Content Strategies To Improve Your SEO

Becoming an expert or a respected source for specific types of content is one of the best ways to improve your search ranking. Search engines view sites that have multiple pages of in-depth coverage on a particular topic as more valuable because they present users with a greater chance of finding the information that they’re looking for.

Search engines look for “content clusters” on websites to determine their relevance to a specific search query. Sites that have lots of quality content focused on a single subject are likely to rank higher. For sites covering multiple topics, it’s important to organize based on themes, main subjects, or terms, otherwise known as “siloing,” to help increase your ranking. Organizing related elements of your website into “silos” of information helps search engines recognize related content, and can be easily done in your main navigation.

Another popular (and often successful) strategy is creating content around a keyword or keyword phrase that has shown high levels of engagement on your site. If you know that a certain keyword draws a lot of traffic to your site, then you should focus your efforts on creating more content around that term. This will help you reinforce your relevance and boost your search ranking for that particular term. This should hopefully lead to more traffic and monetization opportunities for your efforts.

Blogging & Content Marketing

Having a blog is a necessity for content marketing. If you want to be taken seriously in the digital marketing space, you have to maintain a blog and keep your followers coming back to your site for more. This is an obvious truth for online publishers and bloggers, but many big brands neglect their blogs or lack them altogether.

According to a 2013 HubSpot report, 79% of companies with a blog experienced a positive ROI for inbound marketing, compared to just 20% of companies without a blog. Clearly there’s a big discrepancy between those numbers that serves as an obvious indicator of the importance of a blog.

In 2014, a brand’s blog should be the front line of their content marketing strategy. It’s their own customizable domain to share relevant information, tell their story, and provide followers with great branded content. Essentially, a business’s blog is where the content marketing journey starts.

As the critical foundation for your content marketing endeavors, you should take the time to focus on the design and layout of your blog and ensure that all of the existing content is of the highest quality possible. Your blog will serve as the single most important place for your content strategy, and as such, it should provide an unbeatable user experience.

While having a great blog of your own will be a cornerstone of your content marketing strategy, it doesn't mean that you have to limit yourself to creating and sharing information solely on your blog. In fact, it’s equally important to try and contribute to other related sites in order to get your brand and your message in front of your target audience.

Having your brand appear on neutral publications will help build your fan base and legitimize your business while also helping to establish your reputation as an expert in your niche. When your followers and potential customers recognize your brand on other sites, it helps them build trust and reinforces your company’s relationship with them as consumers. On the other hand, guest blogging serves as a great opportunity to evangelize your company to new audience members and gives you a new platform to further share your story.

Blogging For Content Marketing

Running your own blog requires a lot of time, effort, and resources. As such, you should look at your blog as an investment. One of the best ways to ensure that you get a return on your investment is to focus on optimizing your blog and your content for search. Ultimately, your search ranking will help you generate more organic traffic, reach a larger audience, and bring in extra revenue.

So what are some tips for getting your content noticed by search engines?

First, you should spend a lot of time crafting the headlines of your articles. When it comes to content marketing, having a catchy headline is more than half the battle. In fact, most content creators spend more time coming up with headlines than they do on the body of content itself—it’s that important!

Here are a few guidelines to help you write better headlines:

Be Concise—Internet users want to be able to gather as much information with as little effort and in as short amount of time as possible. Thus, your headlines need to be short and to the point. Typically, headlines with 8 words or less perform best.

Use Numbers—Starting your headline with a number tells readers exactly what they can expect to find inside and tends to attract more attention as a result. Titles such as “10 Expert SEO Tips” or “5 Unbelievable Marketing Videos” will garner more clicks and help your content be recognized by search engines.

Offer Benefits—Use words that promise some sort of benefit to your readers. For example, the phrase “How to” typically gets a great response because it quickly indicates to your readers that they can learn something new from your piece.

Optimize for Search—This may seem like a no-brainer, but you should try to include your keyword or keyword phrase in your headline. Search engines will look at the title of your article to determine its relevance to a search query, so it’s important that you include the term or subject of your article in the title. Use tools to learn what people are searching for and find a way to include that specific term in your headline.

Tease Your Readers—Titles that are mysterious or play to the curiosity of your audience will also perform well. The key to this type of headline is to write something short that hints at what makes the article helpful, controversial, interesting, or funny. Don’t give all of the information of your article away in the title; rather, make readers click to find out.

Writing catchy headlines plays a huge part in the success of your content strategy, but so does your subject matter. Real content marketing success is the result of combining a great topic with high quality content, a great headline, and then getting creative with how you share it with your audience.

Try using these guidelines for choosing great subject matter and getting the most out of each and every post:

Choose Timeless Topics—Just like there are timeless songs that we all know and love regardless of their age, there are timeless topics that no matter what year it is, people will still be interested in them. Some great examples are celebrities, technology, food, and entertainment. Finding ways to tie timeless elements into your articles will help extend their shelf life and their relevance to your readers over time.

Expand On Your Previous Posts—A great way to keep your momentum moving forward is to study your previous posts, find out which ones performed best, and then build on those topics. This is an effective strategy for targeting your audience and nurturing a new content cluster, which search engines will view as being authoritative.

Update Older Posts—You don’t always have to create and share brand-new content. Extend the life of your existing posts by updating the most popular posts from your archives. Take a look at your analytics, find some posts that have performed well in the past, and give them a modern makeover. Don’t rewrite your posts, as that could have damaging effects on your SEO. Simply give them a bit of an update so that they are relevant to your new audience members.

Stay On Top Of Trends—Blog posts are inherently short-lived and generally news-y, which is why it’s a great idea to stay atop trends and cover topics in your niche that are popular at the moment. These types of posts can be quickly created and shared, and result in quick and easy spikes in traffic, which will boost your search ranking. As public interest grows in a trending topic, there’s often a short period of time where marketers can create related content and ride the wave of popularity. You can expand the reach of your brand by sharing timely posts or developing entire campaigns around trending topics.

Your blog gives you total control over your brand’s image and should act as the foundation for all of your content marketing efforts. Your brand identity and voice should be strongest on your blog because after all, it’s your home turf. The most important thing to remember is that this is where your content marketing strategy will start, so you need to take the time to optimize it, both in terms of design and content. Understanding who your audience is and what they’re interested is a big part of creating a blog and content that will be successful.
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