How You Can Market Your Content The RIGHT Way: Transforming Words into Digital Gold (Exploring the underlying Relationship between SEO and Content Marketing)

Are you a content creator or a business owner struggling to improve your online presence and increase your reach? Are you asking yourself why your website isn't visible to the digital world, even though the content/products/services on your website are top-tier?

If that's the case then you are not alone.

Research shows that 90.63% of pages do not get any organic search traffic.

So why is it so that you are a part of 90% of pages but not the other 10%?

What are those 10% of websites doing, that you're not doing? Is it just that their content is exceptionally good? Or are they just lucky?

What can YOU do for your webpage to be part of those top 10% of web pages?

Don't you worry, I'll provide answers to these questions of yours. But before telling you the strategies, you need to know what Content Marketing and SEO are.

Content Marketing

In today's highly competitive online realm, it is extremely crucial that your content is marketed well to the right people. I cannot stress enough the importance of Content Marketing. For instance, It helps in:

• 
  Increasing brand awareness.
• Engaging with an audience.
  
• Bringing traffic to your site.
•  Driving sales and Retaining customers.

Not marketing your content is like making a class project for a science exhibition. And rather taking it to school, hiding it in your locker, and then being sad that it didn't get any praise.

Now, how can you market your content in the right way? One of the most efficient ways is to increase your website's organic search results, and the best way to do that is through SEO.

SEO 

What does SEO stand for?

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization (Not to be confused with SEM), is the practice of optimizing your website in such a way that it improves its visibility, searchability, and ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

SEO is the procedure through which your website can rank on the top page of a search engine.

Understand the underlying Relation between SEO and Content Marketing

SEO and Content Marketing are very closely intertwined.

SEO marketing (a fancy term used for marketing using SEO strategies) should be your priority as it is the most effective way to increase your content's reach.

According to Xpand Digital and Impact Plus:

• 61% of companies highly prioritize improving SEO.
• 49% of marketers believe that SEO has the best ROI (Return on Investment) in any marketing channel.
• 70% of marketers consider SEO to be more effective than any other marketing strategy.
• Effective SEO practices are proven to have conversion rates increased by 14.6%.

For your content to gather an audience and reach out to the people you want to reach out to. Your goal should be to aim for your website to appear on the first page of Google's search results.

You may be asking, Why the first page?

And why google?

Stat Counter reports that Google owns 92.9% of the Worldwide Search Engine Market. Meaning that it dwarfs its competitors like Bing and Yahoo when it comes to the number of searches per annum.

Not only that, more than 90% of traffic goes to websites on the first page of google search results. 

So it means, the following SEO strategies can be used to reach 90% of web traffic.

How to Market Your Content the Right Way using SEO

Now that we've established the significance of Search Engine Optimization. Let's move to the evidence-backed strategies that will optimize your site for search engines:

Backlinks and Link Building

Backlinks are one of the most important factors that contribute to search engine optimization. According to Search Engine Land, links are one of the top two criteria that are taken into consideration by Google's page ranking algorithm.

What is a backlink? Backlinks are clickable links from other websites to your sites. Every backlink is not equal in value.

They are an essential part of SEO, and they can help to increase your website's visibility and ranking in search results.

Image by Freepik

When creating content, you should aim to include links to other relevant, reputable, and authoritative websites. 

Link building can help improve the credibility and trustworthiness of your content and increase the chances of other websites linking back to your site.

Linking can be of two types: 

1. External Linking: Linking to external pages on other websites from your website is called External Linking. It can be useful for your audience as it provides additional information and it can also signal to the search engine that your site is reputable and credible, however, the links should be to authoritative sources and should be related to your content. Otherwise, they can have a negative impact on your SEO. Furthermore doing this can increase your chances of getting backlinks from those sources.
2. Internal Linking: Linking to pages on your website is a good practice as it eases the audience when navigating your site and can also help improve your website's SEO by distributing link equity throughout your site.

Link building should be kept in mind when optimizing a site as 52% of marketers believe that backlinks and brand mentions can improve your site.

Produce High-Quality Content

Focus on creating high-quality content that is engaging, informative, and valuable to the users.

What does informative and valuable content comprise:

1. Content that addresses your audience's needs, interests, or concerns.
2. Content that is lengthy and provides complete information about a particular topic and leaves the user satisfied.

When the content on your webpage is lengthy, it gives a sign to the search engine that your content contains a lot of information, boosting your search engine results.

Conduct in-depth Keyword Research

What is keyword research? 

Keyword research is the process of discovering and analyzing the specific search terms that people use to find information online.

In-depth keyword research is essential to determine which keywords your target audience is using to search for your product, service, or content. It is the bulk of your strategy as it requires the most time and critical thinking.

By conducting keyword research, you can gain a better understanding of your target audience and the type of content they're searching for. This information can then be used to optimize a website or blog with those specific keywords, improving its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages.

 90.63% of pages do not get any organic search traffic. This is because they do not use relevant keywords.

The more relevant the keyword, on your website page, the more traffic it will bring in. However, it is important not to get carried away, thus making your page just a collection of jumbled keywords. 

Remember? Quality content is the priority and if forcing a keyword in your text ruins the quality of the content, don't use that keyword at all. It won't be of any use if you use hundreds of keywords to attract users but your content isn't worth looking at. So don't forget, content comes first, and rest comes later.

Optimize for mobile devices

Last but not least, make your site mobile-friendly. You might be asking,

Why is it important to reach users on their mobiles?

The reason is that nearly 86.34% of the global population uses smartphones compared to 48% of the household population that has computers.

So just by optimizing your website for mobile devices allows you to reach this 86% of the population.

Moreover,  Mobile browsing makes up 69% (nice) of all digital media time.  

In fact, Google now uses mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily uses the mobile version of a website's content for indexing and ranking.

That's why you have to make sure that your site is easy to navigate, not only for your desktop users but for your mobile visitors as well.

Conclusion

In summary, if you want to enhance your online presence and expand your reach as a content creator, prioritizing content marketing with SEO is crucial. By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve your visibility, connect with your intended audience, and generate more traffic to your content.

Backlinks and link building, producing high-quality content, and conducting in-depth keyword research are just a few of the many strategies you can use to improve your website's ranking and reach more people.

 

Remember, with the right techniques and a little bit of patience, you too can join the top 10% of web pages and achieve online success. 

And always remember, Patience is the key. Good luck!

References

Check out my blog post about optimizing landing pages.

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