In nearly all content marketing programs, the ultimate goal is to create high-quality content that's of value to readers while promoting growth for the business by attracting new potential customers.
To benefit a business, content must resonate with users and serve as a starting point for engagement between an audience and organization. For search engine optimization (SEO), content with a good amount of links to it tends to rank well.
When authoritative websites, such as top-tier news outlets, link to a certain piece of content on a website within their story or attribute a quote to a company with a link to the homepage or a corresponding blog post, it's a signal to Google that the content provides value to others. For this reason, strong backlink profiles play a significant role in when it comes to where pages will appear in search results on search engines like Google.
Any good piece of content takes effort to create, and while the types of content addressed below may be sizeable investments in both time and resources, they typically have an excellent ROI. Many marketers have built unique pieces of content time and time again found themselves discouraged by a lack of immediate results. However, slowly they should found that these pieces of content were performing well over time and consistently generated organic traffic months after publishing.
For any business looking to naturally amass links to their website's homepage, or to a certain landing page that houses unique content, specific styles of content tend to work most effectively. Consider the following five types of content as you develop your upcoming content marketing strategy:
If a company has unique data about a certain initiative it has executed successfully, marketers should be completely transparent with it and use that as a way to attract new users, potential customers and the eyes of others within that industry. Whatever their vertical, brands should treat the case study like they would a scientific case study, but in a manner that makes it easily understood by the readers. Include as many actionable tactics and impressive results as possible. Brands want to showcase how they made improvements to a certain aspect of a business or client's business so that others can apply it to the needs of their own company, citing it as a resource with a link for their own content marketing initiatives later on.
When creating blog posts or written content intended to perform well over time, that contribute to a well-balanced and authoritative backlink profile by attracting natural links, it's crucial that marketers consider keywords during the curation process. They'll want to identify keywords that are relevant to their business and the topic they're addressing and keep them in mind as they start writing. The keywords should occur naturally throughout the content and not over-saturate the material simply for the purpose of inclusion. Ultimately, this makes it more likely for content to appear prominently when users search Google for that specific term.
Another way to utilize a keyword strategy for garnering links is to look at the top 10 search results for a term a brand would like to rank well for. When marketers ask "what's missing in this content or how can I create something better?" they can use the response to the question as the framework for their next post. For example, marketers should try combining ideas found in five or six of the results, plus their own concepts so that the insights for most of the results are all in one place, making it a quick solution for those trying to read an article with as much information as possible in it. It's an easy way to create a more valuable post than the competition, and will help ensure that over time the company attracts more links.
An infographic is a substantial investment of resources seeing as brands need to collaborate with a design team in order to make something that people find particularly unique and interesting. That being said if a marketer is designing one, make sure that they have something quotable or material that someone else covering a similar subject would like to include in their own article. Unless one works for a massive brand or a consumer product goods (CPG) company with a household name, his or her company's expertise alone may not be enough to simply state facts that are validated based on their brand's influence. Not every company and their employees will be considered thought leaders right away. If marketers make an infographic, they may not be credible enough to attract natural links just because they're saying something interesting. Instead, it's best to create content that substantiates bigger ideas, and is backed by trustworthy information from a recognized data provider.
Answering a FAQ that is relevant to an industry and a business in video form tends to help generate a lot of traffic. While it's fairly simple to do a standard, written blog post that answers questions many people might have-it's too common, and thus is harder to attract links to. When marketers are in an environment where it's typical to try and respond to questions in comments or in blog posts, having a video instead can truly make you stand apart.
If another blogger or a reporter is writing an article related to the topic, it's much more likely that they'll link to a video that clearly and cohesively explains the content rather than directing their readers to another 1,200-word article. Additionally, those reporters want to keep their users engaged with their own post-not send them elsewhere. If marketers use a program like Wistia, they can host videos on their own site but also allow others to embed the video in their own article. This way, anytime they embed the video, the organization that created the content gets a link.
Injecting an organization's ideas and employee expertise into current events or newsworthy items is an effective way to build content that will gain traction as a resource for others. When a newsworthy item breaks that is related to a company's industry, if their marketers are on the forefront of content creation before a lot of their competitors can do the same, they'll likely get referenced as other reporters and journalists start shaping out their own articles on that particular subject. Whether they include a link to their content because they are quoting the marketer's company in it or they link to the post to provide general support and substantiate their own story, the marketer's enterprise will be receiving links.
As soon as the event occurs, if marketers are timely with gathering their content, they can create the article and disseminate it over social media or on their blog and website to start attracting visitors. Reporters looking for details on a particular event that the company publicized good insights on will be likely to then include it as they round out their own article.
Effective content marketing is crucial to the success of any SEO strategy or overall online marketing plan. To enhance the ranking of your content and to produce an increase in traffic to your website, you need links from authoritative platforms. Interesting, creative content that engages the user will undoubtedly assist in achieving the objectives of your content marketing plan by naturally amassing links.