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What good is great content if no one can find it? How useful is findable content when it doesn’t engage and persuade?
and then he says:
The only thing worse than no SEO at all, is ALL SEO.
This is where we have to be very careful. Most content writers and content marketers don’t know where to draw the line.
My main point of interest is the first highlight, that what’s the use of writing and publishing great content if nobody knows of its existence, if nobody is able to find it?
If you are popular, no matter how lousy and senseless your content is, it’s going to rank well; I’ve seen it myself. Being popular means more people link to you, more people talk about you and more people are going to share and forward your updates.
But what if you are not popular? What if nobody knows you and nobody even cares what you write and publish? You need to build your presence from ground up, and this you do by not only creating great content, but also creating it in such manner that search engines can easily crawl it and rank it for the right keywords. This is where search engine optimization helps you.
Of course you shouldn’t obsess about it. Excess is always bad and the same goes for SEO. You may like to go through the following links on the same topic:
Should you regularly write and publish content on your website just for the sake of content marketing? Joost de Valk mulls over this question in his recent blog post.
Being a content writer who makes a living off encouraging people to publish as much content as possible I would say yes. Otherwise, I would say, it depends.
I repeatedly write on my website as well as on my blog that don’t write content merely for generating traffic, unless you earn revenue from advertisements (even then relevancy is very important). But I slightly disagree with Joost, and his friend whose post he has referred to. These guys get good traffic on their websites, and they have done their share of content marketing before they can coolly say, “Oh I hate terms like content marketing and content publishing!”
This is precisely the reason I tell my clients not to take rampant advise on the Internet too seriously, and literally. If you need traffic, you need content, and you keep on writing and publishing content until you have traffic, and then, if you think you have had enough content (on your own website as well as other websites) to get web traffic for a couple of years, may be you too one day can say, “Please spare me your ‘content’.”
Fundamentally I’m not disagreeing with the central theme these two gentlemen are talking about. Useless content is, well, useless. Write something meaningful, and if you are really involved in your work, when you really confront problems and work on solutions, you have something or the other to write about.
So does your business need regular content writing to keep the engine of your content marketing running, or at least humming? In order to understand this you have to understand why you need regular content writing for your website in the first place?
You need search engine traffic that actually converts
You need to establish your expertise
You need to engage with your audience
You want people to link to your content
There can be umpteen reasons why you may require regular content writing (just as some people and business may not require this much regularity). The unavoidable truth is, if your business doesn’t enjoy a strong presence on the web (search engine and social media) you need to publish regularly. You need to write content for recognition, in order to cover all your keywords, in order to generate longtail traffic and if nothing else, then just to keep your visitors engaged with fresh, thought-provoking content. If you say your business doesn’t require content, so be it. There are some businesses that don’t require the Internet and websites.
The title of this blog post comes with a touch of irony. I address you as an SEO expert and then I try to explain why you cannot ignore content marketing. But it is not a complete irony – I still come across well-meaning SEO professionals who think that content is important, but it is optional and good search engine rankings don’t necessarily depend on good content. So this blog post is for them.
What exactly is SEO? Is it merely getting good search engine rankings? I remember once a client came to my office and requested me to set his website as my homepage so that every time I loaded my browser, it would increase his visitors count. I asked him what he was trying to achieve by that, and he said, it would instill confidence in his other visitors. When I asked him what effect a higher visitor count had made to his business, he flatly said, “None.” SEO hadn’t become a buzzword back then and nobody on this planet had heard of social media.
Why your SEO needs a healthy dose of content marketing?
I’m not an SEO expert but over the past 12 years that I have spent eking out a living on the Internet I have found out that there are 4 things that decide your search engine rankings
The quality of your content
General well-being of your website
The quality of your incoming links
The level of competition you face
The recent addition, the fifth thing that has an impact on your search engine rankings, is your author rank – how much social relevance your name enjoys on the Internet.
The relation between content marketing and SEO
What are people doing when they are using the search engines? They are looking for content in the form of information or entertainment. They seek information to keep them aware, to educate themselves, for researching, to find product or service they need, and to make good buying decisions.
Suppose you get good rankings for “garden sprinkling system” but when people come to your website they cannot make out what you are trying to do. The content is not convincing. Or it is full of errors. Maybe you haven’t highlighed the greatest benefits of the sprinkling system. Are you merely providing information or you want people to buy from you? And if they should buy from you then why? Just because you have got good search engine rankings or your sprinkling system is actually better than the others? People don’t do business because of your search engine rankings; they buy from you when your written content, your copywriting, is able to engage them and convince them.
This is just one aspect of content marketing. Once you have written credible and convincing content you also need to make it accessible to as many prospective visitors as possible.
The relationship between content marketing and quality incoming links
The days of paid links are gone, or going. Google heavily penalizes websites that aggregate incoming links by either paying for them or through link-exchange schemes. People should link to you for the value you provide, in terms of content or branding. Two legitimate ways of getting quality and reliable incoming links are:
Website owners, authors and bloggers voluntarily linking to you
You write for other websites and blogs and your link appears in the small bio or profile on the same link as credit
In both the cases you need high-quality content. If people voluntarily link to you then they must find something worth linking to. If you write for other blogs and websites then too, they won’t publish your blog posts and articles unless they are of a certain standard.
So you can see, whether you are focusing on onsite or off-site SEO, ultimately it’s the combination of the quality of your content and a well-coordinated content marketing strategy that decides what sort of search engine rankings you are going to experience.
Content writing and inbound marketing are interrelated. Not much explanation is needed for the former term, but the latter may require some explaining. Inbound marketing is the opposite of outbound marketing (you may also call it conventional marketing).
We live in an interconnected world. This connection is not through businesses, companies and organizations, it is through the people. Of course these people use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or blogging to share their thoughts and opinions, but at the crux of everything that goes on, it is the people-centric conversations that make up the world these days. Most of the reading, writing, communication and interaction happens online. Even opinion-making is happening online to a great extent. Even the politicians are taking people seriously these days due to the way people have been empowered by accessible publishing tools and information dissemination services.
As a business you need to participate in these conversations in a constructive manner. Once you become a part, inbound marketing begins to manifest. When people come across you for the first time they’re not bothered about what a great service you provide and what a magical product you have got to sell. They want to know you as an individual. They want to know how they are going to benefit from you if they allow you to post messages on their timelines. Whether they follow you on Twitter, add you as a friend on Facebook or like your Facebook page, it basically means allowing you to share your messages with them. Among friends, colleagues, family and prospective mates they don’t want to experience your business overtures.
So how do you become a part of a conversation that doesn’t involve your business but still makes people aware of your business?
Through targeted content writing. Actually, since I provide content writing services I am speaking about this particular medium, but when it comes to sharing content you can share any format such as video, audio, photographs and images, presentations and animations. Multiple channels can bring multiple inbound marketing opportunities.
Persistent content writing helps you build a vibrant platform that facilitates inbound marketing. You share your expertise. You provide answers to all the questions your prospective customers and clients may have. You talk about topical issues in the context of your business and show that you are interested in people’s day-to-day lives.
The ideal situation is that by the time a person is ready to do business with you he or she is fully aware of what you stand for and what is the value of the product or service that you provide. Through methodical content writing you can achieve that. People again and again come to your website whenever they seek useful information.
In inbound marketing it’s not necessary that people straightaway click your links. They can come across your information on other people’s profiles and timelines. They can find your content among search engine results. Your guest blog posts and articles on other blogs and websites can highlight your links. One of your articles, videos or images can go viral and this can make people aware of your website.
Why inbound marketing, supported by content writing, is more effective?
This graphic explains the basic concept of inbound marketing vis-a-vis content writing:
In the beginning, people are strangers. Neither you know them, nor they know you. Then they start coming across your content. They start finding what you have written useful and interesting. Regular content writing makes you familiar to them. They start visiting your website again and again, you encourage them to sign up for your e-mail updates and they become your leads. As you constantly keep in touch with them via quality content writing, they are bound to purchase from you as and when the need arises. And if you keep them happy after they have purchased from you, they become your friends, they start promoting your product or service without you having to tell them to do so. This is the power of inbound marketing.
Here are a few reasons why inbound content marketing is more effective:
People don’t want to block you: You must be aware of the fact how people constantly try to block out advertisements and promotional materials. On the Internet there are pop-up blockers. There are also some online services that allow you to access the content without accompanying ads. Many TV services these days allow you to fast-forward advertisements or at least pause them while they are being telecast so that you can fast-forward them after a couple of minutes (we do this at our household all the time). This doesn’t happen with inbound content marketing because people access your content at their own discretion, at their own convenience and according to their own preference. There is no inherent resistance as you see in the case of conventional marketing.
It easily scales: Content based inbound marketing is easily scalable and this characteristic can be of great use when people are accessing your content via multiple devices and channels. So the same blog post can be read on a computer, on a laptop, on a tablet and also on a smart phone without much inconvenience.
It suits every budget: The great thing about inbound marketing with content writing is there is no entry barrier. You can initiate your inbound marketing strategy by publishing just a single paragraph on your website or blog. From day one you can start uploading slides, videos and text. Even a single 20-minute advertisement on television may cost you a year’s worth of content production and distribution.
It doesn’t have recurring costs: Once you have created high-value content it is always there. The inbound traffic that that content generates is free of cost once it starts attracting traffic. For instance, if your blog post or article is able to get good rankings on search engines, the traffic that comes from there is practically free. Agreed, you needed to pay your content writer or had to spend a few hours creating that high-quality content, but after that it gives you free traffic forever. Just imagine having to pay for every click for the 2000 clicks that your recent blog post generated.
It is more targeted: With inbound content marketing you’re not throwing darts in the darkness. You know exactly what you are doing. For instance, if I am writing something on content writing and content marketing, I am pretty sure that people interested in these topics will be reading it. I also know that many among these people one day will become my clients. This sort of precision is not available in conventional marketing.
It is inclusive: Inbound marketing via content writing (or whatever sort of content publishing you may find fit for your own business) is inclusive and engaging. Rather than talking to people, you talk with them. You engage them in conversations. You get there feedback and then create the subsequent content accordingly. You take their questions and concerns seriously and then try to provide as many answers as possible on the website and blog itself.
Conventional advertising is constantly telling you to buy something. It’s normally one way – you come across it on TV, radio, print media or in the form of banner ads, landing pages and text link ads on the Internet. Conventional advertising is interruptive – instead of providing any value, it simply starts telling you buy this product or subscribe to that service. Of course it is exorbitantly expensive from business perspective.
In the absence of any other option, it was considered to be the best way of reaching out to prospective customers and clients. Content marketing not only altered the perception, it completely changed the rules of marketing and engagement.
We have all grown up in the midst of advertising, but content marketing is something very few people understand. Lack of proper understanding prevents many people from even taking it seriously, let alone considering it as an alternative to conventional advertising. What exactly is it?
Just because it is called “content marketing” it doesn’t mean there is lots of marketing. It simply means, indirectly marketing through valuable content. What is valuable content? Content that informs, educates, creates awareness, engages prospects, or even entertains. While implementing a content marketing strategy you don’t overtly tell your prospective customers and clients to do business with you. You constantly provide them highly useful information that they actually appreciate. Through your content, you are constantly communicating with them. The main ingredients of an effective content marketing strategy are:
Relevance
Value
Timeliness
Engagement
Regularity
Is content marketing an Internet-specific buzzword?
Although content marketing has certainly gone mainstream with the advent of easy publishing through the Internet, it’s origin definitely cannot be traced just back to the Internet. In the modern times (around 100 years) businesses have been using valuable content to strengthen their brands, reach out to their customers and clients and create an engaging presence in the market. Those in America may like to research more on the Michelin Guide for example. Been published since 1900, it is a very famous travel guide that provides highly valuable information to travelers such as where to live, where to eat and where to rent good automobiles.
Do you know that the G.I. Joe comics were created to boost the sales of the eponymous toys? Another good example is Richard Branson – he constantly participates in activities (for instance covering great distances in a hot air balloon) that get quite media coverage.
So one way or another, content marketing has been at the forefront of branding for many years. It has just now become accessible to almost everybody due to a publishing revolution called the web.
Why big businesses like Coca-Cola are ditching conventional advertising in favor of content marketing?
By now every content marketer, one way or the other, has talked about this famous Coca-Cola content marketing roadmap.
These videos were created for their own staff.
So why content marketing? Because it works. People these days don’t like being talked to. They don’t like interruptions. They want to be engaged. They want to find you when they need you. For that they may use their favorite search engines or their favorite social networking and social media websites. The moot point is, if I want to purchase a particular camera I would like to obtain the right information myself rather than you as the camera seller pushing that information down my throat when all I want to do is watch my favorite TV show or YouTube video.
Today’s customer is empowered by unprecedented connectivity. He or she can immediately log onto the Internet and find the needed information. He or she should be able to find you exactly when he or she needs you. This becomes possible through a carefully implemented content marketing strategy.
Big businesses are switching over to content marketing because one, conventional advertising is not as effective as content marketing, and two, conventional advertising is a lot more expensive and short-lived compared to publishing and distributing targeted content.
I will share more thoughts on this in the coming blog posts, so stay tuned.
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