You’ve heard it before “Content is King” and each year it continues to make the list as an important factor in your marketing and branding strategy. In fact, Content Marketing is so powerful it can influence all of your other marketing channels, creating opportunities for driving traffic from social media, email, and search. It allows for better partnerships with bloggers and influencers and traditional PR mechanisms, social sharing, “soft selling,” the list of benefits goes on. In this installment, we’re going to talk specifically about the interplay between Content Marketing and SEO, so you can better understand the positive impacts to your overall SEO strategy. So how does Content Marketing help with SEO?
1. It Improves Domain Authority
Introducing new content to your site on a regular basis increases your site’s total real estate value. This increase has a positive impact on Google’s rating of your authority and therefore your ranking in search results pages. As you likely already know, your site will then be seen more often and search traffic will increase as a result. Another factor here is inbound links, if you have high quality content on your site you audience will be more willing to share it and this will contribute again as a positive indicator of your domain authority. The combining impact of these factors creates a snowball effect for your site’s SEO.
2. It Increases Long Tail Search Traffic
When you invest in great content you will start to attract more long tail search traffic. This is traffic coming from more specific, less common user searches. The benefit of this traffic is it tends to be very high quality, they’re looking for exactly what you have to offer. Consider each piece of content like a fisherman would a hook in the water, having more than one hook in the water increases your odds of catching a fish. In the digital world you might as well have more hooks as they equate to more opportunities to generate traffic.
TIP: Invest in content over the long term, don’t try and do everything at once. It’s better to make content marketing a weekly, or monthly, investment of effort and ensure it’s worked into long term plans. You might not see results immediately but it’ll be worth it in the long term.
3. Drives Onsite Engagement
Content is an opportunity for engagement. It’s all about providing something valuable that will create a stickier relationship and drive goodwill with your audience. Providing valuable content will have an overall positive benefit for your site due to the theory of Reciprocity. This theory states that people give back (reciprocate) the kind of treatment they have received from another (in this case your brand) and as a result you will “get back” from your audience. An example of this in action is when authors give away the first chapter of a book free of charge, or a consultant provides an free e-book to educate their prospective clients.
4. Builds trust & reputation
For Google it might be all about your Domain Authority, but for users it’s more important that you’re trustworthy. People will be willing to engage with your brand, and buy what you’re selling if they trust you and they know you have a good reputation. Content Marketing is a good way to show your credibility and it works on a number of levels. Firstly, it shows a voice or perspective on a particular subject, this implies expertise and experience in that area. It also creates shareable moments, a share from a friend will act much like a recommendation or referral, basically giving you the approval from an unbiased third party. If you’re established as an expert and have someone else’s personal recommendation, then you’re really set up to be successful.
TIP: Invest in high quality content and make sure it’s polished so it positively reflects your brand. Spelling and grammar errors can undo your efforts so make sure to have editing and sufficient review work done to ensure it’s right before launching.
5. Drives conversions
Content marketing can even drive leads and sales for your business. There are a number of ways to integrate content into your customer’s overall sales process and you’ll need to determine the right way for your brand. In short, content gives you reason to reach out, it can be source content for social and email campaigns, and by offering content you’re able to sell your brand without a repetitive sale message. More touch points, combined with the previously mentioned theory of reciprocity, will drive more sales. Having content on hand to weave into your sales approach can provide a very real benefit to the bottom line of your business.
As you can see there are many reasons to invest in Content Marketing and it should definitely be a part of the SEO strategy for your website. Although it takes effort and a longer term perspective, the benefits fall outside the realms of trends so you can be sure you’ll reap the benefits of your content marketing investments in the long term.