Content-based marketing is one of the top marketing strategies used by digital marketing professionals in 2020. Smart digital marketers create content with the intent of increasing customer interaction with their digital brand, as well as improving the visibility of their website within Google’s search rankings.
In fact, as early as 1996, Bill Gates had this to say in an essay he shared on the Microsoft website about content marketing on the internet:
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher.”
Bill Gates was ahead of his time in realizing the importance of good internet content. However, in 2020, the web is saturated with average content and often lacking truly unique content that is both useful and valuable to readers.
In this article I’ll walk you through 5 trusted ways to create content that accomplishes two important goals that every content marketer should strive to achieve:
- Creating content that ranks well in Google.
- Creating content that is both interesting and useful to your target audience.
Know your target audience and what they like
The first and arguably most important step in creating content is to define your target audience. You need to know what your audience is interested in if you are going to create content that appeals to them.
There’s one tool that I love to use when searching for trends in what people are reading about and sharing on different websites. Buzzsumo has a content analyzer tool that shows the most shared content on a website that can be filtered by different time periods.
The image below shows an example of the most shared articles within the past year related to content marketing:
I use this tool for two primary reasons:
- To see the top shared content on a competitor’s website to see the types of content that are popular within our own vertical that I can either replicate or improve upon.
- I use it to analyze websites that are of interest to our target audience to get a pulse on the types of topics that are popular, and the topic ideas people are engaging with the most.
Look for gaps in content
By looking for gaps in content, I mean searching for content ideas that have not been written about extensively. While there is value in writing about popular topics, there is also a greater risk because of the competition of content already written about that subject.
Content gaps can occur in several ways. I’ve highlighted some of the more common content gap opportunities for content marketers below:
- The subject has not been covered previously
- The content is old or in need of an update
- The content is lacking images like graphics and pictures to make it more visually appealing
To try and find gaps in content, try searching google for the subject you want to write on. Pay close attention to how others are covering the subject and look for opportunities that people aren’t writing about.
It’s also important to pay attention to the dates the content was published. If you are noticing a lot of content with publishing dates older than a year ago, there may be opportunities to provide a fresh outlook on the same subject (with new information of course!).
Include the proper keywords
Targeting the right set of keywords is important to ensure that your content shows up in searches for the keywords you are targeting. Keyword research is a necessary part of on-page SEO and is a critical step before hitting publish on any piece of content.
So how do you know which keywords are the right ones to target for your content?
Start off by using a keyword research tool to find keywords that are relevant to the content idea itself and keywords that have good search volume. The goal is for your content to rank well for things people are searching for. If your content ranks for keywords with high search volume, the more likely people are to see your content.
Another tool that I love using for both keyword research and content ideation is called Answer The Public.
Answer The Public allows you to enter a keyword which will then generate the top questions people are searching for related to that keyword. This allows you to create content around the top questions people are searching for.
Listed below is an example of the results generated using the keyword “Keyword research”.
Promote and earn backlinks
It’s important to be actively promoting your content by building some backlinks to it. These backlinks will help your content to start to gain organic visibility within the Google search engine.
Once your content has that organic visibility around specific keywords for that topic, it has the potential to earn even more backlinks as other people search for information and write about the topic while linking back to your content as a resource.
Listed below you’ll see a few of my best practices for content promotion:
- Promote your content through media outreach efforts using a direct personalized email to all relevant media contacts and outlets.
- Use PR databases like Cision and Muckrack to find writers and publications in the coverage area of your content.
- Send a personalized pitch highlighting the main takeaways of your content and cover why the writer/outlet would benefit from sharing it with their audience. You can also offer quotes, interviews and expert sources to entice them to share.
Update, repurpose and earn even more backlinks
One strategy that many content marketers overlook is the process of updating and repurposing old content that has previously performed well. Many content marketers will simply move on to the next topic they intend to cover. By doing this they are a missing a golden opportunity.
Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media has made several legitimate arguments that updating and repurposing content is not only easier than creating new content, but also offers more long-term value.
He argues that:
- Creating a new piece of content will ultimately take more time than updating an old post.
- There is no guarantee a new post will resonate as well as a post that has performed well previously.
- By updating an old post, you can reach out to the people who have already shared, linked or commented on the post previously. Think of how excited they will be to read about an update on a topic they were engaged with previously?
- Your blog post is more likely to rank higher based on previous authority the post has earned. Adding new content to a previously published post allows the opportunity to earn even more backlinks to that page, which will further establish the authority of your content.
By following the 6 trusted ways I’ve outlined above, your content will not only start to rank well within Google, but it will also be useful and engaging to your targeted audience.
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Source: promotionworlds
