NWA Content Marketing. Fresh, Unique, Compelling Content is Key.

Content Marketing is a long term strategy of consistently creating and publishing value material that builds trust and authority among your visitors. It is a way to build relationships with customers, with the intention that they will become loyal to you and your brand. It is a way to become recognized as a leader in your industry. It is a marketing strategy to attract your target audience and drive sales organically without using traditional selling techniques.

Success in marketing your business, and improving your placement on Google, is dependent upon the quality and value of your content. Google wants to be the goto search engine that gives the quickest and 'best' answer when the user asks a question. With the quality update, Google will be rewarding sites that focus on improving the user experience and offering quality content, while punishing those that don't. Their goal is to deliver Web pages that provide the richest experience. In this article we will visit actionable content marketing tips to writing quality and value content that will increase sales and boost your Google ranking.

Keyword Strategy

One of the fundamental components of Search Engine Optimization is keywords: Researching them, utilizing them, and tracking their effectiveness. It is an essential tactic for developing a powerful content strategy, and improving SEO. There are several free and paid keyword research tools available today. Use your Keyword research tool to discover specific ways that visitors may be searching for your content. Choose the main keywords for your page including the actual search terms people are using. Be sure to target long-tail-keywords in your content. These will often be easier to rank, and assist you in writing comprehensive articles your visitors will love. Once you have identified your target keywords and long-tail-keywords, you will want to optimize them with your content, allowing them to flow naturally throughout your page. In some cases you will want to bold the first occurrence of your keyword phrase.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Find one compelling point that will differentiate you from everyone else: the reason people do business with you and not someone else. Be thoughtful about what will distinguish you. Determine the winning difference that sets you apart and makes you the only real choice.

Strong Headline

A good headline sparks interest and invites readers in. It attracts the readers attention and drives action. As you are thinking about your headline, you will want to include your targeted keywords in your headline. In addition, you will want to consider the length. Search engines have a character limit and if your headline is too long, it may get cut off and no longer make sense. Six to seven words in your headline is ideal.

Original Content

Content is the fuel of your marketing rocket. Google likes original content and so does your readers. Writing compelling content is much easier when you write about something you are passionate about. Stand for something specific, accentuate the positive, and stay focused on your message. You content should be on-topic and centered on the subject matter of your chosen keywords. Consider your content to be another from of branding yourself and your business.

Engage Your Audience

Identify your perfect audience with laser focus. Entice your audience by creating relevant and engaging content that actually gets read. Start with a promising introduction. Include a story to give the reader more clarity. Leave your reader with questions to help them reflect on how they may use the knowledge you have shared with them.

Quality Content

Publish content people actually want to read and digest because it tells them how to do something or where to find something. Write content that answers questions, educates, entertains, or provides quality information the user is searching for. Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your SEO ranking more than any other factor. Visitors know good content when they see it and will most likely direct other users to view it. Write easy to read text, as we all enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.

Provide Answers

Since Hummingbird, the web is geared more than even toward answering users questions. Answer the questions your customers and prospective customers ask. When people use a search engine, what they ultimately want is an answer to a question. It is the search engines job to deliver that answer, and deliver it fast.

Value Content

If quality content is queen, then value content is indeed king. Create web content that focuses on value to the customer. This can be educational, inspirational or just plane entertaining. As long as you continue to provide value, they will find it interesting. Make each article, email or blog a useful resource for the person visiting it. Look at your content through the lens of your customers and prospects and ask yourself if your content provides value. Your readers will continue to come to you, and will come to trust you for helpful information that is rich and thoughtful.

Actionable Content

Create actionable content that engages your audience and gives them the information they need to take action on their own. Although you goal is to provide valuable information, your second goal is to share content that will motivate your visitors to take action of their own.

Proper Grammar and Spelling

Google has placed a strong emphasis on the trustworthiness of a website, and a page with poor spelling and grammar is less likely to be trusted. In addition, your website visitors are less likely to rely on information that is not written professionally, or that contains typo's.

Readability

Know your audience. It's important that your content matches the reading level and expectations of your customers and prospects. Quality content is easy to read and understand. It is your roll to ensure that the reading process is smooth and enjoyable. Keep the vocabulary simple to reach a wider audience.

Become an Authority

The more informative and valuable your content, the greater authority potential your website has. Factually correct content creates trust. Be accurate in your sourcing and reporting of information. As you consistently write quality and relevant content, you will attract loyal visitors. Accuracy builds trust with readers. The more they trust you, the more likely they are to purchase your product or service.

Fresh Content is KEY

Search Engines love new, fresh content as do your loyal visitors. A static website without updates may be viewed by search engines as a website with no life and nothing new to offer. If you frequently update your website, offering unique high quality content and sources of new relevant information, search engines will love you and the more frequently a search engine will stop by to visit your website. Fresh content gets rapidly indexed. When search engines look at your site more frequently, you have the opportunity to achieve higher rankings based on the quality content you provide. If you want to retain high SEO rankings, creating high quality relevant and unique content must be an ongoing process. Unique and frequent updated content makes search engines happy.

Relevant Call to Action

Always add a call to action. Make sure it is relevant to your message and not out-of-context.

Content Length

First rule. Quality first and quantity second. Next, having varying lengths on your blog posts and articles will make your website appear more natural to search engines and to your visitors. Most social media shares come from articles with the most words. You will want to have a content body length of a least 300 words. Aim for posts over 2000 words, as pages with more substantial content will generally rank better than those with brief content.

Links

The number and quality in inbound links is an important indicator of the quality of a page. If well-known, reputable sites are linking to your page, then that is a good indication to Google that the content is trustworthy and credible.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link. This text tells users and Google something about the page you are linking to. Choose descriptive, yet concise text to provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is all about. Avoid links like "article", "click here" etc.

The goal of content marketing is to reach the right customers at the right time. Through blogging or writing articles and posting these articles to your website (& social networks), this allows for search engines to recognize relevant information coming from your website on a certain topic (your service or product) and take note that you’re an expert in your field.