How Simple Content Marketing Can Make You an SEO Boss

How To Create Great Content

In this post we’re going to take a close look at why Content Marketing could be one of the highest-yielding things you do in your business this year.

We’ll also look at exactly how you can run your own simple, well-directed Content Marketing campaign and start dramatically increasing your visibility and authority in your space.

The challenge, and the opportunity

Chances are, only a very small percentage of people in your space do Content Marketing well. This is exactly why we have the opportunity to rise to the challenge of becoming great content marketers – to begin reaping the SEO benefits and attracting a lot more qualified visitors to our site and/or blog.

Let’s look at how…

With a focus on being super useful (helpful), and consistent, it’s amazing what can be achieved. Even in the most competitive markets. Because so few rise to the challenge of producing helpful content consistently, if you make the effort, you will notch up wins and begin staking out a healthy chunk of your market.

Content Marketing richly rewards anyone who’ll use it well

As you probably well-know Content was already King, but since Google began rolling out more significant (and more regular) algorithm updates last year, one thing has become clearer than ever – and that is… Original, helpful content containing a mixture of media (text, images, video, audio, infographics, whitepapers) is, and always has been, one of the highest yielding ‘SEO activities’ we can do, and very much worth investing our time and energy into.

If you’re a small business, sole trader, small start up or new entrepreneur, a focus on Content Marketing for 90 days will very likely yield you much better results than ANY other SEO activity you EVER do. While the bulk of your competitors are either;

  • not doing any Content Marketing at all,
  • fussing over the look of their site (instead of the actual substance),

OR…

  • Focusing on getting backlinks,
  • buying backlink packages,
  • sweating over keyword density,
  • spinning articles
  • submitting five buck articles to directories,
  • wrestling with their site to try and manipulate PageRank…

…and other time-wasting or questionable “SEO tasks”… …YOU can produce amazing content and rise (relatively quickly) to the top end of your market – finally becoming a visible authority in your space.

My first win with Content Marketing – a real shock

The first real SEO win I ever had was shortly after a 90 day binge of producing and publishing good content. I had certainly spent a LOT longer than 90 days doing all sorts of “SEO activities” before this – but the thing that that gave me the most I’ll-say shocking results was creating a decent volume of helpful, original content and publishing it steadily over 90 days.

I focused on broad range of topics/issues/challenges within the industry I was writing about, but each chunk of content zeroed in on a very specific subject that addressed a very specific problem/challenge for a very specific type of visitor (Prospect) for that business.

I went from having to buy (mediocre) traffic through pay-per-click advertising for around $400 per week (to get around 200 vistors), to consistently getting the same amount of organic traffic for zero cost. And the content marketing campaign continued to drive better-qualified traffic as well.

A 96% Increase in Profit

Buying traffic via pay-per-click advertising $400 per week in advertising was buying me 2 ‘conversions’ (per week) [In marketing, a ‘conversion’ occurs when a prospective customer takes the marketer’s intended action]

A conversion was worth $550 to me. 2 x conversions per week = $1,100 LESS advertising cost of $400 = $700 profit Average cost of a conversion: $200 And when I stopped buying traffic, profit from that marketing channel stopped. Dead.

VERSES… Content Marketing (*helpful content aimed squarely at helping people in the market ‘have a win’, get one of their main questions answered or learn more) Cost: $0 – only the energy and time it took to create and publish 2 to 3 solid pieces of content (*as described above) per week for 12 weeks.

Conversions increased to 2.5 per week ($1,375) $0 advertising cost = $1,375 Profit (a 96% increase in profit) And the organic traffic came in for years.

So how did my content keep driving that same amount of traffic?

Because I focused less on keywords, and more on helping, the content was naturally loaded with ‘longtail’ keywords and phases – phrases 3-6 words long for which search volume often outweighs the top searched keywords – common in just about every niche and industry. This is what gave me that targeted traffic you hear about. The kind of traffic that converts into leads and revenue.

I have an infographic for you below entitled “Why the longtail?” – it is an excerpt from the keyword research section the SEOmoz beginners guide to SEO. The excerpt quickly sums up the advantages and benefits of longtail keywords — but first let’s dive deeper in what Content Marketing is about, and how it can make you an SEO boss :-)

Inbound Content Marketing and ‘being there’

Content Marketing really needs to become the engine room of our inbound marketing efforts. A quick definition of Inbound Marketing: ‘advertising’ a company does through blog posts, video, podcasts, eBooks, eNewsletters, SEO, whitepapers, social media marketing and other forms of Content Marketing (source: Wikipedia). This as-opposed to direct advertising or cold calling (also known as interruption marketing).

[Sidenote: If the budget is tight, as you can see from my example above, inbound Content Marketing comes in at the right price. Especially if you, or someone within your business is able to take the time and care to produce regular content that helps your ideal could-be customers and clients… it’s about building that rapport and trust. And as you’ll see in the second infographic coming up below, inbound marketing is near HALF the average cost of outbound marketing. And that’s only the beginning.]

Positioning… (being there) The central idea of inbound Content Marketing is putting yourself (or your business) in a good position to be found by ideal could-be customers (Prospects). Positioning ourselves (in advance) to be found when our ideal Prospect goes searching for the thing(s) we provide (sell).

But more than that, it’s about providing something truly useful once we are found (very few do this well). 90 days of focused Content Marketing (in any market) has the potential to postion you (or re-position you) as a serious authority in your marketplace.

Especially if the content you publish is REALLY useful.Here’s how: Whatever stage of the buying cycle our Prospect is up to, we’ll have something there, indexed in the search engines (already) that will help take our prospect to the next stage of the buying cycle, be-that…

  • Fill out a form,
  • subscribe to our latest posts,
  • or make a small purchase or commitment.

Here’s the other reason why 90 days of focused Content Marketing has the potential to position you (or re-position you) as a serious authority in your marketplace: Providing we do focus more on being helpful, and less on keywords and links, we will naturally produce content that is loaded with juicy longtail keywords…

why longtail seo

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<a href="https://totalwebformula.com/2013/03/13/how-simple-content-marketing-can-make-you-an-seo-boss/"><img title="Why Longtail SEO" src="https://totalwebformula.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/whylongtailseo-twf2.jpg" alt="Why Longtail SEO" align="center" border="0" /></a>
<div>

Courtesy of: <a href="https://totalwebformula.com/2013/03/13/how-simple-content-marketing-can-make-you-an-seo-boss/">Total Web Formula</a>

Are you wondering how to include longtail keywords in your content?

The most natural (and easiest) way is to include longtail keywords throughout your content is to create content that will genuinely help people. Content that people will share without thinking twice. Just make sure you focus to one subject/topic/issue/challenge/question per content piece so your content will be more likely to cut through all the ‘noise’ in the search engines on that topic.

It sounds to too straight forward doesn’t it? But as you write naturally about your specific topics, it will be near impossible for you to not include on-target longtail keywords and phrases that will line up with those unique searches that are done everyday by your could-be customers and clients…

…the searches referred to in the above infographic that make up the majority of the world’s demand for information through search engines – we don’t actually need to know exactly what these longtail keywords are, and we don’t need to try and predict the unique searches, we just need to get busy writing helpful content. The 4 flow on benefits of writing helpful, on-topic content are…

  • Content will be naturally peppered with longtail keywords and ‘hooks’ for unique searches.
  • Your creative process flow naturally and therefore much more quickly.
  • Search Engines like Google and Bing are likely to index your content favourably (because it is natural).
  • You’ll have less trouble creating 1000 word plus Posts which if you produce on a regular basis will further fuel your likelihood of getting multiple organic search engine listings.
  • You’ll get more social media shares (because it’s helpful) – further fuelling search engine ‘love’ for your site, and increasing the number of qualified visitors to your site.

All of which in-time helps you become a highly visible and credible authority in your space. Just in case you’re still not convinced about the pros of Content Marketing, here’s an infographic that contains some really compelling statistics…

Content Marketing SEO

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<a href="https://totalwebformula.com/2013/03/13/how-simple-content-marketing-can-make-you-an-seo-boss/"><img title="Content Marketing SEO" src="https://totalwebformula.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/contentmarketingseo-twf2.jpg" alt="Content Marketing SEO" align="center" border="0" /></a>
<div>

Courtesy of: <a href="https://totalwebformula.com/2013/03/13/how-simple-content-marketing-can-make-you-an-seo-boss/">Total Web Formula</a>

Content Marketing still is one the most sure ways to position ourselves as the ‘go to’ person (or people) in our marketplace.

We’d all rather learn than be sold to…

What I love about Content Marketing is that you don’t need to be ‘salesy’- we just help people by helping get one or two steps closer to where they want and need to be.

When it comes time for them to hire an expert or service, if we’ve done our Content Marketing job well, we’ll either be top of mind, or they’ll do a Google search and there we’ll be – we’ll have answered many of their questions and concerns already in a helpful and relatable way, not with a sales pitch.

Content Marketing is the backbone of SEO. Many people who are in business think SEO is about keywords and links, which it is – but only in part – and it’s much becoming the lesser part. The most powerful (as-in highest leverage) and cost-effective SEO a business can implement (even on their own, without the help of “SEO experts”) is consistent Content Marketing… that-is publishing content (such as blog Posts) that help people solve their current and inevitable problem, and having those Posts indexed in Google.

We’re all becoming more blind to advertising

It’s interesting that we are all becoming blind to advertising. ‘Banner blindness’ is a well known online marketing challenge for marketers today. Banner Blindness refers to our tendency to sub consciously block out banner advertising.

But it doesn’t have to be banner ad for us to block it out – dry, cold promotion of any kind and especially blatant pitching – unless preceded by some good solid help, authenticity and authority will more often than not fall on deaf ears and blind eyes.

This is why Content Marketing is so powerful and important. It’s the perfect platform for us to provide the help and answers people need – to create an environment for them to choose themselves to take the next logical step/action.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell…

Be helpful and relatable > which makes the initial connection > which opens them up to listen and receive (engage) > a percentage then choose themselves to take the next logical step (with you or your company). No hard selling.

Another thing – Authenticity and Authority flow completely naturally in a Content Marketing setting. Try writing a Post to help your market overcome one of their most common challenges and you’ll prove this to yourself – I challenge you :-)

You’ll find yourself having plenty to share. You’ll probably even find that half way through your second or third paragraph, you’ll have too much to share. Just don’t try and cover too much in one Post – keep to the Post topic – if have too much, put it aside to start building the sequel – you could even write a ‘series’ of Posts on the topic.

Conclusion

Content Marketing that focuses on helping your ideal customers or clients have immediate small wins could well end up being one the highest-yielding marketing activities you do.

It’s super cheap, effective, and you don’t necessarily need an SEO expert for it to work for you. You just need to do it. What’s been your experience (good or bad) with Content Marketing?

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