How do you use content marketing for SEO? Content marketing is one of the biggest trends in marketing right now. It has replaced direct marketing as the #1 way to market your product or service.
With content marketing, you promote your brand or business by creating content that is educational, entertaining, and valuable to your target audience. This can include blogs, videos, articles, interviews, and more.
Now that Google has confirmed that they use user behavior data in their search ranking algorithms, it has become even more important to create high-quality content.
This is because Google wants to show the most relevant content to its users based on how they interact with it. If users like, share or engage with a piece of content, then Google thinks it is good and should be shown to other users!
Content marketing can be very time-consuming, though. There are many ways to organize and manage this workload efficiently, though.
It’s what Google wants
As Google has continually changed its algorithm, one thing that has remained the same is its focus on quality content. Content Google wants—specifically, high-quality content that users want to engage with and share.
Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant information as a list of pages, including a top search result, sidebar links, or a box embedded in a page. This includes information about businesses, services they offer, and how they rank compared to competitors.
The way they determine this is by evaluating how much engagement content receives. Does this content get lots of clicks, shares, and engagement? Then it’s likely high-quality content!
Content marketing is an excellent way to develop high-quality content that gets clicks and shares. By using your marketing efforts to promote your best content, you are doing yourself a favor from an SEO standpoint.
You need SEO content
Paragraphs are one of the most fundamental parts of writing. Even in social media, where sentences are limited to 140 characters, a well-written paragraph is important.
Paragraphs are used to organize and summarize information. They can describe something or someone, explain a process or procedure, or list things.
SEO content is no different. It uses paragraphs to organize and summarize information about a topic related to your business or website. It describes what your business or website offers, explains the benefits of using it, and lists some examples or case studies.
By creating SEO content for your website, you are organizing and summarizing information about your business or service and how it relates to your audience. This lets Google know what your site is about and provides quality information for the search engine to pick up on.
We can use paragraphs in several ways on your site to improve SEO content.
You need good content
As mentioned before, Google values content that is relevant, high quality, and user-friendly. Therefore, creating good content for your website or blog is an important part of SEO.
Having fresh, high-quality content on your website shows Google people are interested in your site and its content. Featuring your site higher in searches because of this interest, encourages Google users to click on your site, which leads to traffic and conversions.
Google also rewards sites that have frequent updates with a higher search ranking. Since Google ranks sites based on how frequently they are updated, this puts you at an advantage. By having regular posts on your website, you are encouraging more traffic and conversions, which helps with SEO.
Finally, having user-friendly content shows you are putting effort into your posts. If people find value in what you write, then they will share it, which promotes further interest in your site.
Content marketing helps you better understand your customers
Content marketing is all about creating and sharing content that your audience finds valuable. It can be anything from blog posts, listicles, videos, interviews, etc.
The more creative you get, the more you can diversify your sources of content. For example, you can do interviews on radio or podcast channels, create video tutorials or explainers, or write long-form blog posts.
By studying your audience and their needs, interests, and concerns, you can create high-value content that connects them to your brand. This makes them more likely to become customers later on.
As part of your content marketing strategy, you should also track which types of content are most popular and effective with your audience. This will help you focus your efforts in the future to get the most return on investment (or ROI) from them.
Content Marketing Principles
What are content marketing principles you should follow?
Have you been struggling to create engaging content for your business? Are you unsure of how to effectively market your content? Look no further! In this section, we’ll break down the essential principles of content marketing and give you the tools you need to create successful content for your brand.
01. Your content should focus on your customers, not yourself.
It’s important to create content that is not only relevant to your brand, but also to your audience. If you are a fitness app, then your content should focus on fitness. If you are a fashion app, then your content should focus on fashion.
You should not try to sell your product or service in your content unless you are being very subtle about it. Your readers will pick up on it, and it will not attract them to purchase your product or service.
Being self-promotional can feel awkward, but if you put out quality content that is worth reading, then your readers will recognize that and appreciate it. Giving them quality information that they seek makes them feel valued and like they’re part of a community.
We see this a lot with brands that post funny videos or images, but their audience loves and shares them because they make them laugh. Being self-promotional does not always have to be a negative thing.
02. Your content should aim to provide value to your customers, not sell them something.
If your content does not appeal to your audience, is not well-researched, or does not offer value, then it will not attract links or engagement.
People will not share or use content that does not benefit them. This can hurt your long-term SEO, as links must be high quality to effect change in search results.
Content marketing works best when it is done intending to help people rather than selling something. When you put out quality content that appeals to your audience, they will continue to follow you and engage with you, which will increase traffic and sales.
Using content marketing strategies can be difficult at first, but will pay off in the long run.
03. Your content should be easy to read and digest, not complicated or confusing.
More and more, Google is looking at how users interact with your content as a measure of its quality. Content that drives interactions like shares, comments, and engagement is considered higher quality.
Google also now has a tool called Account Activity that monitors your account activity on Google services like Gmail, Docs, and Drive. It also tracks how people interact with your content on these services.
This is a new factor that Google is using to determine search rankings, so ensuring high-quality content that elicits user interactions is a new strategy for SEO!
Having high-quality content means writing concisely with simple language and ideas. This makes it easy for people of all reading levels to read and understand what you wrote.
04. Your content should be consistent, not random.
In order to get your content out there, keep posting even when you have nothing new to share. This is where consistency comes in, you have to keep posting as often as you can.
If you post once a week, then you have to stick to that schedule. If you can only post twice a week, then that is what you need to do.
Your audience will start recognizing your content and looking forward to it, which will help with SEO and spreading the word.
Blog posts will also rank higher in search results because of the frequent posting, which keeps your site fresh and relevant. Readers will see that they can rely on your content and come back for more, which increases traffic.
Posting at the same time every day is best for gaining popularity and sticking around.
Why SEO is actually About Content Marketing?
SEO and content marketing are two integral parts of any digital marketing strategy. One of the main reasons why SEO is closely intertwined with content marketing is because websites need words, articles, substance, keywords and more to attract and retain their target audience.
Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant and informative content with the audience. SEO is what helps the content reach the right audience by optimizing the website and its content for search engines.
While SEO has more structure and defined steps, it is the content that makes an SEO strategy truly effective.
By prioritizing content marketing in their SEO strategy, businesses can create informative pieces of content that employ their most valuable keywords, attracting a new audience and driving traffic to their site.
In short, SEO without content is like a body without life force.
