Want more organic traffic without blowing through your ad budget?
Everyone wants to rank higher on Google. Visibility leads to more clicks, more leads, and more sales. But…
Too many businesses think content marketing is throwing blogs at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Nope!
Publishing content with no strategy won’t get you very far. If you want to rank, you need a solid plan in place to guide your efforts.
Here’s a complete guide to content marketing strategies.
Table of Contents
- What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
- Why You Need a Content Strategy for SEO
- How Content Marketing Helps with Organic Growth
- Components of a Killer Content Strategy
- Content Marketing Mistakes That Tank Performance
- Wrapping Up
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
At its core, a content marketing strategy is a plan for your business to create, publish, and distribute helpful content that attracts and retains your target audience.
While blogs are part of the content equation, it extends to keyword research, topic planning, content formats, publishing schedules, and promotion tactics. Businesses with written content strategies boast 33% greater ROI than those without one.
Content needs a purpose. Without a guiding strategy, those purposes are pieDAO in the wind.
Sure, lucky breaks happen every once in a while. But if you want to crush it with SEO… you need to make things easy for search engines to crawl, interpret, and love.
Working with a Jacksonville marketing agency or optimizing content yourself, your strategy should outline specific goals for what you publish. Who it serves, and why it’s being published.
Need help organizing your thoughts? Check out a free content marketing plan template to get started.
Why You Need a Content Strategy for SEO
SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand. If you want to rank on Google, you need great content.
Google wants to serve up content that provides actual value to searchers. Websites that are stuck publishing blog posts on topics that sound good in a brainstorm session rarely achieve success.
A proper content marketing strategy plans out every piece of content that gets published on your site. It ensures your pages are valuable, relevant, and authoritative.
Does that sound like keyword stuffed garbage to you?
Yeah. Publishing content nobody wants to read won’t win you any favors with Google.
Publishing topics without a strategy leads to:
Thin content.
Topics being repeated on multiple pages.
Pages cannibalizing each other for the same keywords.
…it’s no surprise that having a documented content marketing strategy increases organic traffic by 10x over those without one.
How Content Marketing Helps with Organic Growth
Website traffic doesn’t grow by magic. It takes diligent content publishing in order to build topical authority with search engines.
Submitting one stellar blog post and expecting to beat the big dogs is silly. Dominating Google takes serious time and effort.
Publishing fantastic content consistently signals to Google that you’re the expert on a particular topic. Every new blog post gives you another chance to rank for a keyword.
The more pages you have indexed on Google, the more opportunities your website has to show up in search results. Simple math tells us the more visibility your content has, the more traffic you’ll receive.
Publishing great content also earns backlinks.
Other websites love linking out to blogs that provide valuable information for their readers. Backlinks not only help with rankings but provide additional value to your content.
Google rewards websites that link out to trustworthy resources. By sprinkling in some backlinks on your blog posts, you’re casting a wider net for potential links from other sites.
Benefits of great content:
- Higher rankings
- Increases organic traffic
- Builds domain authority
- Improves brand visibility
…it’s easy to see why content is the foundation your entire SEO strategy should be built upon.
Components of a Killer Content Strategy
Now that the importance of content for SEO is clear, here’s what makes a quality content marketing strategy.
Keyword Research
Content should always be created with a target keyword or topic cluster in mind. Keyword research is how you discover what your target audience is searching for.
Consistent Publishing Schedule
One blog post every 6 months will not help you outrank bloggers that publish once a week. Consistency is key when it comes to content publishing.
Not only do regular updates allow you to build topical authority faster, but it also gives Google more chances to crawl and index your content.
Focus on Quality
Short blog posts won’t cut it. Google prioritizes content that provides users with as much value as possible.
Statistically speaking, content that’s over 3,000 words grabs significantly more traffic, shares, and backlinks than shorter content.
Don’t stuff keywords in every sentence to meet a word count. Ensure your paragraphs provide value and cover enough substance on the topic at hand.
Break up content with images. Use real world examples and data when possible. Leave enough white space for readers to skim through content easily.
On-Page Optimisation
SEO doesn’t stop once the content is written. On-page optimisation like proper title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, internal links, and image alt text help search engines determine what your content is about.
Have a Distribution Plan
Publishing is only half the battle. You need to have a plan set in place to distribute your content through social media, emails, outreach, etc.
Content Marketing Mistakes That Tank Performance
Alright, you have a strategy… now what?
You can follow the most banging strategy in the world but fail to see any results if you make these deadly mistakes.
Not Optimizing Content. Google can’t index content that isn’t optimized for keywords it should rank for.
Neglecting Old Content. Often times editing and updating old content provides faster wins.
Poor Keyword Targeting. Jumping into keywords that are highly competitive with little to no domain authority is never a good idea.
Not Using Internal Links. Linking to other relevant pages on your website help distribute authority and allow search engines to crawl deeper into your site.
Wrapping Up
Content marketing is your best friend when trying to rank on Google. Implementing a strong content strategy sets you up for success with SEO and increases organic growth.
Here’s your cheat sheet:
- Document your content marketing strategy.
- Perform keyword research.
- Publish high-quality blog posts on a consistent basis.
- Promote your content everywhere.
- Update old blog posts.
Succeeding with SEO isn’t easy. But if you stick to publishing consistently, your efforts WILL pay off down the road.