The vast majority of Internet marketing experts will tell you that compelling and relevant content is the backbone of a successful website strategy. For years, companies have been getting away with keyword stuffing and other technical SEO practices, but now that search engines have begun closing the net, all content must be informative, compelling, and relevant in order to rank.
PageRank (PR) is a well-known ranking factor used by Google, and because having a high PR has a lot to do with having high-quality links to your site, webmasters often make the mistake of concentrating on getting those links to ensure their website is seen as an “authority” in their niche. What they fail to realize is that having high-quality content is even more important in this pursuit. Below, we look at the keys to producing great content and how you can achieve that goal.
Provide Relevant Information
Your website should provide useful and useable content to readers; it should teach them a thing or two about your niche and answer at least one question visitors might have. Obviously, you can adjust your content based on where it will be published (a blog, social media, or your website, for example) and the purpose of the content.
Blog posts tend to have more general information, whereas website content typically contains more statistical data, though this is not always the case. As a rule of thumb, if the content’s purpose is to drive traffic to a website, it should contain details as to why visitors should go to the website and what they will find there. If the goal is to sell products or services, the content should outline the benefits of these goods to the reader.
Be Interesting
An old rule of Internet marketing states that you should “write for people, not the search engines,” and with Google’s emphasis on relevance, this is the only way you should approach content marketing. Compelling information like statistics (73 percent of online consumers become frustrated when they arrive on a website and the content has nothing to do with their interests), analogies, and metaphors help maintain reader interest, and infographics have become phenomenally popular because of their ability to convey large amounts of factual data in bite-sized chunks.
Above all, don’t be overly technical or clog your posts up with jargon; without a conversational tone, people will quickly move away from your page and straight into the arms of a competitor.
Find Your Target Audience
As the statistic above points out, customers hate arriving on a website only to find it has nothing to do with their original search. You can only find your target audience through research, as you must know who you are writing for as much as what you are writing. Once you have attracted your target audience to your website and provided them with the compelling content they crave, their loyalty and patronage becomes almost guaranteed.
With the help of the rules above, you have a much better chance of becoming a success in content marketing and, really, in all marketing areas. At Phoenix Online Media, we get to know your audience, write interesting content, and provide relevant information to ensure your company drives traffic and makes sales like never before. Contact the Phoenix Internet marketing team today!