Online marketing isn’t as easy as it used to be. Twenty years ago, all you had to do to drive traffic to your website was create pages stuffed with keywords. Well, that plane doesn’t fly anymore. If you want to win the search engine game, you have to get beyond keywords.
Content marketing is a strategy that combines tried-and-true marketing principles with the fundamentals of SEO. It really wasn’t a thing until Google introduced its Panda update some 10 years ago. But with Panda came subsequent search algorithms that have made Google increasingly more adept at separating thin, worthless content from high-quality, usable information.
To say that content marketing should be part of your overall digital marketing strategy is to state the obvious. Some people say that content marketing is dead. They must not pay attention to what Google says. But that is a different topic for another post. For now, here are five killer things content marketing can do for your company:
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1. Boost Authority
Online competition is fierce. Just search some of your company’s favorite keywords and you’ll see just how many competitors you have. You will not be able to compete very well if your company doesn’t have any kind of authority. Fortunately, content marketing can help here.
Content marketing can boost your company’s authority by providing relevant, timely information your customers can actually use. Some of that information will have a limited shelf life. Other information will be evergreen, which is to say it will be as relevant two years from now as it is today.
2. Build an Audience
Content marketing is an excellent tool for building an audience. Why would you want to do that? Because a loyal audience is likely to turn to your company when the need arises for whatever products or services you offer. Never forget that people stick with what is familiar. A loyal audience is familiar with your company. When they need what you have, they will come to you.
3. Solidify Your Brand
Your brand is not just your logo and color scheme. It is that aspect about your business that separates you from the competition. There is no better way to emphasize whatever that is more effectively than content marketing. Of course, your content has to be backed up with quality, both in customer service and the products or services you sell.
Content marketing is especially helpful if those things that make your company unique are hard to quantify in the retail marketplace. You can use content to highlight and explain those things. Content can offer concrete examples to drive the point home.
4. Encourage Action
Companies like Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing put a lot of emphasis on calls to action. Why? Because these encourage website visitors to make a decision with the information presented. You can and should do that with your content. Solid content marketing encourages people to do something about your brand. If you are doing things right, the majority of those decisions will be positive.
5. Measure Growth
Finally, content marketing is a great tool for measuring your company’s growth. By producing great content and then tracking its results, you can get a good idea of where your company is at any given time. The better you are at measuring the results, the more effective future marketing efforts should be.
Content marketing is a fantastic SEO tool that really should not be ignored. If you hear people say it’s dead, ignore them. And if you are not currently using content marketing to promote your company, think about changing things up.