What is Content Marketing, you might ask. In simple words, it is a form of content that you create and share with your audience to educate and provide value to them. It is a process of marketing your brand which gives your readers a feeling of solving their problems and answering their questions. Through unique and strategic content, it gives you an opportunity to turn your product or services into something that stands out from the other brands. After gaining the visitors’ trust, content marketing helps to generate new leads, converting them into customers.
As opposed to traditional techniques of ‘push marketing,’ where companies force their brands to the consumers, Content Marketing functions on the principle of ‘pull marketing,’ where companies offer genuine, relevant, insightful and helpful content to their audience which attracts them to their brands.
Why does SEO play an important role in Content Marketing?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a method of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by improving the website popularity for search engine users. Having SEO-friendly websites helps in increasing the visibility to your potential customers.
SEO and content marketing are interconnected and complement each other. While SEO gives you an idea of what your content should look like, content helps to make you realize the full benefits of SEO-relevant and useful content on your website.
Here are the top 10 reasons why SEO plays a vital role in Content Marketing:
1. Increases Visibility and Traffic Organically
SEO and Content Marketing go hand in hand and thus content marketing is built on SEO retainer projects. Content helps in building organic visibility both directly by appearing for long-tail searches and indirectly by supporting the primary categories of service and product pages.
The growth in organic traffic helps brands expose themselves to a broader audience and assist them with informational needs. Being a genuine destination for your audience, even the early stages of buying, can lead to increased traffic and increased conversions.
2. Educates your Audience
Thanks to the internet, consumers nowadays are more informed than ever before. A few years ago, consumers may have contacted a business or visited their physical stores based on advertisements. But now, they are completely aware of the brands, and they search for additional information about the product or service before making a purchase. If they do not find accurate information about your brand on the internet, you will be at risk of losing them.
Providing your audience with explainer videos, product feature comparisons, or visualization of the key features will attract them better. Additionally, if you sell complex products or services, think about content that would explain, simplify, or break down into easier terms to help your audience understand.
3. Builds Brand Awareness
It is quite difficult and expensive to build brand awareness through advertising or PR. In this situation, content marketing emerges as a cost-effective way of building awareness for your target audience’s new members. You can prepare a buying guide, which will be the first touchpoint of a user ever with your organization. This may act as a catalyst for the beginning of a long relationship between the user and your brand.
Your unique content can make your brand stand out from other competitor brands on social media. In 2012, Dollar Shave Club came up with a video that brought the brand to their target audience’s attention and secured a place in the shaving product market. The integral objective of marketing is to get your brand in front of people for the first time, which can be done through innovative content.
4. Gives a high Return on Investment (ROI)
Content Marketing not only precedes traditional marketing tactics but also attracts more website visitors and new leads. A good conversion strategy brings in high-quality leads, and frequent content production boosts website traffic.
According to Demand Metric, 6 out of 10 consumers get inspired to check out a product after reading useful and relevant content. The offer can be an infographic, a white paper, or a complimentary consultation. By accepting your displayed offer, the website visitors get converted to leads and new clients.
5. Increases your SEO ranking
One of the best ways to attract organic visitors to your website is through great content. By producing keyword optimized quality content, you will rank high in customers’ search through search engine optimization (SEO).
Great content also helps you build backlinks to your site, through which it will expand your organic audience even further. Backlinking serves as one of the criteria the search engines use to rank your site.
6. Content Helps you to Rank in Google
Google is the world’s biggest search engine, and as a result, it fields more than 1 trillion queries every year from users worldwide. With that number, there is always someone in your area who uses Google to research your industry. The best way to reach those potential customers is by creating interesting content and posting it to your website.
First, you need to research the keywords to help you reach your target audience and earn traffic. Build content around those keywords and optimize it for search engines. Secondly, you will have to create a call-to-action (CTA) like “add to cart” or “buy now” at the end of each page to convert your audience into customers. Once you submit your pages to Google, it will index your pages and show them in search results.
7. Sets Yourself Apart from Competitors
In the digital marketplace’s busy scenario, it is vital to set your business apart from competitors. For small businesses, SEO optimized Content Marketing is one of the most effective ways to stand out in the industry and show the audience what makes them special than others. By sharing your brand story to a larger audience, you can start building authentic relationships with your customers.
The topics that you choose to create content around and the value of the content produced determines the difference between a consumer choosing your brand over a competitor’s. For example, if a buyer researches the utility of certain products, they will be more inclined to buy from the brand, providing them with more relevant information.
8. Appeals to Users at Different Buying Stages
Content Marketing can target audiences across various stages of the buying process, from initial awareness to final conversion. With proper SEO strategies, Content Marketing can satisfy your audience’s different needs by nurturing them on their journey from one stage to another.
For example, buying guides are powerful content tools for users who are in the consideration phase. It helps them move to the next stage of the process by eliminating the final barriers that initially prevented them from purchasing.
9. Generates leads for your business
Content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional advertising methods and costs 62% less as well. Content Marketing helps marketers to build a targeted and engaged audience by continually publishing information prospects for customers.
Proper SEO strategies enable strangers to find your website through your informative and useful content. Most of the time, this happens even before they decide to buy from you. So, through premium content on your site, it convinces them to lay trust in your brand, and you get conversions through these leads.
10. Content is Shareable on Social Media
No matter what business you are in, it is always good to have a social media account. Different social media platforms help you to promote your business and gain new leads.
Facebook- On Facebook, you can create a page dedicated to your business and post content with a summary of your brand. That will earn you interaction from your followers (including likes, comments, and shares) and get you some new followers to spread the word about your business.
Twitter- Twitter is a microblogging site that works similarly. Here, you can post a link to your content with a summary that anyone can find by looking up the keywords you have used in your tweet.
LinkedIn- LinkedIn is a professional networking site where you can build a list of useful connections. You can post blogs, links to your content, or questions for your followers, which will earn you connections from your industry and help you in expanding your business further.
Instagram– It is a widely used social media platform that can bring thousands of users to your website through images and videos. Instagram’s audience is image-centric, and you can gain a robust follower base through eye-catching pictures and quirky content.
Snapchat– Snapchat shows photos and videos for only a few seconds at a time. It is a great way to engage users who like quick, bite-sized content.
Thus, Content Marketing is one of the most powerful ways to create a long-term marketing strategy that builds awareness around your business and gives you inbound leads. Whether you are a small business owner, SME, or a large corporation, content marketing should form your marketing strategy. With the increased competition in digital marketing, only the best of the content will rise through SEO, and others will get lost in the noise. Hence, Content Marketing should be developed strategically with the help of SEO and should enter the audience’s mind even before the production begins.
