relevant to the audience you’re trying to connect to for the best chance of reaching them.
If you need more information, send me an email: gmiltiadou@zahramediagroup.com.
