Using Content Marketing to Improve Your SEO

Content marketing consists of producing, publishing, sharing and generating online content that’s in line with the brand’s positioning. However, and at the risk of disappointing you, publishing a few occasional tweets and one blog article per month does not qualify as content marketing. In fact, content marketing usually forms part of a wider inbound marketing strategy and is used as a way of encouraging and attracting visitors. Once attracted, it then becomes possible to transform these visitors into prospects, then into customers.

To find out more and learn how to optimise your visibility, delve with us into the secrets of content marketing.

Content marketing formats

Depending on your particular professional challenges, your strategic objectives, and your business sector, there are numerous content marketing levers you can apply and use. In order to be effective, content marketing needs to be varied, multifaceted and coherent. A few examples:

Articles

Taking the format of a piece of text, articles can vary in length from 500 to 1,500 words, depending on the subject matter. This is content that gets published on your own website’s blog or on those of third parties, such as Medium or LinkedIn Pulse. You can also use guest-blogging by hosting partner content or having it hosted, or by providing and submitting articles and editorial pieces to well-known and influential publishers (the press, professional sites, etc.).

Social network posts

This can take the form of reusing existing content shared on social networks, or it can be newly created content designed to provide information or stimulate engagement.

Images

Used in the form of slide shows, photo albums or GIFs, these illustrate and breath life into content, be it on social networks or on your own online store or corporate website.

Corporate videos

These can be either long or short-format and serve to diversify the messages associated with the particular topic being dealt with. Each video needs to be precisely targetted (a video aimed at shareholders will be completely different from one aimed at your distributors or customers, for example).

Live videos

This is a useful format to use for FAQ-type personalised chats or the relaying of a live event.

Stories

This is a short-lived, trend-focussed format found on social networks.

White papers

Used primarily for B2B, this is an authoritative document that provides advice and good practice guidance on a specific topic. White papers are essential for generating qualified leads.

Email marketing

This is a type of content sent by email at regular intervals to recipients in a database of qualified leads/prospects.

Infographics

Here, images and visuals are used in combination with key figures to summarise a challenging problem or complex topic and render it more accessible.

Once produced, each piece of content can then be recycled and reused multiple times: an extract from the white paper as a blog article, a video as a story, a piece of infographics as a tweet, etc.

Content marketing tools

Getting involved in content marketing requires organisation and the appropriate resources, particularly:

Personas

Personas are archetype profiles of your different customer types. They are essential for defining your targets and knowing who you need to speak to. Each persona is associated with a particular subject area and has its own reading habits.

Editorial line

This is a strategy that people need to know about and be aware of and that needs to be properly shared so that the tone and style used can be standardised. The editorial line must be coherent across all types of media and all content.

Editorial calendar

Whether a comprehensive tool complete with task delegation, tags, and resource allocation management or just a simple Excel spreadsheet, this is as a useful tool for organising your content production. Your calendar tells you what’s been published, what needs to be worked on and what’s currently in production.

Automation

Once content has been shared, it needs to then take on a life of its own. Automation both avoids the need to carry out painstaking work and encourages sharing once the content has been published.

Economic intelligence and benchmarking

These are useful tools to use for searching for keywords and topics of current importance whilst at the same time strengthening your knowledge of both the market and your competitors’ activities.

SEO and content marketing: a winning combination

Search engine optimisation is a daily preoccupation for marketing professionals. Dropping just one place in the Google rankings can result in a real and substantial loss in business. This is why SEO is of primary importance. There are numerous levers available, such as backlinks, responsive formats, page loading speed and the avoidance of duplicated content. It’s also extremely important to have new content that uses strategic keywords and gets regularly updated.

When properly put together, a content marketing strategy can lead to your content being found via new keywords. But not only that. It can also move you up the ranks in the search engine’s natural results and prepare your website for voice searching.

The quest for visibility and credibility is of fundamental concern to advertisers. This is the reason why you need to think carefully about your content. Bill Gates was already saying that content is king back in 1996. And it’s a stance that still has just as much currency today, twenty years later. Our team can provide you with expert help and support with your own content marketing. Contact us today!