The Real Deal About Content Marketing

Those who are invested in SEO know that content is king. Well, let me be a bit clearer: QUALITY content is king. If your organization is spending a lot of time creating dynamic and creative content, it is important that you are using it to its full advantage. That is where content marketing comes in. There is a lot of talk about the strategy these days, and sometimes it is more of a buzzword than an actionable plan. Tandem can give you the inside scoop and offer a bit of guidance, to make sure you are getting the most out of your content.

What Is It?

Sure, we have all heard of content marketing. But some of us may have more of an idea of what it is than an actual grasp. To be clear, content marketing is the creation and distribution of relevant and quality content to the right audience to (hopefully) drive engagement. It might even increase your customer base, but we can’t make any promises. J

Content marketing is valuable to its audience. They want to consume it and share it. It entertains them as much as it educates them. It makes them curious about your brand. Sounds good, right?

Who Is It For?

Content marketing is created with a particular audience in mind. It may take a lot of trial and error to figure out what that audience will connect with, but once you do, the real journey begins. Because that is what content marketing is…a journey.

It is a long-term strategy that tries to touch its audience over and over. It is a brand awareness adventure. And once you share enough relevant and quality content with your audience over Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn…wherever your audience is, they will begin to remember who you are.

What Is a Good Example?

The go-to example of content marketing is an infographic, because people eat ‘em up. They are fun ways to digest information, so it makes them hot commodities on social media. Have a topic that is tough to make exciting? Infographics can add some pop and flair to not-so interesting content, topics, or industries. If you have a graphics person on your team, put them to work!

Other content that is great for marketing includes: industry resources like whitepapers, case studies and e-books. If you want to get more visual, videos, GIFs and slideshows can all have great success and grasp a consumer’s attention.

It is important to see the difference with these examples. Things like infographics and GIFs almost beg to be consumed and shared. People in your target audience should want to download your whitepaper; it should drive people to your site. That is what makes a good piece of content marketing.

Why Should I Bother?

Like many other marketing strategies, content marketing does not promise a sharp increase in sales over night. It is a long-term investment that seeks to connect with an audience. During the course of your content marketing journey, you will build tons of valuable resources. This can have all sorts of positive SEO and social media implications. After you have truly honed in on what your audience wants to see and read, and built your brand up in their minds, you may start to see some of that audience converting.

Whether your business is big or small, content marketing is a worthy cause. While it may take a lot of work, and you may not see a lot of immediate pay off, it is a long-term investment that will help you learn about your audience and even your own company.

To learn more about content marketing or any kind of content strategy, contact Tandem Interactive and one of our team members will be glad to answer any questions you may have!

Five Important To-Do’s before Publishing Content

Every marketer has heard the phrase “Content is King”, but that statement should come with asterisked. While content is important, there are certain factors that can make it king or make it an enemy.

Content development is important for every business and should have a strategy behind it. If you are creating content, just to have it with no purpose or structure, you could be doing more harm than good.

Make sure that all content you are creating is relevant and unique. Your customers like to read fresh, new content catered towards your industry, and so does Google! So “Relevant Content is King”.

Once you have created awesome content for your company, follow these 5 important to-do’s before publishing:

1. Get a fresh set of eyes. While you may be an excellent writer and editor, we tend to overlook common spelling and grammatical errors. It is important to have a co-worker or friend double check your work before making it live.
2. Do an ‘SEO’ proof.  Once your content has gone through a regular edit, conduct an ‘SEO’ proof. This means read through your content and check for relevant keywords and any missed opportunities to enhance the SEO. Use keyword research tools to help decide which keywords are optimal for content development.
3. Images need love too. Sometimes we focus so much on the content itself that we fail to optimize the image we insert into our blogs or articles. Double check that all images being published with content, and individually, have been optimized with Alt Tags.
4. Link Up! Content is not made to cover everything, and realistically it can’t. Find relevant content to link to within your writing, this helps to enhance your information and building relationships with others in your industry. Adding a link acts as an endorsement, endorse others and they will endorse you.
5. Encourage readers to amplify the post. If you have created engaging content, prompt your users to share your post. Adding share buttons to your content can make the amplification process easier for users and could result in more shares.

So remember, while ‘Content is King’, it is only king if it is relevant and optimized for your readers.

For more tips on how to develop SEO rich content, or to speak with a SEO Content Specialist contact Tandem Interactive directly. 

Keywords that Can Actually Increase Traffic to your Site

If you own a business and are currently paying a marketing team to build out your content…make sure that they are building content that can actually increase traffic to your site, WITHOUT keyword stuffing.

As a business owner, you are probably well aware of the negative effects that Black Hat SEO can have on your site and more importantly, on your relationship with search engine master Google.

If you are not aware, here are some tips to avoid a penalty and keep in mind for organic content:

• Google wants websites that produce QUALITY content, NOT necessarily QUANTITY. While it is good to be building your brand with a decent amount of content each month, the quantity of keywords should not be overbearing. If you produce content that has one of your keywords, sprinkled around once every 100-150 words or so, you are on the right track. If your content pumps keywords each sentence, you will most likely be flagged. While it is great that your business is getting a lot of traffic, if you are not giving the searcher the information they want, that traffic to your site is essentially useless and they will leave your page, after they deem you as unreliable.

• Choosing the right keywords for your brand can be more difficult than you think. You may know the obvious keywords, but the truth is, unless you already have an internet presence, you will not rank for those keywords as compared to larger competitors. However, there are ways to determine / find the ideal organic content keywords for your product.

To find ideal keywords, your marketer should be using Google Adwords and MozPro in coordination. Why use both tools you ask? Start in Google Adwords. Search for keywords that have a good amount of AVERAGE MONTHLY SEARCHES and a LOW to MEDIUM COMPETITION STATUS. Then, use MozPro : Research Tools : Keyword Difficulty, to plug in the keyword you found with Adwords, in order to see its DIFFICULTY SCORE and SERP Analysis Report.

You will notice that if the keyword has a Difficulty Score of 60% or more, then it will be a highly competitive keyword that you should not use.

To further explain this: The Lower the Keyword Difficulty Score on MozPro and the Lower the Competition via Adwords, the easier it will be for your company to create individual content pages to achieve top results.

HOWEVER, this only applies for smaller businesses or lower authority domains; meaning a local moving company trying to rank for moving key terms against a large, nationwide moving company.

The SERP Analysis Report will tell you the reasoning behind the difficulty score. So if a keyword has a difficulty score of 60%, the SERP will say “Moderately Competitive: Search results require high authority domains with well-targeted pages OR lower authority sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results.” Meaning: if you are a smaller business, you can rank for this keyword by using “powerful individual pages”, and if you are hiring the right person to write your content, and they are creating powerful, unique content, you have a higher chance of moving up in the rankings! SCORE!

EX. You own a small, local moving company. You most likely will not rank high for “moving company”, so try searching for “relocation” in Google Adwords. The keyword “relocation” has an average of 14,800 monthly searches and a Medium competition status in Google Adwords. When you go to MozPro, “relocation” has a Keyword Difficulty of 58%, which is lower than 60% so you are in the clear, as a lower authority site, and are able to use this keyword in your content in order to improve your rankings. YOUR WELCOME!

Finding the proper keywords for your specific brand and target audience will take some playing around in SEO tools with, but it WILL benefit your business in the end. After all, who wants to pay for Organic Search Content creation that does not work?!