Do Content Marketing Strategies Influence SEO? Find Out!

There is a huge confusion over SEO and content marketing. The confusion is, Do SEO and content go hand in hand? Do they work together? Do content influence SEO? The straightforward answer is YES! SEO creates the demand and content marketing fulfills it.

But how do they influence SEO? In the below post we will attempt to find the answer to this question.

Everyone knows how critical is Search Engine Optimization to any digital marketing strategy. But they make a mistake by ignoring the power of well-planned content marketing strategies. Simply writing blogs and submitting third-party articles isn’t enough to get ranked on SERP. You need to have a solid content marketing plan that is in sync with your business goals.

So, how do you do that?

We have listed down the influence of content marketing on SEO. Let the game begin!

• Smaller the better – If you have an in-house content writing team supporting your digital marketing efforts, you would probably have heard “How many words do you want?” So, the length of the content has always been a talking point among new age marketers. Today, the audience likes/prefers to read shorter and easy to understand messages. For instance, the micro-blogging site, Twitter has introduced a limit of 280 characters for its users to convey their thoughts in a crisp and clear form. If you are a company that is looking to be on the top of one of the most interesting digital marketing trends of all time, you need to deliver your messages in a short, crisp and fresh format.
• Change in the pattern – As per the earlier content pattern, marketers focused on producing content around long tail keywords for link building and devised their content marketing plan. However, the latest content pattern is more user-friendly and result oriented. Presently, instead of keyword stuffed content, search engines (especially Google) prefer content that helps the end user – one that has a purpose or that gives a solution. So, marketers focus on the new pattern and develop your content marketing strategy for 2019.
• Visual is the king – While content continues to remain the king, visual/video content has greatly dominated the search engine market. Today, when you open your Facebook or Instagram handle, what do you see the most? Videos – types of videos, right? Video marketing is scaling upwards. According to Business Insider, 500 million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day and over half a billion internet users watch online videos every day on Facebook. Videos influence about 90% online shoppers’s buying decisions. So, your 2019 content marketing plan must have engaging video content to please your users and upscale your SEO efforts as videos deliver value to users.
• Voice recognition technology – Voice search is gaining momentum in the digital marketing space. Have you ever even in your wildest dream thought that a visually impaired person will be able to use a Smartphone so seamlessly? With Google-voice search this has become possible. As a content marketer, we need to pull up of socks to deal with the evolving technologies and use it at our advantage. In order to align with the increasing use of voice search, you need to create content that is conversational. A conversational content plan can make your brand appear on the top of the SERP when a user searches for your offerings by using a voice search.
• That personal touch – Delivering personalized content to the target audience is essential to ace the content marketing strategy. For instance, if you have a clothing brand, the best way to acquire a new set of customers is by creating a personal email marketing content plan. You can create a separate email for both male and female with apparel suggestions matching their budget and choice. Just do this and see the output. Personalization creates an eternal connection.
• Influencer Marketing – Working with influencers is a great way to generate high-quality natural backlinks for your website, which further enhances your website ranking. Influencers can create content and link to you or they may share your link thereby influencing others to share the link further. By partnering with influencers, you’re carving a reliable and bold presence for your brand in the market. This is because you are sharing your brand message through a trusted source. For instance, you must have seen few Instagram profiles of famous bloggers promoting a brand message or products and services on their profile. That’s influencer marketing.
• Be Unique – Creating something that hasn’t been done before and ranking higher for it. Your content marketing plan should focus on SEO gain – create an information piece that is not available online, which people are searching for. For instance: if you sell premium quality chocolates online, as a general marketer you would develop articles/blogs about why chocolate is the best gift for Valentine’s Day, Why it is the ideal gift for birthdays etc. However, such articles will be available in bulk online. In fact, a lot of your competitors might be writing the same set of blog posts. Instead, by doing a little research you might come up with a certain research-based article like the health benefits of premium dark chocolates for pregnant women. You can end the article with a subtle call to action. This is a perfect topic to be included in your content marketing plan for 2019.
• Create a mix – Your search engine rankings can also increase if you deliver a mix of content – Infographic, blogs, video, email, social media etc. This engages your site visitor. Just posting an article of 1000 words won’t help. If you upload the same article with supporting Infographic, or video content, your readers would love to consume that and may even share it within their network.

We don’t say personalized content will boost your SEO efforts immediately. However, it is the most ideal way to engage your existing and potential users. Your content marketing plan should be directly proportional to your SEO efforts. It will increase your brand reach, awareness, visibility and traffic.

Content and SEO go together – Hence proved!

Your content marketing plan is only going to be successful if it has SEO features. Imagine, if nobody searches for your content, producing content will be of no use. To make it find and work, you surely need SEO.

Top 3 Amazing Content Marketing Examples with Great Results

As per Zazzle Media, 60 percent of brand finds it tough to produce content regularly, and 65 percent finds it challenging to develop engaging content. Here are the best examples of great content marketing idea combined with ethical SEO. Take a look.

1. Hoot suite – Hoot suite used a popular culture – one of the popular shows ‘Game of Thrones’ as a jumping off point to tell a relatable story about their brand via a video titled ‘A Game of Social Thrones.’

2. Coca-Cola – Coke used personalization to get everyone talk about their brand. Their ‘Share a Coke’ campaign in Australia resulted in sales of 250 million bottles and cans across the summer.

3. GE – This brand combined their Instagram content marketing campaign with influencer marketing, getting six Instagram influencers and several super fans to do the #GEInstaWalk. This included visiting their manufacturing units, capturing photos and hashtagging it on Insta. This garnered, 3,000 new followers, 8 million views of GE’s Instagram account etc. without spending a single penny on paid advertisement. That’s the power of content marketing.

In a nutshell

Content has always been one of the evergreen and important digital marketing trends. However, how uniquely you use it for the marketing of your business offerings determine its effectiveness. There is a reason why the content marketing strategies of reputed brands work great – it creates strong emotional connect, addresses the issue/gives out the solution, delivers unique content etc.

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