Is Creating Unique Content Worth All the Effort?
- Content creation is hard and it’s time consuming and, in the end, for what benefit?
- Does anyone ever read your content?
- Does your content positively affect your ranking in Google?
- How do you find out which content your customers are looking for?
- Does you content convert site visitors into customers?
- Do you mix up your content types to grow your audience and / or keep them interested?
- Do you promote your content, if so where? Is your content promotion effective?
- How, where and when do your preferred clients consume content?
- What “voice” does your content need to project to.grow your bottom line?
Content Marketing is the Secret Sauce for Success Online
Why Your Customers Need to Know More
Very few businesses (if any) generate success online by creating a simple “brochure” website and then leaving it “as is” doing nothing more to generate new business.
Your customers are intelligent and inquisitive and they need more before they will contact your or purchase your products / services.
The fact is sometimes they will not even call you or place you on their shortlist if your website is simply an online brochure which displays the bare minimum of thin content because there are too many of your competitors that have put far more effort into their online presence.
What Sort of Content Do Your Customers Want?
There’s no “one size fits all” answer to this question as every industry is different.
As with most things Digital Marketing research comes first before you commit valuable time, effort and, sometimes, promotional dollars to producing new content.
Research can take the form of listing the sort of questions your exiting / potential customers are asking you about your business, products or services. If one person asks then others will want to know as well!
Google also provides free information on what people are looking for in your industry in various free tools and also in the auto-complete dropdown on the Google search page. We are certain you have also taken advantage of Google’s Featured Snippets tool when looking up things for yourself.
There are also many free or premium paid tools that will identify the questions people are asking about your industry, products and services. Not only will they identify topics and question, however, they will also give you valuable information on how many people on average per month are searching for this information.
Which Types of Content Are Best?
Once again, this is heavily dependent upon your industry, products and services.
People consume various types of content dependent upon what they are searching for or what they have seen (and what has piqued their interest) during other activities. This may include;-
- Product pages on your website
- Blog posts or articles on your website
- Long or short form textual content
- Images or photos
- Videos
- Infographics
- FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
- Audio content e.g. podcasts
A combination of the above on a page is often a great option as it can cate to multiple audiences at different times of the day.
Using Social Media for Content
No all content needs to be on your website.
Social media platforms such a LinkedIn are also a great place to post your content.
When your content hits the mark with potential customers they may consider contacting you via that social platform or checking out your website.
Promoting your content on multiple platforms can dramatically increase the reach of your business and drive traffic right to your door.
Content Marketing Drives Positive SEO
Google loves to reward high quality websites that are popular with site visitors. It commonly rewards such sites by increasing their position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Places) for the keyword phrases that are prominent on the website.
How Does Google Know About Your Content?
Google indexes webpages and the content on those pages across the World Wide Web.
Google’s indexes your competitor’s websites as well. Google knows all about all of the websites in Perth who are actively promoting any given keyword phrase.
Google automatically compares the content on those sites trying to work out which are the best results to show someone who searches in Google for that specific keyword phrase.
It then present those sites in order on any number of pages as results for a search for that specific keyword phrase.
Google knows which results it presents are clicked, how many pages on those sites are subsequently accessed and how much time a site visitor spends on each web page and website.
Google continues to measure the above continually changing the rankings based upon the amount and quality of content on each of these websites and the statistics it measures from the searchers who visit these sites.
Now the above is a very simplified description of what actually happens. In reality there are other factors at play in Google’s algorithms as well, however, you should never underestimate the fact that the quantity, quality and relevance of the content you place on your website has a huge bearing on the ranking of your website and its pages over time.
Some Content Marketing Do’s & Don’ts to Help Your SEO
Like everything else experience can be key to your content marketing program. Experience combined with producing well researched, content on a regular basis which is both relevant and helpful to your audience and to the keyword phrases that reflect the products / services you are attempting to promote.
To get you started here a few basic do’s and don’ts;-
- Do perform research up front. This could be the difference between an article that draws in hundreds of views or one or two.
- Do write about what people want to know. This can be ascertained from Google or third party tools.
- Do write long form content. Try not to go under 300 words
- Do use multiple media types in a single article wherever you can. Add a relevant image or photo with your text. This breaks up the content so it does not look like a schoolbook and remember, some people are visual.
- Do break up your content into small paragraphs, lots of headings and bullet points where possible. Giant slabs of text are commonly ignored.
- Do add textual versions of the voiceovers on your videos so Google can read them too.
- Don’t use duplicate copy. Google will find out and your ranking will suffer accordingly.
- Do add content regularly. Get into a good content creation habit.
- Do promote your content in other places. Don’t be afraid to post summaries with links to your content on social media. Become a guest blogger on relevant websites within your industry.
- Don’t write for Google. Write for your site visitors. You will always be rewarded for good accurate content.
Recent Content Management Projects
Recent Articles
![](https://balanced-business-growth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/background-page-title-designer-developer.jpg)
![](https://balanced-business-growth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/AdobeStock_420113141-1-scaled.jpeg)
![page header background WordPress](https://balanced-business-growth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/bg-page-header-wordpress.jpg)
What Our Customers Are Saying
Stephen Gaebler is a strong, clear, big-picture thinker. He is helping to create the future of work and of free enterprise. I've worked with him on several formal and informal projects over the past few years, and he has never failed to enlarge my perspective, challenge my blind spots, and clarify my vision.