You have probably heard the term Content Marketing but may not be sure what it means. Content Marketing involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blog posts, news, videos, white papers, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, photos, etc.
Content Marketing is one of the best methodologies for marketing your website and your business. Posting relevant, valuable and frequently updated information on your website will boost search engine optimization (SEO), help position you as an expert, and allow you to build relationships with your audience. All are priceless benefits for any business.
How It Used To Work
In the past websites have tended to rely on using page titles and meta data such as the common keyword and description tags to encourage Google to rank their sites highly for certain keywords or phrases. To some extent search engines relied on the content within these special tags because it was much quicker and easier for them to process pages this way. However with improvements in computing power search engines now have algorithms to properly analyse the entire content of a page, and most therefore ignore meta tags entirely when it comes to page ranking. The exception is the title tag of a page which is still considered an important indicator of the page contents.
Market Research
The content of your website should always begin with proper market research. First, you should determine your high value customers (HVC) and define personas for your website. Then you should determine how you will target them. Taglines and slogans that are customer-centric (i.e., focuses on the needs and wants of the customer) are essential to capturing the attention of your prospective customers. Keywords are the king of the SEO world, and if you want to have a higher ranking on the search engines you need to understand what keywords your potential customers are searching on. Search engines look for keywords within your website content to determine what a page is about.
Using the right keywords on a site can push it up the search engine rankings, but be careful! If you overuse a keyword search engines can penalise your site, this is known as ‘keyword stuffing’ and is a common problem with older sites and content.