Content Marketing

Is Content marketing good for SEO

Paul TagentLeave a comment

A fact about content

Original and quality content gives Google and its spiders more to look at on your website aiding your organic SEO. This gives you a higher position in search and ultimately generate more clicks to your website, blog and/or online shop.

How and why?

Google likes to see activity on a website and a blog is likely to be the part of your site that you will most frequently update with new information to keep readers engaged.Each new article or post creates a new page with a new URL and hence, allows you to optimise it accordingly. Your content is also vital for building consumer trust, but also for Google SERPs (search engine page results). 

But why is organic SEO so important? 

Regular Content

Organic SEO matters because a staggering 75 percent of searchers don’t even click past the first page of results. If you’re not ranking on that first page when people search for what you offer, you guessed it — your website won’t get any traffic which ultimately means your site will struggle to bring you sales or enquiries.

This means that having well written, authentic and helpful content which gives the reader some value by, for example, answering a question, actually develops relationships with them. Similarly, written (or video) tutorials and how-to guides are a great way to engage your audience and help them. Most content on websites are factual – About Us, What We do, Contact Us….whereas the content you create on a blog or a video really allows you to create a personality for your company. 

Consumers look beyond traditional marketing tactics nowadays and crave more unique and engaging online content. Put simply, today, customers expect high-quality, consistent content from their favourite brands and this is why some organisations rank so well in Google. 

How often should content be generated?

Sit down for this, but ideally weekly. Weekly content is what is suggested by Google as the best way to see increased traction from your content marketing. But, if you are already posting content, it might be just as beneficial to go back and update that content first, especially if after a little while, you want to give certain posts a boost. This is because Blog post traffic is compounding, which means it gains organic results over time. This is why updating posts are important. This gives you more reads, more recognition, and possibly, more subscribers or ‘fans.’

Another way of using content is by engaging the services of an ‘Influencer,’ who is a personality endorsing your product or service via social media. I’ll write a post on this next.

Is there anything you’d like to know about? Drop me a line 01225 436426. 

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What is digital marketing?

Paul TagentLeave a comment

Digital marketing is pretty much any form of marketing that involves electronic devices. When you
think about it, digital marketing is just marketing. It’s how today’s businesses are getting their message in front of their best prospects and customers, but using online platforms. 

Whether we like it or not, most purchasing decisions begin online. None more so than now, customers are online: hanging out in social media, staying updated on current affair sites and blogs, and searching online when they have a need for a product or service. Your customers use Google and YouTube and many are now using voice search on their phones so effective digital marketing puts you in those same channels.

Think about the latest thing you looked for and/or bought. Regardless of what it was, you probably began by searching the Internet to see what was available, who provided them, and what your best options were. Your research may have also included by reviews you read, the friends and family you consulted and pricing. 

Talking to your potential customers on digital platforms means you build brand awareness, set yourself as an industry thought leader, and place your business at the forefront when the customer is ready to buy. Not only that, but digital marketing can collect valuable insights into your prospect market, audience behaviours, customer engagement, traffic sources and customer retention. 

What makes up digital marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO). 

SEO is the process of optimising the content you have online. Primarily, this will be a website and/or Blog. Google indexes pages so elements like the technical setup, the content, the URL, the page properties etc all play an influential part in helping your pages appear at the top of a search engine result for a specific set of keyword terms. 

Having a high, organic position in Google is one of the most desirable elements of effective digital marketing. Not only for visibility, brand building etc but effective SEO drives visitors to your site when they’re actually searching for the services and/or products you offer. Recent figures suggest that over 90% of people look for organic positions over paid ads……….

Paid search. 

Paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, typically refers to the sponsored result on the top or side of a search engine results page (SERP). These results take the form of pre designed and written ads which charge you for every click. They have the word Ad next to them.

The beauty of paid search is that you can tailor your ads to appear when the desired search terms are entered into Goggle. This means your ads can be shown to prospects seeking something specific. This is called targeting in marketing speak! However, Google ads work very much like a bidding system; the higher your budget, the more change your ad will show and the more chance of getting a click. This is marketing speak is called visibility!

Content marketing. 

Content marketing has become a vital part of digital marketing. If companies can generate authentic, original and educational content consumers using a blog or a video, tag the item correctly and post to a website, channel or Insights platform, Google will be your friend forever! Some staistics indicate that content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising so make the additional effort.

Social media marketing.

Socials have been all the rage for a while now, but……and it’s a big but, just because there are lots of platforms to use and these platforms are primarily free, it doesn’t mean that every company should have a profile on all of them. 

The key to effective social media marketing goes far beyond simply having active social media accounts. These platforms like Twitter come under the heading of social media as you need to create engaging content and interact with people. The more your audience is inspired to engage with you in return and the content you post, the more likely they are to share it. Once shared, your network will expand. 

Social media though, is time consuming so pick the platform that works for you and that is where your market it. Integrate activity with your other marketing efforts and, above all, don’t tell people you are going for a coffee on Twitter!

Email marketing. 

BMC is a massive fan of email marketing. Very much a push strategy as you push out your message to a database and it is still the quickest and most direct way to reach customers with information, updates, offers etc. Your eshot needs to be engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining and tick the following 5 boxes – be trustworthy, relevant, engaging, consistent and be considered.

Yes, there are huge amounts of junk emails flying about, but these are simply mass market blasts that have no relevance to you. A quality, clean and relevant database of recipient is also vital.

Mobile marketing. 

Much as we all cannot live without our mobile devices, mobile marketing can be deemed as invasive. Think about a ping on your phone; you pick it up and it is a SMS or in app marketing advert. Delete.

Mobile marketing is quite young as a digital marketing platform but it can be effective. Not only that the ability to reach your customers directly on their devices is attractive, especially if your selling actual products, but consider your other digital marketing channels and the offer you make.

A great article that elaborates on this area is from Megan Mars.

Content Marketing – What??

Paul TagentLeave a comment

A marketing initiative that can make a huge, positive impact on your brand awareness and credibility as part of your marketing mix is content marketing.

But what is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the act of using unique content as a way to boost your expertise with your target market through posting articles on a dynamic area of your website like a blog. This written form of content that you post on a regular basis helps your website rank in search engines as well as increases your authority…..if the content is valuable.

How do I get this content “out there?”
Social media is a great way to promote your content and create inbound links to your Blog as is having a facility that allows others to share it to their own platforms. Bath Marketing Consultancy often posts our content to our Facebook and Twitter pages so that our followers and friends can read our free marketing tips and integrate them into their own strategies. We may well post the article on Linkedin if it is aimed at the B2B market.

Any content you create can also take the form of a video, vlog or an infographic and all are perfect for sharing on social media platforms like Instagram, Vimeo and YouTube….which is now second inline as a search engine.

Which in turn, drives traffic to my website? 
Yes. Content marketing is a subtle approach with the idea that you inform visitors about your expert opinion, instead of pushing your products and services directly. Once trust is built, readers will want to buy your products and services.

Why Use It?
Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing methods available as it creates long-term returns for websites. The new pages you create are ranked well in search engines and tend to leave a footprint for long periods of time.

In addition, you can target different search terms with these posts thus throwing your SEO net wider than just the core terms you may well have targeted with your website. For example, if you search for a “marketing consultancy” in the UK, the BMC website ranks top locally and nationally. But, having an area where we post regular content has allowed us to target smaller, more niche terms like “marketing advice in Bath” where we hold the first 5 positions in Google with our posts.

At the moment the trend is slightly against paid content so dedicate time and resources to deliver your content via articles and blog posts that relate to your products and services & then “market” these posts.

However, don’t plug them directly; demonstrate you know what you are talking about and give readers the opportunity to “read more” or “subscribe.” Potential customers want to be informed as on average people will consume over 11 pieces of content before deciding to part with their money. If you can’t provide this content, speak to someone who can as you may well miss out on prospects.