I get asked this question at least twice every single day of my life. Big, medium or small – it doesn’t really matter what size their business might be, every single business owner that’s looking to profit from what he does or sells online is interested in knowing how to get the max out of his SEO efforts.
Why? – Well, because generating more and more quality traffic to their website is the no.1 goal in any digital entrepreneur’s playbook.
Needless to say, SEO is all about traffic. By making your website and messages as Google friendly as possible, you’re drastically increasing your chances of being discovered by your desired audience.
Learning how to successfully optimize your work for search is basically the same as learning how to speak Google’s language. It’s your job here to do everything in your power to help the world’s most popular search engine better and faster understand your messages and web pages.
So, What Does This Have To Do With Content Marketing?
Everything, really.
As we established numerous of times before on this blog, investing in content marketing pays off on so many levels these days. Apart from giving your company a voice, generating intelligent traffic, building up brand authority and helping businesses create leads that are already sold to, good content marketing actually speeds up the process of creating more and more internal and external links for your website.
That’s why it’s so important for SEO. Link building was, is and forever will be the foundation of every successful SEO strategy. There’s no way around it. Although there are a few other good ways to earn higher rankings and valuable links without producing content, there certainly aren’t more efficient ones.
However, even though this all sounds great, and everyone agrees that content marketing and SEO mix well together like lime and soda, if your content isn’t interesting or valuable enough to stimulate engagement and encourage people to naturally link back to your pages – you probably won’t see any fruit from your labor.
How come? – Well, because, in order to rank high in SERP, you cannot just produce a piece of content that applies to a certain query, post it online and wait for Google to make you rich and famous. No. It doesn’t really work that way. If you want to dominate the SERP for specific queries, you need to create something extraordinary that will earn you citations and endorsements from all sorts of different parties online, plus add the validity in your work, in both the eyes of your website’s audience and Google’s search algorithm.
As you build more and more links to your content, you’re constantly increasing trust in your message, and thus automatically building up your SEO and presenting yourself as a powerful domain in certain niche and market.
It’s Still About The People
It doesn’t matter if you write for the print or the Web, you have to keep in mind that content is primarily your brand’s instrument in telling a story. It highlights your products and services, but also the people that stand behind and in front of your logo. That’s why it’s important that all your messages:
1. Build confidence in your products and services;
2. Create respect for your company and its position within the industry;
3. Show the human side of your company;
4. Instill sense of goodwill and affinity among your current and potential consumers;
5. Respect formats and tones that are appealing to your users.
Having all this in mind, the question that most digital businessmen tend to ask themselves is: “What sort of content is best for SEO? What kind of material has the best chances of getting amplified by large audiences, while helping me earn those high-quality backlinks that will drastically improve my ranking in SERP?”
In order to solve this puzzle for most of our readers out there, I have decided to create a list of 6 types of content that tend to work best with SEO:
1. Blog Post
Many online businesses out there constantly forget all the benefits that come with running a company blog. If you’re smart enough, your blog can play multiple roles in your company’s success.
List posts, how-tos, hacks, research, original data, reviews, interviews, rants, case studies, white papers – it doesn’t really matter what type of blog content you’re publishing, if based on solid data, it can help transform your site into a real content hub which people will love to constantly revisit.
Believe it or not, but your blog is a wonderful and extremely powerful tool for generating traffic and earning insanely valuable backlinks for your website. It’s the no.1 place where you should display your content.
Why? – Well, if used correctly, your blog could play a very big role in your marketing strategy. If carefully designed, it could influence your site visitors in every part of your marketing funnel.
There are many businesses out there that benefit highly from their blog. HubSpot, MOZ, Buffer, GrooveHQ – these are just some of the brands that managed to turn their blogs into something far greater than just another section on their website. By sharing their expertise, company culture and success stories, these businesses have managed to build up real names for themselves in their niche and market.
Every single person who has heard more than two sentences about SEO, has heard of Rand Fishkin of MOZ as well. Same goes for digital marketing and Neil Patel. How come? – Well, because these guys were smart enough to invest their time and efforts into intelligently covering some of the most important and most frequently asked questions about their business on their blog.
When it comes to blogging for SEO, you can do wonders for your website if you just do a little keyword research, write 1000+ word-long posts, add smart links and focus on your permalink structure. But, if we think about blogging as a real tool for generating tons of quality leads to your website, the biggest challenges are closely related to finding new relevant topics to write about and getting people to amplify your content. Although things tend to vary here from niche to niche, one thing remains the same: people want to find answers to their troubles while being entertained.
So, when coming up with blog content to dominated SERP for particular long-tail keywords, always keep in mind that you:
1. Address real pain points that your targeted audience is facing;
2. Never write less than 800 words per text;
3. Keep it simple;
4. Craft powerful headlines;
5. Insert links to related articles within your site, add “anchor text” to links and images, and use H1 and H2 tags (etc) throughout
2. Ultimate Guides
Creating ultimate guides is a great way to increase traffic, links, and social shares for your site. Why? – Well, there are many reasons. Let’s first think about what the word “ultimate” itself really means.
As cited in every online dictionary, the word ultimate naturally refers to something maximum, conclusive, total, final, etc. Having this in mind, it’s quite logical why most people can’t get enough of these guides.
When they’re searching for something, a lot of internet users don’t really want to browse around 10-20 different pages before they learn what they want to learn about a particular subject or matter. No. They’re only interested in acquiring instant knowledge. They want it all. Now!
Here’s where ultimate guides come to shine. By producing long and detailed content that guarantees its readers a whole bunch of valuable information, you’re beating your competition on nothing more than a powerful word play. Naturally, everyone knows that “the ultimate guide” has to present something far more than just an ordinary piece of content. When people click on it, they expect something that goes beyond the length, style and approach of your ordinary text, so it’s quite advisable that you really invest yourself here and deliver on your promises. If not, if you produce a mediocre page and call it an ultimate guide, it will only backfire on you.
Although Ultimate Guides can be basically published as regular posts on your blog, my suggestion here is that you really think about them as something more than that. See how MOZ did it? They have a special menu, called “Learn & Connect”, where you can “get started” with their Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
3. Videos
There are many types of videos out there. It doesn’t matter if you produce short clips or full-length films, a good video will always communicate your message in an exciting and memorable way.
Why? – Well, because videos apply to a lot of our senses. With the right script and music behind it, you can provoke almost every emotion from your viewers. You can make them happy, sad, furious, inspired – anything you want.
In most cases, videos are far more personal and relatable than text and images because they tend to feature real people in relatable situations.
From the very first day when the television was invented, people have been doing their best to create compelling and persuasive video messages that stimulate their viewers to take some sort of action.
If you want your videos to convert, stimulate people to click on them and share them with their followers, friends or subscribers, you must provide quality, relevant content to your audience that’s easy to use and navigate.
Coming up with a successful Video SEO Strategy is all about attracting visitors with your videos and making them stay on your website, and eventually, convert into your regular visitors. As you probably know, posts with videos attract 3 times more inbound links than plain text posts.
So, what can you do in terms of video SEO to make it work for you?
Here’s the list:
1. Choose the right hosting solution;
2. Try to add target keyword in Post Title;
3. Proper Optimize Blog meta Description – add some catchy words with keywords;
4. Add at least one H1 (Heading) and H2 (Sub-Heading) tag inside blog post;
5. Create unique and relevant content that includes some targeted keywords;
6. Optimize Post permalink;
7. Do internal linking – tie in new posts to relevant old ones;
8. While adding images, do not forget to add image alt text;
9. While adding the video inside the Post, don’t forget to create a sub-heading to explain what type of video it is. For example, What Type of Content Is Best For SEO.
4. Infographics
Even though I’m not a fan of this type of content, the numbers say that infographics tend to generate more views, shares and love than almost any other type content.
Infographics are a visual way to provide information quickly. As far as I’m aware, infographics are good at providing time-based data, statistical trends, geographical data, hierarchies and the way multiple nodes are connected to each other (i.e. networks).
An ideal infographic consists of good design, relevant data and information of the story it has. Color schemes, typeface, themes and credits also play a big part here. Infographics have icons, text, charts, symbols, images, etc., in them.
They can be used at different places such as books, magazines, newspaper, on the web, as posters, etc. With the given list of online infographic makers you can create different infographics and charts easily out of the data or content that you already have.
This type of visualizing your information or data in a custom, fun and colorful way has been known to earn a lot of backlinks to all sorts of different industry experts.
5. User-Generated Content, Such As Product and Service Reviews On Third Party Websites
As you know, I already wrote an entire post on how to encourage people to create user-generated content for your brand. In that particular post, I wrote that in today’s world, user-generated content, such as product/service review or recommendation, is extremely important in most industries. In B2B marketing, in particular, these comments are especially useful for smaller/newer vendors where trust is an important issue for their existence.
Most people don’t really see it, but USG has a HUGE impact on your SEO. How? – Apart from constantly directing new waves of traffic to your website, USG also gives a pretty interesting and usable insight on what your audience and users are interested in. It’s great for figuring out what topics are trending among your targeted audience, how to mash up your existing content for agile rankings and understanding what kind of long-tail keywords could become a part of your existing content strategy.
6. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the best and most efficient tactics for acquiring quality links from high authority websites. Apart from that, this sort of way of reaching out and displaying your tips and trick on new web addresses helps you establish strong relationships with the top players from your niche, present your skills and knowledge in front a new crowd and stimulate large number of people to visit your website and site in order to figure out what you’re all about.
Getting links from authoritative sites is a great way of raising your domain’s search rankings.
Naturally, the old way of guest blogging for SEO is long gone. In this day and age, if you want to see some real return for your guest blogging efforts, you need to produce original and relevant content that offers some real value to its readers. Google hates repetitive and spammy content. If you just pile up random drafts and publish them on a site that has no authority at all, you won’t see any fruits of your labor. But, if you write powerful and compelling texts and do your best to publish then on web addresses that are known for producing quality stuff, then you’ll experience some real ROI.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
