This article is all about how you can improve SEO with content. Content marketing is the best way to boost your Search Engine Optimization efforts.
Simply put, when you create a piece of content that targets phrases and keywords your leads are searching online, you are by extension, improving your visibility in SERPs. (Search Engine Ranking Page)
The idea is to ensure that a prospect can find your brand when he/she searches for a topic relevant to your product or service.
That way, you can start to nurture business relationships and, most importantly, generate leads.
What’s more? When your content tops search engines, it means your brand is getting the exposure it needs to thrive. And the beauty of it is that this exposure comes for free!
The long and short of it is that content marketing, when done correctly, can boost your brand’s awareness by driving traffic to your website.
And, the more relevant traffic your site attracts, the more opportunities you have to generate revenue.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at how content marketing and SEO work together.
We’ll tell you how you can combine the two to take your business to another level. On top of that, we’ll let you in on how you can develop your SEO content marketing plan.
Let’s dive right into it.
What Is Search Engine Optimization SEO?
To understand how content marketing boosts SEO, it is essential to start by describing what SEO is. Search Engine Optimization is a systematic process of optimizing your website to make it friendly to search engines while providing valuable information to searchers. This is done by creating new pieces of content, speeding up your website, and making your website pleasurable to visit.
By creating content you give Google content to drive visitors to your website. In this case, the traffic is free or organic, meaning that you’re not paying to make people visit your site. In the digital marketing world, we call it organic traffic.
Here’s the thing…
Search engines such as Bing and Google have a search engine results page that offers search results depending on the phrases and keywords a user types on the search bar.
These engines rank these results based on their relevance to the user.
In essence, this means that you can use SEO to rank phrases and keywords relevant to your target audience.
You can also boost your business’s online presence by optimizing your website and content marketing efforts for search engines.
Sidenote – The customer value journey starts when a user researches a relevant topic on Google and other search engines. So, when you rank for the keywords the person is searching, you’re helping him/her find what he/she needs.
Of course, there’s more to search engine ranking than content. It would help if you implemented several off-page and on-page factors to rank high in the search engines.
These include your website’s structure and inbound line to the content.
You can read more about on-page SEO and off-page SEO here and here.
For now, we’ll focus on content marketing and how it relates to SEO.
Also Read: 10 Signs You Need Professional SEO Help
Content Marketing And Keyword Research
One essential element of SEO regarding content marketing is keyword research.
It would be best to find keywords and phrases your target audience uses to find brands like yours on search engines.
Once you have the keywords, you’ll create content around these topics and work toward ranking for the phrases in SERPs.
Pro Tip – When you’re doing keyword research, be sure to dig deeper. Avoid broad and obvious keywords as these have high search volumes and are harder to rank for. Instead, opt for long-tail keywords with less competition and a decent search volume.
Google Keyword Planner is excellent for finding long-tail keywords that can draw traffic to your website. Here’s a blog post you can read if you want more information about keywords.
What Is Content Marketing?
Now that you understand the basics of SEO, it is time to look at content marketing.
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves – well, you guessed it right – generating relevant, helpful, and valuable content to help you attract new leads.
The primary aim of creating this content is to motivate your target audience to take action.
You can, for instance, drive your audience to buy, book a call with you or download an eBook as a way of moving them down your marketing funnel.
The question is; what type of content can you create to generate leads for your business?
Here’s what you need to do:
Create relevant content that offers a solution to your target audience’s pain points and,
Educate your readers.
It is critical to note that creating content only solves one half of the puzzle.
The other half involves putting the content in front of your target audience. It entails promoting content through an assortment of channels such as social media.
The idea is to establish a connection with your readers and, most importantly, drive relevant leads to your business.
Note – You can get customers to trust your brand by showing expertise in your and providing information to help them buy an informed standpoint.
Also, be sure to create content that appeals to all buyers, from those just starting to become aware of their problem to those ready to hit the “buy now” button.
At this point, we believe you have the understanding you need to move to the next point, so we’ll switch gears right away.
For even more, be sure to check out the 10 Commandments of Content Marketing for Software Developers here.
How Does Content Marketing Improve SEO
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience. It is one of the best strategies for driving SEO success because good content improves both user experience and search engine rankings.
The following are some of the many reasons why you should invest in content marketing:
Content marketing attracts potential customers to your site by delivering quality information that they are looking for.
The right kind of content will also maintain their attention on your site.
Content marketing helps search engines rank your site higher in results pages because it creates more opportunities to be found by relevant keywords in SERPs.
A great website does not only have a high-quality design, but it also has high-quality content that solves its searcher’s problems.
More Content Equals To More Keyword Opportunities
Look, search engines see websites differently than humans.
Sure, you can look at a site and tell what it is all about, but bots have no way of determining a website’s purpose unless you crawl what’s written on it.
Content marketing enables you to tell your story beyond a couple of words on the landing page. It allows you to go above and beyond alt text descriptions on your images.
By writing blog posts, articles, and in-depth guides, you can use more relevant keywords, further telling both the bots and people what your website is all about.
For instance, if you’re selling kitchen faucets, content marketing allows you to rank for a host of other related keywords.
A blog post on “best kitchen faucets” allows you to incorporate other keywords, including “how to fix a leaking faucet,” “how to choose the best kitchen faucets,” and so forth.
And the beauty of it is that you can rank for the two keywords!
Google Prefers Longer Content
That’s right!
According to Search Engine Journal, your page is likely to rank higher on Google if it has reasonably more content than your competitors.
Before you think well that’s silly I can fill up a piece of content with information there is a distinct reason longer content gets more attention. Longer articles typically will go more in-depth on the topic the reader is looking for. When Google shows your article/blog post in Google search it becomes possible to rank for other relevant content your post may cover.
Further, a Backlinko survey found that pages occupying the first three SERPs positions have an average of 2,400 words. With that recommendation, the blog you’re currently reading is just over 2,400 works for that reason.
You must be thinking…
Is writing long-form articles going to guarantee me high results in search engines?
Well, the truth is… it depends.
You see, Google ranks pages that provide relevant, valuable information for users in search of answers.
In essence, this means your blog post, guide or article could be long, but if it doesn’t offer solutions to your target audience’s pain points, readers will leave – and that can harm your ranking.
The point we’re to make here is even though Google welcomes long-form content, be sure to create something informative and detailed to stand a chance of scaling the rankings.
Once again the benefit of writing a lot is there are tons of opportunities to cover more content. Longer and more thorough writing allows you to focus more on a target keyword.
The more that word is used inside of your article the more likely Google will send you organic traffic because of the user’s search intent. Along with longer articles, there are going to be other areas that could benefit your article and by sending internal links to other articles you have will allow the reader to find other valuable content you may have published.
So, How Does Long-Form Content Improve SEO?
Here’s the thing…
Long-form content allows you to give comprehensive answers to what your target audience is looking for. In other words, long-form content allows you to generate something your visitors will appreciate and, most importantly, come back.
Content Keeps Readers On Your Page Longer
Picture this:
You’re looking for something online. Your search takes you to a page that doesn’t offer any answers or helpful information. What do you do? … well, you’ll move on to the next website. That’s what we call bounce rate.
Google considers factor metrics such as bounce rate when evaluating your website’s overall SEO profile.
Google doesn’t love pages with high bounce rates, and as a result, it doesn’t rank them high in SERPs.
The is because Google wants to pair the reader with the types of content they would find valuable. If that reader visits your website and leaves quickly that tells Google the information they were looking for isn’t available on that page.
On the flip side, content can help you reduce the bounce rate.
For instance, if your landing page’s bounce rate is high, you can assume that’s because your visitors aren’t sure where to start learning about your services or products.
In such a scenario, you can add content that allows you to introduce a product or “about us” pages. You can even add links to some pages.
The idea is to ensure that a visitor stays longer on your website, further reducing the bounce rate.
But, as a rule of thumb, be sure to create content that helps your visitors. Remember, even with more content, your visitors will still go away as long as you’re not solving their pain points.
Unique Content Can Help You Dominate The Rankings
Content marketing is all about creating something new.
Ideally, you want to focus on what your competitor is not doing to improve your chances of ranking high in SERPs.
Put differently, when you combine keyword research – a vital skill you should learn to improve your SEO – and a well-thought-out content marketing strategy, you can focus on generating SEO-optimized content.
That way, you stand a better chance of claiming the top spot in your industry.
Let’s say you sell chocolate online.
Your content can revolve around things such as the health benefits of chocolate, why you should eat chocolate regularly, and so on.
While there’s nothing wrong with these topics, someone has covered them before. So, instead of writing about the health benefits of chocolate, you can opt for the health benefits of dark chocolate.
You will then write an authoritative piece that stands out from the rest with a call to action telling your readers where to get dark chocolate.
The point we’re to make here is that, as long as you create unique and well-researched content, you will always find your way to the top. And the beauty of it is that you can rank for more related long-tail keywords.
How Do You Write SEO Content?
Now that you know how content marketing improves SEO, it makes perfect sense to talk about how to create an SEO-oriented content marketing strategy.
The tidbits below will help you craft an SEO content strategy that will positively impact your brand.
Research Your Target Market
If you want to see success with your SEO and content marketing campaign, you should focus on an audience interested in your products or services.
Create a buyer persona for your brand. Consider demographics as well. Most importantly, be sure to answer your target market’s questions and concerns when looking for services or products like yours.
This is where most content marketing goes awry. The key is to really understand who you’re looking to speak to and figure out what they are going to Google for. By creating content that answers their specific questions is going to help you get through the SERP rankings faster.
Even with evergreen content its important to visit it once a year and give it a tuneup.
Successful marketers know their ideal customer better than anyone and because of that, it makes it much easier to target the content types they are looking for.
Do A Thorough Keyword Research
You must know the keywords your prospects are typing to find answers to their questions.
When you know popular keywords with your audience, you can optimize your website for search engines and generate content they’ll find valuable.
Let’s say your business provides legal information about debt lawsuit in the US, you’re likely to use keywords that are most likely to be used for Google search by the your target audience.
There are tons of SEO tools that are available such as UberSuggest that is free and you can start to use. These tools can help you identify the search volume behind the keyword and give you a great starting place.
Be careful not to fill your articles with too many keywords (keyword stuffing) as it can have a negative impact on Google. It shows that your content may be full of fluff and could provide a bad user experience.
The simplest way to do it is to add keyword research to your SEO strategy and regularly incorporate Good content with high search and low competition keywords. By doing this you can begin to create different content types that incorporate the keywords you want to target.
Also Read: 10 Elements Of High-Quality Business Content
Develop Great Content
Once you have the keywords, it’s time to put pen to paper. Use the info to create in-depth content. Develop blog posts around these keywords. You can go beyond articles and create eBooks and white papers.
Or you can create video content around your keywords.
Quality content is:
Well-written
Full of relevant examples
Written for people and not search engines
Easy to read
Links to other valuable pieces of content
Answers the searcher’s question
Once you have an idea it’s time to create fresh content that you can post online and help drive your readers to it. Be as thorough as possible and if you’re stuck Google it. See what others are writing and create an article better than what they offer.
Update Your Content From Time To Time
SEO content marketing is not a set-and-forget project.
If you want people to keep coming to your website over the years, you should make sure that your content is up-to-date.
In other words, give your audience a reason to keep visiting your website by creating fresh, informative content regularly.
Review your content periodically and update it as necessary.
What we do here at Growth Generators is we come up with several dozen content ideas at a time and then we begin to publish them. After several months and we can see how our articles are performing in the search engine algorithms we will then revisit the article and make it better.
This helps give us a baseline of where we are and then we can modify and tweak it to make it better. We love to use a tool called Frase.io to help show us voids in our content and where we can improve on our SEO efforts. It’s also great to get content ideas and is a valuable piece of our content marketing plan.
The Bottom Line
SEO and content marketing are incredible tools small businesses can leverage.
Still, you must know what you’re doing to achieve the intended results.
You must develop a solid SEO content marketing strategy to make both tactics work in harmony for positive results.
To recap some of the easiest ways to succeed are:
Identify SEO opportunities
Publish fresh content regularly
Build a marketing funnel
Understand your search rankings (leverage Google Search Console & Google Analytics)
Become a content creator, not a content consumer
The tips above will help you develop a water-tight SEO content marketing strategy to help take your business to the next level.
Want Help With Your SEO Content Marketing Strategy?
Say no more! Hit the Contact Us button right now, and one of our content marketing experts will help you set up a strategy that works for your business model and target audience.
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