There are a number of different marketing channels that can help you rank on Google and SEO plays a role in each of these mediums.
Content marketing is when a company creates and distributes content that is both valuable and relevant to its audience on a consistent schedule.
A sound content marketing strategy will aid in boosting brand awareness and generating higher quality traffic. It’s a profitable marketing tool. If you’re keen to get started, you could consider interviews, ebooks, webinars, and roundups.
Content is a key player in your digital marketing strategy. Therefore, SEO is a huge component of whether or not your content gets seen by the right people. In order for your content to get exposure and interest, it needs to be created with your keywords in mind. Your keywords are essentially the terms and phrases your audience uses when searching for solutions online.
By creating content around these key terms, you’re laying the foundation of a strong SEO strategy and showing your audience you’re knowledgeable regarding the topics most relevant to their needs.
Now, let’s dive into a few specific components of content marketing and how SEO plays a role in each.
Blog posts are the backbone of your content marketing, and SEO blog posts are like a belt and buckle. The two fit together. Of all SEO strategies, blogging is undoubtedly the easiest to start with. Blog posts offer a host of benefits:
Prioritizing SEO is step one when creating blog content. You’ll want to first pinpoint your most important keywords and start by creating pillar posts for each. These are essentially lengthy, in-depth blog posts that dive into specific topics. Once these pillar posts are created, you’ll want to routinely link back to them using their designated key terms as the anchor text, which will help boost their SEO over time.
While blog posts are the owned media component of your content marketing, guest articles are the earned media component. Placement isn’t a guarantee; it’s earned through credibility, and rightfully so. Guest articles can bring you qualified traffic, motivated leads, authority, relevant links, and potential sales. There’s a reason they are perceived as one of the leading inbound marketing strategies around. Becoming a guest contributor means you can craft articles that provide readers with new opinions and expertise while positioning yourself as an industry leader. And since the goal is to place this content on high-quality sites your audience reads, they also provide you with an opportunity to build up your backlink strategy by linking to your pillar posts when possible.
One of the core metrics that search engine algorithms consider when trying to rank your website is backlinks. Backlinks can be seen as virtual votes of confidence from other sites; however, the idea isn’t to get links placed anywhere you can. You want to focus on getting good-quality backlinks from authoritative websites.
Aside from adding backlinks to your guest articles, here are a couple of backlinking strategies you can adopt for your own SEO campaigns:
If you’re a B2B marketer, you’ll definitely want to incorporate LinkedIn and Slideshare into your SEO strategy. Take those keywords you’ve identified as part of your keyword research and plug them into the description on your company’s LinkedIn profile page. Be mindful not to simply stuff your page with keywords, though! Search engines have evolved enough to be able to spot this and will likely not assign you points.
Apply the same idea to your LinkedIn posts on your newsfeed and in industry-related LinkedIn groups. Similarly, incorporate keywords into your Slideshare presentations. Slideshare offers an excellent platform for establishing your company as an expert on a particular topic, so be sure to use your target keywords in the presentation and description and share your slideshow far and wide.
The first few results on a search engine results page are paid ads. If you can snag the top spots for your keywords, it increases your company’s name recognition and importance (especially if this is combined with organic search results). Be sure to use the keyword list that you generate through your keyword research in your PPC advertising.
One way to figure out which keywords your target audience is using is to enable a site search functionality on your website. By doing this, you can understand exactly what language people use to search for specific products and services.
Be sure to apply this same strategy to your PPC advertising on social media sites like Facebook as well.
Instagram probably doesn’t come to mind when you think of places where SEO keyword research is applicable, but don’t be fooled. Just because Instagram is a visual site doesn’t mean people don’t find what they’re looking for with words. If you figure out the combination of hashtags that give your posts the most exposure, you’re looking at a way of bolstering your usage of Instagram as a marketing channel.
Videos are a vital part of your content marketing strategy. If they’re well executed, they can help boost your company’s visibility in search engine results. So how can a website like YouTube factor into your SEO strategy?
For starters, improve the quality of your videos so that people stick around for longer than the first three seconds. YouTube can tell how long people spend on videos and ranks them accordingly. One quick way to increase the duration of your views is to get rid of long-winded introductions.
Include links to other videos your brand has produced to add value for the viewer and increase the views of your other videos. Encourage your audience to like your videos, share them, or subscribe to your channel. Finally, make videos based on the topics you’ve already identified as high-interest topics through your keyword research.
The role played by SEO across marketing channels is invaluable. And yes, while the results are never instantaneous, it is worth persevering and keeping your keyword research top of mind every time that you seek to create new marketing content.
Armed with a well-thought-out SEO strategy incorporating a handful (if not all) of the marketing channels above, it will only be a matter of time before the algorithms reward your diligent efforts. Let us help you further with your SEO journey, visit our services page or book a Free 30 Minute Discovery Call today!