The quick, easy black-hat tricks once used for boosting your website’s rank are now obsolete, and more importantly, punishable by Google. Nowadays, content marketing is what drives SEO.
The purpose of content is to give users what they’re looking for. It needs to be high-quality, engaging and one-of-a-kind. Beyond helping with SEO, content marketing also provides:
- Better user comprehension: Your content actually provides online readers with answers to their questions. It educates them about your services, why they need them, how what you do is different and more.
- Lower bounce rates: Because users are spending more time on your website reading the information for which they were searching, they are less likely to hop on and hop right off. This is something search engines take into consideration when determining when and where to display your website’s content.
- More trust in the website: High-quality, authentic content shows your expertise and experience. This can lead to inbound links from valued referrers and return visitor traffic, both of which are important to SEO.
- More social media shares: Content is easily shareable on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. When content is shared and linked back to your website, it provides an easy way for people to get to know you more.
Before you dive in, do your research. Understand who your target audience is, what keeps them up at night, what their burning desires and concerns are – all of this is fodder for content creation. Based on what your target audience is seeking from you, develop a content calendar outlining what pages or articles will be created, by when and by whom.
Boost your SEO impact by integrating key search terms. You can research those here. Address those words or phrases in your content so that when a user asks a search engine a question, your page will be one of the first to appear.
Monitor your efforts to see your content is driving in more website visitors, page views, leads, etc. Don’t get discouraged if it takes longer than one blog post. Content takes time to affect SEO, but it can do so in impactful ways.
