Content marketing has been a top online marketing strategy for the past 10 years. New tactics come and go but the fundamentals of content marketing, including consistent content, have proven to work for building relationships with customers, improving search rankings, and driving relevant traffic to your site.
Here’s the practical guide to content marketing and why it matters for SEO, visibility in search, and traffic to your site.
What is Content Marketing
Content marketing is creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and engaging content to attract and retain an audience. Content creation is a crucial part of this process, as it involves generating useful and relevant content to engage your audience. The end goal is to guide that audience to become paying customers.
This marketing approach includes:
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Social media content
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Newsletters
- Ebooks
- Graphics
- Online courses
All of these can be part of a content marketing strategy.
How Does Content Marketing Work for SEO?
Many of these content types are SEO friendly, but text-based content has the most impact on search engine optimization. Since search engines analyze and rank content through text, creating high-quality written content can boost SEO.
Text Content
Text content like blog posts and articles support SEO by providing search engines with rich keyword-based content, and creating quality content can significantly boost SEO. Optimized with targeted keywords, meta tags and on-page SEO techniques, written content will rank better on search engine results pages (SERPs).
For example, if you have a business selling specialty coffee, writing a blog about coffee topics will get your site to rank for related keywords. Over time, those blog posts will attract traffic from people in your niche, and that visibility will give you more opportunities to convert customers.
Video and Audio Content
Video and audio content also contribute to SEO. Although they don’t have text in the traditional sense, videos can rank well if optimized properly. Incorporating video and audio content into your digital marketing strategy can enhance user engagement and improve SEO.
Firstly search engines love video content as it’s engaging and keeps users on the page longer. To optimize videos you can include meta descriptions, titles and tags so search engines can understand the context. You can also post transcripts alongside videos or audio files so search engines can index text-based content which will improve visibility.
Image Content
Images are another type of relevant content that can support SEO if optimized properly. Using keywords in image alt tags, captions, and file names will increase your chances of ranking for related searches. Alt tags in particular give search engines clues about the content and can get images to appear in image search results.
In fact, search engines are getting smarter in recognizing and interpreting image content that sometimes the image itself can rank in search results. Platforms like Pinterest have shown how powerful image-based content can be when combined with SEO tactics.
How to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy for SEO
To get the most out of content marketing for SEO, it’s essential to develop an effective content marketing strategy that includes a range of digital marketing skills such as:
- SEO techniques
- Copywriting
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
These skills will help you reach and convert your target audience. If you’re just starting out, a good starting point is to focus on high-quality content that’s also SEO optimized. Since SEO is a long-term strategy, publishing SEO-optimized content sooner rather than later will set you up for future success.
How to create content
- Keyword Research: Identify keywords that are relevant to your business and target audience. These keywords will be the base of your content strategy.
- Optimize: Use on-page SEO techniques like meta tags, alt text for images, and internal linking to increase content visibility.
- Consistency in publishing: Publishing high-quality content regularly, whether weekly or biweekly, is part of a strategic marketing approach focused on consistency, which search engines love. A steady stream of content will boost SEO.
- Build Backlinks: Creating content opens up opportunities for other sites to link to you which will further boost your SEO. Backlinks from authoritative sites tell search engines your content is valuable and credible.
Why Content Marketing Works for SEO
Content marketing’s main purpose is to provide value to potential customers. Additionally, content marketing costs are generally lower than traditional marketing methods, offering a better return on investment. By doing so businesses can nurture their audience, drive consistent traffic and improve their SEO rankings. Over time and with consistency content marketing will give you a solid online presence that ranks and attracts traffic.